Producing your own quality video content for a website can almost be impossible without the right equipment. In fact for the untrained eye this could do more damage to your brand if not done correctly. Providing the right visual message is just as important as how you present yourself when visiting a prospective client for the first time.

Courage Media is a London-based video production agency that specialises in the filming and creation of high quality video products across a broad spectrum.

If you are inspired by creative thoughts and opinions of others you should have a chat with these guys and talk about what they can do for your business. They listen and respond, plan meticulously and above all translate your brief in to a result that you can be proud and happy with.

They provide a full service from brief to duplication, including script writing, filming, editing and 3D motion graphics.

With an industry trained crew they will provide you a wealth of both technical and creative knowledge to ensure you project is both cutting edge and eye catching.

Their complete service offers unbeatable quality, reliability and value, which explains why their clients just keep coming back.

Clients include: AOL, Deutsche Bank, Easy Group, Hewitt Associates, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Tate Galleries, Crown Prosecution Service, City University and many more!

Services: SD and HD Filming, Editing, Duplication, 3D Animation, Scripting and Audio Production.

The state of the art video production facility boasts the latest in Digital Video Equipment, including broadcast cameras, G5 hardware, support for HD, high quality Sound & Lighting – and what’s best is that it’s all under one roof.

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Posted under Corporate Identity

Registering your company details on a business directory can enhance sales and further build a company’s reputation online.

Why not offer this on our award winning Times Top 20 Best British Finance Blog we thought.

For a limited period we are offering companies the opportunity to list in our business directory without a cost being involved, so make sure you sign up and submit your business details and website link. Subject to approval by our administration team your listing should be live within 24hrs!

If you want to develop your opportunity even further we have also launched a community forum.

It will also be possible to interact with users of the website’s own forums. Once registered, the forums can be used to start a new topic or to reply to questions that users might have.

We are giving suppliers the opportunity to put forward new ideas and concepts while consumers have the chance to make their views known. This will give your company the chance to gain those all important recommendations from users of the site.

If there is not a category that fits your chosen topic then all you have to do is place it in the miscellaneous category at the bottom of the forum. We will place it in a NEW relevant category for you.

Registering with both our directory and forum could be advantageous for local or national companies looking to increase their customer base.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

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Posted under Find New Customers, Working With Suppliers

Ofgem has recently launched the ‘Green Energy Certified’ label with the aim of reducing consumer confusion over environmentally friendly energy tariffs. It is hoped that the introduction of this scheme will also enable consumers in making an informed decision in supporting energy companies that go further in reducing their emissions. The addition of this level of clarity will help consumers decide on a suitable supplier when they compare energy prices and look to reduce their carbon footprint.

By providing households and small businesses with a level of reassurance and clarity, regarding the energy tariff that they are on or are about to choose, should help consumers in choosing a tariff that will actually help them to reduce their greenhouse emissions. Although energy providers are accountable as to where their energy sources are from, the new scheme will see that they have to demonstrate that their tariffs are in addition to their existing obligations to a panel of independent experts.

However, not everyone is happy with this new measure, in particular Dale Vince founder of the renewable energy company Ecotricity:

“Ofgem’s new ‘rules’ set an artificial standard of what green electricity really is. If suppliers want to plant trees or look after birds, I’m all for that but not under the guise of green electricity. Consumers just want to be sure of two things: where is my green energy coming from, and what good will my bill bring? And both of these are quick and simple to verify.”

Under current government requirements energy companies must produce 10% of their energy from renewable sources however, a ‘green electricity’ tariff must now mean that energy companies go beyond this target. However, this ‘extra mile’ could potentially mean that energy supplier’s off-set their carbon emissions into community schemes; this could potentially will mislead people into thinking that their own carbon footprint is being reduced, when in actual fact they are simply being passed on elsewhere.

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Posted under Cheaper Energy

Have you taken out a loan or credit card from a bank or building society?

Are you one of the 2 million people who have been sold insurance they don’t need and can’t use?

You may have been recommended to take out something called Payment Protection Insurance (PPI). It helps borrowers to meet the repayments of a loan if they are unable to keep up repayments due to accident, sickness or unemployment.

This works in theory, but in practice many people have had their claims turned down due to policy clauses and exclusions. The Office of Fair Trading estimates that there are around 20 million policies currently in force, with as many as 7.5 million further policies being sold every year. The profit the industry makes each year from the sale of PPI policies is estimated to be £5 billion.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) have fined a number of high street banks and building societies for mis-selling PPI which means you may now claim back the payments you have made.

In the following video, an expert from Belmont Thornton explains who is eligible to apply for money back.

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Posted under Banking & Investment

For a small company starting up it has to be said that going around looking at all of the traditional offices can be rather depressing. The more traditional offices are great looking, new and would be perfect for any company except for the major problem that buyers face when looking at this type of office. The price!

For a company just starting up it is almost impossible to be able to afford to buy a place outright. This is where the serviced offices come into play.

A serviced office essentially breaks up the cost of the office, meaning that you need to pay money per workstation and not for the entire building itself. This, in turn, means that if you are a small team of 3-4 people you are essentially only going to be paying for the area of workspace that they use.

Although the press has been focusing in on the bad points of the recession, for the last couple of years there have been many small companies starting up using this method that have gone on to be very successful indeed.

Advantages Of Serviced Offices

• They are much cheaper than the traditional offices companies are so used to purchasing.
• The rent you are charged per workstation is usually all inclusive meaning that rent, property taxes, furnishings, maintenance, heating, air conditioning, lighting, cleaning, security and sometimes even a receptionist are included in the pricing you get every month.
• The length of time you have to stay in a contract for is a lot lower than the more traditional office space.

Source: Office Broker

This graph shows the increase in the amount of serviced offices sold in Scotland between the years 2008 and 2009.

On top of this, across the entire United Kingdom it has recently been reported that 2009 was a huge year for the amount of companies only wanting 5 desks or less worth of working space.

In fact in the first two quarters of 2009 a massive 77% of enquiries for office space were people wanting 5 desks or less of space. The main reason for this can be put down to small companies keeping a very close eye on the money that they are spending.

A bright future for serviced office space?

With the recession apparently being ‘over’, is it going to be increasingly harder for start-up businesses to find serviced offices? What about a serviced office in London? The capital of country and commerce, will it become harder to find a good supply quality serviced offices in busier economic times?

With a 13% increase in the number of tenants utilizing serviced offices in 2009 over 2008, it is likely see the numbers of businesses seeking serviced office space will increase again. If the recession has taught business owners anything about saving money, then prudence utilizing a serviced office makes complete fiscal sense.

Serviced offices can be found in every major town and city throughout the country; so finding office space Hammersmith to or office space in Aberdeen should not be possible, but be quick as there are going to be many business start-ups thinking exactly the same.

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Posted under Business News

To mark National Science and Engineering week What on Earth campaign which is raising awareness of UK plants and animals facing habitat destruction and homelessness, free wildflower seeds are on offer on. The aim is to get as many people across the land to go outside into their parks and gardens and to take photos of the plants and creatures they don’t recognise. In exchange, www.whatonearth.org.uk will send each person a packet of seeds specially designed to grow a range of plants that will encourage a greater level of biodiversity. (Subject to availability).

It couldn’t be simpler or more fun. All you need to do is upload a snap of something you don’t recognise that you spot in your garden go to www.whatonearth.org.uk and you will receive native varieties of wildflower which will encourage greater biodiversity in your back garden or flower box.

The aim of what on earth is to spot, collect and identify as many species as possible over the course of the week, painting a fascinating picture of UK wildlife for us all to observe and enjoy. Organised in partnership with The Open University iSpot website, NEWS specialists from all fields of natural science will examine, identify and catalogue as many finds as they can over the course of the week and beyond.

That’s not all; a green roof will be awarded to a school in the area which has shown most support for National Science & Engineering Week. What on Earth’s campaign and uploaded the most pictures.

So whether you are an avid nature watcher or you just happen to find something unusual crawling around in your garden take a picture and submit it to www.whatonearth.org.uk

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Posted under Environment

Travel insolvency specialists International Passenger Protection Ltd (IPP), have warned that many companies are operating outside of the 1992 Package Travel Regulations and risk large penalties if caught acting outside of the consumer law.

The warning comes as companies look to increase their product range and offer more than one component part of a trip per transaction. Under the Regulation the booking becomes a packaged trip even if just an overnight stay.

‘Take for example a hotel who are offering a hotel room plus theatre or concert ticket deal, they are now offering a package and need to comply with the Travel Package Regulations’, warned Michelle Irvine, Underwriter at IPP. ‘To comply with the Regulation the organiser needs to provide security against their own financial failure for payments up to the completion of each packaged trip.’

‘These Companies may not realise that they are doing anything wrong but they face severe penalties if caught acting outside of the legislation, so they should look at their product range and speak to an expert to see if parts fall within the Regulation.

IPP have negotiated an exclusive contract with major international insurers to provide insurance cover to comply with the Legislation with minimal administration involved.

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Posted under Travel & Holiday

While I was visiting a client last week I was shocked to see a bundle of mobile phones in a drawer when he opened it to pass me a business card. I asked him why he didn’t recycle some of them. To which he replied “I should really!” I offered to do a little exercise and noted down the models of the phones and went on to sellmymobile.com I use them for getting the best price for my own used mobile phones. If the client had recycled all these old mobile phones I calculated he would have netted his company around £400.00 and been able to make better use of his drawer space!

If you are a business owner the chances are you provide some of your staff with a mobile phone too, especially if you have a team of sales personnel out and about during the day. The mobile phone has become an essential part of a sales kit as it allows the business owner and customers to contact a member of staff 24/7. However if your company has downsized and made redundancies, you may have been left with a number of phones you no longer need. Why not recycle them and bring in some much needed extra cash?

Many organisations are now turning to sites like www.sellmymobile.com which promote recycling and offer cash rewards for it. Perhaps when you receive your payment you could use the money to support a charity or use the payment towards something useful for your business. With technology changing from week to week it makes sense to sell your old phones before they become out of date.

Amongst the mobile phone recycling companies featured at sellmymobile.com you can expect to see top named recyclers that allow you to sell mobile phone handsets with them, Fonebank, Mazuma Mobile, Envirophone, Mobile Phone Exchange, Mopay, Boots, Greentec, Sell Old Mobile, Cash In My Fone, Earth Mobile, Love 2 Recycle, Money 4 UR Mobile.

sellmymobile.com is an independent and impartial mobile phone recycling comparison site you can trust, and is now the UK’s #1

When you enter the make and model of the mobile phone you want to recycle the information is put in to a database that gets you the best price available. It’s by far the easiest site I have used and its software is updated daily.

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Posted under Broadband & Mobile Phones

The marketplace is flooded with office supplies companies, most have acceptable service level and provide products from the same buying sources.

It can be very confusing when you receive cold call from a prospecting office supplies company guaranteeing savings of 20-30% especially when you existing supplier has told you that you have the best available pricing! In many cases this percentage saving can be true, but often short lived.

So how can a new supplier offer this type of saving?

Prices offered to new business clients are often lower than the prices used to run existing accounts, some organisations will even supply their goods at below cost on the products you buy on a regular basis. They then introduce new products and services with larger profit margins replacing branded items for own brand products. This is to claw back any losses they might be making.

WhatStationers.co.uk is a new stationery information website where you will be able to find “Answers” and ask “Questions.” Find articles related to the different contracts and services office supplies companies offer. The aim of the site is to arm you with information. You will be able to find articles related to the whole procurement process and get involved in the Forum.

Archiving & Data Storage | Consolidation | Cost Consultants | Decision Makers | E-Auction Environmental Products | IT & Consumables | Marketing Print | Office Furniture | Printing | Tender Process | Transport & Warehouse Storage.

If buyers of office products continue to work together they will better understand the multi billion pound industry.

The mindset of the consumer and business owners is now about taking the control back from suppliers who are not up front with their pricing structures. No matter how big or small you are as an organisation the opportunities are now available to lower costs and keep them low.

Price comparison websites have taken the control back from brands monopolising the marketplace. Forums can open up discussions that turn a minority in to a majority. You only have to look at what has been achieved for the general public with Banks overcharging customers in previous years.

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Posted under Business News, Office Supplies

Consumer focused broadband comparison website Broadbandgenie.co.uk is calling on mobile broadband providers to drop their ‘up to’ advertising techniques in favour of more realistic average speed claims. The call comes in the wake of the site’s own research found the average mobile broadband speed in 2009 was just 1Mb, while many dongles are now sold as ‘up to 7.2Mb’.

Despite a continued failing to meet customer expectations and a history of complaints, the mobile broadband industry continues to use unrealistic speed claims as one of its main sales techniques. Broadband Genie argues that this is counterproductive, as the product is good enough as it stands to persuade customers to pick up broadband dongles.

While the advertising doesn’t lie – the dongles are capable of these speeds – the reality for customers is very different. The outcome can only be a huge swathe of disappointed customers who may be turned off of mobile broadband for good.

In reviewing more than 6,000 mobile broadband specific speed tests carried out via its speed test throughout 2009, Broadband Genie found the average speed had gone up around 0.2Mb between January and December, despite the majority of the mobile broadband suppliers upping their ‘up to’ speeds by a significantly higher margin.

Broadband Genie editor Chris Marling said: “The hike in ‘up to’ claims has been led by an influx of new dongles capable of handling higher speeds, but in reality the networks can’t offer anything like what they are capable of yet.

“It was bad enough before, with the ISPs offering ‘up to’ 1.8Mb and ‘up to’ 3.6Mb deals when the reality was speeds averaging less than 1Mb. Our tests show that average has gone up across 2009 to an average closer to 1.1Mb, but ‘up to’ claims have gone through the roof. The latest dongles are being advertised at anything up to 7.2Mb, which is frankly ridiculous.

“We implore the mobile broadband suppliers to be more honest with their customers when it comes to advertising. Or do we have to end up with another situation where the government has to threaten the industry with legislation because they can’t do the honourable thing without a hefty push?”

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Posted under Broadband & Mobile Phones