Over the next four months 10% of sticker sales will go to… Vim!

Unless you're a programmer and/or system administrator this probably doesn't excite you one bit. Vim is a text editor, mostly used for things such as fiddling with configuration files and programming. It's a powerful toy, but not one the average computer user is likely to ever use.

So why Vim? It's partly because it's my editor of choice, and partly because all money donated to Vim goes to ICCF Holland, a charity helping orphans in Kibaale, Uganda. Vim is so-called charity ware; users are encouraged to make a donation, which goes directly to a good cause. It's an interesting concept, and it seems to work for ICCF Holland: a fair amount of the charity's income comes from Vim users.

A good starting point for finding out more about ICCF's work is the video embedded here (if you don't have Flash installed you may want to download the movie). The ICCF website contains lots more information, including interesting reports from its treasurer, Bram Moolenaar - who also happens to be the author of Vim.

If you're interested in Vim the obvious place to start is the Vim website. That said, if you're using Linux or Mac OS X you may want to dive into the terminal and enter vimtutor for a relatively short (but comprehensive) tutorial.

As the price of a first class stamp has gone up from 46p to 60p - an increase of 30% - I've had to review the prices I'm charging for the anti-junk mail stickers and other goodies I'm selling via the sticker shop on the Stop Junk Mail website.

It's not all bad news. For letterbox stickers I was charging £1 per sticker plus 50p for postage and packaging. I've increased the postage fee to 60p but at the same time reduced the price of stickers to just 90p. In other words, if you buy a sticker you still pay £1.50. And, if you buy more than one sticker you'll pay less. Buying two stickers, for instance, used to cost (2 x £1 + 50p =) £2.50. This is now (2 x 90p + 60p =) £2.40.

Other prices have gone up. The return to sender stamper can only be sent as a packet, and Royal Mail has increased the price for sending small packages from £1.97 to £2.70. I've therefore increased the postage fee from £2.00 to £2.70.

A word about Royal Mail's price increases, then? I'm actually not too bothered about it. Many online sellers have complained about the new prices, but then quite a few sellers out there charge postage fees that are completely disproportionate to what they pay Royal Mail. This is much more damaging for online trading then the increase in stamp prices.