After two months where rents fell slightly, the average rent in the UK showed a rise again in January in both Wales and England.  During January, rents increased by.1% reaching the average monthly rate of £712; which is about £30 higher than it was previously. Overall, the renting cost has increased by about 4.3% when compared to last January’s rents.

The largest increase in rents was seen in the West Midlands where rents increased by 1.8% and in the South West where rents increased by about 1.5%.  London reported only a 0.8% increase after 13 consecutive months of rents falling.

In four regions of the UK, rents fell according to the LSL Property Services with the larger drops seen in Wales and the East of England. Commercial Director of LSL Property Services, David Brown, stated that the higher demand has helped create a fiercer level of competition which has been observed since the holidays, helping to prevent the rental market from falling as it usually does during the start of the year.

Brown added that he expects to see rents continue to increase over the coming months as more people become dependent on rental accommodation since the credit crisis will keep them away from purchasing a home. At the same time that rents are high, so are the tenant arrears rates with about 11% of all rent due in January paid at a late date or left unpaid.  This totals up to about £300m of missing rent.

Russia has its own vision for the future, hoping to turn 400 hectares of old desolate farmland, located about 20 miles away from the Kremlin, into a Russian version of Silicon Valley. The goal is that the farmland will be turned into a city that boosts a population of 35,000 and is also home to some of the most advanced research centres in Europe.

As absurd as the idea may sound, according to promotional materials that were given to British scientists, investors, and entrepreneurs in an effort to draw attention to the Skolkovo Innovation Centre, the idea may not be so farfetched.

The pamphlet explains that the centre will aim to further explore the moon and to also reach the other planets at the Skolkovo space centre which will sit beside four other science clusters including biomedical science, nuclear technology, energy efficiency, and IT.

Russia is attempting to attract investors by offering personal tax breaks and corporate tax breaks as well as the chance to meet Anna Chapman, the underwear model that used to be a spy for the country.

The key focus of Skolkovo is going to be space, with an aim to tailor the country’s interest in space into one that is profitable on the private scale as well. Other aims of the centre include launching new satellites and creating a new generation of space shuttles that will be able to offer low-cost transportation to the moon and space. In other words, Russia is hoping space cruises will bring some money into the country.

IBM is the first to create a microprocessor that is tentatively referring to as a brain chip given the fact that it is very close to replicating the diverse and intricate synaptic structure of the connections of the brain in a human body. The system is able to rewire its connections much like the way that biological synapses work making it one of the first starts to creating an actual brain chip for technological machines.  Researchers believe that this feature may be the first start towards truly creating artificial intelligence and machines that are able to learn.

Outside of AI, the invention may have alternate uses as cognitive computers could also be used to help with environmental monitoring and for understanding the way that humans behave. IBM project leader, Dharmednra Modha, stated that the focus of the project was to recreate different aspects of the mind such as sensation, emotion, cognition, and perception by attempting to engineer the brain in reverse.  The system uses two computer chips that both have 256 computational cores which are essentially the technology counterpoint to neurons in the human brain. Each chip also contains over 260,000 programmable synapses and 65,000 learning synapses.

SME software for iPads

Over the fast few years, payroll software has become invaluable for SME’s as well as large corporations and companies. Even in those firms with only a few employees, it makes the whole payroll process a lot quicker and easier than in the days when it all had to be done by hand in ledgers and tax and national insurance, holiday pay, sick pay etc all had to be worked out manually.

The payroll bureau software available today for SME’s makes life so simple as everything is there in front of you and with just a few clicks of a mouse you can do what used to take hours. There are numerous online sites where you can get this software from, so it is worth taking a bit of time checking out what is available to get the one that best suits the needs of both you and your business.

Small offices, finance companies, retail outlets, dealers and service companies are just some of the many who will benefit from payroll software. Some of the benefits of installing this software are instant access to your employee database, instant salary reimbursement via bank transfer; absence and holiday information, final processing should an employee leave the company as well as fully monthly and yearly reports.

The best payroll software is that that allows you to customise it to your needs, so you can activate and deactivate features at will should you choose to use them or not. It also pays for itself tenfold very quickly in terms of time and manpower saved, so these employees can be utilised in other ways to benefit the business.

SME’s who have installed payroll software all report how much easier it has made that side of their business, so it makes perfect sense to simplify the mundane yet necessary tasks and spend the time saved on implementing the growth of your SME.

The OCED has issued a warning that the UK and the eurozone in general may be entering another recession and given this fact has cut its forecast for global growth. The OCED predicts that the eurozone will shrink over the last quarter of the year by about one percent and by another .4% by the close of 2012’s first quarter.

In a separate announcement, Mervyn King, the Bank of England governor, told a special MP committee that growth will be close to zero or flat over the course of the next six months. King said that he had not yet read over the report issued by the OCED when he spoke to the Treasury Select Committee, but was aware that the output growth for the next quarter is much weaker than it was just three months ago.

In addition, the OCED report lowered its global economic growth prediction down to 3.8% by the end of this year and then lowered to 3.4% for 2012. The organisation also warned that a global contraction was possible if a negative event such as the default of Spain or Italy were to happen.

The OCED not only represents wealthy countries that are part of the eurozone, but also Japan and the US, meaning that the growth prospects are lowered all over the world. The organisation was very serious in its warning stating that world economic prospects for the next several years will be very dependent on events and that just a small upset could change the economic future.

Despite the fact that many rioters seemed out of control in London and various UK towns over the course of events, police were actually able to thwart a great deal of additional attacks by using the mobile phones of those they arrested to garner information about planned illegal action. Multiple attacks were prevented across London by Scotland Yard after investigators were able to get into social networking websites to read details of the attacks by using the mobiles of those involved in the riots heavily.

Included attacks that were discovered on the BlackBerry Messenger service were several on Oxford circus stores, attacks on the Olympics site, and attacks on both Westfield shopping centres. The mobile phones allowed them to access messages that listed details of the riots and of subsequent looting activities that were being tossed around the BBM service.  Monitoring of the phones also allowed the Met to gain access to Twitter accounts that were involved in the riots so that they could prevent additional planned riots from occurring as well as to keep pace with where activity may be developing around Britain. Police remarked later that at one point they even considered shutting down Twitter and BBM use briefly during the riot crisis.

At one point when you thought of a smartphone the first mobile device to come to mind was the cleverly marketed iPhone, but now it seems the Apple branded mobile device has to work a bit harder in order to earn and keep its base. While it is true that owning an iPhone is still seen as a status symbol, the fact that the mobile has become so readily available has worked against the company as now more tech orientated and trendy mobile customers are now looking towards other devices.

Google’s Android mobiles have taken the world by storm for instance over the last two years or so and show no sign of slowing own as the Android mobiles are now the top selling brand across the world. Also showing signs of growth in the smartphone market are Windows OS mobiles which puts Apple at a disadvantage given that it only has one model with which to challenge the market while its competitors have at least a handful if not now. In the coming years this fact alone may push the iPhone down on the sales charts a bit, and just how Apple intends to compete is yet to be seen.

Most people known millionaire Alan Sugar as the BBC1 star of the Apprentice, but Alan Sugar is more than just another rich old guy because he has a sense of humour that will shock and entertain just about everyone and in his latest book his true fun opinionated spirit is on display for everyone to see. In the follow-up to ‘What You See Is What You Get,’ Sugar is back this time talking about his current life and modern celebrity doings in ‘The Way I see It: Rants, Revelations, and Rules For Life.”

Perhaps the best way to open this book is by looking at Sugar’s expression on the cover first, because his half-frown half-smile is typical of the dry sarcastic humour that you will find inside and a pretty good indicator of whether you will like the book or not simply by if you get his bemused stare. Filled with talk about how he is still able to be a family man in the life of someone that is part of the House of Lords, Twitter gone mad, and of course reality stardom you’ll have fun almost every page reading his fab and not so fab daily adventures.

As a man with opinions that he is not afraid to share such as why entrepreneurs need to stop blaming everyone else for their shortcomings all the way to what he thinks of paying too much for a boring steak dinner he is the guilty pleasure celeb that you cannot turn away from. In fact, there is pretty much nothing that is off limits when it comes to the opinions of Alan Sugar, which is ok because his off the wall commentary is of course half the allure and half the fun.

After the bailout that Ireland received in order to get its economy back on track many people are wondering how long it will be until we can see some positive effects from the debt loan, however, given the fact that NAMA is quite new it is hard to judge just when the results of the loan will be able to be seen. In fact, many experts are now saying that the effects will not be discernible in 2011 and possibly not until another five years have passed.

Waiting eight total years to see the results of a bail out is a hard task for those who want to see results, but this is most likely the correct time frame given the fact that the viewpoint will be much clearer as the agency will be dissolved and assets will be sold. It is at this point that the effects of the debt loan will be able to be viewed as either a failure or success based on the economic growth and the market value of goods in the country, so the best answer that can be offered is that only time will tell.

It used to be that when you were applying for a new job all you had to worry about was if your boss would give you a good review at your previous job or if you had enough references to land the spot. However, now with social media firmly playing a large role in most people’s lives social media history is just one more thing to be concerned about. This is due to the fact that even if you clean up your profile and downplay your activities, proof of your younger transgressions can still be out there floating on the web.

In fact, all it takes is one simple web search for a job applicant for a future employer to possibly see them on full display in their not so great glory days on friends’ pages and other social network devices. Therefore, there is only so much that you can do to alter your own history, because unbeknownst to you there may be plenty of additional history out there that you are not quite so proud of. In lines where a positive reputation is a must such as medicine and education, this is quickly becoming a problem for many reformed college partiers.