I feel sick and sad this morning

Footnote to my story in November called “Why don’t auckland hospitals work smarter rather than harder.” and the previous one The Hospital is the best place to be when you are sick, or is it?

My friend passed away this morning after an agonising battle with cancer. One has to wonder how much easier it would have been for her if she had received the treatment she was entitled to at the times she was turned away due to strikes and staff shortages. I’m sure she would still be with us today if she was able to receive the treatments and surgeries she was scheduled for.

Her husband is one of those nice old school Kiwi guys who listens to what he is told and didn’t want to rock the boat. He refused to fight through the management or the media to get the treatment his wife needed because he felt that was not the way you behave. Now he has lost his wife and soul mate too soon. We had to respect his right to be true to himself, but I’m not sure we have to accept the system that put him in that position.

My advice, if you are in a situation like that, where lives can be saved or prolonged and the bureaucratic penguins and the system is holding stolidly fast to this is where the line starts and if you’re not there anymore when you get to the end of the line, will the next patient shuffle forward, make a noise like someone’s life depends on it, especially if it does. People who go to the media miraculously get the treatment they need and sometimes before its too late.
We Kiwis need to stop being PC and accepting the bs that comes from our health industry. Note its not the wonderful hospital staff, they are put in an invidious position by the administrators, by the beurocrats and by the politicians who sleep sound at night and whose close ones are probably not getting turned away because “a registrar is off sick and the shift couldn’t run”. They are the ones who have to lie to the patients and their families when cost cutting measures, old fashioned systems full of lost paper files and ancient systems, and cost cutting means many people don’t get their surgeries, live or die in pain.

This person’s story is over. We won’t be going to the media or fighting because it is not what her husbands wanted. I respect that and much as it burns me, I will not add to his grief or risk creating feelings of guilt to him to make matters worse. He came from a generation who said yes sir, I know you are doing your best and genuinely trusted that. She may still have died, in fact probably would have, but she might have had a few more years and she certainly wouldn’t have suffered the degrees of agony of that she did over the last 4 months. We don’t do that to animals.

If you find yourself in a situation like this, make a noise, get your loved ones help, let the media know and as a country we have to get our government and administrators to invest in the new technologies that in the long run will cost less and save more lives.

Why don’t Auckland Hospitals Work Smarter Instead of Harder

 

 

3D Bioprinting

3D Printing is no longer news although I suspect most people haven’t heard of it yet. In fact there is a company within a couple of km of my office in Albany already successfully offering a variety of 3D printing services, incidentally called 3D Print. Another Aucklander, well known internationally in the  3D printing with RepRap is Vik Oliver, seen here with one of his machines.

When I heard that Richie McCaw was injured and after surgery was going to miss around 6 matches after having a titanium screw in his foot, my first reaction was, as most Kiwis, just what we need in Rugby World Cup year as he is such an amazing skipper and we want him there leading the All Blacks. Then I thought about so many other sports people who suffer injuries all the time given that they are putting their bodies on the line professionally.

Imagine a technology that rebuilds or repairs body tissue, bones, ligaments, even organs in vivo, using micro surgery techniques that mean people recover far more quickly, naturally and potentially therefore stronger than before.

Using the same types of technologies as conventional 3D printing, it will soon be possible to pattern and assemble, layer by layer, functioning living tissue, as well as non living substitutes such as ceramic and titanium according to Vladimir Mironov, an associate professor and director of the Advanced Tissue Biofabrication Center at the Department of Regenerative Medicine and Cell Biology, Medical University of South Carolina. He is also currently making waves about growing in vitro meat, something I have previously blogged about.

So this is a relatively new technology and I don’t know that it has been tested on humans yet, but the technology is already commercially available from companies such as envisionTEC.

Imagine the good this technology could do for people with problems from injuries, burns, through to the huge numbers of people who die for lack of organs for transplant.

The following video shows how bioprinters will be used in the long term. The technology will also be used to create human tissues which can be used for drug testing instead of using animals.

Of course if tissues and organs are made using material from the host, we can eliminate problems such as donor organ rejection.

On Living Longer

I’ve decided I want to live longer.  I love technology and I love this world of change and the ability to be involved in this technological era. I have things to contribute and I want to be active in ICT, Location Based Services and also as a songwriter. I want to see my children and grandchildren grow up and explore this ever changing world and see what they make of it.

I’m going to have to work longer, that was always expected, but then providing my Maslow and Herzberg needs are met, I enjoy working. I enjoy making a difference, helping people achieve their goals. I enjoy learning, watching what is helping in my spheres of interest, particularly those mentioned above. I enjoy collaborating and networking and am particularly passionate about seeing New Zealand step up to the plate and continuing to innovate and achieve greater success on the world stage.

I reckon a healthy target for me would be 120 given medical advances now and in the future. My greatest risks are probably heart and cancer, with the determining factors being nature and nurture and my general disposition i.e. my attitude and happiness.

One thing that is obvious is that I have to look after my financial well being. If I continue to work, then raising the retirement age isn’t going to be a major for me. If I am enjoying my work, see a future for myself where I can contribute from my experience, passion and knowledge and can continue to grow, I wouldn’t be expecting to retire at 67.

I know I can’t rely on the Government to give me any kind of lifestyle on the retirement pension anyway. Our budget deficit has just been raised to over $15b and despite some significant successes, we still don’t have an infrastructure that really supports innovation. We tend to take credit once people are successful, but most successful innovators tend to be successful in spite of the country’s and their employers contribution rather than because of it.

So my first considerations as I start goal setting and planning will be how I can maintain my lifestyle in the years to come, continue to build an asset base so that when I wind down to a shorter working week I can continue to enjoy a lifestyle and if I should be forced into retirement through poor health (which is not the plan) I can still live comfortably, which no one can in NZ on a pension or benefit. I have a super scheme, I still have a mortgage. I am closing down my rental property LAQC and have sold my rental property. The Government doesn’t want people be able to claim losses from their expenses and without that I can’t afford to own rentals. I’ve invested in public companies before, but unless you are buying and selling daily, this is in my opinion a far greater risk business. Even the biggest companies make mistakes or get caught up in circumstances beyond their control and shareholders unless they are big, have little or no control over their destiny. How many Kiwis lost their life savings in the past by investing in ‘rock solid’ companies?

So I’ll invest in myself. I am studying song writing at Berklee Music on-line, which is costing me a small fortune, but if I can score 1 or 2 hits somewhere along the way, I’ll recoup that investment. I study the industries I’m involved in daily through the media, the occasional conference, networking in person and through social media such as LinkedIn and Twitter and I read a lot.

I have and continue to amass a huge amount of local and international experience in a number of industries, particularly in the application of leading edge technologies to solving business problems. Experience, I have learned takes years and is perhaps something that is least appreciated by younger people who come out of university thinking they know everything and by people who have stuck in one industry or a very small number of companies during their work career.

So to cut a long story short, I need to start planning for my long future. I need to consider a range of aspects, particularly how I want to live those years, what I want to do in them, what I want to contribute, what capital I need, how to maintain my health and fitness. Must be time for some goal setting and dream building.

I’ll leave the last word for now to Anne Brunet (who came via that other little university in Boston (not Berklee Music, but Harvard) and Thomas Rando of Stanford U.

Note the real meat of this video starts around 21 minutes in.

Why don’t Auckland Hospitals Work Smarter Instead of Harder

A friend of mine was prepped for 2 days with nil by mouth a month or 2 ago for urgent cancer surgery. The first day she got bumped and the 2nd day was the start of a radiographers strike. Last night she was prepped for an 8 hour operation and got bumped due to a critical case that suddenly appeared. We thought she was criticial, but obviously that’s not for us to judge.

I’ve asked the question before “Is hospital the best place to be when you are sick?” and pretty  much decided unless it was a private hospital, possibly not. But of course most of us don’t have any choice especially as we get older.

It is nice to see that some things are improving. For example Auckland Health Board has decided to send some patients to private clinics for radiation treatment to reduce waiting times.

I had blogged previously about waiting times at North Shore Hospital based on experiences waiting with family members in A & E and subsequently in corridors in some cases for days, without being assigned to wards. Each time we were told that it was an exceptional case and we were just unlucky. A registrar was sick and therefore his team couldn’t operate was a common excuse. Think about it, an entire team doesn’t operate because one person doesn’t turn up? Maybe they were stretching the truth, being they are short staffed and can’t afford another registrar, and they didn’t turn up because they didn’t exist.

According to the reports, North Shore Hospital is improving and it is now only the 3rd worst in New Zealand. North Shore Hospital supports North Shore and Waitakere with an excess of 400,000 population and rapidly growing. Of course things will change with the new Super City, but the problems won’t go away.

As you can see in previous blogs I’ve written such as ‘76 Deaths, Surgical Mistakes in New Zealand Hospitals‘ I have been pushing for more specialized technology to streamline processes for many years. The technology has been around for a long time, yet we still seem to rely heavily on paper. Tablet and handheld computing has been around for a long time. Most of us use WiFi in the home, in cafe’s, at the airport and understand the power of dealing with information once, accurately and allowing instant access to anyone who needs it in a timely fashion. That’s how we live.

I now see bar codes on patient wrist bands, but I don’t see them being read by a handheld computer to check for allergies, conditions etc at the bedside. This technology could have saved many NZ lives at a tiny fraction of the cost of their lost lives, productivity etc.

When I started promoting this technology, it was with Pocket PC, Palm and Symbol technologies (handheld computers, 3D Bar Code Readers, Portable Printers, Digital Cameras which were being used in many US and European hospitals and that was 20 years ago!

Today there is superior technology such as the Panasonic Mobile Clinical Assistant CF-H1 which runs on Windows 7. The video is pretty corny but it really does illustrate how efficient it is to use mobile technology. Of course this technology has a rugged drop spec, is chemical resistant, lasts 6 hours on a standard battery.

This technology means everyone is in sync and has access to critical data on demand. Paper gets misplaced in hospitals. I had one visit with a daughter that was delayed by 90 minutes simply because someone had misplaced her file. Data can be shared with specialists and medical staff in and out of hospital, including images such as scans, x-rays, photos, test results, charts and graphs. Allergies and condition interactions can be monitored to minimise risk of causing new problems, doses can be confirmed, approvals provided remotely. Pretty much the whole world’s medical knowledge is available online today.

Today’s world should be about harnessing technology to work smarter rather than harder. I suspect the focus is on cost of the technology because our hospitals are run by administrators tasked with saving money. Of course they are largely man aged by politicians. If health is a major election platform every election, why is it that the performance is still so poor?

Next time you are in hospital, have a look at how they use or don’t use technology. Think about how you operate in your business. Think about what’s at stake and ask them why they do things the way they do.

We have national elections next year. They will be talking about improving the health system. Will they be talking about improving the ICT structure and putting information in the hands of the clinicians? Or will they be talking about saving money, improving the monitoring of staff performance and measuring waiting times in A&E?

We have an ageing population and growing population. They are going to need more services and we could increase our throughput, reduce patient risk, significantly improve outcomes by harnessing technology, working smarter rather than harder, expecting great results from staff working double shifts several times a week.

Olmesartan and Recovery from Autoimmune Disease

The following presentation is fascinating. So many people suffer from autoimmune problems. Could it be that many of them can be cured using a subset of Vitamin D?

It makes sense that many bacterial genomes damage the immune system over time and incrementally shut it down. In effect microbiota block the Vitamin D Receptors from producing antimicrobials.

Professor Trevor Marshall has worked with over 500 human subjects and demonstrated reversibility of   many autoimmune conditions including Lupus, MS, Type 2 diabetes and many more conditions, typically chronic inflammation conditions.

What is even more impressive is that as the inflammation receded, a host of other conditions that the subjects suffered from also disappeared. These included  memory loss, obsessive compulsive disorder, osteoporosis, bipolar and even cardiovascular disease.

In their research they discovered a couple of very interesting points. One is that only 1,25 dihydroxyviatmin-D can activate VDR transcription, whereas Vitamin D that we can take as pills actually inhibit it.

Could this be one of the discoveries that will help increase our life expectancy and potentially cure people from many terrible diseases?

Your Ashes on Record

I’ve lost friends and a family member recently which has led me to think about what I would want to do with my ashes. We don’t often face our mortality and a number of topics have come up recently. For example, what happens to your social networking and web presence when you die. One solution I discussed in a previous blog was Legacy Locker, who can provide access  to your records to anyone you want to access them. Do think about the consequences of this though, especially who you provide access to.

Another topic that I have pondered on is my funeral. No I’m not planning to die anytime soon. Hopefully I have at least another 40 years on this planet. But I would like to have control over at the very least, the music that is played. I have a few tracks in mind, like Santana’s Samba Pa Ti, which I love. I’d also like to have at least one of my own songs that I have recorded, but I am hoping that my best work is yet to come, so that may change.

I definitely plan to be cremated. I hate the idea of worms crawling through my bones. So what to do with my ashes. Well I think I’ve found the perfect solution. A company called Add Vinyly will press your ashes into 30 records containing 24 minutes of any audio content you want. Now you can not only have control of what’s played at your funeral, but you can be a physical part of the performance and any of your friends who want to can have a piece of you so to speak.

What do you reckon?

And When I Die

No I’m not talking about my blog, but it is relevant to the podfade. There is so much I want to write about. How thrilled I was about The Hyperfactory achieving their harvest plan and that Derek and Geoffrey are planning on coming back to New Zealand to share their knowledge and help others follow in their successful path. As you know location based services and mobile marketing are amongst my passions.

I would also have liked to talk about the Rex which set foot in New Zealand, just as I was bemoaning the difficulty of Kiwi innovators to capitalise on their ability; again an area that has been of great interest to me. Then of course there is the tentative success of the oil cap on the BP oil well. I have pondered much on Oceanic Dead Zones, whilst the BP accident helps extend them.

Two months ago I was faced with a family crisis. My father in law was told that he had somewhere between 3 days and 2 weeks to live. Life as I know it, pretty much stopped. Our close family was in shock, even though we knew it would come eventually. Before you offer condolences, he is still alive:)

Having developed a taste for tobacco while serving in the air force, 20 years ago he had a laryngectomy as a result of throat cancer. He didn’t take it lying down. He learned to talk again and picked his life up. He became involved with the Lost Chord Club and eventually became President, counselling others through their throat cancer journey. He also visited schools and let children look into his stoma, seeing that he had to breath through a hole in his neck, caused through smoking.

So for most of the last 20 years he was in remission, then the cancer returned and as often is the case 2nd time around, it was not going to be possible to treat it.

So my life and that of my family has changed dramatically for a while and  many of things I have been wanting to do, I haven’t had time for. We spend as much time as we can with him, because once it is over it is totally over.

It strikes me that whilst we all know that from the moment we are born, we can be certain of one thing (I have blogged about people (such as some from Singularity University) are doing everything they can to avoid it) it appears that death is a given for each of us.

So we have been assisting with respite care, trying to help him maintain his dignity as he becomes helpless, and his confusion as to both why he is still alive and what will become of him when he dies. Will there be a place for him in heaven? Is there a heaven? These things worry him. He has never been a religious person, although he was a church choir boy many years back. He worries about his wife and what will become of her after he passes on.

We all worry about each other, how each is going to cope with the end. I wonder how the women of the family cope now, they look after him around 18 hours a day, partly because they want to and partly because there are not many people who understand how to look after someone with a hole in their neck, who can’t talk. If he had a shower and water got into his stoma, he would drown. If his neck valve leaks (and this happens from time to time) when he eats a few spoonfuls of his porridge, the food can leak into his lungs.

Anyway, things aren’t normal right now and no one can tell him what is next tomorrow, let alone for eternity. Two months ago he was told maximum 2 weeks. Two weeks ago we were told “a few days”.  It took us a while to understand what he meant every time he woke up and asked “What’s going on?” We thought he meant Who’s here? or Is someone going to take me to the toilet? But eventually we figured out that he is asking, “Why am I still alive?”

So it seemed appropriate as I wait for my finger nails to toughen up again (for guitar) after washing the bathroom and shower, so I can do my latest Berklee Music assignment and then head back to the rest home after a work out at the gym (down to one a week because I go to the rest home straight from work) that today’s blog be about something more basic than singularity and the latest problems with iPhone 4. Once you break it down, we are just an essence in a body that peaks somewhere between late teens and mid twenties and then starts to die.

Sometimes all that matters is the people that are close to you and can give you comfort, and you them. When you break it down, we are beings in flesh and blood in a temporary home.

NZ Herald Landlords taking money we need

It’s soapbox time folks. Over the last week, there have been several stories in the NZ media about businesses complaining that people are investing in rental properties instead of buying shares and options in companies on the share market. The latest was in yesterday’s NZ Herald.

I take exception to their bleating and here’s why. Many years ago I worked for a company called RC Dimock as a divisional sales manager. A number of us got together under the guidance of the Financial Controller and formed a share club. We all put money in each week and collaborated on which companies we would invest in.

I really enjoyed it. I read every copy of NBR, charted the daily value of stocks, learned about all aspects of stocks and bonds and invested more in our own company, my employer when we were purchased by Anzon Investments. As time went on, I started investing independently, continued staying up to date with large reliable companies and punted on more risky investments in various industries.

I had my own broker and whilst my investments were not massive, I was young and suspecting that superannuation was not going to give me any sort of lifestyle, I was looking for ways to improve that situation when it came.

As well as Anzon, I joined many people who invested their life savings in NZ stalwarts including Brierley Investments, Carter Holt, Robert Jones and many other companies. Then came Black Tuesday and many Kiwis lost their entire retirement savings.

Friends and colleagues lost almost everything they had, whilst the senior managers of the public companies moved on and in many cases their old boys club helped them pick themselves up again.

When I got married and started a family, we bought our first modest home and gave up any form of lifestyle for a few years paying at times over 21% interest, but we were building some security. Other people’s poor business decisions and the economic climate were not going to take this from us, providing we were able to maintain the payments.

Subsequently I worked for a company which was embezzled by it’s CEO and lost 10′s of thousands of dollars in salary, commissions and a large company credit card bill that my boss had run up without my knowledge. I then learned what it means to get a company credit card and you sign a form in good faith saying that you are jointly and severally liable for a company credit card. The credit card company who were coincidentally owned by my bank told me that I could either pay for the company credit card, or they would sell my house and give me the change after the 9 month bill was paid.

Further in my career, when I was making a lot of money for my new employer of almost 7 years, I was made redundant when the company was sold, along with several of my colleagues and my MD. The decision was made on the basis of a spreadsheet looking only at what they were paying us, not the great success we were achieving, over budget in ebit and sales.

So forgive me for having a lack of faith in business as a way of protecting my future lifestyle if and when I reach retirement age.

I started learning about rental properties, LAQC company structures, negative gearing and tax benefits, in as much as being able to claim depreciation and costs against my personal income and invested in a rental property.

Some people thought I was rich because I had a rental property, but my own home remained modest and I was having to subsidise the rental to cover the cost of the 100% mortgage, i.e. I had zero equity. My first tenants were a young family with 4 kids. Sometimes they would call me and say they couldn’t make the rent and could they pay the following week. I was paying around $170 a week to top up the mortgage, because the rent didn’t cover it. Then there was property insurance, fixing appliances, calling in drainlayers when they tried to flush nappies and other unmentionables down the toilet. These are just a few of the issues I had, and if it wasn’t for the ability to recover some of these losses against my income tax I would have gone broke.

The family were never going to be able to buy their own home and didn’t take great care of mine. They couldn’t pay a rent that would cover my costs, market rents did not reflect the cost of owning property. My hope was that over time the property value would increase and I would recoup my losses.

The key to my rationale, which I still subscribe to, is that I was making my own decisions and having control in the level of risk I was prepared to take. I wasn’t going to have my safety net taken away by some entrepreneur who was travelling first class around the world, who was able to walk away and start again when he had spent all my investment savings.

Owning a rental property is a business. There is a need for rental properties. The Government has quit most of their State Housing stock and people who can’t afford to buy their own homes, around 35% of the NZ population, over 1.5 million people do not own their own homes. So who is going to take responsibility for them?

When people set up a public company and use our funds to run them and take risks with, we have no control over how they use our money. If things turn sour as they have for many Kiwis trying to invest their hard earned money, they walk away and set up their next business. Investing in public or private companies is high risk. For people who can afford that risk, great, enjoy. But most owners (think big mortgage) of rental properties are not wealthy people, they are just people trying to make sure they can afford a little lifestyle when they retire without being a burden on their family. It is not easy owning rental property and the odd example of someone who has built up a rental empire is the exception, not the rule. The majority are Mum’s and Dad’s who don’t want to live on a combined income of $478 a week.

Could you live on $478 a week including rent, power and phone? What would that give you for food? Forget entertainment. On the other side, there is the potential for people to live much longer than in previous years and with Baby Boomers, less tax payers to heklp support them.

If the Government wants us to invest in business instead of rental property, they should give us some security against the risk of public companies. Of course they will also have to invest in providing rental accomodation for the 35% of us who can’t afford to own their own homes. What are the odds of that? About the same as that of people who invested their life savings in Brierley Investment shares. Telecom shares anyone?

What the HAL?

I love the way Japan and Korea are developing robotics. I used to say that the Japanese were great engineers but not that great at innovating, I think that perhaps those thoughts should be banished to the dim past.

I’ve written a few blogs on robotics, such as about the plans in Korea to have a domestic robot in every household between 2015 and 2020, ironically I mentioned HAL9000 from 2001 A Space Oddysey in that blog.

The latest innovation greeting the media this week has been the new Japanese Robot suit from Cyberdine, also called HAL, but this one is a robotic prosthesis. HAL stands for Hybrid Assistive Limb and uses the faint nerve impulses when your brain tries to control weak or damaged limbs.

This technology has been under development for several years, but it looks like it is ready or the market, as demonstrated in this video taken recently in a Japanese hospital.

What seems remarkable to me is that this robot will soon be available for purchase in Japan for a little over US$4,000! This means that these devices will be accessible for less than the cost of an average surgery and could perhaps be of major assistance to people on waiting lists for hip replacement or other limb operations.

One of the great features is that the exosceleton, if I can call it that, supports its own weight, so isn’t an extra burden on the person wearing it. This offers people with disabilities an amazing opportunty to live and do ordinary, but also extraodinary things. For example during testing 2 years ago, Seiji Uchida, a quadraplegic was able was able to climb a mountain on the back of a climber using a HAL suit.

Of course this brings in the Six Million Dollar Man question. If this is what disabled people can do, what could able bodied people achieve with one of these?

Of course the military have been working on projects like these for a long time. DARPA have for several years been working on exoskeletons that can help people carry more weight, run faster and of course have much more strength when needed.

Other scenarios where these could be used would be in civil emergencies such as earthquake rescue, where immediate strength could speed the release of people trapped under rubble.

The immediate opportunity is to alleviate suffering of people with injuries or issues such as arthritis, but there are likely to be lots of people queuing up for the opportunity to become super people, or perhaps super heroes, or of course super criminals, but I don’t want to go there.

Day to day operations of emergency services could also benefit from this technology. In the hands of fire services, police, paramedics and others, this technology could be brilliant.

Legacy Locker passes all your web accounts on to your beneficiary

I read a story in this morning’s NZ Herald which doesn’t appear to be available online. It was about a new web site which people can use to pass on all their passwords and account details for everything they do on the web from your online banking to all your web sites, social networking pages etc.

This was something I hadn’t considered before from my own perspective, or from those I leave behind. There are of course practical issues, such as having access to my online banking accounts but also my blogs, the sites where I post my music, such as MySpace and Music Forte, and my social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook.

The practical things are important because I would want to ensure that my beneficiaries have access to all my assets, but there are also the emotional considerations. Unless someone does something about it, my blogs and my social networking pages will remain forever. Personally I think it would be nice to leave a digital footprint behind, especially for my music, but also where people can remember me, almost like a legacy, where my own perspectives can be seen, rather than other people’s interpretations of them.

The NZ Herald story, which came from Telegraph Group Ltd, (which I also couldn’t find online) raised issues of the pain that it might cause to people left behind, when their loved ones pass away, seeing all their posts, photos and other net based activities, like footprints in the sand that people can see in time to come. It could be very painful.

On the other hand, I would love to be able to access information left by my forefathers. I have travel diaries from my grandparents and a small number of photos, but mostly their information is lost forever, or scattered, not shared, amongst my many cousins, uncles and aunts.

So the Legacy Locker service allows you to ensure that people left behind have access to all your accounts and can follow through on your wishes after you pass on. I don’t know how they find out that you have died, their must be a mechanism for that, but you have the ability to write an email that will be delivered to your beneficiaries after your death, so that they have access to all the information you want them to find.

It looks like they have all the systems you need including bank level security, to ensure that your data is safe.

They make a good point on their site that online assets have value. There may be areas of financial value, but there is also the intrinsic value of having access to photos that you may not have ever printed, music, diaries / blogs and traces of all your relationships, business, family and friends.

The pricing is also very reasonable, $30 a year, a flat fee of $300 and you can also have a free trial. I’m not so sure about the free trial other than being able to evaluate how it all works, but it is something I would probably do if I was going to sign up. Will I sign up, not at the moment, but maybe some time in the future, who knows?

While this blog is starting to get a good following, I would love to get more readers and encouraging me to keep writing. If you feel that my blog is interesting I would be very grateful if you would vote for me in the category of best blog at the NetGuide Web Awards. Note that the form starts each site with www whereas my blog doesn’t and is of course http://luigicappel.wordpress.com.

Thanks so much for your support:)