Friday, January 28, 2011

So just what is the price of gold?

I think we're all aware that gold has been a great investment for those who got into it a year or two back. Yes?

The thing is, when riding an investment wave like this, it's necessary to keep an eye on what the prices, the gold prices that is, actually are. For while prices might be rising at present, the one thing we do know about rising prices is that eventually they will fall.

No, this doesn't mean that the gold price is going to fall below its current level. It could go much higher than it is now and then fall without coming back to current levels.

All I'm trying to point out is that if you're going to play in this market you need to keep a close eye on the price of gold.

Something which, fortunately, you can indeed do simply by clicking through one of those links.

And finally, yes, I know, what you want to know is whether I am a buyer of seller of gold?

Well, actually, neither, as my day job is in the metals trade. So when I diversify my investment portfolio, I go away from metals, not towards them.

Saturday, January 08, 2011

Where should I get my hosting?

I think we all know by now that we really do need to have an outlet on hte web if we're going to have a business these days? Yes? Even if we're not going to be a "web business", we need to have a website, just as no one would these days dream of having a business without a phone line?

Well, quite, but having understood that we do rather need to go through the various alternatives about how we could do this: are we going to try selling from the site? Is it for infomation only? Just so that people know we exist? Perhaps it might not be a selling interface, but something people can refer to for post sales technical information?

The reason we need to work these things out is because upon those decisions will rest the decision of who to use for what type of web hosting. We might just need the plain vanilla availability of such hosting. Or we might with higher volumes be much more interested in managed hosting. Or if we're going to be going further than that, then perhaps colocation would be the right answer.

This is the thing: while we might know that we need a web presence, until we've worked out what that presence is going to be ew can't decide upon the most basic technical decision, what sort of hosting we should have.