Australian Content Blog

September 2, 2010

Tents and Marquees

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — The Editor @ 9:52 pm

marquees-pavillion-3Event Tents, such as wedding tents are used when you want to make a fabulous outdoor scene. They are generally structures installed at a location for a period of time.

Why A Tent?
Commercial Tents are used as protection from the sun, rain or a gathering place. They can make a stunning and creative atmosphere for any event.

Tent Rentals
Tents can be rented or leased for a day, a weekend, weeks, months, etc. For one or two day events, the Tents are usually installed a few days before the event, depending on scheduling and weather, and remain until a few days after the event. Many rentals are quoted for the entire week, allowing for time to set up and design the interior and exterior. Some Tents are built for exceedingly long-term events and have been installed and remain installed for years.

What Kind of Tent Should I Rent?
Tent rental companies come in all sizes - from small-sized companies with just a few Tents to exceedingly large-sized companies - carrying dozens of several sizes and styles of Tents. Some general rental companies rent from tent rental companies to accommodate their client’s needs.

You may know you want to use a standard Tent for your event, or your event planner may already have in mind to use a Tent. You have options! There are lots of other fabulous
structures and Tent styles out there. Some are unique and make a statement of their own. Ask the rental company you’re working with for a list of the type styles they have on hand.

Usually, the different types of Tents available in most companies are (the names vary depending of the company):

Folding Tents Easy and fast to use and always in demand. Very popular, because usually is the less expensive tent. Fast, flexible, cost effective and long lasting.

They are used by:

  • Corporate brands across most industries
  • Government & Council buyers
  • SME business marketers
  • Franchisees
  • Agricultural exhibitors
  • Emergency services & community groups
  • Folding Tents create brand exposure opportunities.
  • You can reach your audience at the right time, in the right place with the right message.

Inflatable Tents An exciting and lively alternative Tent. Easy & fast to set up. Be sure they have removable printed roof because in that way you can share the investment with other licences.

What Size Tent Will I Need?

The size of Tent depends on a few factors:

1. The number of guests you expect
2. Layout or seating arrangements or the style of event:

* Reception with what type of tables?
* Speaker engagement with what type of seating?
* Will you need a dance floor?
* Will you need display areas for your products?

If you are interested in a Tent, you can expect to need about 2,000 - 2,500 square feet for 200-seated guests. That could mean a 40 x 60 size Tent (Always ask the Tent rental vendor directly and they’ll give you the best dataabout the size of Tent you’ll need).

Therefore, the key rule is; know what you are going to use your tent for. The choice of tents is amazing, almost on par with the choice of cars that you can buy.

So if you need a tent for the family BBQ, for example, your needs are fairly rudimentry
and your budget may be low. Look for cheap tents that offers a waterproof Polyester roof and a decent warranty for under $600.

If you need a tent for a school or sports club you will need a diverse range of sizes, and colours. Most plain colour Tents s range between $995- $2900. If you are keen to advertise yourself, you can have your names printed for around $150-$300. Printing logos usually be a little more expensive.

In the last 5 years, portable Tents have become important to businesses for their marketing. The key need for these buyers is a prominent and quality reproduction of their logo. Sign written or printed Tents can be as boring as a website address or they can be a design extravaganza.

Remember, if it is for commercial purposes, the aim is to build awareness of your company with your printed Tent. Printed corporate Tents range in price from $1500- $4000. Good ones will really catch your eye.

Once you have decided on what sort of buyer you are and how you are going to use your Tents, a good Tents company will offer you a choice of frames, a warranty of between 3-5 years and help with designing the printing-if you need it.

For more information about tents, contact Extreme Marquees. We have a range of cheap tents, for all sorts of home and business applications.

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August 23, 2010

New Zealand’s Top Holiday Cities

New Zealand has a stunning array of amazing landscapes. Like huge mountain ranges, endless coastlines, dense rainforests, deep fiords, snow capped mountains and steaming volcanoes. These panoramic wonders have all made New Zealand an inspired destination for all kinds of holidays.

Fantastic travel packages and holiday specials are available on quality accommodation in modern city hotels and luxurious wilderness lodges at discounted prices. Among the top holiday cities in New Zealand, Queenstown, Christchurch and Auckland would definitely be there. Travel Online is a celebrated online specialist travel operator and provides fantastic tourist services for New Zealand. Travel Online provides an instant quote and booking service for accommodation in cities right across the country.

Queenstown
The international resort town of Queenstown is situated on the shoreline of Wakatipu Lake. This beautiful region is among the most scenic locations on the globe. Throughout the year adventurous and exciting sports like jet boating, bungy jumping, and white water rafting take place. This town is the epicentre of the entire world’s bungy jumping activities too. With the advent of winter, the town gets transformed to an alpine wonderland with snowboarders and skiers from all corners of the world assembling at the annual Winter Festival.

There is constant demand for Queenstown Accommodation all round the year and Travel Online offers a select group of hotels best suited for New Zealand holidays. 1, 2, 3 or 4 bedroom apartments, with luxurious facilities, gyms, spas and fantastic views are available at various holiday retreats across the city. Larger apartments with more bedrooms, tennis courts, private jetties and fitness centres are also available at a higher price. Luxury complexes with studio rooms in the vicinity of cafes, bars, and restaurants are also found in Travel Online’ Queenstown Accommodation selection.

Christchurch
When choosing a place to stay in Christchurch look for hotels that give views over the beautiful Victoria Square, across the transfixing Avon River or towards the epochal Anglican Cathedral. Situated on New Zealand’s South Island, this cosmopolitan city is always abuzz with great festivals, shopping spots, theaters and art galleries. Hotels overlooking Victoria Square provide visitors with an insight in to the city’s English history.

Individuals staying in the vicinity of the Christchurch Cathedral will find hotel rooms with a Manhattan-style feel. Tradition and elegance are everywhere in these hotels along with a keen eye on service excellence. Spacious bedrooms with full-fledged kitchen facilities are common, along with hi-tech conference facilities, resort-like leisure features like spas, saunas, gyms, and swimming pools. Many of these hotels provided by Travel Online are located in the vicinity of the Technology Park, the International Antarctic Centre, and the airport. Travelers who want to stay away from the hustle and bustle of the cosmopolitan life will find suitable accommodation in the majesticcountryside surrounding the city.

Auckland
Auckland, also known as the City of Sails, is situated in between 2 harbors and has more boats per person than anywhere on the planet. Within minutes a person has the choice of sailing away on yachts to isolated nearby islands, living the high life in the casino, surfing at winding beaches or tasting the exotic wines at local vineyards. Hotels come in stylish and comfortable studios, and luxurious executive / marina suites. Travel Online caters to the tastes of corporate and business tourists and can beat any price seen on Auckland accommodation advertised. Auckland harbor is majestic, and is seen perfectly from atop Sky City and the surrounding accommodation.

Affordable and comfortable apartments are available for casual tourists, equipped with kitchens, laundries, and balconies to provide a memorable holidaying experience. Visitors to Auckland adore visiting the Antarctic Encounter, which showcases the only penguins present in the sub-Antarctic region. More adventures include cage-bereft shark dives, scuba expeditions and snorkel safaris. New Zealand is waiting.

Travel Online has a wide range of Queenstown accommodation close to all the snow action and cosmopolitan Christchurch accommodation surrounded by all that theatre and art. For holidays in and around the water, Auckland accommodation is as good as anywhere in the world.

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August 18, 2010

Repairing Flooded Carpet: A cheap job is a good job right? Wrong….

Filed under: Uncategorized — The Editor @ 12:40 am

Don’t have an inexperienced 24 hour carpet cleaner show up to repair your carpets with water damage. These are the worries you must be wary of:

Overcharging. An amateur water restoration carpet cleaner may build the job up with superfluous steps. E.g. using dehumidification to dry the damaged carpets when it is not needed.

Not using the correct equipment. They sometimes hire equipment from hire companies to dry the carpet. This is all right, but a professional water damage technician will possess all their equipment so they can offer a speedy response and hopefully a better value job.

Does not have a proper moisture metre. If they don’t have the proper moisture meter, they won’t be able to know if the carpet is repaired. This increases the risk of mould in future. Mould removal in future may be required.

If they aren’t specialised. There are a lot of “Carpet Cleaners” in this industry who do water damage work on the “side.” i.e. they do not complete this type of task each day. Be wary of that. Restoring water damage to carpets is an art. Taking carpet off the gripper strips then reinstalling them should be done by a professional, otherwise it can be damaged incontrovertibly.

You may be thinking, how do I find a proper Flood Restoration techinician? Below I have selected some things to look out for when you hunt around for a carpet flood damage business:

What size is their Yellow Pages advertisement: This can indicate how much repair work they are doing already. A full-size Yellow Pages ad can cost about $50 000. So if they have paid for a larger ad, you can at least have some indication that they are established.

Where do they come up in Google? The higher the rate in Google, the more click-ins there have been for their business.

What Qualifications do they have? The minimum qualification they need is a IICRC qualification of Applied Structural Drying and Water Damage Restoration.

Do Insurance companies source them for water damage jobs? This is a better indicator. If insurance companies hire them, the business is probably going to be excellent at their work. Insurance companies often use the businesses that give them the best value for money.

How much Equipment do they have? They should own a minimum of 100 Air movers. If they have this many, this probably means that they have been established for some time. Our business took 8 years to accumulate that many wet carpet drying air movers.

What sort of commitment can you get with them by calling over the phone? Try to pin them down to a set fee for water extraction, water removal and initial inspection. If they won’t give you a rate for just this, you know they are not willing to serve you, so move on.

Response Time – Our Water Damage Brisbane-based business works to a 59 minute response time to water damage emergency. The job needs to be responded to ASAP. Mould can develop in a 24 hour period.

If you stick to these tips you are sure to come up with a Flood Damage Restoration technician who can get the job done right.

If you have carpet water damage Brisbane, call us for flooded wet carpet drying. Brisbane storm season is approaching and you may need storm damage carpet cleaning. Brisbane and surrounding areas serviced.

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August 13, 2010

Podiatry as a Career in Australia

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — The Editor @ 1:49 am

As a practicing podiatrist in Brisbane, Australia, I am often asked by parents if podiatry would be a good career for a school leaver to enter. There are many things to recommend a career in podiatry including:

  • You can be self employed: This is a prospect that is increasingly being denied to other health care providers such as optometrists and even General Practitioners . Big Business controls a lot of health practices. Consider how often you see an independent optometrist these days – can they compete on price with the multinational chains?
  • Legal Issues: In Australia (unlike the USA where things are very different), podiatrists very, very rarely get sued . The nature of podiatry practice does not lend itself to accidentally harming one’s patients. Also, you never have to give your clients the bad news that their condition will be terminal.
  • Working Hours: Emergency call outs are very unlikely. This is good news for those among us who like their sleep uninterrupted.
  • Financial Reward: Whilst it is true that podiatry doesn’t pay as well as being a doctor or dentist , the pay is generally commensurate with other allied health providers.
  • Instant Gratification: One of the most fulfilling facets of a career as a podiatrist is the instant gratification! People come in with pain and leave happy. You will see a plethora of bite-sized jobs each day, many with a cure you can provide immediately. From someone that has worked with unanimously grumpy customers in a past career, believe me when I tell you, it makes the day much less stressful when people leave you smiling.
  • Philanthropy: Podiatry will give you plenty of opportunity to help resolve the suffering of your fellow human beings.
  • Self – Determination: Podiatry gives a clinician the power to determine their own course of action for the benefit of their patients. This is unlike a career in nursing for example where one works under the direction of a doctor.
  • Clear Job roles: The only people who can claim to be a podiatrist are those with a podiatry degree . The clear roles that this demarcates relieves the requirement to find your ‘niche’ after university - as someone with a more generic Bachelor of Science degree might need to do.
  • Do you like to travel? There are many places around the world that do not train their own podiatrists including Tasmania, the Northern Territory, all of Asia and all of the Middle East. If you want to work around the the world, Australian podiatrists can be registered in any Commonwealth country and are especially in demand in Singapore, Egypt, United Arab Emirates and other far flung fields.
  • Variety: In any given day, a podiatrist will see a large range of complaints. There may be an ingrown toenail or two, a debilitating corn, a sporting injury, some sacroiliac pain and at least a couple of painful heels . The essence of being a good podiatrist is to be a great problem solver. Every patient is an individual with a unique complaint requiring a well considered solution.

How do you qualify as a podiatrist ?

To qualify as a podiatrist necessitates) a four year Bachelor of Health Science degree course {available at six Australian Universities:

  • Curtin University
  • La Trobe University
  • Charles Sturt University
  • Queensland University of Technology
  • University of South Australia
  • University of Western Sydney.

Last year, the entry score for the QUT was OP 8.

Stephanie Cosgrove graduated as a podiatrist from QUT in 1990 and with a Master’s degree in Applied Science (Podiatry) in 1996. Since 1991, she has worked in private practice as a Podiatrist Brisbane. She received three university prizes during her studies, including the award for excellence in design and manufacture of orthotics. Brisbane has been the site of her private practice since 1991 which has grown to four locations and eleven staff. If you want to Walk Without Pain consider a visit to Brisbane’s most innovative podiatry practice today. Call for an appointment now on 1300 A1 Feet.

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August 7, 2010

Eight Steps to Great Web Design

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — The Editor @ 7:21 pm

Take control of getting your site conceived by a developer and know the process it will save you money and aquire you a site that actually works the intended purpose!

1. Understanding your business and how you are currently established in your market.
In order to establish a site that truly meets your requirements; you first need to have a full knowledge of your business including your products, and/or services and more importantly their market position. You then have to acknowledge how you want to explain your business and what it offers in 7 seconds or less. Sounds impossible? Well that is the average time that a user will consider the point “is this site I searched for?”.

2. Budget and estimation
Have a budget in mind and don’t be afraid to let the developers know what it is. In saying this: BE REALISTIC, $500 will never see a great web site created, nor will they be anything left in the bank to market it.

3. The creative process
Be armed with example sites and more importantly the elements of the site you like so they can attain an understanding of what you would like to see on your site and also what you find frustrating about other sites. This will construct a good profile and realise not only what type of site to actualize for you but your tolerance to colours, animations, layouts etc. for your requirements which will allow for fast development. The more interaction and information you bestow them in the beginning the more time you will save everybody in the long run by becoming what you want 1st time round. Check with the designers on how many rounds of changes come with the contract, most will allow for a total conceptual redesign only once and 2 rounds of changes after that.

4. Production and Content
After the home page design is created, the developers will more than likely acquire the general layout of this concept and then formulate the inner page template. It is this template that will be repeated for most of your pages for your site.
Submit your content in a pre-proofed word processed document; don’t get too creative with the document fonts etc. as these will not be kept when the content is copied into the code of the site. It is inferred that you do use bolding, underlining, headings and sub heading though ,as these highlights are transferred into the site and are very important later on in not only interacting with the reader but for Search Engine Optimisation.
One last tip for content; provide a decent amount of content but provide it in a way that a reader may accomplish a summary of what you are trying to get across in the 1st couple of paragraphs and an image or to. The rest of the paragraphs that get into finer details ARE FOR GOOGLE !

5. Development Programming and CMS
If your website contains Content Managed Areas (CMS) or has any other dynamic sections the developers will wrap your design around a content management program such as Joomla or Drupal or they may have a custom built system. Make sure that you get to see how the CMS system works on another site they have developed or an example site they may have. You need to know that you can utilize and know the system when your site is complete.

6. Testing and training
We work closely with the developers to test your site especially if there are any CMS or special programs that have been created for you. You can guarantee if it is has just been written for you then it will not work 100% first time round. This is a where things can get ugly in the process you must understand the way the program operates and test it as if you were normal website user. If it doesn’t make sense to you, chances are it won’t make sense to your audience. Make sure you test your website on more than just your browser, try to test it on Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. All of these browsers are avialable on the internet for free!

7. Launch – going live
When the developers are ready to bring your site onlive make sure you have finished the above testing step until you are certain that this website is the best representation of your business / product it can be. Remember even though you can change things after going live it is still a poor reflection on your business if there are spelling mistakes or broken images when you launch.

8. Marketing
There is little point in having a website if nobody visits it, make sure as part of you contract you have discussed search engine optimisation and or search engine marketing as part of your website build. This is the absolute most important factor of the whole process. If you are the only one looking at your site then you are in trouble.

Remember Search Engine Optimisation is about 30% Onsite (getting your site correct for Search Engine to index correctly) and 70% Promotion. Any developer who tells you otherwise hasn’t been in the industry too long.

For more information about web design Brisbane, contact Web Site Blue. Our web designers understand marketing as well as design.

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August 6, 2010

Tips to Creating a New Business Logo

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — The Editor @ 12:44 pm

A logo is a decisive step to building a business. It is the face of your business. And like your face represents the tone of your business, indicates the service and reveals the professionalism or lack there of.

People spend a lot of money on the creation of their logo and walk away with no artwork files. Then a couple months down the track when they need to put signage on their new building they cannot track the design studio down that created the original logo for them and so incur costs to have it recreated. This is unnecessary and may cause obstacles when trying to replecate the logo exactly as done originally.

We have created some basic tips you for to think about when creating a logo. Hopefully these will help you from experiencing any future difficulties.

Tip 1
First things first - you need to decide if you would like your logo to have an accompanying icon. It is advised that if your service or product name is not in your business name then perhaps an icon will help in getting a clear message across to your target audience.

An icon can add an extra element to your branding in that you could use the icon on its own on collateral where perhaps you are searching for a more illustrative finish without losing recognition.

A excellent example of this is the well-known and executed Nike logo.

Tip 2
Colour can be an crucial decision as it not only could change the output costs but can also hinder your output use. Think about the end result and what you will be bringing your branding onto in the future. Make sure your designer is aware of this as they should design accordingly.

Tip 3
Make sure you get a back up disk of your logo as a master file and make sure that it includes all the files needed for the different printing formats.

Creative software updates frequently and some programmes become obsolete. Make sure you have a copy of your logo as a PDF - with the text converted to curves.

Tip 4
Using images in your logo is not very easy to regulate. For example it is troublesome to reverse into black and white. Images also have limitations when it comes to size - they can only be reproduced to a certain size before they start pixilation.

Tip 5
Using gradients in your logo is not recommended. This too can have limitations when it comes to output for ie: gradients are hard to reproduce when embroidering fabrics.

Tip 6
Ensure sure the font is legible. Some logos need to be reproduced on small pieces of collateral ie: post stamps. It is important that in this case the text is
readable

Tip 7
Confirm that you collect a copy of your logo in CMYK high resolution 300 dpi (for printing use) and RGB 72 dpi(for web use).

Tip 8
It is important to have a style guide of your logo. It will clearly show you how to use your logo so it looks exactly the same every time it is reproduced. This allows you to keep your corporate image consistent.

Tip 9
Make sure that you get a letter from the design studio declaring that you own the copyright to your logo.

If you follow these tips then not only will you get a well-designed logo but you will also own the artwork. And when it comes to reproducing your collateral you will be doing it the most cost effective way.

For logo design Brisbane and web design Brisbane, contact Bydaughters today for a free two hour consultation.

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July 31, 2010

How to Create a Style Guide

Filed under: Uncategorized — The Editor @ 5:36 pm

How many times have you commissioned business cards to print and collected yet another version of your corporate colour? Ever been enthusiastic to see your advert in the latest newspaper and then observed that the crucial tag line is gone or your logo has been squashed.

There is only one way to stop this from happening and that is to use a style guide. Not only will a style guide aid you oversee the reproduction of your logo - it will also help you extend your brand recognition – which many argue is one of the strongest selling tools.

We have placed the below steps together for you as a starting point.

Step 1 : Outline the audience for your Style Guide. Is this for staff to put to work in-house or is this for suppliers and contractors to refer to?

Step 2 : Define what your output uses are. This is important because you will want different logos and file formats for example, black and white publication adverts in comparison to vehicle graphics.

Step 3 : Define the tone for the copy and content required. For example you may needcopy rules for printed content and then copy rules for website content.

Content rules cover all punctuation rules and how to attribute to the business and team.

Step 4 : Make sure you layout all the design templates so it is clear how and where the logo and branding lies on all the different pieces of collateral that may be reprinted.

Step 5 : Ensure to take into account any contributing logos or logos of business that are associated with you. It’s also important that you deliver a copy of the layout to these companies to insure they accept the layout of their logo as they too may have their own Style Guide and hierarchy layout rules.

Step 6 : Ensure that grammar, spelling and contact details are correct.

Step 7 : Make sure that when suppliers are using the Style Guide they understand~know~discern~apprehend} that a proof needs to be dispatched~sent~mailed~commissioned}to you to be confirmed as correct.

Get your Style Guide completed and as established as possible. Then have it saved in an email friendly file format and have a couple printed. Once this is done we strongly advocate a training session – whereby your design studio arrives and trains your staff on how to use the Style Guide and most importantly your brand.

For graphic design Brisbane, logo design Brisbane and web design Brisbane, contact Bydaughters today. We help your brand build business.

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July 19, 2010

Projectors: LCD Verses DLP (The downfall of DLP technology)

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — The Editor @ 11:35 pm

The most common question heard when buying a new projector for the home, office, or classroom is: would I get an LCD projector or a DLP projector? LCD, short for ‘liquid crystal device’ and DLP, which stands for ‘digital light processing’ are the two top projector imaging technologies. With so many brands and different types available, it can be overwhelming for customers to decide between these technologies. It comes down to the fact that LCD projectors provide superior image quality and colour accuracy. The next paragraph tells you why DLP projectors struggle with bringing up an equal grade of image quality.

Think of a set of blinds in your home covering your bedroom window. By pulling a rod you can turn the shutters open or closed, according to whether you want to let light in or not. Such is exactly how an LCD projector behaves. Each pixel works like a single shutter on a set of blinds to either pass light through or to block it. DLP on the other hand is made up of millions of microscopic mirrors or ‘pixel elements’ as experts like to call them. Each pixel element works to either reflect light or block it.

How the light source is processed from the time the projector switches on to when the image reaches your screen is absolutely significant with regard to image quality, brightness and colour accuracy. LCD projectors process white light from the lamp by splitting it into red, blue and green components, by three mirrors which send the coloured light to 3 separate LCD panels. The 3 LCD panels create the elements of the image by switching each pixel on and off. The pixels are then projected in a glass prism to deliver the projector image. Something to know about LCD projectors is that all three colours are projected onto your wall all at the same time. The way a DLP projector runs is widely different and even the final product of how an image comes out is not the same. With DLP, white light from the lamp is sent through a rotating colour wheel with transparent red, blue and green segments, at speeds up to 11,000 rpm/s. This method of forming an image requires a sequence of red, blue and green light. The millions of micro mirrors described above reflect the coloured light on the pixels to produce the image elements. The elements of the image are displayed in sequence on the screen, one colour at a time. The viewer’s eye will then pull together each coloured element of the image into the single whole image. With LCD projectors, all colours are available all the time to deliver the top level of brightness and fantastic colour accuracy. In DLP, only one colour is available at once, and so resulting in lower colour brightness and accuracy. Some DLP manufacturers have included a white segment for the colour wheel to improve overall brightness, but this then detracts from colour accuracy.

I find in forums all the time that DLP gives a higher contrast ratio and as such must be better. For those who are unsure, the contrast ratio is a measure of a display system defined as the ratio of the luminance of the brightest white to that of the darkest black that the machine is able to produce. DLP projectors do offer high contrast specifications in comparison to the majority of LCD projectors. At a glance, this appears to be a benefit, however, in the real world, the true black level is determined by the ambient light in the room when the projector is in use. Do not be hoodwinked by contrast specifications on websites and in brochures.

When the content you wish to view has moving images, DLP projection technology can also have image errors, or ‘artifacts’. The most often seen artifact that a DLP projector creates with moving images is colour break up. Colour break up is to be expected in DLP systems because moving images change position between the time red, blue and green colours are pulled up. LCD projectors do not have this disadvantage because the colours are sent at the same time. DLP manufacturers have come up with 3DLP solutions using 3 chips to fix the colour break up issue, but the cost of these projectors make them hardly practical for the large part of businesses and consumers.

Another point of difference between LCD and DLP is how they compensate for the refractive qualities of light. Think back to high school science, and remember how the different colours of light refract different amounts when shone through the same lens. The problem with DLP projectors is that they use the one same panel for the same lens to project Red, Blue and Green. All 3 colours are obviously not the same and refract light in different ways. Generally with a DLP projector, some yellow colour will come through above and some extra blue will show below an image containing something as simple as a single black line. While being built LCD projectors can be set to take away these effects on the projected image, because each colour is projected on isolated LCD panels.

The only true buy point (excluding price) with choosing a DLP projector is its overall smaller size and weight. However, this is only relevant to portability and must be traded off against the image superiority of LCD projectors. If the outcome of the picture quality is important to you, then the decision is no-brainer. Take an LCD projector! LCD projectors will consistently produce bright, colourful images with fewer image mistakes. If you wish to ask more about LCD technology in more detail, see this tremendous resource website: Explore 3LCD. If you have any other questions, visit Projector Central and send me an email.

Jonathan King is the sales and marketing manager for Projector Central, Australia’s leading online shop for projectors. Based in Brisbane, Projector Central has serviced Australia for 15 years. For data projectors in the Gold Coast and Interactive Whiteboards, contact Projector Central today.

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July 16, 2010

Yachting and Yacht Clubs

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — The Editor @ 5:59 pm

As the Dutch rose to dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht became a leisure craft used mostly by royalty and then by the burghers on the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, arising as private matches. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English royalty in 1660, the city of Amsterdam gave him a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he called Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, sovereign 1685–88), made more yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and back, on a £100 bet. Yachting became fashionable with the wealthy and nobility, but after that period the trend did not last.

The first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed at about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard organization, and had large naval panoply and rigour. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” when the “fleet” pursued an imaginary enemy. The club endured, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, when joining with other organisations, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing began in some ordered fashion on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to monarchy in 1820, it was then named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht club had been started at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal sponsorship made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the perpetual site of British racing. The organisation at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, also at the rise of George IV. Each member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for large stakes were held, and the society life was wonderful. Eventually Royal Yachting Club boats were raised in size to more than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting began with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and persisted when the English took power. Sailing was for the most part for pleasure and rose to its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a minimum of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht organisation, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while aboard his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts were within the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through to the second half of the 19th century. The design of bigger yachts was originally heavily impacted by the success of America, which was created by George Steers for a club led by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) had its namesake after its success at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with just a model used. Not until the latter half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the use of the study of aerodynamics do for the craft of sails and rigging what such science had done earlier for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had been individually custom-built, there was a desire for handicapping boats previous to the one-design class boats were built. Therefore, a rating rule was written, which resulted in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and edited in 1919. In modern times, one of the rapidly blossoming areas in sailing is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to standard requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other areas (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing such boats can be had on an even keel with no handicapping required. A prime example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

As long as yachting belonged mostly for the royal and the rich, cost was no object, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller craft happened in the latter half of the 19th century in the sailing of the Englishmen R.T. McMullen, a stockbroker, and E.F. Knight, a barrister and journalist. A journey around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the seaworthiness of less sizeable yachts. Thereafter in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and leisure yachts became more popular, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, craft of less than 3 m were setting sail single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, when steam was set to emulate sail power in market boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly used in pleasure yachts. Bigger power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance cruising became a fond pastime of the well off. The first power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave way to yachts powered by the completely submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant boats, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht archetype for several years. By the latter half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were solely power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

During the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design of large steam yachts. Conspicuous within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, with triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was operated by a crew of at least 150. The Mayflower, purchased by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and was used in active service for World War II.

As bigger and more dependable internal-combustion engines were developed, many big boats started using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, advanced during World War I. In the decade following that, big power-yacht building flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that time the biggest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The manufacture of bigger power boats declined in 1932, and the style from then was toward smaller, less costly craft. From World War II, a lot of small naval boats were sold to private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread loved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and keeping their own small recreational boats. The amount of yachts and sailors is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional places along the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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July 8, 2010

Proportional, Progressive, and Regressive taxes

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — The Editor @ 3:54 pm

Taxes can be differentiated by the effect they have on the placement of income and wealth. A proportional tax is a tax that imposes the same relative requirement on each taxpayer—i.e., when tax liability and income grow in the same proportion. A progressive tax is recognised by a greater than proportional increase in the tax burden in regard to the growth in income, and a regressive tax is recognisable by a less than proportional growth in the relative liability. Therefore, progressive taxes are seen as fighting the lack of equality in income distribution, whereas regressive taxes are believed to cause an increase in these inequalities.

The taxes that are usually regarded as progressive include individual income taxes and estate taxes. Income taxes that are nominally progressive, however, can become less so for the upper-income class—particularly if a taxpayer is permitted to lower his tax base by claiming deductions or by taking certain income components from his taxable income. Proportional tax rates which are applied to lower-income categories can also be more progressive if such personal exemptions are made.

Income measured over a given period may not absolutely come up with the most suitable measure of taxpaying ability. For example, transitory rises in income may be saved, and during temporary declines in income a taxpayer may choose to provide for consumption by taking from savings. So, if taxation is made comparable with “permanent income,” it can be less regressive (or more progressive) than if it is held in comparison with annual income.

Sales taxes and excises (except those on luxuries) are mostly regressive, because the spread of individual income consumed or spent on a specific good decreases as the level of personal income is raised. Poll taxes (also known as head taxes), levied as a fixed amount per capita, patently are regressive.

It is not simple to classify corporate income taxes and taxes on business as progressive, regressive, or proportionate, because of a lack of certainty about the ability of businesses to shift their tax expenses (see below Shifting and incidence). This difficulty of determining who bears the tax burden is dependant essentially on whether a national or a subnational (that is, provincial or state) tax is being debated.

In analysing the economic purposes of taxation, it is essential to differentiate between differing ideas of tax rates. The statutory rates will include those specified in law; usually these are marginal rates, but occasionally they are median rates. Marginal income tax rates note the fraction of incremental income demanded by taxation when income grows by one dollar. Therefore, if tax liability increases by 45 cents when income grows by one dollar, the marginal tax rate is 45 percent. Income tax laws often contain graduated marginal rates—i.e., rates that increase as income rises. Structured analysis of marginal tax rates need to consider provisions in addition to the formal statutory rate structure. If, for example, a particular tax credit (reduction in tax) declines by 20 cents for each one-dollar rise in income, the marginal rate is 20 percentage points greater than indicated in the statutory rates. Since marginal rates display how after-tax income changes in response to changes in before-tax income, they are the necessary ones for appraising incentive effects of taxation. It is even more difficult to know the marginal effective tax rate to apply to income from business and capital, since it may be reliant on factors including the structure of depreciation allowances, the deductibility of interest, and the provisions for inflation adjustment. A basic economic theorem grants that the marginal effective tax rate in income from capital is zero under a consumption-based tax.

Average income tax rates show the percentage of total income that is paid in taxation. The pattern of average rates is the one that is relevant for considering the distributional equity of taxation. Under a progressive income tax the average income tax rate increases with income. Average income tax rates commonly grow with income, both because personal allowances are provided for the taxpayer and dependents and because marginal tax rates are graduated; conversely, preferential treatment of income received for the most part by high-income households could dwarf these effects, allowing regressivity, as signified by average tax rates that lessen as income rises.

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