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Finding a new bed can be a daunting experience, especially when there is such a large selection of mattresses these days. The biggest question that puzzles us all is “Which mattress should I buy?” and “Which mattress is right for me?”. I can say that last weekend I too was facing this conundrum and ventured out to find the solution. Before we begin I will happily admit that I went into this experience never having really selected a mattress for myself (properly) before and so I was most definitely the uneducated mattress buyer.

After having a look at a few different stores at the Homemakers Centre in Alexandria, I poked my head into Snooze Alexandria where I was met with a sea of friendly faces. After some friendly banter I went on my mission to see what they had available, and this is where Tom stepped in. Tom came over and took me from the A to Z of what I needed to know about buying a new bed, he was able to chat to me on my level and give me the details I needed as well as ensure that I got the right mattress to suit my body and comfort needs.

It is not often you get a person who provides exceptional customer service, but I have to say Tom really went above and beyond and spent as much time with me as I needed to make sure I was comfortable, had seen all the options and had all the tools to make an informed choice as to the mattress that I needed. At no point did I feel rushed and at no point did I feel unattended, Tom always seemed to be there in the background when I was ready to try the next mattress.

The age old saying goes, if you give someone a bad experience they might tell 7/10 people… I prefer to go with if you give me an amazingly exceptional experience, like Tom did, I will shout it from the rooftops till the cows come home.

So if you are in Sydney and in need of a new bed, a new mattress, or both, I would have no hesitation in telling you to head over to Snooze at the Alexandria Homemakers Centre, the staff are great, the selection is great and they have some great deals available (YAY for Easter Sales).

Keep up the awesome work Tom and the rest of the team at Snooze Alexandria.

Stuart

Everyone has their favourite iPhone and iPad apps, the 10 apps that they consider the best apps for their iPhone or iPad, so I thought today I would share the top 10 apps that I can no longer function without in the hope that they might be of help to others and to support the developers as well.

The top 10 iOS apps that I can’t live without are:

1. 1Password: Useful for storing passwords securely. Using dropbox can sync with Macs, PCs and other iOS devices as well.
2. Amazon Kindle: As a student I am a big fan of eBooks and the Kindle app makes it extremely easy to load up books I have purchased. The feature that syncs the most recent page to all your devices is a godsend for switching between devices.
3. iSSH: SSH app which is perfect for system administrators. The ability to SSH into all my servers quickly and easily is one that appeals to the sysadmin in me.
4. Evernote: If you take notes, any notes then you should already be using Evernote. Available to install on PC, Mac, iOS and more the notes sync everywhere and the iOS App makes it easy to create, edit and read notes while on the run.
5. Sonic 1: Technically a game and a very recent edition, but still an app it takes me back to my youth when I owned a Sega Megadrive. If you remember this original Sonic the Hedgehog game you will enjoy the trip down memory lane.
6. Quota: Great little app which lets you keep an eye on things such as download limits for your phone and home internet, call credit remaining and so on.
7. Omnifocus iPhone/Omnifocus iPad: While expensive, Omnifocus is great for task management and synchronises with the OSX Omnifocus application. Unfortunately for PC users no Omni products work on Windows.
8. DocsToGo: After having used Pages, Keynote and Numbers and playing around with Office2 HD, I settled on DocsToGo, it is the best office app I have used so far and I have found generally displays formatting quite well.
9. i-Clickr: This is a nifty little utility that can be used in line with your computer for controlling Powerpoint presentations. Works really well on both iPad and iPhones and is a definite must for students.
10. Twitter: Hey even with the new changes I still find it the most straightforward app to use for Twitter, it will be interesting to see how things change for the competition in coming months.

Quite a while back a friend introduced me to a cuisine that I had never had before. Korean BBQ! Some of you may have seen the places before that have holes in the middle of the tables for them to put a BBQ of some sorts. A lot of places I have seen have gas ones however there is a nice little place in Strathfield (here in Sydney, Australia) that gives you a slab of hot rocks like the ones in the photo to the right.

You then get to order your food and cook it on the table in front of you. The flavours of the cuisine are unique, I do have to admit I loved their rendition of a satay sauce. While it might seem unusual to go to a restaurant to cook for yourself it is great for having a good chat over and the tastes that you can make using the burning coals are beautiful and Smokey.

So next time you are in need of trying a new cuisine, hunt down a local Korean BBQ place for something new and different.

Stuart

Recently I made the conscious decision really begin focusing on my online efforts and putting in the thought and the time to making my online presence something meaningful and useful to others rather than just a mashup of randomness.

Therefore I have set out to reading some new books on better managing an online presence and the first book that I opted to read is “The Twitter Book” by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein. I have been getting into Twitter a lot more recently and wanted some hints and tips on what I might be doing wrong and surprisingly what I found was a book that teaches not only how to make the most out of twitter but also teaches specifics such as tweeting for the professional and tweeting as a business.

My thoughts on The Twitter Book

I can happily say that the book gave a great insight into some of the things that had been doing me a disservice on Twitter as well as a some skills to look toward building the strength of my presence on Twitter. Without going into too much detail as I respect copyright, the book contained some great ideas on how to retweet effectively, effectively using hashtags, tracking trends, effectively interacting with new leads to possibly get new contacts/followers and a whole lot more. The book starts from the very beginning and gives an overview of Twitter, how to sign up and so on, so for those that are not as savvy with the service it can take you from the very beginning to making the most of the service. It also goes so far to have a chapter specifically dedicated to tweeting effectively for businesses.

What I would love to see in the next edition

There were a couple of ideas I had while reading the book of what might be great to see in the next edition. While reading the book there were lots of references to different third party services which was a really welcome insight however I would have loved to have seen a summary page at the back which included each URL again, the service name and a one liner to jog the memory of what the service offers. Although I was reading the book as an e-book I could see how this would benefit the print version especially as you may not be near a computer while reading it but also for both just as a great little reference tool for later on.

The other idea I had was once again for a little summary page at the end of the book which just has a summary of the key things to remember on each topic that you could essentially print out and have on your desk for the first few weeks while finding your feet so you could draft your tweet, quickly check that you have followed the good points and have not done anything bad then post your tweet.

Final thoughts

I am certainly going to be putting a lot of the learnings into play on Twitter and I think that for the two and a half or three hours it was well worth the time and money to gain a better insight into how I can get twitter to work for me.

So if you want to follow me on twitter drop me a line on @StuartCRyan and if you want to learn how to really make the most of it, do yourself a favour and grab yourself “The Twitter Book”.