April 10, 2008

So, you’re thinking about buying a used car, are you? Don’t want to spend a lot of money? Stop in at BuyYourCar.co.uk and look into their Used Car section. You will be amazed at what is available. There is an enormous selection of used cars offered at the best prices by both private sellers and used car dealerships.

Save time and money! BuyYourCar.co.uk has a simple to use Search. Enter in the make and model of the car you’re looking for as well as a few other options like colour, price range, location and who you would prefer to buy from: a private owner or a dealer (or both!). You can also select how you want the results to be sorted: by Latest Offers, Distance, Lowest or Highest Prices. Click on the Search button and you’re on your way to finding just what you’re looking for! By offering the cheapest prices available for any used car online, BuyYourCar.co.uk is able to guarantee that they offer very competitive rates on used cars.

Still not sure what to look for? Look at the menu on the left hand side of the page. Their Buying Advice section offers excellent advice on what to ask the seller (i.e., Why are you selling the vehicle? Are you the original owner? How many miles on the clock?), how to inspect a used car both before and after a test drive (there are nine points pre-test drive and at least seven points post-test drive: best advice is to look at the car during the daytime and to also listen for any strange sounds as well as to paying attention to any unusual smells!), safe buying tips and as if that weren’t enough, they also provide you with an 18 points buyer’s checklist!

Buyer Beware! Unfortunately, in this day and age, it is necessary to do whatever we can to protect ourselves. BuyYourCar offers great advice on how to avoid being scammed.

Author - Dave Long is an expert in online automotive sales, car leasing and site reviews.

I’m not quite sure if have blogged about this before.

I read in The Age a month or two ago about a new management strategy enjoying a lot of success. It’s all about preventing failure, by posing the hypothetical question:

“Project forward to the future, and this project has failed. Why do you think this happened?”

This simple question changes the dynamic of planning and lets people communicate possible faults with an idea without the fear of offending.

Can you imagine how many major mistakes could be avoided just by applying this simple technique?

I can think of a couple : the lack of preparation for the occupation of Iraq, the first home buyers grant, the impending Liberal loss in the upcoming election..

Obviously the future isn’t totally foreseeable but by asking this hypothetical question, one can prepare more thoroughly.

This tool would be a disaster in the hands of naysayers - the kind of people who think a problem is a reason to give up, or abandon an idea.. without realising it is simply a hurdle to be overcome.

The amount of times I have told someone an idea where they have said “oh yes, but it wouldn’t work because of X” and boom, that’s it. No more thought required on their part. Instead they should be asking “what about X?” or something equivalent, and then trying to solve that problem.

There’s no such thing as the perfect idea - if there were, we’d all be rich. The people who ARE rich are the people who have taken concepts and ideas then overcome problems, retooled their methods, who have learnt from mistakes instead of giving up.

For these people, learning from mistakes in advance would no doubt help them on to further success.

StylishDesign.com is a design blog mainly for people who build and code websites.

Obviously the first question on the mind is - does the website actually look good? I hate it when I see websites by supposed designers but they’re atrocious. However, this website is not like that. It is very pleasing to the eye, with a nice attention to detail when you look closely at things. Probably the only thing I dislike about it is the tag cloud, which noone really uses and just makes a design look a little disorderly (in my humble opinion, of course.)

It’s very common for coders of websites to have little knowledge of design aesthetics. While it’s important to get the code right, that is just the beginning, the foundation. What comes next is what convinces the average visitor like you or me to hang around and read.

The blog is for those who are already experienced in coding. For example, the post My Opinion About Negotiated Content In Server Programming goes straight over my head.

The posts that I can understand are good and it’s obvious that the owner has put in a lot of time and effort into getting this blog off the ground.