March 2008

Unsecured Loans are ones where there’s little to no security for the loan provider. For example, if you are unable to provide proof of income, or you are just unwilling to, you will be wanting to try and get an unsecured loan. Also, many loan providers require some form of collateral - such as a deposit or an asset tied to the loan.

Thankfully, due to the competitiveness of the internet, and the lucrative nature of the loans trade, great websites such as EzUnsecured.com have popped up with products like their Small Business Loan service.

Let me tell you, in the current economic climate, you’ll have difficulty getting easy access to cash, especially unsecured cash, to finance a business.

EzUnsecured taps into the breadth of money still out there to provide No Doc loans up to $350,000. *wow. They have very few requirements and promise to process loan applications quicksmart.

So. Next question : How do places like this survive? Honestly, I don’t know. But it’s a wonderful utility for small businesses to have at their disposal. These are the entities that often find themselves in a desperate need for cash, especially early on, but have the most difficulty because of a lack of financial history to back themselves up to established lenders.

They have a nice website also, albeit with a slightly disconcerting face looking back at you. EzUnsecured.com reflects the general rising standard of web design that is spreading around.

Every now and then, I settle myself to a bit of reading about the world’s coolest animal: the army ant:

This is one of the most vicious and feared animals in the world. It has no match and is the actual king of the jungle.

There’s actually over 200 species of them, but I’ll talk specifically about Eciton burchelli, which is the most famous.

Even now, if a colony of army ants is approaching a village, they will normally pack up everything they own and run away for a bit while the ants come through and eat everything that could possibly be eaten.

They will literally pursue an animal that it has the scent of for days until it has its prey.

Army ants do not have nests. Every day, they roll up into a ball, maybe against a log, with the queen in the centre. At night, they go crazy.

Another thing that’s cool about them is that there’s several species of bird who completely rely on the army ant to eat. They wait till the ants flush out some insects or small animals, and then attack (and fly away before the ants turn up.)

Big question : do the ants eat humans? Answer : yes.

Not many predators can make that claim.

A BBC article on the ants is here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/features/268feature1.shtml

Regular readers will have noticed that the coupon market has become extremely crowded lately. But there’s always room for more on the internet, and into that gap has stepped 1-coupons.com, with their discount code for car rentals page. Yippee, discount car rentals. I have some experience in the absolutely heinous costs that can be brought about from hiring a car. I have also had an experience where I was given a car for a day for free just for linking to a rental car website! There’s huge variations in the market, and many companies are competing on price through the internet, as often that’s the best way to pick up some of the very tight-wadded consumers out there.

They have digital camera coupons which should get the budding photographer excited.

It’s a nicely designed website but best of all, the coupons are current. It’s very frustrating to be visiting websites with coupons that are 12 months old. This is especially for technology such as computers, which don’t have a very long shelf-life.

Parenthood is a long way off for me but when that happens I’ll be looking for baby clothes big time. Something I have noticed with baby products is that there seems to be a large variation in price for products that seem very similar. Websites that carry good coupons help bridge the gap to some of the more expensive products.

Overall it should be interesting to see how 1-coupons.com progresses, against stiff competition, but they seem to have the formula about right.