House prices

Funny old world. For years house prices have been going up and up and up. Online we have houseprices.co.uk and other similar sites where you can check out actual sale prices in your area, your road, even next door. Check out the postcode SW19 4TN if you want to make your eyes water.

But now, as prices dip in some areas and freefall in others, a new clever site tracks prices going down, and how much by. Picking their name from the opposite of property tv programme Property Ladder, the website www.propertysnake.co.uk keeps a track on zillions of houses for sale, but only flags them up when the price is cut.

This site was very helpful to me - we were planning a move, only to discover that the area where we were selling was dropping a lot faster than the one we were planning to move to, and thus the gap was widening and becoming less affordable. Thanks to Jackie d'A for telling us of that useful site.

How to create PDF files for free

PDF format files are a very useful way of transferring documents between PCs of all different sorts. Unless you are very determined to break it, PDF format is generally regarded as "Read-Only" although the smarter documents do allow data input over the web. Let's stick with the standard Read-Only ones for the moment.

I'm sure, like me, you have at least a few times thought "I wish I could create my own PDF files" rather than email someone a Word document, for example, but the Adobe software is expensive. There are a couple of web services you can use, but they add on a page with their own advert on the end of the document, which is both annoying and unprofessional - and thus useless. PrimoPDF to the rescue - a FREE download to do the trick. I've started using it recently and it works well. Go to www.PrimoPDF.com and download then install.

How I cut down my fuel costs using the web

Everyone knows that fuel prices are climbing steeply and that there's no reduction in sight. Many people like me in the UK use the PetrolPrices.com website to check out where to find the least expensive fuel in their area, and that's certainly a good start. This site is powered by fuel card data, and uploaded every day or so - hence they can tell the selling price per litre at practically every filling station in the UK.

However, I went one stage further. Having been approved to work full-time from home, we (family of four with two children aged 8 and 11) did not need two cars any more. Given that I have a leased car, it had to be my wife's BMW 120d which was for the chop - approaching three years old, it was soon due its first MoT and the insurance renewal was looming. I'm realy not into all this AutoTrader lark, waiting in for tyre-kickers to check out your car, although it probably might have realised a slightly higher figure had I persevered - but what value is my time?

So I went to my local BMW garage and they gave me a price to buy it in, which was OK but not spectacular - buyers market, I decided. Two weeks later I made contact again and they withdrew the offer because a stop had been placed on buying in cars as they had sufficient stock. Then I heard a radio ad for WeWillBuyYourCar.com and I thought I'd check them out online - I found a few negative comments but generally the consensus was positive and I gave them a try. One Monday evening I logged all the details of the car on their website and their system quoted me a nice price, better than the BMW place. Good start. So I clicked some "let's go for it" button and the next day had a phone call from them as they promised. Three days later a guy arrived by train from Hull, and was with us about two hours in all - checked all the service history and other paperwork and went over the car with a fine-toothed comb. Price got adjusted slightly due to a couple of supermarket car park dings, but I agreed a price and then we called the WeWillBuyYourCar.com office for me to say "go ahead" (I could have pulled out up to that point). 15 minutes later I checked my bank account online to find the money transferred, so I then handed over the keys and said goodbye. Easy peasy!

And as fuel prices continue to go up, we're laughing!

Carry a memory stick at all times

A really easy win in the "Paperless office" stakes is a memory stick. I'm still amazed how few people carry one as a matter of course. Ever since I moved full-time into the IT industry in 1990, I have never gone too long without meeting someone asking me some sort of IT technical query about their PC - just as soon as they discover I work in IT (and particularly in Customer Support!), they latch onto it. Even though I am really proud of what I do, I try hard now to avoid telling people I am meeting for the first time. That said, my memory stick has got me out of a few holes in the past - both being able to carry useful files with me, and also to take copies of files back home to analyse further and advise on later. I still get away with a 2GB memory stick similar to the one in this photo here - although this is an 8GB model which is about the standard capacity these days - expect to pay about £15 in the UK for this. The thing I particularly like about this design is that it is very slim - some of the chunkier designs are awkward to use when you have something else in the adjacent USB socket. However, it isn't the most robust of memory sticks - you balance the survivability against the practicality.

How technology helps my children

In his speech at our wedding 15 years ago, my father admitted he did not know me before I was five - and it wasn't because he travelled with his job. His business was less than a mile from home and he just stereotyped my mum into the stay-at-home wife who had his dinner on the table when he got home, and looked after the children. Just recently he admitted that he really had no influence on my development and he left her to do it. I've always admired the focus and commitment he gave his business, but it mades me cringe and I'm shaking my head in staggered disbelief even now how little he cared about me through my formative years.

So technology helps me work from home, and opens up all sorts of opportunities. The most important of these is that I get to spend more time with my wife and children due to zero commute time. In term time, I share the school runs pretty equally with my wife, and any day I can be kicking a ball about or helping them with homework the same minute I log off. And I want to, too.

No-one ever puts on their gravestone "I wish I had spent more time in the office", and if technology helps me get the work/family balance right, then it's got to be a good thing.

Internet Telephony

As with many new technologies, it takes some time for them to settle down and be viable, and Internet Telephony is just one such area. Yes, Skype has been around for a while, and we've heard about VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) but very few are sure what it means. (Wikipedia definition here, should you have a minute!)

I am uncharacteristically late on the bandwagon on this one, but just recently I went over to VOIP with my employers and have been stunned by how good it is. So much so, I then signed up for Skype on my home PC and made my first call across London to a friend of mine (he had his webcam pointing the wrong direction, so I could see his shoulder but not his face, but don't tell him!).

I'm going to spend some more time investigating this, and possibly buying a hands-free phone which would work off my WiFi network. All sorts of possibilities here - BT and O2, you're going to have to fight more for my business!

The future of estate agents

The UK housing market has been ably steered in the downward direction by the intransigence of Mr Brown and Mr Darling, who cannot seem to organise a booze-up in a brewery between them. Our Gordon, previously the self-promoted "safe pair of hands" is left looking culpable with his inept handling of the Northern Rock debacle, taking many weeks to decide what to do and allowing the market to create a huge level of uncertainty. I never thought I'd say this, but the US Government managed significantly better with their sorted-in-two-days approach to Bear Sterns and they sailed on almost regardless. OK, so the oil price has not helped, but is a compounded problem on top of the housing market. Yes, there were other factors too, like the no-brain who invented the >100% mortgage.

UK estate agents are having a bad time, with house sales by volume quoted as the worst for anything between 30 and 75 years (dependent on which news source you choose to believe) and some agents already laying off staff. Over the last 5-6 years particularly, the internet has revolutionised house selling, and I am expecting the housing sale downturn to play in favour of the internet due to its low cost base. By the time the market picks up (you guess when!), the most savvy websites are going to be the winners. Unless they really pull their fingers out, the first generation property portal sites will also be losers - Rightmove, PropertyFinder, FindAProperty, PrimeLocation etc, and if I were a betting man, I would put money on the second generation property sites (more like search engines now) to be the winners. So watch closely for Globrix, DotHomes and Zoomf to make their marks, along with agents like Foxtons whose business model is built around their website being the #1 selling place, rather than the office. Thus most of their selling staff are home-based and there is one central admin office for dealing with the legal side of things once a sale is agreed, and that can be in a lower-cost location.

The One Year Rule

The One Year Rule is "Never buy software within one year of it being released". Software these days is so complex that there's no way any software house can hand-on-heart tell you that they have tested every conceivable combination of keypresses. It is thus given that "early adopter" users will find lots of bugs, which I'm sure would be really annoying. This rule applies particularly to operating systems like MS Vista. This approach is also known as "Never Buy Version One"

Welcome to The Paperless Office

Welcome to Jeremy's blog "The Paperless Office". Here I am going to add some notes, thoughts, website links and so on - aiming at frequent short updates rather than wordy epistles.

As the strapline says, it's about "Life survival techniques using the Internet and Gadgets" - clearing your desk and life with everything except a keyboard, mouse and a VOIP headset. OK, so maybe a mobile is OK, or even a Blackberry if you insist.