Tesco is to enter into the garden centre business after winning a bid for Dobbies. The Scottish based chain currently has 21 outlets. The Dobbies brand will be retained but it is likely the garden centres will start selling some Tesco products.

Ashop offer ecommerce software so you can create your own online store. They provide a shopping cart that is fully integrated with all most major banks as well as Paypal. This includes built in SSL protection so you can make sure your customer’s details are secure. The software allows you to customise your storefront with your company information and sales information through a website interface which requires no knowledge of HTML. They host the online store for you and provide a daily backup as part of the service. They also provide free unlimited tech support. You can look at a demo store on their website to see exactly how it all works but even better then that, they offer a ten day free trial. There are four different packages available depending on how much storage space you require. Prices start at £19.95 for the light package which gives you 50MB of web space and go up to £99.95 a month for 300MB of space with no limit on the number of products.

I remember seeing the Trunki on Dragons Den a while ago. The idea is that is a kind of ride on suitcase for children. At the time the Dragons described the idea as worthless but the inventor has gone on to make his product a success without their help. He has now sold 85,000 of his suitcases. It is marketed in 22 countries and is a top seller at John Lewis, Mothercare, Fenwick and Debenhams. It is nice to see that that sometimes the small business man can make it even without the Dragon's help.

If you already have a blog and want to start getting paid to blog, then you might want to have a look at Smorty. They are a service that connects advertisers and bloggers. Basically an advertiser can sign up and advertise on blogs by paying bloggers to write a review of their site or a particular products. The advertiser will specify relevant keywords and request a link to their website.

As a blogger you can sign up and submit your blog for approval. There is no limit to the number of blogs you can add, the only specification is that they are at least 30 days old. Once you have added a blog and it has been approved you can start blogging for money. Simply log in to your Smorty account to see what opportunities are available. All you need to do then is to choose which opportunities interest you and write at least 150 words on the subject. Once the post has been approved Smorty pay you by Paypal after seven days.

Nokia may have to replace around 46 million batteries in their phones due to reports of them overheating. The problem affects BL-5C batteries made by Matsushita between December 2005 and November 2006. Batteries made by other manufacturers are not affected. The problem is caused by a short circuit in the battery which causes it to overheat.

I just opened a bottle of Spier Shiraz 2005. The wine is from the Cape of Good Hope. It has a fruity smell and a full bodied colour. It doesn’t taste as fruity as it smells but has a plum like flavour with oak undertones and a hint of spice. At only £4.99 it’s a good wine for the price.

Mattel has issued recalls for around nine million of its Chinese made toys. The toys are being recalled for two reasons. There are fears that magnets contained in toys could be swallowed and some toys could contain lead paint. The recall affects Polly Pocket dolls and Batman action figures. You can see a list of the recalled toys here.

Two Morrisons stores could be responsible for an E coli outbreak in Scotland which has left one person dead and two seriously ill. It is thought the outbreak is linked to meat brought from the cold meat counter of two Morrisons shops in Paisley. The health board has warned people not to eat meat brought from the Lonend and Falside Road store in the past few weeks.

I have been looking forward to the release of Run, Fatboy, Run a new British comedy that stars Simon Pegg and Dylan Moran. The story is about a guy who leave his fiancée on the wedding day and then discovers ten years later that she is his true love. In order to win her back he needs to finish his first marathon and make her see her new man is the wrong guy for her. You can check out Run Fat Boy Run teaser starring Simon Pegg, it looks great.

It has recently been reported that the Top Shop chain is profiting from Asian workers who are paid less than £4 a day. The factories that supply Sir Philips Green’s stores employ hundreds of Sri Lankan, Indian and Bangladeshi workers who work 12 hours a day up to six days a week. The workers receive as little as 22p an hour, that’s around 40% less than the local average wage. Sir Philip Green is currently ranked seventh in The Sunday Times Rich List.

If you dabble in the stock market you might want to have a look at Wizetrade. They have an interesting blog that has some useful tips on the stock market and securities. The blog covers issues you might come across such as creating a trading plan. Much of the blog is focused towards helping you get the most out of their Wizetrade stock trading software. Looking at the blog the software seems like a really useful tool. The programme allows you to conduct stock market analysis and chart potential entry and exit signals on any stock symbol. They also provide a Wizetrade Trading Workshop in a city near you, so you can find out how to get the most out of their software.

Japanese researchers have developed a table and chairs set that can change colour. The furniture has sensors embedded in and can work out the colour of items that are placed on it. They work by bouncing red, green and blue off of objects and recording which hues are reflected. An Apple Mac inside the table then sends wireless messages to the stool which project light to match the colour of the object on top.

MyWeigh sell weighing scales including pocket scales, shipping scales and bathroom scales. They have scales that handle weights from a fraction of a gram right up to hundreds of pounds. I found the site because I was looking for some new parcel scales. Their digital postal scales weigh things up to 75lbs and also weigh in pounds, ounces, kilograms and grams. The scales have a detachable face so that you can weigh even large boxes and still read the screen. You can even meet the face on a wall for easy access. All their scales come with a lifetime warranty in the US.

This is one of my favourite wines for drinking on a hot summer’s day. The fact that it’s a rose and only 10% volume means that it is very light. Its one of those wines that once you open it its very hard to put the cork back in the bottle. The wine is from California and this particular one in from 2006. The blurb on the bottle promises you strawberries and watermelon and for once the blurb does not disappoint. I don’t usually drink rose but this wine is really good and at only £4.98 its one of the best wines I have had this summer. At this price its worth getting a case, because it won’t last long.

It can be hard to organise your business cards, and if you are anything like me, I often find I have piles of them lying around and can never find contact details when I need them. That’s where a business card scanner could come in useful. Basically what it does is scans the business card and provides you with an images of the card as well as the text information. The scanned image can be saved in several formats including JPG, TIFF and BMP. The extracted text can then be saved or exported to other applications such as email and the web.

You can also use it to scan photos and cheques and it takes media up to A6 size. The scanner is portable and requires no power supply. One useful feature is that you can fully integrate the scanner with Microsoft outlook so that it automatically creates a new contact record for you with the scanned information. It also features a Live Update feature so that when you are connected to the internet it scans for updated software and update automatically with the most recent version. It comes with a 30 day money back guarantee and free technical support is also available.