Fergal Crawley

Google endeavours to remove objectionable sites from its search results. If you see  offensive material in Google’s results that you feel should be removed, you can report it here.

Google.ie have given their pages a black background today, to help raise awareness of today’s global energy conservation initiative - Earth Hour.

You can view Google’s description on what they are doing here.   Google are asking their visitors to support the initiative by turning out the lights in their home for an hour between 8PM and 9PM this evening.  What a fantastic initiative and awareness building campaign.

I’ll definitely make an effort and turn the lights out this evening. The Earth Hour site is very slow to open, they must be getting a huge amount of traffic from Google today, but I’ve managed to sign up and pledge my support.

Score is an in-depth website with a huge amount of content for small business owners and those considering setting up a small business.

Useful features include articles on small business issues, business plan templates and inspirational success stories.

Business Advice Forum is offering our members the chance to win $50 every week.  Entry to the competition is really easy and further information is available at the small business and personal success forum.

I’ve been considering the idea of launching a site that would make a small contribution to ending world hunger, for quite some time. The result is HungerLink.org.

Hunger Link invites visitors to submit their sites for inclusion on the blog.  Once approved we make a free blog post about the submitted site.  We then make a contribution to world hunger for every site approved.  Each contribution will feed a hungry child for one week.  Webmasters are given the opportunity to promote their site for free and to make a contribution towards ending world hunger.

Audit
An official examination of accounts to verify that they are correct.

Dictionary.com is an excellent, free online dictionary. A very useful site if you want to check the spelling or definition of a word.

There are quite a lot of ads on the free dictionary service, however if you find these annoying you can sign up for premium access. Premium subscription is ad free and currently costs $19.99 per year. The paid service also provides additional features such as word puzzles and audio pronunciation services.

Learning Curve
A graph showing learning against time. The rate at which something is learnt.

Dissolute
Lacking self discipline or moral restraint.

XE.com is an excellent site if you want to get up to date currency rates. You can get conversion rates from practically any world currency to any other.  XE.com also provides information and tables on past currency rates and has a section providing updated currency news.

The XE.com Currency Converter allows you to get real time comparison values for any amount, in terms of any other currency. I’ve recently used this tool to get a Euro estimate of property prices quoted in AED’s (United Arab Emirates).

When using the site you should take the quoted rates to be guideline only. You will sometimes find that if you contact your bank you can get a better rate than that quoted by XE.

Panegyric
A lofty speech or piece of writing, praising a person or thing. Eulogy.

Annuity
A series of fixed payments, paid with an agreed frequency, for a specific period of time.