If you are considering office space in London as a start up there are many things that you have to consider, but the highest of your concern is probably going to be capital because you will have to spend money before you can actually start to earn anything on your investment. Technology, however, has progressed further than it ever has before making it easier to keep your operating costs lower. Here are just a few tips to help get you started.

First off, you need to think about the location that you base your office at, because the most important thing is to get an offline address that will reassure customers that you are worth doing business with when they visit you. Furniture costs for a new setup can also be considerable, therefore it is worth considering furniture hire in London or even purchasing ex-hire furniture. For those that cannot afford an office in the business districts, or top London districts, then a less prime location with permanent address forwarding service maybe a great solution. This will allow you to get a London address without paying as much for the rent.

Second, you will need to think about your advertising and promotions so that customers know that you have started an office. Luckily, the internet is a great tool for low cost advertising anymore and by using social media and social networking you can quickly get the word out to a mass amount of people without spending more than a little time. Of course, make sure that you do not spam customers as this will hurt you more than it will help you.

Finally, you may want to look into internet tools such as VoIP, live chat, and other similar ventures of communication purposes. You can easily slice the cost of your overhead if you take advantage of new technologies out there for communications.

This way, instead of paying exorbitant phone and internet bills, you can get enrolled into a low cost budget that will allow you to expand as needed in the future. Plus, as a bonus you will get your own contracts with providers instead of being forced into using the providers offered by the person that actually owns your office property.

The Government is coming under fire for its flagship unemployment scheme due to the fact that many are complaining that jobseekers are being used as taxpayer funded labour for high street chains.  Tesco has echoed the refrain by asking the Department for Work and Pensions to change the terms of it jobless scheme.

Tesco stated that it asked DWP officials to make the unemployment scheme voluntary after it received a backlash from thousands of customers that were angry that the large company is profiting from workers that they do not have to pay for as part of the jobless scheme.

As part of the flagship jobless scheme jobseekers must work for at least eight weeks and up to thirty hours at work placements that are handed out by job centre managers.  The work placements can also be at private businesses since the government changed the rules in the beginning of 2011.  Prior to that work, placements only lasted two weeks and had to be at public bodies or charities.

Now, after the eight weeks are complete the only thing employees are offered is an interview and the companies they work for have no obligation to actually give them a job or even have a job available before they take on work placement candidates.  Last year about 34,000 people took part in the scheme.

The main flaw is that while it shows those receiving unemployment benefits are earning their missing wages, private businesses can continue to use work placement employees instead of actually hiring new employees to help reduce their labour costs.

News of the World, the previous News International paper, was shut down during 2011 after the phone hacking scandal and since then there has been a lot of speculation that eventually News International would bring something else to the market to fill the void.

Torin Douglas, a BBC media correspondent, said that there was a large gap in the market created when News of the World closed but since tabloid sales in general were decreasing it was not clear if there was actually enough demand to publish the Sun on the weekend.

An internal memo published by Tom Mockridge, the News International chief executive, stated that News International has been very clear about its goal to eradicate its past mistakes and to change the way they operate. He added that they are committed to investing in a new edition that will prove this.

Editor Dominic Mohan of the Sun said that this is a big moment for the newspaper publishing world and that he is proud to have a part in it. With the huge readership of the Sun on  a daily basis, it is expected that the Sun on Sunday will be well received.

At the dawn of the internet age the largest threat that most computer viruses could pose was the destruction of a computer or the slowing down of the computer’s processing speeds. While these things are tiresome, they are not necessarily devastating to a business as they can be remedied.

However, in the same way that computers have advanced over the last decade, so have computer viruses, making them a much more dangerous threat to businesses. Now they no longer just threaten your system’s functionality, but also the reputation of your entire business. Internet security providers such as Norton Antivirus have had to evolve and react quickly to growing threats over the past decade as the first line of defense for online businesses looking to protect their websites and customers.

Many malicious hackers are not content to simply steal computer RAM or host off a business computer, instead they now concentrate on stealing business information and customer databases. This means that by leaving your internet security lax you are leaving the door open for sensitive business information to be stolen.

This in itself is a threat as you do not want your company system and information to be an open book to anyone else. However, the threat does not stop here because this is not all that hackers are after. They also often break into credit records and customer records in an attempt to steal as much credit information and customer information as they can.

Therefore, if the right hacker manages to break through your internet security system they will be able to steal credit card numbers from your customers and their other private details. This type of privacy breach can ruin the reputation of a business as you will have to notify everyone potentially affected, ruining their trust in your business. Just one act alone could be enough to ruin your company; which is why it is important that every business have a solid internet security system in place.

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There has been a great deal of panic among upcoming university freshmen and their parents given the fact that student loans were revised for 2012, however, there is not much need for panic as most of the changes are not major and will not significantly change the borrowing situation for those in need.

It is also helpful for current university students to understand that they are not bound by the new regulations and will continue on the current system. The new system allows tuition fees to be paid up to £3,375 per student, but institutions can charge as much as £6,000- £9,000 per year.

However, this will not necessarily mean that poor students will not be able to attend these universities as they will be bound by law to offer extra provisions for poorer students in exchange for increasing their rates above the student loan cut-off.

Cash is not a necessity for going to college as many first time undergraduates believe, as once an application has been accepted the Student Loan Company will automatically pay tuition fees. Of course, if you have the money to pay for your own tuition you can opt out of the arrangement and pay upfront.

Finally, the last thing to understand is that after graduation you will only have to repay your student loans if you make over £21,000. If your income does not total up to this amount pre-tax you will not have to repay the loan, and once it does 9% of everything above the amount will come out of your pay via the income tax system.

For the last several years Google has been following a simple promise made by CEO Eric Schmidt to put their mobile division first. While Schmidt may no longer be at Google, his replacement Larry Page is continuing to follow that line of the thought as evident by Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility at a whopping £12.5bn. The full implications of the move will not be clear until it is seen how Google plans to use the new acquisition, although many analysts claim that the real reason for the purchase is to get the mobile patent portfolio that Motorola holds.

On the other hand, if Google continues to maintain the large business that it just purchased it is quite possible that there will be some big changes within the mobile technology sector. Either way, it seems safe to say that Google will still stay focused on patents and software as the patents alone will be chief in fighting the market leaders, Microsoft and Apple, and maintaining its spot on the top of the mobile market with the Android. This is the chief priority since patent claims have been the only setback to the Android operating system growth.

Exchange Traded Funds, or ETF’s, are essentially the low cost alternative for UK investors. Fund investors in the UK are invariably hit with increasingly high costs such as Total Expense Ratios. TER’s, which are a kind of tracker that many think cost way too much for the service they provide and often reach 1% a year. ETF’s are also mostly trackers, but can also have rock bottom expense ratios, hence their popularity.

An example of this is the ishare corporate bond ETF which charges only 0.20% a year, no retail bond comes anywhere near to offering that type of service for the that price. For those who are struggling to understand all this jargon; an ETF is basically a basket of securities which are traded in the same way as individual stocks in such places as the London Stock Exchange.

Exchange Traded Funds can be bought and sold throughout the entire trading day, unlike such products as unit trusts and OEIC’s. They can also be bought on margin and sold short, or through stop-loss orders, in layman’s terms, anything you can do with an ETF that you can do with a stock.

Most ETF’s will also charge a lot less annually than even the lowest priced  traditional tracker, but you must bear in mind that as with stocks, you must pay commission if you want to sell or buy ETF’s, which can be a drawback for those who want to trade on a regular basis or invest money regularly. While all this sounds great on paper, there are a few more things to take into consideration.

Whilst ETF’s are infinitely more flexible in many way that traditional shares, their shares can’t be sold back to or bought from fund companies as with OEIC’s. There is a lot to be said for ETF’s, but as with any investment, do your research.

Shoppers who have problems with traders in Europe will now find it easier to reach a settlement out of court due to new EU proposals that have been put into place to protect them. The EU Commission has proposed a new online platform that will be accessible across the EU in order for consumers to quickly solve their disputes online in just a month’s time.

In the past, the mechanisms for taking care of complaints were only available to consumers on a regional basis depending on what type of system was in place where a consumer resided. According to the EU, the new rules will standardise dispute resolution across the continent and could help consumers save as much as £9bn every year collectively.

Malcolm Harbour, a UK MP, stated that he was glad to see the commission draft directive due to the fact that it will offer a way for problems to cheaply and quickly be solved without the need for formal legal action.

The EU governments and parliaments hope to make the package official by the end of 2012 with the new platform actually becoming available for use online by the time that 2015 rolls around. Over the course of last year one out of every five European consumers had problems when purchasing services and goods within the EU market.

In order to make the dispute settlements work a network is being set up of professional and neutral mediators that can help resolve contractual problems between businesses and consumers.

After getting in trouble with the Information Commissioner’s Office last year over violations of the data protection act Google has announced that it has taken a great deal of steps to make sure that its privacy policies are a lot tighter. Information Commissioner Christopher Graham acknowledged the changes stating that Google has taken a number of proactive steps to ensure that their privacy procedures are now aligned with data protection laws. Graham noted however that the company needs to continue past the audit of the ICO to make sure that their new technologies and products also adhere to the same high standards.

Google was criticized from many world authorities after it admitted that its Street View mapping cars were able to collect payload data while out on the streets by accessing unsecured Wi-Fi networks. In response to the outcry, Google quickly announced that it would take whatever steps were necessary to be in compliance with data protection laws including enhanced data protection training for all staff members. The company also added tightened privacy controls on all of their existing products and declaring that all new products would have the same accommodation.

Interactive Voice Response, or IVR systems, are automated phone systems that work with software to enable you to conduct transactions over the phone without having to speak to a real person. Think automated payment lines, and those menus with different options you get through to when ringing large companies, these are all IVR systems and they are moving forward at an amazing rate.

The technology encompassed in these systems has always been cutting edge, and advances are constant. While many thought that network based IVR had gone as far as it could, it is now a reality that it there may come a time when the call centre worker becomes redundant and anything we want to do can be done with a telephone and an IVR system.

While at one time all an IVR did was, due to a recording and voice prompts or through pressing keys on your phone, direct you to different departments within a company, these  systems can now answer practically all your queries from simple bank balance enquiries to paying bills and requesting account information.

While many dislike IVR systems they have become an essential part of every day life, and we now expect to hear that automated voice awaiting our command prompts when we call a large company or corporation. For the company they are extremely cost effective and, when installed at their optimum level, direct callers to where they want to be with very little hassle or waiting time.

Love them or loathe them, Interactive Voice Response systems are here to stay, and will be taking on much bigger roles in the future. There are already multiple options on menus that then lead you to another set of multiple choices and questions you think can only be answered by humans will become incorporated into IVR’s as the software makes ever increasing technological advances.