So you have a flat or house and you need a roommate. You want the right roommate, not the guy who smokes in the kitchen or the girl who has the Dog that urinates on the Couch weekly. Find me a Room is about finding a roommate but getting an idea about what your getting in your other roommates. See what your potential flatmates are into, or not into and get an idea of the house, flat to let.

It's free and it includes handy maps, is open to anyone and can handle multiple languages. It's also global so it doesn't matter where you live.

Find me a Room, or find you a room, or find us a roommate, or find you a flatmate or....you get it.

Let me know what you think.

I have the best android iCloud alternative below but sorry, iCloud for Android doesn't technically exist, and iCloud for Blackberry doesn't either - but here is something equally useful for Android and Blackberry users. This is how you can get the iCloud experience without the ios5 device.

I have an iPad and an Android phone (Samsung Galaxy S). I work on a PC at work and a Macbook at home. So for me iCloud is awesome but useless as it doesn't cross over all my devices. If you are looking for the easier cross platform/device alternative there is a simple answer: SugarSync

SugarSync is cooler or as equally cool as iCloud and Dropbox for the following reasons:

• Works on android, iphone, blackberry, symbian, mac and PC.
• You can choose what folders to sync (dropbox is great but tends to focus on your one dropbox folder)
• You get 5GB free up front
• It has a great online interface

So you've finally realised the value of Cloud Computing. Overall you seem to think it is a solid, sound, affordable solution for your computing, storage and business needs. More importantly you have chosen a SaaS provider (Software-as-a-Service) for different parts of your business. In fact you may have even chosen a PaaS provider but that is for another post.

QR Codes are back. The UK tried to launch them about 5 years ago but they didn't take off. In South East Asia they have been using QR Codes for a long time very successfully. What's all the buzz about and how do you generate them? The good news is a QR Code is free so they are easy to generate. Basically you can enter a website address and a QR Code is generated that is a 2D barcode. You scan this code with your phone and the link is pre-loaded taking you to the website. They can also be used for business cards, scanning text and more but that's the gist of it.

You can trial or generate QR Codes for real at http://getquickcodes.com if you want to see what all the fuss is about.

If you are wondering what the heck you would use QR Codes for then you can read more at this post about using QR Codes.

Or, if you feel brave get out your Android, Blackberry or iPhone and scan the image on this post and off you'll go!

https://www.paypal.com/uk/mrb/pal=SU3CXXQVUCM4G

I should preface this by saying I don't believe in SEO software as a complete solution to your SEO needs. I believe it is a useful addition to your toolkit even if you only use it to assess your current SEO rank and that of your competitors. If you at all in doubt about SEO software you are using then don't use it. You are better off floundering around hoping for some Google love than using black-hat or incorrect techniques to get better rankings.

IBP simply gives you the advice and statistical information you need to make informed decisions to then alter your website accordingly. It is not a panacea for all your Search Engine Optimisation worries.

IBP 11 (Internet Business Promoter) from Axanda is SEO software that has been around for a while. They currently boast a guaranteed Top 10 Ranking which always sets the alarm bells going but they are usually quite honest about why their software is useful and white-hat.

I just got this email. Is it possible this idea could go viral? I think perhaps it is assuming people will take action, travel an extra mile to get gas, potentially miss out on points, experience inconvenience. Somehow the crowd mentality will probably fall to paying more. Personally I think this would be a great experiment.

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Please see what you think and pass it on if you agree with it.

We are hitting $2.15 a litre in New Zealand now and soon we will be faced with paying $2.50 per litre. So Philip Hollsworth offered this good idea:

This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the 'don't buy petrol on a certain day campaign' that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to hurt ourselves by refusing to buy petrol. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work.

Please read it and join in!

I am finding it hard to get excited about this one. Basecamp added a whopping 10MB of free file storage for their free accounts. If they are using Amazon s3 or similar this would cost them about 0.0014 cents. Hardly an enticing offer guys, surely you can be a bit more generous. Not sure I could even fit a PSD online for that.

Facebook Fan Gates (fangates) are all the rage right now. To encourage people on facebook to become a fan you install a fan book on your fan page. The visitor must 'like' you to get past the fan gate and see the content underneath.

Fan gates can be a great way to grow your fan base but may in time prove frustrating for FB users. They can be used to hide offers, specials and fan only content. Once people 'like' you they then get access to the offer or information. The gate is a small 'barrier to click' and more people should find people don't hesitate to click like and progress to the content. 'Likes' are a cheap currency. It is easy to like because it is equally easy to unlike. If you are going to do fan gates on facebook consider offering something of value to reward the visitor, to ensure the transaction isn't bitter or annoying.

Wildfire have a free tool (which wont be free forever) which make adding a fan gate to your facebook page easy. It can be done in less than a few minutes.

You need to install their application call iFrames for Pages app but this is simple.

I am on a roll posting amazon ec2 SSH terminal tips and tutorials. So here is another. Exporting a mySQL database from amazon ec2.

After connecting to amazon (see related link below) use the following commands:

mysqldump -u username -p databasename > /path/where/you/want/file/filename.sql

It will then ask you for a password. You can include password in above line but it never works for me.

enter database password (you might get this from the config.php file or similar in your website files)

Hopefully that will then do it's thing and your done. You will now have a file on your server in the name and directory you used above.

Then lets compress it so we can download it easier. Type in:

tar -zcvf filenameyouwant.tar.gz filenameitis.sql (the file name it is is whatever you called it above)

This will compress the file. To download use ftp or wget. That is another post.