If you’re planning to visit Austalia, there’s one place you should consider checking out, and that’s Tasmania. It’s called “the holiday island” and not without a good reason. The best time to go to Tassie is December – February, as that’s when you’ll find the best weather. Tasmania is a beautiful, green place but it can also be pretty cold, that’s why it’s best to go there during the summer.

What should you see once your there? Definitely visit the capital, Hobart. Go to Salamanca markets, take the trip to Port Arthur. Rent a car and drive around the island, go to Launceston or try out the West and take the Gordon River cruise. There’s plenty to see, so if you can, plan it and go!

If you’ve ever moved to a new place without having a job there, chances are that one of the biggest challenges you’ve found is finding employment. One options i never considered until recently was looking for a business for sale. Finding a small but working business that wasn’t very expensive turned out to be a great way of getting started at a new place. Suddenly I found myself not only with clients and suppliers but also with a couple experienced staff. Instead of being tough the early phase of my new business turned out to be exciting and even… profitable. More next time.

You’ve probably already heard about  lean manufacturing. What’s it precisely about? In short, lean is a a philosophy of production that considers using resources for things that won’t create value for the final customer to be wasteful and so to be eliminated from the production process. Lean manufacturing concentrates on delivering a quality service or product while reducing the amount of work needed.

There is more than one approach to lean production. Some view it as a set of tools which help in decreasing the amount of waste in production. Others see lean as being an effort to maintain a special flow in production eliminating “unevenness”. The latter philosophy was promoted by Toyota. The main goal in both these philosophies is generally the same though the method to achieve it is somewhat different.

More information on maintenance benchmarking: http://www.mcpeurope.com/amis.aspx

Another interesting piece of software is self storage software. It’s unique in that it has to be able to solve multiple problems at different levels at once. A good self storage program will both be able to take care of space management as well as the customer management and the billing/accounting side of the business.

So what kind of functionality will a good piece of self storage software include? It will have a well designed reservation system, and it should be scalable, i.e. allowing for managing multiple storage sites. Flexible reporting and complete pricing and billing control is also essential.

I’m having some problems with the blog roll – my links won’t appear :/

I’ve added it in the “Widget” section, but it won’t work.

I’ve done it again – another gap in posting here. Maybe I’ll make these a bit more regular some day. A place worth visiting added to the blog roll.

I’m in the middle of winter, so this might be for this grumpy post. The thing I love about winter? Nice looong warm evenings with a couple of coffees and my favorite blogs. The worst? Making it worm. If you’ve got gas heating, your cool (or rather I should say safe and snug), unfortunately not all have the luxury of an easy access to a gas pipeline. Fortunately there are some more and more advanced coal heating systems that help you automate the fueling.

That’s not super hi-tech, but boy it’s handy.

Recently I’ve been thinking of ways of cutting the costs when using a satellite phone. There are at least a few options to consider. One in considering satellite phone rental instead of buying your own phone. This may not always work, though, as the longer the period we need the phone for, the less financially interesting this option is.

The other is cutting the costs when buying your own phone. How? Well, first you might consider choosing the right satellite phone plan, as just like with regular phones, you can cut your costs somewhat by correctly estimating your usage and choosing the best option from your provider. The second is buying a cheaper sat phone. The simplest way to do this is to buy a used phone. If you want to go real cheap you can consider buying a first-generation sat phone, like an Ascom 21 or Hughes 7100 (if your considering Thuraya) or and Kyocera SS-66K (for Iridium).

They are somewhat more bulkier than the new models, but as long as you don’t buy damaged equipment, you should do just fine with them. The older phone work fine within their networks – just as the new ones (Globalstar might be an exception to this, as their old phones might not work globally due to some compatibility issues – but Globalstar is a seperate issue of its own so I’m going to leave it for another time).

I’ve been watching quite closely the satellite phone market for some time now. It’s an overall interesting subject, as it reflects the dream of being able to communicate “anywhere, anytime”. But, on the other hand, it’s a very specific market. It has many obstacles of its own. No wonder that the first giants like Iridium and Globalstar, fell.

The costs of launching a network of satellites, maintaining the system and then replacing it after 7-15 years is enormous. You need to be a real business wizard to have something like that going smoothly.

Iridium and Globalstar both bankrupted in the early 2000′s, with outrages debts. The new owners bought the equipment for pennies, but still have a tough time balancing the companies (especially Globalstar, who has faced an earlier than planned replacement of their satellite network).

And Thuraya in this light is an interesting company. It isn’t global, no, but that has allowed it to start by investing a much smaller amount into building it’s system. They have put on the market some interesting (very small!) satellite phones, the Thuraya SG-2520 and Thuraya SO-2510, and now have launched a new handheld, the Thuraya XT.

I will try you to give a better glimpse of the company and equipment it is offering in the next few blog posts.

I was just wondering: has anyone visiting this blog been using a Thuraya phone in Australia? How is the Thuraya coverage in Australia and/or in surrounding areas? Are coastal waters covered?