Category Archives: Internet

Internet, Rants

Student Property Shop request clarification

1 Comment

I’ve received an email from Chris Johnston from the Student Property Shop requesting that I clarify something for him. Chris’ website, StudentPropertyShop.com is in no way related to the website I blogged about last week, The Student Property Shop known as thestudentpropertyshop.co.uk.

Chris’ website and business has been around since June 2005, whereas the thestudentpropertyshop.co.uk website is brand new, and has just taken up residence in Leeds.

Chris writes:

Hi, please would you be able to point out somewhere on your website that ‘The Student Property Shop’ is nothing to do with my website StudentPropertyShop.com (which I have been running since June 2005). I am currently in a dispute with ‘The Student Property Shop’ about their choice of trading name.

Thank you,
Chris Johnston
Founder, StudentPropertyShop.com

No problems Chris, sorry if anyone thought that your website was in any way related to the letting agent in Leeds.

While we’re on the subject of the letting agent in Leeds, we wrote last time how they’d leached an image from the website of My Homez (note, by leached, we mean stolen – that’s an Internet technical term meaning a website is using an image hosted on another website). Well, now it seems that the website for thestudentpropertyshop.co.uk has now been taken down, as the domain name shows a ‘coming soon’ message.

But… they haven’t done it properly. Would you have seriously expected them to?

No, they’ve removed the index page, but left the rest of the website (including the Google Maps which is registered to another website, as explained here). Have a look and see what we mean.

Here’s the home page, removed, and here’s the website, still accessible!

Good work guys, you’ll get it right one day.

Google, Internet

WhatDVD.Net is a PageRank 6

Leave a comment

I have to admit, I used to be quite hung up on Google PageRank. Every time an update was due I’d get quite excited, and start checking different data centres in anticipation of any gains or losses to see how my sites were doing.

Of late however I haven’t given it any thought, cos let’s face it; Google PageRank is pretty damn pointless in the grand scheme of it. It’s only people who sell links and idiots who think PR is a measure of their site’s success who actually bother with PageRank.

Having said that, I’ve just noticed that in the last PR update (which I completely missed) my DVD reviews website WhatDVD.Net jumped from a PR 4 to a PR 6.

… ahem, Google’s PageRank is vital for the success of your website, it’s the most important thing ever and should be lauded!

Nah, seriously, it’s pointless. Still nice though 🙂

Google, Humour, Internet, Rants

The Student Property Shop, Leeds

8 Comments

You may remember the posts last year about the letting agent in Leeds who was featured on BBC’s Watchdog twice accused of withholding deposits from students. The posts received a lot of comments from students who were claiming their money had been withheld, and some of them got quite upset about the whole thing.

The letting agent in question is no longer located at the premises in Leeds, and a new letting agent by the name of The Student Property Shop is now in their place. Some students are sceptical about whether the companies are related, judging by the emails I have received on the subject.

Anyhow, I decided to have a look at the website for The Student Property Shop, which is www.thestudentpropertyshop.co.uk. The website is hosted with our old friends 1and1 Internet, on the IP address: 87.106.210.120. If that IP address seems familiar to you, it should. It’s the IP address of the website for My Homez, which can be seen at www.myhomez.co.uk.

So the two websites are hosted on the same server, with the same IP address. This doesn’t mean anything, except that the same person runs the account with 1and1 Internet.

However, when you dig deeper you find something a little more interesting. Have a look at this code for example.

<img id=”mainimage_back” src=”http://www.myhomez.co.uk/images/property/{DA84A2EE-9A01-4FDA-961A-151ABC9A6168}.jpg” alt=”Student property in Leeds” width=”275″  />

You can see that the code for the image is from the website for My Homez… except this code isn’t from the My Homez website at all… it’s from the website for The Student Property Shop.

Here’s a screenshot from the code itself.

I wonder why they’ve done that?

Again, this doesn’t necessarily mean that My Homez and The Student Property Shop are in any way related, but if they’re not, The Student Property Shop are stealing images from My Homez.

So, to find out more about The Student Property Shop I clicked on their contact us, and found that the map the website uses (from Google Maps) didn’t work. The reason for this? Well, just read the alert from Google in the below screenshot.

Seems the API key for Google maps was registered for a different website. Anyone care to hazard a guess at what website that is?

Home Delivery Network, Internet

HDNL blog and forum

42 Comments

While checking my website stats today I noticed that I’d received a few visits from a forum which sounds interesting. The forum is for HDNL drivers (Home Delivery Network) and they’ve clearly been talking about MrDaz.com and the posts about their company, such as this post where over 100 people have commented on Home Delivery Network’s shoddy service and their inability to deliver parcels.

Hopefully if more HDNL staff, drivers and managers alike, see this site and read the feedback from their customers then they might do something about improving their service, instead of posting comments on this site slagging off their customers and being racist.

I haven’t read what was said on the forum because you have to be registered, but there is also a blog on the site so you can read about the latest news from HDNL.

Fascinating.

Internet, SEO

Google profile

Leave a comment

Being the blatant self publicist that I am, I was very interested to learn of Google’s new profile maker when you have a Google account. You can enter profile information for yourself, places you’ve lived at, companies you’ve worked for and such like.

Why is this important? Well, you can create links to your own websites, websites that you like or even pages such as your Facebook or LinkedIn pages. These links are hosted on the Google domain, which could well have some bearing on your SEO. Also, by creating your own profile page you’re helping with your own personal reputation management, as the pages are indexible, and will rank for your own name in the SERPs.

Whether you’re an outrageous self publicist, or just someone interested in SEO, it’s worth checking out the Google profile maker.

Internet

Student accommodation in Leeds

Leave a comment

I feel that after my last post, where I showed up how a property company in Leeds that offers student accommodation was cybersquatting on a rival company, I should explain how that’s done. It may have been confusing, or people might have thought that it was done by accident.

It wasn’t, it’s a blatant attempt to cash in on the good name of a decent student accommodation company.

The screenshot below shows the HTTP Headers of the domain www.pickarproperties.com when you visit it. You can see from the Headers (which are returned by the server) that a 302 redirect is in place to the rival company. This redirect even goes to the http:// version of the website, rather than the www version, creating a canonical URL issue (very poor).

That’s by the by though, the proof of the deliberate attempt to cyber squat is in the image below.

Internet

What is Cybersquatting?

6 Comments

You may have heard the term Cybersquatting in the past. It’s when someone buys a domain name that is a subtle miss-spelling of a well known person or company in an attempt to get traffic from people typing the address into their browser incorrectly.

It is illegal under US law, but in the UK it’s a little more of a grey area. However, it is clearly dodgy because to do it you’re trading on someone else’s name.

Now, because I have some student friends in Leeds, I know of an article that appeared in the latest issue of the Leeds Student Paper about a certain property company in Leeds that lets to students.

No, not that one, another one. This property company is called Pickard Properties, and their website is www.pickardproperties.co.uk. They’re a well known and reputable letting agent in Leeds and are approved by the Leeds student union, so anyone looking to rent student accommodation in Leeds from a decent company knows to go there.

However, if you were to type in www.pickardproperties.com (notice the .com extension) you get redirected to a website owned by a different company, one that is Cybersquatting on Pickerd Properties good name.

I hope no students fall for this one, it’s a very underhand trick.

Home Delivery Network, Internet, Rants

HDNL Complaints

279 Comments

The delivery company Home Delivery Network (HDNL), who deliver for Internet retailer Amazon, have managed to annoy a great many people online. My posts on the subject have received hundreds of comments from outraged customers and idiotic, vulgar and racist drivers for HDNL alike. Most of the customers have been trying in vain to get hold of someone at HDNL to locate their delivery, but there is no phone number on the company’s website.

Luckily, I have it. The phone number for HDNL is 08448 111 816 – but don’t expect to get anywhere when you phone it.

One thing I did notice in Google when I searched for HDNL (besides this very website of course) was the website reviewcentre.com. Anyone who runs a dodgy business like HDNL will know all about reviewcentre.com, the website shows up on the first page of Google for searches on every dodgy company you can think of (try it ;)).

The funny thing about the site is that when companies like HDNL get listed on there, and get awful reviews from their customers, they all tend to react the same way. They go onto the website themselves and submit fake reviews of their business, with really obvious made up comments. You can tell they’re fake because the real reviews all give them 0/10, whereas the staff of HDNL give themselves 10/10… that’s quite a discrepancy!

Plus, the idiotic staff of HDNL who have reviewed their own company have all tended to add reviews as ‘guest’ writers, rather than having the good sense to create an account, log in and write a few genuine reviews for other companies before spamming their own listing.

Don’t any companies know how to perform reputation management online?

I guess not.

So again, if you want to complain to HDNL, you can ring the Home Delivery Network phone number: 08448 111 816. Mention this website for extra annoyance factor!