Financial & Travel Musings

We all expect technology to be innovative in some ways. After all, innovation is what technological development is all about, isn’t it?

However, that innovation is most evident in surprising areas. For example, if you’ve been keeping an eye on MP3 players over the last few years you’d have seen their initial introduction with 128MB a few years back and size-wise they were fairly large with normal batteries to be fitted in. Gradually, the memory crept up but the size dropped dramatically as batteries became the internal ones charged from your computer. Then screens appeared first to display the menus and then to show photos and videos.

Probably the most innovative product this year are the various baby computers. They’re not so much innovative in terms of the techology but they significantly change how you use them. For instance, I find that I use my little Acer in ways that I’d just never consider with a normal sized laptop. Would I ever have watched that Open Yale course with the normal laptop? I think not.

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No matter what kind of pet you have, you’ll be almost constantly looking for dog supplies, cat supplies, or whatever.

None of it’s cheap of course as we all know but at least these days there’s the option of getting much of the gear online. Surprisingly that includes quite heavy items which you’d not think would be economic to deliver (the perennial online shopping problem).

Since many of the online stores have special arrangements for delivery with courriers, you can sometimes find that even rather heavy items like food are viable when at first glance you’d not even think of buying them online. Obviously all the smaller items are there to see too and, as always, you’ll find a better selection and keener pricing online.

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OK, the economy seems to be going down the toilet, but how is the job market?

Well, it depends on what your skills are and where you’re looking. For instance, Austin jobs seem pretty plentiful at the moment although, to be fair, they always seem to be pretty thick on the ground in that area no matter what.

Banking and finance jobs aren’t obviously too secure at the moment you might think. However, even there some specific areas are growing ie in the lines of company administration and related fields. In-government, finance skills are a growth market with all the banking nationalisations around the world and, of course, the banking supervision departments are getting beefed up somewhat too.

In all these cases though employers are able to be a lot more picky about the qualifications that they demand so don’t neglect the development of your skills and qualifications and, if you are currently unemployed, take advantage of any special training and education assistance that’s around.

Popularity: 8% [?]