Want to earn money driving foreigners around Durban?

Out of luck? Need some spare cash? Retired with nothing to do?

If you're passionate about Durban and want to be involved in medical research (as an ambassador, not a test subject) then why not try out for a K-RITH Ambassador part-time post?

Details as follows...

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K-RITH Ambassadors (part-time contractors)

KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV

Nelson R Mandela Medical School

REFERENCE NUMBER: AMB/SEPT/001/2011

Brief overview

You will be responsible for planning, preparing and guiding K-RITH visitors to areas of interest within Durban and surrounding areas. Your role includes both driving and guiding. You will be responsible for ensuring your guests have an informative, safe and enjoyable experience.

Taking full advantage of Afrihost's FREE 1GB offer

(want to save on AFRIHOST? http://tinyurl.com/AFRIHOSTsavings)

I may be a Christian (in fact, I am a Christian), which means I am an honest guy as far as I can help it, but it doesn't stop me from still being blessed (or cursed?) with a crafty mind.

You see, free things and me go together like mustard sauce and a boerie roll. If there's a way to score free stuff, or to save, I'll figure it out.

So with the latest craze of free ADSL bandwidth being dished out by AFRIHOST, I came to realise that if you are already an AFRIHOST subscriber, you get 1GB free every month automatically now. What else I already know is if you are buying 1GB or 2GB or 5GB from AFRIHOST per month, it costs nothing different per GB. In fact, as I've always advised my customers and friends: rather just get the 1GB AFRIHOST account and opt for an auto-top-up to your preferred limit. That's the first and most honest way to save money with AFRIHOST.

The second money-saving tip is this one:

With AFRIHOST dishing out free 1GB to every existing customer, everyone already wins if they're a member of the AFRIHOST Elite. For some, like me, I happen to have TWO 1GB accounts under my name, so when this special kicked in, I scored 2 free GB of bandwidth (and I don't think it's port-locked since the contracted accounts let you have concurrent logins) - this translates to 2 * 1GB bandwidth usable ANYWHERE!

• The 1GB FREE ADSL is port-locked to a specific number so you can't use it outside of the number you registered it for
• Existing subscribers also get 1GB additional and it goes onto your existing contract which in my case is NOT port-locked and supports concurrent logins.
• If you run 2 * 1GB accounts it's the same cost as running 1 * 2GB account.
  A more extreme example,:if you run 5 * 1GB accounts it's the same cost as running 1 * 5GB account.
  
  The bonus comes in with the way this special is implemented by AFRIHOST:
• If you have 1 * 2GB account, you get 1GB free = 3GB (2+1) per month now for R58
• If you have 2 * 1GB accounts, you get 1GB free per account = 4GB (2+2) per month for R58
• If you have 1 * 5GB account, it's 6GB (5+1) for R145 per month
• If you have 5 * 1GB accounts, it's 10GB (2+2+2+2+2) for R145 per month
  
• See where I'm going?

Another interesting tidbit is you can sign up with GMAIL accounts and use your email address as with the "+" alias, for example:

• joe_soap@gmail.com
• joe_soap+2@gmail.com
• joe_soap+3@gmail.com

And so on, and earn yourself additional free accounts.

Of course, I don't condone exploiting AFRIHOST since it will only kill them and mean we don't get such favorably revolutionary deals in the future, but I do want to point out that if you're a subscriber, WHY are you paying the full amount every month when instead you could just be paying the MINIMUM amount and still not be preventing yourself from the enjoyment of the full service IF and when you use it (at which point you pay for what you use)? Likewise, if you go the economical route, you can actually double your bandwidth per month for FREE and use it concurrently anywhere you like!

Saving on monthly AFRIHOST bills

[UPDATE: The following only holds true for accounts 5GB and smaller. A 10GB account is R19 per GB, but with R29 per GB top-up after that. So this is now only really applicable for 1,2,3,4,5GB accounts]

Many people subscribe to AFRIHOST because of their (currently) competitive per GB pricing at R29 per GB.

What many subscribers don't seem to realise is that it doesn't pay to subscribe to any account over 1GB, because whether it is 2GB @ R58pm, 5GB @ R145pm, or even 20GB @ R380pm, it still works out at exactly R29 per GB.

The benefit of going the cheaper route of 1GB per month is that you're only tying yourself down to 1GB per month: that means if you don't use bandwidth (i.e. TELKOM is down [again] or you're away on holiday) you're only debited for R29 for the month. If you are doing a higher bandwidth deal, you're being charged the full amount regardless of usage, and there's absolutely no need for this!

AFRIHOST offers an automatic top-up facility (interestingly, this was implemented 3 days after I emailed them about putting this feature in, so they took my comments seriously and responded - another big feather in their cap from my perspective) which enables you to set the limit (and size of your top-up increments) up to 20GB for recaps every month, and this method of, for example, 1GB plus 19*1GB top-ups achieves the same net effect (and total cost) as buying a full 20GB account up front but without the committed cost implications at the beginning of the month JUST IN CASE you don't use it all.

Let me simplify this:

• Buying 20GB @ R380pm means you are committing the R380 to AFRIHOST every month REGARDLESS of what amount of the 20GB you use - 0.1GB, 2GB, 5GB, 9.3GB will all end up costing you R380 for the month and there is no carry-over of your bandwidth so what you don't use is thrown away completely.
  
• Buying 1GB @ R29pm means you are only committing to R29 to AFRIHOST every month REGARDLESS of whether you use 0.1GB, 0.5GB, or 0.9999GB.
• The real savings come in when you employ the AUTO-TOP-UP feature on the 1GB account, and set the top-up to do 1GB at R29 each time, up to a number of times that you specify (for example, if you are a 5GB subscriber, you'd set it to automatically top-up only four more times at 1GB a time).

This allows you to still get up to the total bandwidth you want every month without any interruptions to your browsing, but with the luxury of knowing that if you don't use it, you don't pay for it (in the 5GB example above, if you used 2.8GB you'd save R29*2 for that month because you wouldn't buy the 4th or 5th GB).

So what are all of you 2GB and higher AFRIHOST subscribers waiting for? Go and downgrade your contract and enable automatic top-ups instead! You'll save yourself money in the long run and it won't possibly cost you anything more than your current bills are DEFINITELY costing you every month!

brattex.blogspot.com is worth $4,000!

I recently googled for brattex.blogspot.com (not in a vane ego-stroking venture, but to see if the site was still blocked from dodgy people) and discovered this as one of the links:

Site Analysis of brattex.blogspot.com



Estimated value: $4,392

http://www.strategicfirst.com/brattex.blogspot.com/

Really quite flattering, and probably inaccurate too ... I think it's probably based on $1 per visitor. Here's another valuation for my website (http://www.serpanalytics.com/sites/brattex.blogspot.com):

Approx. monthly SE traffic cost equivalent: $101.06
And apparently the post on "most expensive laptop" is worth about $97.69 in advertising?? Seems maybe I should consider becoming a google advertisement associate...

CDWOW savings of 12%

If anyone shops with CDWOW - today they are giving away 12% discounts on their e-vouchers. What this means is, you buy yourself an e-voucher, it mails it to you instantly, you redeem it, and then spend it on the item you were intending to buy from CDWOW originally. I just bought HALF-LIFE 2: ORANGE BOX (XBOX360) for 12% less! Entire process took me about five minutes to score the discount!

HINT: for those that don't realise it, see how much the product is, and enter that amount in the e-voucher box and you will get a complete 12% discount, but I think it may be for today only, so hurry! ONE CAVEAT: Voucher takes 24 hours to go live, so you can't spend it until 24 hours have passed... so in truth I have not just bought HALF-LIFE 2 ORANGE BOX, I have to wait another 23.5 hours... :(

Battle of the Bandwidth

ADSL in South Africa ain't cheap... not by any stretch of the international imagination, but it is sure as heck getting cheaper!

XBOX360 in South Africa: buying MICROSOFT POINTS

Most people are cheap-skates. Let's be honest, it is most probably every man's innate gift to humankind to want to save a buck. Likewise, it is also probably every man's desire to want to play computer games. Merge the two together, and every man wants to save a buck while playing computer games.

Save money the "smart" way

For those loyal readers that don't follow anyone else's blog but mine for up-to-the-minute smart, insightful and handy tips for life, I'd like to take this opportunity to advise you all that YOU HEARD THIS TIP HERE FIRST:

HandyTechTips blog has a suggestion on how you can save between 5% to 15% off Woolworths merchandise if you have an eBucks account! Check it out!

Remember: You heard this money-saving tip here first!

Consumers beware! Do your homework!

Case 1: HD on analog? Blu-ray fail!

WAP banking - Mobile goodness!

If you want to be able to do pretty cool "internet" banking on the go, then I strongly urge you to experience WAP banking. I was a little cautious at first, but after doing some digging, and realising my bank balances weren't changing after I logged in, I have become quite attached to WAP banking. I call my ABSA WAP service ... WABSA!

You see, there's always been cellphone banking, but it's been horribly unreliable for me, and the SMS thing is great, but SLOW. With the BlackBerry, and with unlimited data plans, and with the ability to switch between applications, I can now do my banking almost as efficiently as if I'm doing it online.

So far I've only been able to review ABSA's service, since I bank with ABSA, but the results are great for me. I can't complain - it does what I need, and it does it pretty fast and pretty reliable!

If you're with ABSA, check out their WAP site and try it out! It's a legitimate link, as you can tell from this ABSA post.