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Toastmasters
They say that the fear of public speaking is greater than the fear of dying. Given the choice of speaking in front of 50 or 60 people or plummeting from the air after the wing has fallen off your plane does not seem like much of a choice at all really, but there you go. It reminds me of the saying "The pen is mightier than the sword" (unless of course you are actually fighting someone with a sword)
Toastmasters is a great way to overcome the fear of public speaking. You are given the chance to regularly give both prepared and unprepared speeches (called table topics) It starts off very easy and as you become a stronger more confident speaker you are eased into more challenging tasks. Before you know it, you can look back and say "WOW" look how far I've come.
The ability to speak in public confidently is one of the few skills in life that can change both your work and private life dramatically. I highly recommend coming along to visit the Adelaide toastmasters club.
Preeminent Adelaide Public Speaking Club
No it is not a washing machine repair web site, its the most important and informative site to discuss anything to do with the Australian internet scene. It is the place to be to research Australian broadband technology. If you are looking to get broadband or join the information superhighway, all the information is at this site.
High Rankings is a business run by a lady called Jill Whalen. She specialise's in Search engine optimisation. The highlight though is her forum which is a wealth of information on SEO techniques. It is enormously popular and encourages legitimate techniques to make your web site the best it can be. If you are after a way to make your web site successful, look no further.
Spinwave is a great online tool for reducing the size of Gif and jpg images for use on the web. Putting your images through this tool will see roughly a 20% reduction in image size with no noticeable quality loss.
I'm not entirely sure how a piece of software this good can be free. Could be something to do with Google owning it.
What Picasa does is organise your photos by date. It is a polished piece of software that I would highly recommend.
I would like to recommend a lady by the name of Marina Basilicata from the Kensington Gardens office in the eastern suburbs of Adelaide.
For a lay person, it is hard to work out what one real estate agent does from another. Well I have worked a way of doing this. When a real estate agent calls you to keep you updated even when nothing is going on with the sale of your house, is always well dressed, professional, they are well on the way to being a great real estate agent.
When an agent then goes on and actively solves difficult problems including dealing with hostile tenant situations to aid in the sale of your house, then you have found a gem.
I have bought and sold many properties over the years and a reasonable portion of the agents I have dealt with have been full of false promise, had poor communication skills, and have never gone above what is required. It was refreshing to find an agent who worked as hard and is as professional as Marina.
Update**** Marina with the help of Richard Thwaites sold another property of mine for $50,000 over the reserve recently, another great result in as many years.