Since then, there has been a million hoops to jump through to satisfy the requirements of my E2 visa application. The E2 application calls for placing significant funds at risk, which basically means spending $xxx,xxx on goods and services to set up the business (lease, computers, insurance, promotion, etc). Finally all of this has been completed and my lawyers have submitted my 160 page E2 application this week!

The lease on our, freshly repainted, office started today and Brian, who recently moved to Austin, has taken the keys and started putting together the furniture that was delivered a month or so ago. An internet connection is being setup sometime next week.

As soon as I get out there we just need to grab our brand new computers and office equipment from storage, and we will then have a wonderful office set up in the heart of Austin!

The great feature of this site is that you do not need to save the screenshot as an image file. Simply click the PASTE button on the site and the image will be uploaded right from your clipboard. To get an image in your clipboard you can press the PrintScreen button on your keyboard, or use ALT+PrintScreen to only screenshot the currently active window.

The site provides a large and a small image embed code so that you can paste a clickable screenshot into a forum, website, blogpost, etc. Just like below:

If we’re in a pub having a beer then I would happily chat with you about web technology. I really enjoy it.

However, if you want me to assist you with your projects then I need to get paid. Here are some of the requests I’ve received from people, who don’t host nor have other services with me, over the past 10 days or so:

• quickly install gd
• I can’t access my server, whats wrong?
• I need rsync. Can you install it on my server?
• the videos need to convert at higher quality, can you fix that?
• do I need a separate database server?

In order to provide exceptional service to clients I can no longer afford to spend time helping people free of charge. Please respect that information is a valuable part of my service offerings.

Below is the email that I shall be sending in response to all support/consulting requests from people who continually expect services free of charge.

Hello and thanks for your email,

I would very much like to assist you with your ongoing or one off technical support and consulting needs. For me to assist you we need a retainer in place, or if you prefer we can agree an amount of time at our hourly rate to work on the assignment. Retainers are the best way for us to provide you with cost effective and prompt assistance.

You can view our current retainer and hourly rates here: http://www.incero.com/current-rates.

Feel free to call me on the number below if you have any queries regarding our retainer, hourly, or project pricing options. I will be happy to assist you.

–
Kind Regards,
Gordon Page
http://www.Incero.com
USA: (512) 394 8803
UK: 0208 123 5338

We sorted out a company car, office space, furniture, computers, promotional goodies, and various other things including bank accounts etc. Pics and videos below.

Brian with a third of the Dell order:

Downtown office space, which will be repainted white:

200 mini tins of jelly beans, a few beans having been eaten in the photo:

Company car:

90 polo shirts:

Since then I’ve been scouring the Internet for new ideas to either develop or invest in, but everything I’ve come across I have found to be flawed.

With most of the startups/ideas that people have pitched to me I’ve found myself thinking “Fail Whale.” The number of people who are still, to this day, starting up new video and image hosting sites amazes me. News alert! That sector is done, youtube/flickr are king! No more million dollar cheques for a general traffic site purchases. When I started PF in 2003 online video was a revolutionary idea.

If you want to make millions then you need to develop something with a very niche/targeted audience like CafeMom.com, so that you actually have a chance of selling advertising at decent rates.

It has taken me a while to realize this but I’m well suited to being a WebDev consultant. Over the past 5 - 6 years I have been completing WebDev jobs for extra cash.  I enjoy working with web technology, I enjoy learning new skills, and I really enjoy the satisfaction of a doing a great job. Now it is time to do this full time, and build a solid business out of it.

A month or so ago, I spammed my email list of wealthy people that I’ve bumped into and cheekily asked them to invest in my new technology consulting business. Sine then I’ve secured a $200k investment, I’ve retained lawyers for an E2 business visa, formed the LLC, and have found my first employee/business partner. I’m heading off to the States this week to arrange a lease on some office space right in the heart of Austin, Texas.

Oh don’t worry, you’ll be receiving an email detailing our services as soon as we’re up and running! ;-0 If you would like to be added to that list then please leave a comment below.

I went with the Express Gold package hoping that they would move quickly. The service details a 7-10 business day turnaround time and they did meet that, but I feel they could of done better. Here is why:

I submitted my order at 9am on Monday the 17th, I left details in the “notes” section clarifying my business address was to be in the UK and listed my phone number asking them to call me 24/7 if there were any problems.

The State approved the filing on Tuesday the 18th, and on the 19th the status updated to “Preparing your final documents for ******* LLC”.

On the morning of the 21st I called to check the progress as all they needed to do was print out my documents and send them to me. I asked if the package would ship out today and they said either today or tomorrow (Friday).

On the 24th, Monday, the order said it was on HOLD so I called and they wanted to confirm the business address for the documents even though I had confirmed this in the notes section of my order. They had also apparently ignored my request to call me if there were any problems.

On the 25th the order still said it was on hold so I called again and the lady said the package “might” ship out tomorrow.

On the 26th the package shipped, I had upgraded to next day delivery so the package arrived on the 27th.

That is exactly 9 business days from order to arrival at my door, which is within the timeline they laid out. I just felt that they weren’t really on the ball and the lady when I called on the 25th was not really interested.

I won’t be using LegalZoom again because they didn’t call me when there was a problem with my order, and they didn’t seem too interested in speeding things up.

Below is a pic of the order status (the dates represent the last day that that specific stage is being worked on, not when they started on that stage).

Although instead of using the fmt=18 as suggested in that article, I would suggest using fmt=6. Format 18 is a mp4 quality file at 512kbps, 128kbps stereo. And format 6 is a flv at 900kbps, 96kbps mono. As detailed here: http://blog.jimmyr.com/High_Quality_on_Youtube_11_2008.php

If you click play on both of the videos at the same time you should notice that the standard quality load progress bar loads more quickly than the high quality video bar. You will also be able to see the difference in quality by comparing the videos.

High quality:


Standard quality:

The camera comes with standard component cables, HD component cables, a USB 2.0 connection and charging dock, battery, power brick, software, and remote. No HDMI cable is included, but the camera does have a mini HDMI output.

There is a £50 rebate available for UK purchases until the 28th of August: http://media.sony-europe.com/uk/leaflets/209513SonyHandycamA5_4ppleaflet.pdf

I’ve uploaded some photos taken with the camera here: http://www.putpic.com/gallery/2144/6883142

[See post to watch Flash video]

Get Putty, set some basic tunnel settings within it, ensure that AllowTcpForwarding is set to yes in /etc/ssh/sshd_config on your server, and change your browser settings to use your new proxy/tunnel.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons for wanting to do this (encrypting your traffic across your ISP to your trusted server) aswell as plenty of questionable reasons, such as wanting to watch hulu.com content from outside of the USA.

Without an export feature I have had to manually copy and paste the details for each transaction into a spreadsheet in order to calculate my profit/loss and taxes due.

I contacted Etrade about this, and pointed out that their US site (and most other online brokers) offer an export feature but they didn’t really seem to care.

Think 160 times before signing up with Etrade UK, or you will regret it come tax time!

Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 8:27 PM
To: uksupport@etrade.com
Dear Sir or Madam,

I am trying to find out how to download my account/trade history from my account (for import into excel, etc). I see that the US site has this option under "accounts" but the UK equities site does not appear to.

Cheers,
Gordon

———————————————————————————————————
UK Customer Support <uk-customersupport@etrade.com> Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 9:10 AM
To: Gordon <***********@*.com>
Dear Mr,

Thank you for your email, apologies for the delay in getting back to you. In response to your email with regards to importing account history onto excel, unfortunately we do not offer the facility on our website. However our website is currently undergoing development and we are finding new ways of improving the facilities we offer. Hopefully we can accommodate this feature in the near future.

Should you require any further assistance please contact our client services department on 0845 234 34 34 or <mailto:uksupport@etrade.com>

Kind regards,
Jaynesh Shah
Client Services Representative

E*TRADE Securities Limited
42nd Floor
One Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London E14 5AA
T: 0845 234 34 34

———————————————————————————————————
From: Gordon [mailto:**********@*.com]
Sent: 15 April 2008 20:28
To: #UK Support
Subject: export account history

Gordon <**********@*.com> Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 11:35 AM
To: UK Customer Support <uk-customersupport@etrade.com>
Dear Jaynesh Shah,

Thank you for your response. I can not stress enough how important this feature is to myself and many other traders. Without an export feature taxes, analysis, etc are all quite impossible (without manually copying the data for each trade) which is very undesirable for active traders. Your American site does offer the feature (detailed here: http://www.armencomp.com/tradelog/etrade.shtml ).

I hope that you implement this feature in the very near future, in the meantime I have applied for an Iweb share trading account and shall move my business across as soon as it is open. I hope that you will forward this email to management, now is not the time for Etrade’s offerings (especially when a simple programming fix can solve the issue) to be lacking.

Thank you again for your time.

Kindest Regards,
Gordon

———————————————————————————————————

Gordon<**********@*.com> Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 6:29 PM
To: UK Customer Support <uk-customersupport@etrade.com>

Please be advised I have moved £***,*** out of this etrade account and will move the remaining funds away from etrade as soon as possible simply because you do not have an EXPORT account history option (your american site does). Without this feature creating tax and profit/loss reports takes hours of manual work.

Hoping you add this feature in the next week…. another customer lost.

Regards,
Gordon