Rolling coverage of reaction to interest rate decrease

thisismoney has rolling coverage of how banks and building societies are reacting to the decision yesterday by the Bank of England to reduce interest rates by 0.25% from 5.50% to 5.25%.

Keep apps up-to-date with Update Star

Following from my previous post, I have discovered another free-ware application which can help keep your computer up-to-date with the latest application patches. Check out Update Star for more info.

Keep apps up-to-date with PSI

The Personal Software Inspector (PSI) application from a company called Secunia is a really useful application which can help keep your computer up-to-date with the latest application patches.

The Secunia PSI is an invaluable tool for you to use when assessing the security patch state of software installed on your system. It constantly monitors your system for insecure software installations, notifies you when an insecure application is installed, and even provides you with detailed instructions for updating the application when available.

The application version is RC1 0.9.0.0, so not fully released yet, but should be stable enough for most people.

Reestit Mutton is back!!

After a long time in development Reestit Mutton's website is back. It has a brand new layout with potentially many new and updated features.

Unfortunately much is still in development including a major update to the mobile phone price comparison functionality. You can sign up for updates here.

Reestit Mutton had one of the best mobile phone price comparison services on the web before he decided to carry out a major upgrade to it and the site. I am sure that once it has been complete you won't be disappointed.

New Call Through Number

A new call through number from pre-dial!!

The access number to use is:- 01793 23 82 80
...

The geo[graphical number] access service works 24/7.
Unlike previous services offered through geo[graphical number] access, there are no restrictions on the line type used to connect with the 01793 number. I have been told that it can be used by landlines, mobiles, and VOIP.

What this means is that you can phone from any landline or mobile which has inclusive landline minutes, 24/7, for free!! The destination list is mentioned here and includes Israel and USA landlines. Sadly there are very few mobile destinations included in the list.

See this thread at niftylist forums for more details.

Rolling coverage of reaction to interest rate decrease

thisismoney has rolling coverage of how banks and building societies are reacting to the decision on 06/12/2007 by the Bank of England to reduce interest rates by 0.25% from 5.75% to 5.50%.

Update

I haven't posted for a while but I've got a few interesting updates coming to make up for it...

MobilePhoneChecker.co.uk

I have added Mobile Phone Checker to the the 'Free Mobiles Listing' section on the right. Note that this site is currently in beta so may not always be fully up to date until it comes out of beta. 

Want to know which version of Vista to buy?

Check out this article on WinSuperSite.

Click for charity

I have just added the click for charity link on the right under the 'Favourite Links' section. This will take you to a thread on MoneySavingExpert forums which lists a number of sites where you can click on links which generates money for charity.

Interesting BBC news feature about mobile phone cashback deals

See the BBC news feature about problems with mobile phone cashback deals here.

I have been doing cashback deals for about 5 years and never had a problem. One should always be cautious as to the reliability of the company offering the deal and always read the terms and conditions and follow them to the letter as some companies can be extremely pedantic.

If you do have a genuine problem with a company you can always go to the small claims court to reclaim your cashback as has been reported by a number of people on MoneySavingExpert forums.

Rolling coverage of reaction to Interest rate increase

thisismoney has rolling coverage of how banks and building societies are reacting to today's (11/01/2007) decision by the Bank of England to raise interest rates by 0.25% from 5% to 5.25%.

Free calls via jajah

Check out jajah which offers free calls to around 35 destinations including UK, USA, Israel.

Both users need to be active registered users with jajah and there are strict limits on free use.

New Number Range

From SayNoTo0870.com forum

NGMsGhost mentioned here that it was on page 130 of the Numbering Review statement (.pdf).
A summary as follows:-

0300:
UK-wide services at a geographic rate: to be used by public sector bodies and not-for-profit bodies, calls charged at up to the same rate the customer would pay to call to a Geographic Number, with calls to 03 numbers counting towards inclusive call minutes if the customer has remaining inclusive minutes to Geographic Numbers, and included in any discount structures that apply to Geographic Numbers

0303:
UK-wide services at a geographic rate: calls charged at up to the same rate the customer would pay to call a Geographic Number, with calls to 03 numbers counting towards inclusive call minutes if the customer has remaining inclusive minutes to Geographic Numbers, and included in any discount structures that apply to Geographic Numbers

0344/0345:
UK-wide services at a geographic rate: migrating numbers from 0844/0845, calls charged at up to the same rate the customer would pay to call a Geographic Number, with calls to 03 numbers counting towards inclusive call minutes if the customer has remaining inclusive minutes to Geographic Numbers, and included in any discount structures that apply to Geographic Numbers

0370/0371:
UK-wide services at a geographic rate: migrating numbers from 0870/0871, calls charged at up to the same rate the customer would pay to call a Geographic Number, with calls to 03 numbers counting towards inclusive call minutes if the customer has remaining inclusive minutes to Geographic Numbers, and/or included in any discount structures that apply to Geographic Numbers

Cashback Websites [Draft article]

Updated 01/01/2007 @ 17:43

Here is a quick guide to cashback websites:

Cashback websites are websites which primarily pay the user every time they shop online. They also pay the user for certain online activities including search, downloading programs/toolbars, registering for products etc.

The user process is as follows

1. Signup/Login to cashback website
2. Search for online shop/product
3. Click link to shop/product
4. Purchase item (or carry out activity) during current session
5. Purchase is tracked automatically on cashback website account
6. Cashback website pays out.

I use the following sites (in order of preference):

Quidco
Rpoints
Greasypalm
MutualPoints

Quidco pays the highest rates and are very reliable. If the merchant is not on Quidco then pick the site which offers the next highest cashback. Note that there are many other cashback websites you may want to check out (see post below) but the above ones are the ones that I have used.

[to add: easy money, bonuses, mobile phones, gambling, tips e.g. clear cookies/cache etc]

It is possible to make between £1.52 and £2.24 per day just by doing searches for the above cashback sites. It has been claimed that one can make an estimated £300/month by using multiple cashback websites as described in this post on MSE. To maximise tracking success one needs to clear ones cache before returning to a merchant.
(if you find any more daily clicks please leave a comment so I can update the list)

Quidco:
8p The High Street Web (2 per day)
10p Kelkoo (1 per day)
10p shopping.com (up to 3 per day but unreliable tracking)
4p Carsource (3 per day)

Rpoints:
10p Search Anything Credit Cards (4 per day)
5p Kelkoo (1 per day)
4p The High Street Web (3 per day)
2p Carsource (4 per day)
1p Lycos search (multiple searches possible max~8)

Greasypalm:
5p shopping.com (2 searches a day but unreliable tracking)
4p The High Street Web (2 per day)
2p Carsource (2 per day)

MutualPoints: (1point = 0.67p)
5points per email (3+ a day)*
1point for MutualPoints search's (5 per day)
8points PriceRunner (5 per day)
8points Searchtheinternet (2 per day but unreliable tracking)
10points Kelkoo (1 per day but unreliable tracking)

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