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Thanks to 2 Belkin UPS (Uninterruptible power supply) units none of my key electrical equipment got damaged last week when the electrical wiring in part of my home failed.

If you don’t use a UPS then you’re taking the risk that a lightning strike, power surge, electricity brownout or blackout will cause your Computer, modem, TiVo/Foxtel IQ etc to get damaged.

I initially got a Belkin F6S600au 600VA UPS for use in my office to protect my computer, monitor and the gadgets I recharge there including a laptop, mobile phone, video and digital cameras etc.

Note that electronic devices which draw a lot of power like laser printers and heaters should always be plugged in a surge protector socket of a UPS, never in a battery backup socket.

The F6S600auUSB 600VA has 6 power sockets which supply upto 300 Watts of power. All 6 power sockets have surge protection and 3 have battery backup as well to keep your equipment running long enough to safely shut it down in the event of a electricity brownout or blackout.

It worked well during tests like me manually turning that power circuit off at the switch so I bought the cheaper and lower capacity F6S400auUSB 400VA UPS (200 watts) to power and protect my home theatre devices (ADSL modem router, TiVO, Netgear NAS networked storage etc.)

Both the F6S600auUSB and F6S400auUSB have a built-in pass through phone line socket to protect your landline phone or ADSL modem. This worked fine with a traditional ADSL phoneline which had a PSTN dialtone and a naked ADSL line without dialtone.

During times of peak power use such as a hot day in summer, Sydney (like the other big cities in Australia), suffers from brownouts (short power outages) due to the crumbling electricity infrastructure and inefficiently designed houses and buildings which use air conditioning a lot to maintain a comfortable inside temperature.

Brownouts can be particularly damaging to electronic equipment because it is common for brownouts to occur several times at close time intervals with power going up and down.

This causes devices like Computers, NAS or PVR’s such as the TiVo and Foxtel IQ to crash due to lack of power, restart and then crash again potentially losing data in the process.

Many people run a small business from home but probably don’t realise that a home and contents insurance policy only covers lightning/power surge etc damage to your personal electrical equipment.

Any electrical device you’ve bought for your business or which is used primarily for business purposes isn’t covered for damage from a lightning strike, power surge, electricity brownout or blackout so it makes sense to self-insure by supplying these with power through a UPS.

Belkin appears to have a lot of confidence in their UPS product because they offer:

• A 3 year warranty for the UPS,
• Agree to repair or replace any equipment damaged by a surge, spike, or lightning strike while properly connected to a Belkin surge protector with battery backup
• And include a Data Recovery Warranty so if your Belkin UPS product fails while properly connected and your hard drive is damaged, Belkin will engage Seagate Recovery Services to recover the lost data.

If you want to buy a Belkin UPS, shop around on the internet because prices vary a lot eg: F6S600auUSB ($110-170), F6S400auUSB ($90-$130).

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GUEST ARTICLE: Almost 18 months ago, during the Global Financial Crisis, I wanted to share a bit of optimism so I wrote this post about it being the best time to start a new business and I believe I was right.

“Growth”. photo credit: iChaz

These were my main arguments:

• It Takes Time – to start something from scratch, build it up and make serious profits/sell it
• You Don’t Need A Boom To Start – It may be true that it’s easier to start in a boom, but it’s not required
• Great People For Hire – I’m not trying to treat people as a commodity here, it’s just the facts that supply will outstrip demand for a while and that’s a good thing for founders.
• Slump In What? – “You can still sell stuff”
• There Is Money – Yes, there’s less silly money, less private equity, less from family, friends and fools, but it’s there.
• We’re All Still Here – No start-up is an island. It is born, nurtured, matured and blossomed in a community and network that is a key part of the success
• Less Competition In Innovation – When the economy flies to safety, one of the first budgets of the big boys that get cut is the R&D budget. Why is this good? It means that they are leaving much of the new opportunities to you and your shiny new startup.
• So Get Started – if you’ve got an idea that’s been in your head and you’re thinking “Woah, have to put that on hold for now.” then pick it back up again

A bunch of companies started during the GFC are on a great path right now. “So what about now?”

Well, it’s a great time to grow a business. Much of the business and consumer world are confident and optimistic (except Greece maybe). The first of the growth results are trickling in, so this should continue. It’s not hot right now, but you don’t want it hot, you just want it supportive of growth and expansion. You want sales.

All this points to more money available for investment. I don’t think there is going to be a better time than between now (June, 2010) and the end of 2011 to raise capital for small, private, startup businesses. They won’t invest in ideas or crazy dreams and you won’t get $1m for 1%, but you will get smart people investing smart money in smart teams.

More importantly, it’s the right time to accelerate your business. This is specifically more important for startups. The reason is, if you want to grow, exit and finish your earn out, then you want to do that before the next decline. If we’re ramping up now, then we might be hitting the peak in 4-5 years. If it takes you a year or two to grow, a year or two to sell and a year or two to exit, then you better get moving now.

“But what if didn’t start 18 months ago?”

Well, then things are going to be slightly harder. But that is an awful excuse. To paraphrase Mrs Landingham from West Wing, “If you don’t have any ideas and you don’t have the desire to commit to them and make it happen, then I understand. But if you do have ideas and passion, but just think it’s too hard, then gee, I don’t even want to know you.”

This guest article has been written by Mick Liubinskas. Mick is a partner at Pollenizer, which helps web businesses grow and become successful.

If you’re a blogger or an expert about a topic I cover on this blog I encourage you to contact me and I’ll consider publishing your guest article here including generous attribution and back links back to your website as thanks for your contribution

Visit the Rambling Thoughts Blog regularly to read articles about Technology, Personal Finance, TV Shows, Politics, Environment, Books and more

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I had a press pass to the Media 2010 conference last Friday and have uploaded photos of some of the interesting Media 2010 slides to Flickr.

Media 2010 is a co-production of XmediaLab and Fairfax Digital whose aim is to bring together leading visionaries to mark the turning of the most exciting decade in the history of media, marketing and advertising.

Notes from News and the Spectrum of User Experience Masterclass

Before the main Media 2010 conference I attended their News and the Spectrum of User Experience Masterclass run by Oliver Reichenstein, CEO, information Architects (Tokyo)

Quote from Dave McClure: The Internet does NOT want to be FREE. it wants to get paid on F*cking Friday, just like everybody else

• Quote from Dave McClure: The Internet does NOT want to be FREE. it wants to get paid on F*cking Friday, just like everybody else
• Print ads cost exorbitant amounts of money and yet they are unmeasurable! Advertisers with sense would switch from print to web
• In the short term annoying intrusive ads and page takeover ads will seem efficient, but driving away readers means its bad long term
• Be serious about selling big expensive ads on your news website. Sell ads in-house & keep 100% of the money. How else will you finance your journalists?
• Whats wrong with news sites: fonts are too small, blaming Google for industry woes, bad technology (eg: slow sites with big flash ads)
• Efficient user interfaces make $ lots of money. To make news sites efficient need to understand the tasks people use them for and remove obstructions

Photos & Notes from Media 2010 Conference

There is an oversupply of content

Attention is what’s really scarce

Hardware/Software are Commoditised as consumer & enterprise worlds “mushed” together with many organisations using cloud/distributed computing

Predicted trends for Media revenue sources in 2010

Marc Frons (New York Times) says a big trend is people socially discussing news using Facebook as a source of news articles

How can we optimise balancing End user revenue with Advertising Revenue … and maintain profitability

Free versus paid content .. the tradeoffs

Reuters Labs drives media innovation by experimenting with new technologies

News + Music = Reuters Newsbeats (Newziq)

Experimental digital journalist kit

Augmented Reality – remote controlled mini news copters

Augmented Reality – remote controlled mini news copters

Digital printing can cut costs and offer customers bespoke newspaper content

Today’s paper should be about tomorrow’s events, not yesterday’s

Everyblock.com lets you track and discuss what’s new in your neighbourhood

Everyblock.com lets you track and discuss what’s new in your neighbourhood

Reading a newspaper is like starting to watch a TV series mid-season

Solution: create encyclopedia articles as the primary news product and Article Updates as secondary news product

Advertising model is unable to support quality journalism, need to use hybrid model of advertising + other revenue sources

Online advertising spend is shifting to social networks

Commodity News: ubiquitous, instantaneous, difficult to monetise

Participatory Mashups: Are becoming the medium of choice for internet users and advertisers

Quality Niche: is a small audience willing to pay for quality journalism – but with little influence (except when relayed by commodity news sources)

Massive revenue depletion in print and online news

A web viewer brings 16-20 times less revenue than a print viewer

so why isn’t HULU in Australia?

Al Jazeera creative commons repository

Media 2010 Useful Links (Courtesy of Valerio Veo Head of SBS News and Current Affairs Online)

• Adrian Holovaty – Everyblock is hyperlocal (Video Interview)
• Marc Frons – Print to digital – the future (Video Interview)
• EveryBlock — A news feed for your block – Track and discuss what’s new in your neighborhood
• Monday Note – Frederic Filloux’s weekly blog
• Al Jazeera Creative Commons Repository
• Stilgherrian Media2010 Liveblog

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I often think how many people I come across don’t reach their full potential. I know they have great skills or knowledge which could lead to them living a richer life (in terms of well being and/or financially) but these skills/knowledge are lying dormant

photo credit: morberg

Some of these people are doing work they hate just to earn a living. My first tip to achieve your potential is the only way to do great work is to love what you do

Others are working in a “Safe Job” with a steady but unremarkable income which barely uses 20% of their ability. This is a shame and waste of their potential.

Over time these disused skills/experience will slowly be lost. At the very least these people should be passing on their skills/experience to others rather than letting them atrophy.

My friend Luke Harvey-Palmer is an expert in the field of Personal Branding and helping people reach their potential so I asked him to contribute his thoughts to this article:

Luke says he’s pretty blunt with people who fail to achieve their potential because often what they need is a little ’shock therapy’ – in other words, sometime we are just too damn nice and tell everyone “you are so talented!!”.

A particular approach he likes and uses is one thats derived from Abraham Maslow’s famous research paper “A Theory of Human Motivation”. Luke’s version is this: Achieving your potential is very often all about what really motivates you:

There are several stages of motivation and people who don’t realise their potential are those who are motivated by the ‘lower’ rungs of the ladder. It is connection with others and the search for contribution and growth that forces people to explore their potential and realise it:

1. Certainty – these people are motivated by the need to earn an income and be certain what is coming tomorrow and the day after. People who sit here are the classic ’salary’ types who NEED the certainty day to day to get them out of bed.
2. Importance – these people love handing you their business card! For them, title and importance is their key motivation, and the notion of NOT being associated with a big brand or an important sounding position scares them. These are those who most only work with big, important corporate brands and are obsessed with title.
3. Connection – now we step up the scale a little. People motivated by connection are the great networkers, and typical value people over process and income. These are the people who recognise that true success only comes form working with others, from as many different walks of life as possible. Many young and aspiring entrepreneurs are most motivated by connection.
4. Contribution – now we are starting to explore those motivated by ‘doing good’ and truly making a difference. For these people, they have moved beyond ’self’ and are now starting to make decisions on the basis of the community and humanity! Richard Branson and other successful entrepreneurs are here.
5. Growth – this is the highest possible form of motivation..this is about risk takers and colloborators and ‘givers’ who recognise that the growth of others and fellow mankind is the only way to improve EVERYONE’s situation. In many ways, Buffet and Gates are motivated by growth.

According to recent research by The Future Laboratory (commissioned by American Express) the external shock of the current Global Financial Crisis (GFC) on people who have practiced consumption as a way of life has prompted a re-evaluation of what is important to them

Potentialists are equally men and women but the way each sex finds fulfillment differs greatly – men are more likely to focus on work and aspire to set up their own business (26%) whereas women’s ambitions lie in being more creative and artistic (44%) and facing new mental and physical challenges (39%)

In this uncertain economic climate “potentialist” people are taking a much broader, more holistic approach to how they spend their time and money moving away from status purchases and passive engagement to more participatory activities in which they are proactively involved like hobbies, new skills, spirituality, family and travel as ways of expanding their lives and realising their personal potential.

“People are feeling the need for more sustainability in their life that was, I think, there before the recession, although the recession has pushed buttons,” says John Naish, author of Enough: Breaking Free from the World of More.

An example of this is the “Live Local” project which encourages Australians to experiment and meet neighbours, buy locally and support the local economy, plant vegetables in their backyard, save energy and make their air and water cleaner. Have a look at my friend Kate’s blog to see examples of Live Local in action

Value and quality are the order of the day in all aspects of life – success and fulfillment have new measures that are less linked to material value and far less tangible. Learning new skills or experiencing new cultures as a traveller not a tourist are all edging their way up the priority list of what people hope to achieve in the future.

Disclaimer: I regularly display advertising for banking and financial services on this website so FYI American Express may be an advertiser in the future.

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I attended the Search Engine Room 2009 conference and found the Keynote address by veteran journalist and entrepreneur Alan Kohler about The Click Economy full of useful insights about how the seismic changes in the media industry will play out and the impacts these changes will have on both advertising and publishing.

Alan Kohler is one of Australia’s most well respected financial journalists. Previously a columnist at the Australian Financial Review (AFR), Alan has also served as Editor of The Age and AFR.

For the past few years he’s been dividing his time between television on ABC TV’s Inside Business and Nightly News and his own websites Eureka Report and Business Spectator which aim to give ordinary people the business/market news, tools and knowledge to become independent and reclaim the control – and the money! – that is rightfully theirs.

Alan’s keynote examined the latest trends of “The Click Economy” and how the dynamics of advertising have changed more in the past five years than the past 500.

Search, now worth an estimated $800m a year, has been the catalyst. Suddenly it’s about performance, clicks and outcomes rather than advertisers renting space and hoping for the best.

Alan Kohler – The Click Economy (20min) – 18Nov2009 – Search Engine Room conference Video Recorded by Neerav Bhatt on Vimeo.

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Like me you’ll be familiar with American news stories like Justice Dept. Defends $1.92 Million RIAA Fine Against Minnesota Mom and MPAA Shuts Down Entire Town’s Wi-Fi Over Single Illegal Download

Pirate Flag. photo credit: nickhumphries

However I bet you don’t know that The United States of America (USA) was the biggest copyright pirate in the 19th Century. In fact the famous authors Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes) spent a lot of time berating Americans for not paying a penny in author royalties until the every end of the 19th century

In my opinion the pendulum has swung too far the other way because these days US legislators are in the pockets of organisations like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and have enacted legislation with ultra-harsh penalties completely out of proportion for even small breaches of copyright.

In an ironic twist yesterday’s biggest pirate is today’s global copyright enforcer trying to make countries like China crack down on piracy of intellectual property (IP) like Movies, Computer Software and Books.

Some commentators say that China will get more serious over time in attempting to reduce piracy of IP due to pressure from trading partners like the USA, external bodies like the World Trade organisation and local Chinese producers of Music, Software, Movies, Music etc who want to earn money from their work rather than seeing pirated copies sold on the streets for $1.

For more information listen to this BBC World Service podcast exploring the world of intellectual piracy – the stealing of ideas.

For more background about the piracy of Charles Dickens book “A Christmas Carol” read A Christmas Copyright Carol

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