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The email pings and you see someone is now following you in Twitter. “That’s interesting” you think “let’s see what this person is all about, maybe I will follow them back, let be, or block and report”.

Here are sure signs that you should be blocking some accounts

(click on images to enlarge)

1. Picture of pretty girl

1a. Not quite matching the male name….?

2. Weblink going to an affiliate page not a blog or webpage

3. Following way more people than is following them

4. Links go to crap affiliate sites using trending keywords as bait

5. Promoting products using trademarked words such as “Twitter”

1. No bio or web details…who is this?

2. No tweets but following lots of people

3. Following large amount of default avatars

1. Majority of tweets via Twitterfeed (automated regurgitation of RSS feeds)

2. Large amount of tweets via API (script generated Tweets)

Some of these taken in isolation may not be OK. There really ARE some pretty girls out there on Twitter who have avatar pics to prove it… but for the most case you get a feel from what they are saying, and where they link to, to make that judgment call whether to follow or block.

Blocking is a very important activity, and one that we should all be performing when we spot accounts like this. Too many blocks and flags go up in Twitter and the accounts are reviewed and regularly purged. If no one blocks then these accounts will continue to flourish.

Short note on reporting to @spam on Twitter: only report accounts that have sent you unwanted advertising messages. Reporting abuse or even accounts like those should be done via a ticket to Twitter, to send anything else to @spam is messing up their timeline and possibly putting a black mark against your account too.

Thanks to Tanakawho for the Duck image

This is very cool.  When space is at a premium but you still want to house your wine collection, think about this amazing design. I’m not sure of the cost and you’d probably need to be a real connoisseur to justify the investment but it looks cool and it would certainly set your home apart from the competition come time to sell!

 

Property statistics can be confusing unless you analyse what they mean, writes Anthony Keane.

While the numbers don’t lie, they don’t tell the whole truth. Statistics don’t always paint a clear picture and property is no exception.

For everyone looking to invest in property, it pays to take your statistics with a grain of salt.

Many people use stats as “proof” without understanding their limitations, Property Investment Adviser director Will Chapman says.

“If you make a large financial decision such as buying a property based on limited data, the wrong decision can be made,” Chapman says.

Anyone who watches housing values knows “median house prices” can vary by more than $50,000 depending which research is used.

So it pays to make sure you are comparing apples with apples.

Despite the differences, the companies that supply real estate data play a valuable role.

Statistics can help people make accurate investment decisions as long as buyers understand the issues.

Median house prices the most common form of measuring real estate values may vary wildly because of all kinds of things which, when they are properly analysed, don’t really alter the value of your house.

For example, a major new subdivision in a suburb can have a massive impact on the median value.

Hundreds of new small blocks selling at a lower price can dramatically affect data.

“If parents sell their home to their kids at a discount nice parents the statistics may still show it as a normal sale,” Chapman says.

“If you’re looking at a property’s past sales and can’t work out why it went so cheap, this may be a reason.

“In some cases, only half a property will be sold if the partner buys the other half out.

“Generally, this will be noted but be aware that it can mislead.”

Inner-city and central business districts also have big variations. Properties in these areas can range from $300,000 apartments to $6 million residences. But a suburb of three-bedroom houses on 500sqm blocks won’t have much variation.

While the numbers don’t lie, they also don’t tell the whole truth either, Chapman says.

Remember that median house prices are not an average of all sales in a suburb or city.

The median price is the middle sale, the seventh in a group of 13, for example.

Australian Property Monitors, one of several data providers, says the different median prices reflect the analysis by each researcher and their historical data base.

“Essentially everyone has access to the same data you buy it from the state governments,” APM spokesman Matthew Bell says.

“But the trick is how you clean the data. Sometimes providers will look at a dwelling price but not split it between houses and units.”

It also depends on the size of a property. Bigger also doesn’t always mean a higher price.

“The majority of two-bedroom houses tend to be closer to the CBD and therefore more expensive, whereas three-bedroom houses span right out to the outer suburbs,” Bell says.

And don’t get too upset if you suddenly see prices in your area plunge.

“If a median price falls by 50per cent in a suburb, it doesn’t mean the value of most houses has fallen 50 per cent. It might mean a lot of two-bedroom homes have been sold,” he says.

It also pays to read the commentary and notes included with any data to help work out the “lies, damn lies and statistics”.

By Dan Nosowitz, 2:15 PM on Sat Sep 26 2009, 19,574 views (Edit, to draft, Slurp)

Construction on what would become the world’s longest marine causeway, connecting Qatar and Bahrain, is due to begin next year, and what a project it is: We’re talking about a bridge more than 13 miles long, costing around $3 billion.

Somewhat adorably named the Qatar-Bahrain Friendship Causeway, this massive bridge is expected to take around 4.5 years to complete and cost somewhere between $2.3 and $3 billion, but should be a great help for travel between Qatar and Bahrain. The trip currently takes more than four hours and will be reduced to 30 minutes on the bridge, and those in charge expect 10,000 to 20,000 vehicles per day to use it.

For a sense of scale, here’s a chart that compares the bridge to other very large things. Of course, I need a scale chart to tell how big a blue whale is, which sort of defeats the purpose of measuring this bridge in blue whales, but still: This is one large bridge. [Mena Infrastructure via Reddit]