Archive for the ‘mobile house’ Category
How To Choose Perfect Spanish Property
Let’s assume you’ve already chosen the geographical area in Spain you want to live in. So what else should you think about? It’s so easy to fall in love with a property and sign the dotted line before you’ve thought it through sufficiently. I strongly advise you to make yourself a check-list.
In addition to the usual stuff, ask yourself the following:
1. Do I really need to be near a beach, or is a pool sufficient?
The further inland you go, the cheaper the property. Even if you can’t afford your own pool, most villages have a public one and many apartment blocks share a communal pool.
2. Old or new?
Older properties will be cheaper, but bear in mind how much money you will need to spend to make it into your dream home. Older properties will require more maintenance. New properties are usually covered by a 10 year insurance, but may lack the character you are looking for.
3. Are views important to me?
If you want a first-line sea view, you’ll pay extra for it. If you want rolling mountain views, make sure your house is not too exposed or isolated. Winters in Spain can be surprisingly windy, cold and wet.
4. What direction does the house face?
Do you want to be able to sit in the sun? If so, check that your outside space faces south to fully enjoy those rays all year round.
5. Do I need handy shops?
In larger towns, this isn’t a problem. However, if you move to a small village, be prepared to purchase from white vans bearing bread, fish, fruit and vegetables. These mobile shops often visit villages daily. Listen out for their hooting as they announce their arrival.
6. What about medical care?
Find out how close the nearest hospital is, and whether there is a doctor’s surgery close by. In small villages, a doctor may visit once a week, or not at all.
7. Can I get broadband access here?
Many villages are too remote to enjoy broadband. (How I wish I’d thought of that!) However, as long as you have a telephone landline, you will get a dial-up internet connection. There are alternatives, like satellite, to acquire broadband, but they will be expensive.
8. How strong is the mobile phone signal?
In our village, we get a signal about 80% of the time. However, we only get a Movistar signal (Telefonica) and our visitors’ mobile phones on other networks are useless.
9. Do I want to be in an all-Spanish community or close to other expats?
Choose carefully. If you want to enjoy an authentic Spanish life-style, don’t choose an urbanisation that is obviously full of fellow expats. However, if you choose a tiny, remote village like we did, there may be no other foreign residents, and nobody will speak English. For most people, a balance is best.
10. And finally… try before you buy.
Consider renting a house in your chosen location first. Then you can take the time to find your perfect house. Not only will you become familiar with the area, but you’ll be in a great bargaining position to buy your perfect home.
Want to find out more about living in Spain? Victoria’s book ‘Chickens, Mules and Two Old Fools’ is packed with irreverent humour, animals, eccentric characters and sunshine.
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Shipping Container Construction: One Solution to Affordable Housing
The problem of affordable housing has been a problem in many areas of the world for a long time, even before our current economic turn for the worse happened along. To combat this problem and also to address the issue of sustainability, some architects started looking at alternative building materials.
One of the building materials that they discovered was used shipping containers; in many parts of the world makeshift dwellings had been made out of these large metal boxes previously but no one had really played with the idea of using them to design a house with all the amenities of home before.
Shipping containers come from anywhere that ships large quantities of goods; the containers are pre-packed then put on boats and/or trains and the goods are delivered all over the world. Due to the expense of shipping the used empty containers to locations that need them from locations that don’t, sometimes they end up just sitting around empty. It is reported that it can cost more to ship a used empty container than to just buy a new one!
Due to the materials used to make shipping containers, they can be easily recycled into new containers and other steel items, but using them “as is” to build homes can save energy as well as recycle the materials. There are a number of concerns that some people have about these container homes but there are also many advantages as well.
Some container home naysayers say that a container home is nothing more than a do-it-yourself mobile home and would rather not see their ugly construction in their towns and cities. However, other than a similarity in the size and shape of the basic building block of a container home, and the industrial-feel of it’s steel sides, there really is no comparison between the two.
A mobile home lacks the hardy construction of an all-steel shell and the stackabilty of the engineered container building block. Whereas the mobile home is rather dangerous in a high wind-speed storm, the container home is more than strong enough to withstand the high pressure. Buildings constructed out of shipping containers have a modern building block feel to them, often reminding an observer of an oversized Lego structure.
Shipping container homes can be made “from scratch” if you want to design your own home, with pre-designed plans, or pre-fabricated; it’s all up to you. They are generally fast to install, mould-free and termite-proof. Some pre-made varieties are also designed to work completely off-grid so that they are ideal summer cabins or homes for people who want to live in nature.
Container homes may just be the option that many people could benefit from in these tough economic times; however, with the problems in some areas to allow permits for alternative types of housing it might be a while before they’re available as widely as they could be.
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Mobile Sms Marketing Better Than Verbal Communication
Marketing through mobile is the hottest choice of every advertising company. For advertising or marketing every business house is concerning this new medium. Marketing strategy here is simple and more importantly it is time saving and less expensive but more fruitful comparing with other methods of marketing. It will help you to connect with a large scale of people within less time span. Therefore for communicating with people and telling them about your product SMS marketing or mobile marketing is the one of the best way available now in marketing industry. You can understand this strategy if you have a mobile. You can see that some SMSs are sent to your message box telling you the story of different products and they are sent to you either on each day or with some day’s interval. Now you can understand the range of this kind of marketing strategy or advertising strategy.
This is a much preferred way of communication as SMS marketing is more discreet method than a telephonic conversation. In a telephonic conversation your customer may feel disturbed and annoyed but in a SMS there is no way of getting angry or disturbed. So it is a great tool to make your customers aware of your products and newly launched products. Comparing with other method of marketing like email or telephonic conversation it is less time consuming for both the receivers and senders. Therefore if you are using SMS marketing strategy instead of phone call or email you need not spend a lot of time in making the customer understand what you want to say and even sometimes disturbing him. It is even better than instant messaging and email, therefore you need not stay connected to the computer all the time.
Now look at the advantages of this kind of marketing. It is a spam free mode and the delivery of your message is more certain than an email. There are lots of reasons of the failure of your email marketing. It can be considered as a spam or land up as a junk mail. Then the main purpose of your mailing will be failed. But in this case of SMS it is more certain and customers friendly than an email marketing. However, because of the store and forward service of the SMS, the message does not go directly to the client’s cell phone. In this case the advantage is that there is no need for the client’s cell phone to be active or in range for you to send the message. The messages in this case are stored in SMSC and when the cell phone is turned on and gets into the range the message is automatically sent to your mobile. So the delivery of the message advertising your product will surely be delivered to your clients. For this single reason SMS is much preferred than other mode.
Other advantages of this type of marketing are the customers will not get confused with the jingle of words. This medium is better than verbal marketing in a way that there is always a chance of ignoring and deleting the message.
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LG Arena – Select The Best Deal!
Mobile phones have become a necessity in today’s time. Nowadays, it is used by people all over the world. In fact, with the increase in demand for mobile phones across the globe, the mobile company’s are launching new mobile phones quite often. This has ensured that the mobile phone market is intensely competitive.
As far as the mobile phone mart is concerned there are a lot of choices to be made. A wide variety of phone, each embedded with the latest technology are there in the market. Nonetheless a buyer needs to make a prudent decision to find the best deal for him and her. While purchasing a mobile a buyer generally opts for a mobile that is stylish and at the same time has all the latest technologies. Keeping in mind these facts, the Lg Arena can be a great choice.
This phone that is stylish and fully uploaded with multimedia features is a great choice for today’s users. The phone LG KM900 Arena features a 3D S-class interface. Apart from this feature the phone also has quality video and audio output. In fact, this is the first phone in the world market with Dolby Mobile surround sound. So if you are listening to music, you can simply indulge in an out of the world experience. This makes it the perfect choice for music lovers. You can experience quality sound while listening to music on Arena and so if you plan to use your mobile for entertainment purpose this gadget is a great buy.
The mobile phone has 3-inch WVGA screen and 16M colours. Its resolution is four times sharper than the usual QVGA screens. It has a 5 Megapixel camera which means you can have quality pictures. The D1 recording enables to capture DVD resolution video that simply looks fabulous when played back on big TV by TV Out. Arena can also record slow motion videos and catch every minute detail.
Moreover, this phone also allows a user to have enhanced storage facilities. Over a hundred movie and similar quantity of music files can be stored in the expanded 40GB storage capacity that this phone possesses. It is even capable of giving support to 3G HSFPA and the Wi-Fi. Having WiFi in your mobile means you can connect your mobile with the internet through wireless connection. This means even if you are out of your house, you can simply use internet through your mobile phone. Now that for sure is a great choice for executives who travel a lot!
The company claims that the battery of this phone offers up to thirty hours of MP3 Playtime. Photos and videos can be easily shared on the sites of social networking by using this phone. Some of the other features of Arena include inbuilt FM, geo-tagging, GPS and Google Mobile Service. LG KM900 Arena is available in market in two colours-silver titanium and black. This mobile assimilates a host of features that includes a 5 Megapixel camera, a big capacitive touch screen, accelerometer, GPS, Wi-Fi and many more-just name it and you will find that Arena has them all. Having a LG Arena in hand means you are carrying an all round device with you. So what are you waiting for-hurry up and buy it!
