Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of assuming that investors will be interested in supporting a new web project proposal from the idea stage. The reality is that most investors will pay very little attention unless you can validate projected return on investment (ROI); understandably, nobody wants to throw their money at a dead-end idea, no matter how impressive you can make it seem. Continue reading →
Safer? Perhaps. But will autonomous cars reduce the cost of motoring?
Imagine a world where you can summon up a car whenever you want one. Imagine a car that can drop you off at work, pick the kids up from school, or take you to the shops any time you want without any of the downsides of ownership.

Sound like science fiction? It’s a world that is getting closer to reality with around 10 million self-driving cars expected to be on our roads by 2020. You can already buy cars that are able to park themselves, brake automatically to avoid a collision, or keep themselves in lane on the motorway, so the completely automatic car is getting closer.
Safer travel
What does this mean for day-to-day motoring? With cars programmed to obey speed limits and stick to the rules of the road, there should be fewer accidents. In the long run, that could lead to a cut in insurance costs. In the short term they’re likely to rise, however, as robot cars share the roads with human-controlled vehicles.
Buying a car on car finance bad credit in Portsmouth that can drive itself could see your running costs cut. Self-driving cars will be programmed to operate economically and therefore cut fuel consumption and wear to things like tyres and brakes.
Car? What car?
Of course, when all cars on the road are self-driving, the savings are potentially much greater as you won’t need to own one at all. You can just call one up via your smartphone when you need it. This means no tax or insurance to pay for and no depreciating asset sitting in your driveway when it’s not in use.
There will undoubtedly be a market for classic cars to be enjoyed on closed tracks at weekends, so you may still need to turn to companies like www.rightdrive.co.uk who offer guaranteed car finance in Portsmouth to buy some dream wheels.
When you only pay for a car as you need it, there is the potential to save quite a lot of money. Even using taxis should cost less as the fare won’t need to cover the driver’s wages. Of course, all of this will take some time. In the early stages, even self-driving cars are likely to need a driver to take control in an emergency.
Top 10 useful products to recharge your brain
Nuts, tomatoes and blueberries – only a small part of the list
When accumulated a lot of work, but the forces have not, do not hurry to run to the pharmacy for “doping” and simply use the right products. “Recharge” your brain and can not only cheer up a little coffee.

The top 10 healthy foods for good brain productivity.
1. Blueberries
Constant consumption of blueberries helps to improve memory and even prevent its short-term loss, found scientists from the United States. For best results, experts recommend combining blueberry consumption and special exercises for the development of memory.
2. Whole grains
Whole grain foods are slow carbohydrates, which continuously secrete glucose in our blood stream and provide your brain with energy for a long time. Doctors recommend eating brown, unprocessed cereals, whole wheat bread and pasta made of coarse flour.
3. Oily fish
At the use of oily fish, 19% reduced chance encounter problems with memory. Essential fatty acids our body is extremely important, say nutritionists. In addition to fish, a good source of omega-3 may be flax oil and soybeans, pumpkin seeds, walnut oil, and soy beans.
It is noteworthy that even thermally cooked oily fish retains a sufficient amount of healthy fats.
4. Tomatoes
Scientists have proved that tomatoes contain lycopene, which is a powerful antioxidant which protects our body from free radicals, which, in turn, provoke the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
5. Blackcurrant
On the mental activity Vitamin C has good effect. The best source is his currant. One spoon contains a daily dose of this vitamin beneficial for the brain.
6. Pumpkin seeds
To get a daily dose of zinc is enough to eat a handful of pumpkin seeds per day. It is necessary to improve memory and thinking skills, experts say.
7. Broccoli
An excellent source of vitamin K, which is known to enhances cognitive function and improves brainpower.
8. Sage
Sage has a reputation as a plant that improves memory. Studies have shown that the whole thing in essential oils, so the inclusion of a sage in the diet – is necessary.
9. Walnuts
Vitamin E reduces the cognitive impairment (memory loss), especially in the elderly. A good source of vitamin E are nuts, especially walnuts. It also may include green leafy vegetables, olives, eggs and asparagus.
10. Green Tea
Drinking green tea regularly reduces the development of dementia – dementia, persistent decline in cognitive activity with the loss in one degree or another previously learned knowledge and practical skills.
This was stated by Japanese scientists who conducted the study with the participation of over 700 people older than 60 years.
It is noteworthy that showed good results, even those who drank green tea only 1 time per week
Acclimatising wood flooring: the essentials
You have just purchased your new wood flooring and you can’t wait to lay it in place and complete the transformation of your room, but you’ve heard conflicting rules about leaving the flooring to acclimatise. What is the right way to prepare your flooring?

It is a common misconception that if you leave your wood flooring in its desired location for a few days, it will acclimatise properly and be ready for installation. This is not the case.
In fact, this has is not related to how long the flooring is left sitting there. It has more to do with the control of the moisture around it. Wood flooring will always perform better if the humidity around it is kept between 30 per cent and 50 per cent, and the temperature is maintained between 15 and 27 degrees Celsius.
Preparation
This can be said for all types of flooring, including parquet flooring from Ireland, and is an important part of the preparation for installing your wood flooring. It’s not just the temperature and humidity that need to be monitored; the site or room that the flooring is to be laid in needs to be fully completed prior to its installation.
Factors such as plastering, painting and the installation of doors and windows all need to be completed prior to the hardwood floor being ordered. This will ensure that the humidity and temperature have been stable for a period of time prior to the flooring arriving.
Storage
When purchasing flooring such as parquet flooring in Ireland, it is vitally important that you time its arrival correctly and store it properly. The points mentioned about prepping the site and completing work are just as important as storing the flooring.
To maximise the effectiveness of the acclimatisation, cross-stacking and spacing the flooring in its intended destination encourages air flow around the boards, allowing the flooring to adjust to its new surroundings. Most manufacturers recommend a minimum of three days for all types of flooring, including parquet flooring in Ireland, to acclimatise. There is no maximum.
If these necessary steps are taken along with due care and attention in the preparation and acclimatisation of the flooring for installation, you will have a lower chance of experiencing problems with your hardwood flooring and can spend more time to enjoying it in all its glory.
Rounding Off a Corporate Event: Dublin’s Best Music Venues
There’s no doubt that Dublin is a top choice of location when it comes to corporate events, thanks to its ease of access and plethora of facilities. The entertainment on offer can also be a major draw, particularly the plentiful supply of live music, which can mark the perfect end to a wide range of corporate events.

Whether you’re looking for the ideal recommendations for go-it-alone entertainment after a corporate BBQ in Dublin or a show-stopping finale for the main event, here is the lowdown on some of the city’s best live music venues.
You can also find more information on the official Ireland.com website.
Vicar Street
The venue first opened back in 1998, but its popularity continues today thanks to its great staff and ability to combine spacious surroundings with intimate-feeling gigs.
Event management companies in Dublin, such as the Davis Events Agency, understand the importance of tailor-made events, but even if you think that some of your guests or colleagues will not be impressed by a live Vicar Street gig, do not discount the venue straight away. It also plays host to top comedians such as Jimmy Carr and Dara Ó Briain.
The Grand Social
The Grand Social is almost a permanent fixture on the National Venue of the Year list of nominations. With its spacious rooftop garden and its eclectic musical offerings, this venue has everything from world-renowned DJs to regular themed nights.
JJ Smyth’s
If you’re in the market for some jazz and blues, then this family-run, city centre pub is one of the premium choices. This is a real local’s choice and is a perfect spot to enjoy these musical genres in the way they were supposed to be heard.
The Button Factory
Whether you want house or indie rock, The Button Factory on the site of the former Temple Bar Music Centre offers an eclectic mix of genres and acts.
Other Options
The Cobblestone Pub is the authentic choice for traditional Irish music, whilst the vast Wright Venue is an extravagant option thanks to its incredible sound-system and its attractiveness to high-flying DJs – not to mention visiting stars such as 50 Cent and Rihanna.
Whelan’s, meanwhile, will always deserve a spot on any Dublin live music list thanks to its reputation for attracting both Irish and international talent.
Pressure in Chancellor to reduce tourism VAT
This year a large number of MPs and representatives from the biggest players in hospitality, leisure parks and other tourist attractions joined forces in their attempt to convince chancellor George Osborne to reduce VAT on tourism.

Losing out to competition
As it stands, Britain has one of the highest tourism VAT percentages in Europe, as a majority of the EU has chosen to reduce VAT on hotel stays and entrance fees to tourist attractions in order to encourage holidaymakers. The MPs and representatives of the tourism industry claim that the UK’s high VAT rate means that tourist sites lose customers to their cheaper competition abroad.
The British Hospitality Association (BHA) have been particularly instrumental in promoting the ‘Cut Tourism VAT’ campaign. They outline their demands at www.bha.org.uk/campaigns/vat/ and provide evidence of support from authorities such as Dr Andrew Sentance, former member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee. Sentance claims that reducing tourism VAT is a “highly effective” way of encouraging growth in the UK tourism market.
Benefitting the wider industry
The BHA claim that many businesses linked less directly to the tourism industry would feel the benefit from a VAT reduction. Take, for example, businesses that hire out or sell commercial warewashers from 247catering or similar. While at the moment commercial warewashers would be rented out at 20% VAT, with a tourism reduction they could be far more affordable for catering companies, leading to a boost for both the catering supplies company and catering business itself.
At the Chairman of the Cut Tourism VAT campaign, Dermot King, who is also Managing Director of holiday giant Butlins, claimed that support for the campaign is steadily growing. He described how more and more MPs and experts are deciding that a reduction on VAT would benefit the British economy.
For years the tourism and hospitality industry has been at the centre of the UK’s economy, creating as many as one in five jobs and helping the government reduce unemployment. For this reason, ensuring the continued popularity of tourism in the UK for both UK citizens and other nationalities is crucial. Equally, however, the Chancellor could well see the reduction of VAT income from such a large player in the UK economy as a gamble. One thing’s for sure, the debate in parliament is likely to become heated.
HOW TO IMPROVE WI-FI SIGNAL IN YOUR HOME
Sure your Wi-Fi signal weakens many times, and do not know why or how to fix it. The multitude of physical obstacles between the router and we can cause serious problems with our signal. How about it? It ends with the desperate feeling of not knowing how to get a decent Wi-Fi, and aims these tricks to improve the Wi-Fi signal at home:

INCREASE WI-FI SIGNAL AT YOUR HOME
The power of our wireless signal will be lower how much more distance between the router and the room you want to take the coverage. The first step you need to take is to draw a plan of your house and go visiting each of the rooms to check signal quality you get at each location. For those who want a more thorough analysis, they can use programs like WirelessNetView.
Once this is done, it will be necessary to check that your router is in a central point of the house, and that the signal is able to reach all parts of the house almost equally. In addition, it is important that the router is located near the PTR for ONT connections ADSL or fiber connections.
Another aspect we have to consider is the obstacles. This is not to say that you have to remove the walls, doors, windows and cabinets, to run your network, but it does take some steps as not to place the router near a wall, or keep him inside boxes, furniture or shelves.
If your router has antennas, we recommend that orients right in the direction you want to have more connection. And if none of this seems enough, you can try to install a signal amplifier.
Would you like to fix it with your own hands? In that case, you can building a signal amplifier Wi-Fi home. Here are the instructions for making it:
- Grab a can of soda or beer, scissors, tape and glue to stick to the wall.
- Cut the base and the top of the can carefully. Straighten the central body of the can until you have shaped dish
- Use the part that is drunk as the new home base amplifier.
- Spend your antenna wireless router through the hole used to drink beer, and moves the home antenna until it points to where you want to get Wi-Fi signal
5 Ethical Ways for College Students to Earn Extra Cash
No one likes to be broke, but when you are in college, having a few extra dollars to have a little fun is often out of the question. Even for dinner, you are left scrounging. Ah, the life of a college student. It’s not so glamorous. However, with Internet and a little resourcefulness, you could actually make some extra scratch. This injection in cash can not only allow you the opportunity to have a little more fun – you can also subsidize your tuition, your living expenses, bills and more. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to curb these costs in an ethical way. Indeed, there are a lot of unethical ways to make money, but those ways don’t often pay in the long run. Here are five ethical ways for college students to earn extra cash.
- Ghost Writer
If you are in college, ghost writing is an excellent way to make some extra money. As a ghostwriter, you will be working for a number of different clients, writing blog articles, copy, biographies and more. If you love to write, this is the perfect job for you. To find a job in this field, you can simply go online and look for job listings. Simply send in a few writing samples and see what comes back.
- Delivery Service
As a delivery person, you will not only make money from the company you delivery for, but you will also make money from tips. This is a great way to make money, because it will get you out of the house on a regular basis. If you wanted to, you could even start your own delivery service within your dorm or community. You could deliver textbooks, notes, packages, and even school supplies. Just set up a website, do some local marketing and voila.
- Scientific Guinea Pig
If you are going to a college, like University of San Francisco, you are usually around some medical or scientific facilities, which makes it really easy to see if you can join a new study. You could simply be answering questions or you may be trying out a new medicine. Most of the time, these studies are actually quite safe. When you are signing up for a pharmaceutical study, you may even get a placebo or sugar pill.
- Complete Online Surveys
Another great way to make some money is to fill out surveys online. You can usually do a little search to find these surveys. Most of the time, they only pay a couple hundred dollars, but that couple of hundred dollars can go a long way. All you have to do is answer a few questions and maybe take a few pictures.
- Sell Your Stuff
On top of everything, you could also be selling items on Amazon, Etsy or Ebay. You don’t necessarily need to keep these items in stock – you can actually be selling as a third party and then Amazon does the shipment and fulfillment. In the end, this is a very simple way to make some money – and you don’t even need to do that much work.
Beverage Packaging: Which Will be the Dominant Formats?
It may be something that most people don’t even consider, but the packing material used for beverages is big business. There are many forms of packaging on the market, but which of these existing formats, if any, could become the dominant format in the future?

Glass
Glass may have started out as the most dominant packing material, but it then fell out of favour as lighter, less-breakable materials were developed. Although it’s still a favourite for certain drinks (such as wines and beers), soft drinks are rarely, if ever, packaged in glass bottles. There is an argument for the use of glass, as it is easy to recycle and can be re-used indefinitely without loss of integrity, but it is a heavy material that requires greater storage space and a lot of room on the shelves. From a practical point of view, this makes glass less attractive to the manufacturer who wants to maximise the units they can place.
Plastic
There are various different plastics, but most drinks packagings are made of PET, which is as strong as it is light in weight. Such material is great for use in packaging machines, as it’s easy to vary design, low in cost and very light. For these reasons, PET is very popular, but although it is a relatively recent innovation, it is already starting to fall out of favour with consumers who are concerned about waste. Plastics cannot be recycled indefinitely.
Metal
Primarily aluminium or steel, the drinks cans industry is still booming. Unlike plastics that can be easily moulded into myriad shapes, drinks cans tend only to vary in height and width, with most conforming to a standard 330ml size. Aluminium is preferable to steel, since it is much lighter and more practical for use in factories. Metal is also easy to recycle, with each can being made from at least 50% recycled material.
Whether or not a clear winner will emerge, innovations will continue to be made and existing products improved. Companies buying packaging machines through packaging-machines.co.uk or similar will have to decide where their priority lies…
Is it in the sustainability of the planet, the ease with which design can be varied or with practicalities such as weight and ease of storage?
Faster and faster: 4 technologies to improve site speed
Modern internet users have an extremely low tolerance for sluggish site performance, so it pays to optimise every page to ensure that visitors are satisfied and bounce rates can be reduced.

People also have various ways of working out whether the culprit is a poorly designed site, or their own slow connection. And by using the following tools, webmasters can streamline sites so that even mobile users will be impressed on arrival.
Content Delivery Networks
Making use of a CDN is sensible if you want to serve a global audience with your site and allow visitors from a number of countries to get the best possible user experience.
Rather than relying on a single server to host content, a CDN lets you replicate multimedia files and software apps across several data centres so that load speeds are slashed.
This is not only a benefit in terms of site speed, but also enhances the consistency and continuity of the visitor experience. Accounting for spikes in traffic in certain regions can be achieved with the help of a CDN, putting an end to outages caused by high volumes of visitors.
Brotli
Compressing site data allows pages to load more rapidly on a range of connection types. And the Brotli algorithm developed by Google is one of the best compression solutions on the market at the moment.
It can help to cut down up to 40 per cent of data traffic based upon HTML files alone, although annoyingly it is currently only supported on Google’s Chrome browser and rival platform Firefox, meaning that Internet Explorer and other apps are not yet compatible.
HTTP/2
Since arriving last year, this latest iteration of the world wide web protocol is capable of enabling several requests to be handled by a standard connection, while also allowing for compression of key elements such as headers for the sake of speed.
Working with companies that provide digital services, such as Cardiff web design by Ambercouch, will allow businesses to create cutting edge sites which harness this technology and other relevant components.
There are numerous variables involved in determining site speed, from the device and browser used to the location of the servers on which content is hosted. But by optimising to the best of your ability, there are significant benefits to be seen.


