 | Santander, the Spanish financial giant, is rumoured to be on the verge of selling off a 20% stake in its British operations which take in the likes of Abbey, Alliance and Leicester and Bradford and Bingley. The company has been very active in the acquisitions market over the last few years, not only in the UK but around the world, and many feel the company is looking to cash in some of its chips. Could this mean finally the creaking old Cahoot Online Bank could finally be doomed? May not be a bad thing... If the rumours are correct it would appear that the UK operations would have a value of about £3 billion of which 20% would be floated on the UK stock market. This potential windfall of £600 million could be used to increase the financial strength of the overall Santander operation or indeed could fund further acquisitions in the UK and overseas. Either way the company is looking to restructure a whole host of its overseas operations amid signs that tighter funding regulations are about to hit the worldwide financial arena. At a time when many other banks are struggling to make ends meet it seems that Santander has benefited from being a relatively fresh face in the UK market even though the company is a major figure on the worldwide arena. A number of well timed and well-placed acquisitions have allowed the company to build a success UK operation which has a significant foothold in the UK financial market. |
Who doesn't own an ipod? These days they are all over the place, with everyone from my 7 yr old nephew to my sixty something mum owning one. But fewer people own the awesome iPod Touch (or iTouch as its sometimes known). And its is Awesome! I've had mine almost a year now, the 16Gb version (retailing at £270 when I bought it) and its not let me down. The iTouch is essentially a version of the iPhone, but without the phone functionality... meaning half decent battery life!. The 3.5" screen is excellent,and to be honest, the sound is pretty much as good as you can get from a portable MP3 player in my opinion. Esp if you do mainly listen to MP3's rather than uncompressed or lossless files. They now make a 32 Gb version, which is a fairly decent amount of storage for all your favourite albums and mixes, and leaves some spare for video if you're that way inclined.The video quality is also amazing, you can get various free short videos from itunes and the like, and can get free software online that will convert Youtube, Metacafe etc videos and save them into iTunes to sync with your iTouch. It also has inbuilt WiFi (802.11b) which is great fro around the house (or office) if you want to check email, do a quick google search or even watch youtube directly! If you buy now, the iTouch will come with 2.0/2.1 software which has loads of cool stuff over and above the first version, including built in email client, and best of all the 'app store'. This is a link to the itunes application store, where you can find everything from facebook, delicious, wordpress apps, to many weird and wonderful games and gimmicks, alot of which are free, and a few quite addictive!
The downsides of the iTouch? If anything, the lack of blue tooth is a bit of a pain, as the lack of any form of copy and paste functionality, i.e. between a webpage and an email. Apart from that, there is not alot else bad I can say about this excellent piece of kit. I did deliberate over getting a big nano, or the classic, but in the end am very happy i made the right decision getting an iTouch... it goes everywhere with me, the only problem now is despite mine being in great condition and more than adequate for my needs, I am close to splashing cash on the latest 32Gb version!
Go get one, load it up, and have all the media you could want at your fingertips - literally - for hours on end.
Spotify, the European iTunes rival that’s attracted a huge fanbase, is now available in its much-anticipated iPhone version, the company has announced [iTunes download link]. An Android version is also available as of today (search the Android Market for “Spotify”).
Spotify is an awesome way to consume music, providing on demand access to 6 million+ tracks. The only catch: you can only use it if you’re in the European countries already served by Spotify (a US launch is expected soon). You’ll also need to be Premium subscriber to use either of the apps.
The most remarkable part of this story, however, is that Spotify has been allowed in the App Store at all: it appears to be a direct rival to iTunes, making us wonder if Apple would find a squirmy way to reject it. That hasn’t transpired, meaning that Spotify’s impressive feature set is now available to the iPhone and iPod touch addicts among us.
As we wrote of the app last month:
A demo posted to YouTube last week (embedded below) shows off features that include offline playlists: you can store up to 3,333 songs in offline mode, making it ideal for listening to your music on the plane. The core selling point, however, remains the same as the desktop app: on demand access to 6 million+ tracks. Another neat feature: it syncs with the desktop via wifi…no need to hook up your USB cable. Even US reviewers are blown away: Wired’s Epicenter blog claims it’s so good that “you’d have to pry it out of my cold, dead iPhone before I’ll delete it from my phone”.
The app will only be available to those with paid Spotify accounts: with Spotify only available in Europe right now (although launching in the US very soon), that means we’ll get it first.
If you’re a Spotify user, what are you waiting for? Go forth and download!
Dongle laptop packages may seem like a good idea, but you could be throwing over £135 down the drain if you sign up...
Then some bright spark decided to play matchmaker, and married the two ideas together. The dongle + netbook partnership was born, and soon nearly all the providers were jumping on the bandwagon.
The first thing you'll have to decide if you want to get one of these packages is whether you'd prefer a netbook or laptop.
There are three main differences between the two:
Read the full article at lovemoney.com
