Jean Galea

Business, Health, Wealth & Personal Development

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Best Online Trading Platforms for Investors Resident in Europe

online-trading-platforms-europe

Online trading platforms offer a wealth of convenience for investing at any point in time and also provide lots of information about the market minute by minute, helping you make the best decisions.

For active trading as well as long-term investing these are the best platforms I’ve found:

Calamatta Cuschieri Live Trader

This broker is located in Malta and has a decent interface. They are currently launching a new platform which looks like it will be a significant improvement over their stable version.

The disadvantage with CC is that you will have to pay a fee if you decide to transfer your positions to another platform further down the line.

SaxoBank

The Danish giant has a physical presence or local partnerships in many European countries. It’s a great platform that works well on laptops as well as mobile devices.

I would highlight the fact that if you don’t trade for more more than six months they will charge you USD 100, so you need to buy/sell something at least twice a year.

Have you found any other great online trading platforms? Let me know in the comments section.

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How to Migrate from Zoho Mail to Gmail

choosing-perfect-email-address

I recently decided to migrate one of my brands’ email accounts from Zoho Mail to Gmail. Google Apps has many more features than just Gmail and we were also having some spam issues with Zoho Mail so the move was a no-brainer really. The only disadvantage is that Gmail is not free for business use with your own domain, but the price is worth paying, especially if you don’t require a large number of mailboxes/users.

The only disadvantage is that Gmail is not free for business use with your own domain, but the price is worth paying, especially if you don’t require a large number of mailboxes/users.

In any case, my biggest headache was how to replicate the same mailboxes I had on Zoho Mail and move the thousands of emails from Zoho to Gmail. At first, I looked at export/import facilities in both services, however, it turned out that the solution is much simpler.

The best way to migrate is to install a mail package on your laptop, in my case I used the free Thunderbird. There are many others, take your pick or use whatever you have installed already.

Secondly, set up the Zoho Mail inboxes on Thunderbird with an IMAP connection. You also need to create the inboxes in Gmail and enable IMAP (it’s off by default). Then also set up the Gmail accounts in Thunderbird. Once they can all connect it’s time to work the magic.

Let’s say I have a Zoho Mail inbox named inbox@mydomain.com and I have set up the same one on Gmail entitled inbox@mydomain.com. Once they are both able to connect from Thunderbird, what I do is access the Zoho Mail inbox, select all emails, then drag and drop into the same inbox on Gmail. That way the emails will be moved from Zoho Mail’s inbox to the Gmail one. That’s it, easy as pie.

Once you transfer all the emails in this manner, you will also need to set up folders (labels in Gmail) and filters. I suggest you set up the filters within Gmail itself rather than your email client on the laptop. That way you can switch clients at a later stage without having to set up the filters again. Gmail also has a great filtering system so there is no reason to use anything else.

It’s really easy to migrate from one email host to another using IMAP connections. The same procedure described above can in fact be used to migrate between any two email hosts that support IMAP.

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iCloud Explained

iCloud

Today I sat down for what I hoped would be a quick session of understanding how best to backup our family’s iPhones in a reliable manner. I then proceeded in spending a day trying to understand the utterly confusing world of Apple’s iCloud.

If you are in the same situation, I hope to spare you a few hours through this attempt at explaining the iCloud mess.

We need to consider a few important terms that will help us understand what we can do with iCloud:

  • iCloud Storage,
  • iCloud Drive,
  • iCloud Backup,
  • iCloud Photo Library,
  • My Photo Stream.

No wonder people get confused when trying to understand iCloud! Let’s tackle them one by one.

iCloud Storage

iCloud gives you 5GB of storage for free.

You can upgrade your storage to 50GB, 200GB, or 1TB for a reasonable cost.

Once your iCloud Storage is full, your iPhone will stop backing up to iCloud until you purchase additional storage space or free up storage space in iCloud.

iCloud Backup

iCloud Backup is available on iPhones, iPads and iPods. It serves to back up your entire device (or just some aspects of it, depending on your choices) to iCloud.

iCloud Backups count against your available iCloud Storage.

iCloud Drive

Think of this as a sort of Dropbox or Google Drive, however without having direct access to your files through Finder as you would with Dropbox and Google Drive. It allows apps on Macs, iPhones, and iPads to synchronize files using iCloud. So for example, if you create a note on your iPhone and your MacBook is also connected to the internet, that note will also appear on your MacBook a few seconds later.

Your files in iCloud Drive also count against your available iCloud Storage.

iCloud Photo Library

iCloud Photo Library uploads and stores all of your photos and videos in iCloud so you can access them from all your devices.

There are some important differences between iCloud Photo Library and iCloud backup that you should understand before we move on.

iCloud Photo Library: all your devices can access and view individual photos that are stored in the library.

iCloud Backup: you can’t see individual files or photos in your iCloud Backup, even if photos are part of the backup. iCloud Backups are one big file that restores your entire iPhone – there’s no way to access individual files.

If you’re using iCloud Photo Library and iCloud Backup, you could be paying to back up the same photos twice: Once in your iCloud Photo Library, once in your iCloud Backup.

iCloud Photo Library works like the previously mentioned features of iCloud in that that the contents of the photo library count against your available iCloud Storage.

My Photo Stream

My Photo Stream uploads all your new photos and sends them to all your devices. Sounds kind of like iCloud Photo Library, right? But there’s a little difference:

Photos in My Photo Stream do not count against your available iCloud Storage.

iCloud Photo Library permanently uploads and stores your photos and videos in iCloud. My Photo Stream uploads your photos to iCloud so they’re automatically downloaded on devices with My Photo Stream turned on. It only works over Wi-Fi and doesn’t fill up your iCloud Storage space.

The Photo Library is usually the element that takes up most of the storage space in iCloud. 

If you want to keep backups of your iPhone photos and videos without running out of storage space on iCloud (the free 5GB), I suggest you use the following strategy:

  1. Turn Off Photo Library As Part Of iCloud Backup
  2. Turn Off iCloud Photo Library
  3. Turn On My Photo Stream on your iPhone and iPad
  4. Turn On My Photo Stream on your Mac or PC

Since My Photo Stream does not count against your available iCloud storage you will not have any problems with space utilisation in your iCloud account. The photos will be transferred to your Mac where you can then include them in your cloud or Time Capsule backups.

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The 15 Minute Rule

15-minute-rule

Here’s a productivity hack that works just as well for solo workers as for those who work in big offices with lots of co-workers around.

Whenever you get stuck on something, you have to try to solve the problem by yourself for 15 minutes, but then when the 15 minutes are up you have to ask for help.

People tend to fall on two ends of a continuum. Either they don’t put in any effort and ask someone right away, or they get really into something and keep at it for hours even though they don’t make any tangible progress.

Typically those who ask right away are those who have very low confidence with the problem at hand. I’ve seen this many times with older people who haven’t grown up with computers for example. They are afraid of doing a mistake and breaking things, so they will ask someone to help them at every little step, even though with some thought (or a Google search) they could definitely have arrived at the answer themselves.

On the other hand, those who act obstinately and become all worked up on a problem for a long time tend to be people of high technical ability. They have tons of confidence in their abilities and believe that they’re just one step away from the solution. They can sometimes forget how much time has passed since they started to tackle the problem. When they do realise how much time was wasted it sometimes makes them feel even more frustrated and ashamed that they haven’t solved it yet, and spend even more time on it.

The work environment also plays an important rule. Working on your own tends to encourage the second type of behavior, while working in an office where colleagues are close by and very accessible means we are more likely to ask right away before putting in any work. Asking too soon will waste other people’s time and it also means that you’re less likely to learn things properly so you can do them yourself without any problem in the future.

I’ve done both of these mistakes many times in the past. Nowadays the 15-minute rule helps me avoid these situations.

rubber duck debugging

This is also related to the rubber duck method, which I use especially if I don’t have quick access to someone who can help and I’m stumped. Here’s how that works:

Step 1) Beg, borrow, steal, buy, fabricate or otherwise obtain a rubber duck (bathtub variety)

Step 2) Place rubber duck on desk and inform it you are just going to go over some code with it, if that’s all right.

Step 3) Explain to the duck what your code is supposed to do, and then go into detail and explain your code line by line

Step 4) At some point you will tell the duck what you are doing next and then realise that that is not in fact what you are actually doing. The duck will sit there serenely, happy in the knowledge that it has helped you on your way.

Note: In a pinch, a coworker might be able to substitute for the duck, however, it is often preferred to confide mistakes to the duck instead of your coworker.

Original Credit: ~Andy from lists.ethernal.org

Of course, the rubber duck can also be substituted by anything else. One college professor used to keep a stuffed dog outside his office. Before being allowed in to speak to him, you had to explain the issue to the dog first. The dog solved 50% of the questions. It might be hard to believe at first but try it out, it works!

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Best Music for Getting Work Done

music

The purpose of this post is to share some of my favourite music for when I want to immerse myself in work and shut the rest of the world out. Music is a very important thing in my life; I listen to a wide range of music styles but here I am going to suggest some music styles that are particularly good for getting work done.

For general background music, I like to discover new music from the following styles:

  • Instrumental Jazz
  • Instrumental Bossa Nova

I don’t have any favourite jazz or bossa nova bands so I rely on Spotify to find new albums whenever I get tired of what I’m currently listening to.

Ambient music works really well for tasks such as programming and tech related work. Here are my recommendations:

  • Brian Eno
  • Tycho
  • Jens Buchert
  • Emancipator
  • Kraftwerk
  • Jean-Michel Jarre

While remaining in the electronic realm, trance and electro sometimes work well for me, especially when I need music that packs more punch and infuses a sense of urgency to what I’m doing. This can turn out to be ideal also in the afternoon when I generally tend to feel a bit sleepy. I don’t have too many favourites here, although I do love to listen to the album Berlin Calling from Paul Kalkbrenner every now and then. The Tron soundtrack is also awesome, as is that of The Social Network.

When I need to be really pumped up and I don’t mind lyrics I turn to my favourite music in the form of euro dance and rock. I have an extensive euro dance collection from the late 90s and early 00s and that’s what I put on in these occasions. My favourite rock band is Queen and they are usually the ones on my playlist when I need some comforting music to help me through some menial work that I would be dreading doing.

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Jean Galea

Online Entrepreneur. Global Citizen.
Founder of WP Mayor & WP RSS Aggregator.

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