SerieA.tv “The Ultimate Soccer Site” must have been heaven-sent by the Gods of Soccer to soccer / football fans, in particular Serie A fanatics.

It allows you to watch all the games, live or previous games, except Napoli home games (apparently this is due to some rights issue). Or if you prefer, you can choose only to watch only match highlights. No more rushing home to catch the game or lamenting the fact that you’ve forgotten to program the box.

And of course, you can simply focus on your favourite team(s), with all the details you’ve come to expect nowadays: news, table standings, schedules, scoreboards, top scorers and team details; even standard TV fare like match previews, top 10 goals and top 5 saves.

If that’s not enough to quench your soccer hunger, you can even watch interviews and special shows.

Don’t worry if you don’t know any Italian, the website is done in English and most match commentaries are done in both Italian and English.

There are 3 ways to subscribe:
(i) Single match: USD6.95
(ii) Monthly subscription: USD14.95
(ii) Season package: USD109.95

With that money, you get high-quality streaming video (up to 400Kbps).

And perhaps the greatest plus point for this site is that you have access to exclusive games that are unavailable, legally at least, from any other source!

Whether via the media (newspapers, television, radio, blogs etc) or casual conversation over afternoon coffee, a favourite subject revolves anything around money, especially the lack of it.

Many people who borrow money, not just homeowners are finding that paying off their mortgages are a huge burden.

The increase in living costs is a factor, but are banks to blame for making it too easy for any Tom, Dick and Harry to get their loan applications approved?

Well, to me, to ensure their survival, banks need the money, and getting it from offering mortgages is one way. Making it too difficult = less money = more money to competitors = not good for business.

Having said that, of course customers would also have to do their part. Before deciding on a bank, they have to do their homework, which is to compare mortgages, to settle on one which is the best for their needs and their current situation. While they’re at it, it’s important to get mortgage protection, to ensure the house stays in case the person paying off the loan is unable to do so at any time in the future.

Another point to be considered when shorlisting banks is to see whether they have an experienced remortgage advisor. This is important when you need things like poor credit remortgage and hit snags like having no proof of income.

BadCreditOffers.com aims to help those with not so good or even bad credit ratings to look for companies offering credit cards, loans and other resources. In other words, it’s a review site for financial companies lenient on low credit ratings.

Best of all, it is free to use.

They continuously monitor the credit marketplace to show the best offers available, then display each day’s best offers on its website.

For example, in the credit card category, the top ranked card is First Premier Bank Gold Mastercard.

Once you get the best offer for your needs, all you have to do is to ensure you’re paying it off on time. This exercise in rebuilding one’s credit is the way to improve one’s financial future.

Perhaps the biggest amount spent in anybody’s lifetime would be a house purchase. Homeowner loan comes to mind.

Some would argue that paying for the kids’ education, especially if it’s the fully-overseas type would prove to be even more expensive.

Next, the car. Of course this depends on what car and how many cars.

And next, probably the wedding.

After that, gadgets like PCs and stuff.

But don’t forget about personal loans, also known as unsecured loans, this one is tricky. It can start small, then become the biggest thing ever!

Therefore, it’s important to ensure you don’t take loans from dodgy people and to shop around first.

It would seem to be a good idea to pay for everything in cash, no Loans. Of course this would only be practical if you’re in a position to do so.

Some people have something to “run away from,” so paying for something via a loan could be the way to go.

The major holiday season of the year is coming up: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and finally the greatest wallet-buster of them all: Christmas.

Parents might be thinking of a four letter word now: HELP.

Well, everybody over 8 years old knows that help definitely will not come from Santa Claus, but it could come from Coupon Chief, that one stop online coupon deal and discount resource.

You could utilise the coupons offered to get gift items which might be difficult to get in this country.

My younger brother Bon’s eyes would light up if he finds out that he could get USD20 off when he purchases luggage on ebags.

My mom would also be delighted to know that she’s entitled to free shipping when purchasing bags at zappos.com.

As for myself, I’m going to check out some of Dell’s coupons.

To use the coupons, just key in the specified promo codes in the relevant boxes, and you’re done.

Car Guy Garage Inc is a company specialising in … car garages. They have more car garage-related items and paraphernalia than you can ever imagine. Looking at some of the products, it think they will make your garage the prettiest room in your house.

As garages usually are associated with the words dirty, dull and dark, and even perhaps dungeon; these guys offer garage lighting too. As well as offering a variety of lights for different applications, they suggest that the switches be grouped, so that you can choose to only light certain parts of the garage, or all of it.

Buying things online is convenient up to a point, but when you are buying physical products, it is inevitable that things like shipping and handling charges can cost a bomb. In those cases, discounts really do come in handy.

Enter couponchief.com, it’s a website that keeps track of discounts, in the form of coupon codes, offered by various e-shopping sites to benefit online shoppers, including top sites like bestbuy.com, target.com, steples.com and overstock.com. It keeps track of the codes you need to input - I tried it for Dell’s website just now - it even loads the correct page at Dell.com for you!

Using it is very simple: simply load up couponchief.com, locate the online store you wish to purchase from, select your wares.

Each company is allocated its own page at CouponChief, for example to see Dell coupons, you can go to Dell’s merchant page all coupons being offered by Dell at a glance.

There are a lot, in fact more than 1,000 absolutely free-to-get shipping and discount coupons from hundreds of companies available.

To make it even more user-friendly, CouponChief recently added “how to” guides in the form of screencasts for their top merchants, including Amazon dan Dell.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), that world famous spy agency has a new TV series revolving around it in the form of USA Network’s Burn Notice, premiering 28th June on USA Network.

It’s about CIA operative Michael Weston (played by Jeffrey Donovan) being suddenly sacked while on duty, or in spy-speak, receiving a burn notice. Having no inkling of why he’s suddenly terminated, he goes to Miami, his hometown, and from then on he’d try to find out the real reasons. At the same time, he’d offer his special operations skills to those in need to fund his investigations.

My favourite TV / movie genre are dramas and thrillers, so this is something to check out.

As for my personal theory of what actually happened, I think he disturbed the hornet’s nest when he tried to expose a senior member of the organization for serious breach of trust - in this case, being a spy for a terrorist organization. That senior operative gets a handsome amount for his services leaking information overseas and upon finding out that Weston is secretly tracking his movements got him in a panic, and hence used all sorts of dirty tricks to put Weston in trouble, resulting in the burn notice being issued. In fact, that senior operative is merely a link to a much greater scale of corruption in the CIA and other related agencies, including the highest levels of the US government. A multibillion dollar spying business is ongoing and those in the money would never let a single operative spoil the party.

The term “vacation rentals” would probably sound foreign to most Asians, but it’s a tourism buzzword in Europe (especially the United Kingdom) and North America, the concept getting more popular by the day. The term is used by the travel industry to mean the renting out, to tourists, of a fully furnished apartment or even house on a temporary basis. It is an alternative to staying in a hotel / resort. In some cities, such as in Barcelona, vacation rentals are such a success that the hotel industry there felt threatened enough to push for laws enacted to limit its influence.

Here in Malaysia we immediately think of homestay programs as a comparison, but in vacation rental, the property owners do not stay in the same house or even compound. Owners could let agencies manage their property, offering services much like the hotels, for example concierge services and 24×7 maintenance.

Benefits of vacation rentals include the bigger space as compared to hotels - it could be a whole house after all, with multiple bedrooms and bathrooms (of course with nicebathroom faucets), fireplaces and so on. Their locations can even be much nearer to local attractions as compared to hotels. Then there’s the privacy issue: hotels can never compete with rented out houses in this respect.

Therefore, vacation rentals is an interesting new way of enjoying your holidays. Every budget is catered for, as properties range from studio apartments to sprawling villas on private islands.

Vacation rentals are available in most US states, including major tourist areas, for example Fort Myers vacation rentals. It’s located right on the beach of the Gulf Coast of the western part of Florida. I think that should beat any hotel’s offer.

If you’re a Christian into the online dating scene, it should be obvious that Christian singles the world over can be found on dating sites.

In fact, on the year 2002, Wired Magazine forecast that: “Twenty years from now, the idea that someone looking for love without looking for it online will be silly, akin to skipping the card catalog to instead wander the stacks because ‘the right books are found only by accident.’ Serendipity is the hallmark of inefficient markets, and the marketplace of love, like it or not, is becoming more efficient”.

2 years ago, there were already more than 800 lifestyle and dating sites. Market share in this area is increasingly being dominated by commercial services run by the likes of Yahoo! Personals. According to a study done by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) and comScore Networks, US residents spent USD470 million on online dating and personals in 2004, which is apparently the biggest percentage of paid content on the web.