Category Archives: Internet

General, Internet

What are the best decisions you’ve ever made?

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While writing an article just a few short moments ago about photography, I suddenly found my mind wandering and thinking to myself; what are the best decisions I’ve ever made in life?

No, I don’t understand how I strayed onto that subject, but seeing as I did, I thought I’d blog about it here, without any preconceived plan about where I’m going with this. Though I’m fairly sure there’ll be a blog just around the corner countering this one, as that’s the type of negative person I can be sometimes.

Anyhow, while thinking about this I thought how powerful would some of my websites be now if I’d used WordPress from the beginning, and how strong would they be if I could take WordPress 2.5.1, go back in time, and use it around the year 2000?

So, the best decisions I’ve ever made in life? Let’s see…

  1. Spending money to register the domain www.thetransformers.net in August 2000, when I had a website already but it was on a free hosting site called 20m.com (which meant 20 megs free space). That decision was quite a good one!
  2. Then, just a short while later I bought www.transformersthemovie.com (much to Don Murphy’s disgust a year or so ago, claiming I was jumping on the bandwagon). That domain was bought, I think, in December 2000, when I made a website about the original animated film. That domain has done quite well of late.
  3. Not selling the aforementioned domain when someone inquired to buy it. Yes, that was Paramount.
  4. Leaving my job in Cardiff to move to Manchester and work for an SEO company. That has to be pretty high up there. You have to challenge yourself in life and work for the companies that will offer that.
  5. Buying a HP Smartphone and installing voice recording software to record ALL of my phone calls. The CSA aren’t too keen on that one, but it paid for itself after just a few days.
  6. Getting in touch with DVD suppliers and PR companies when I worked as the web designer for GAME. This allowed me to build up contacts I still use today, create the website WhatDVD.Net and become involved in the Transformers DVD releases for Maverick and Metrodome. Thanks to the guys at GAME who thought no one would actually send us DVDs for review because GAME didn’t buy enough units, so they let me do it. Had they known how successful I’d be they’d have done it themselves. Cheers Jonny A and CJ Ravey!
  7. Working for GAME in the first place. I have to say this I feel, it was my first 9-5 job in August 2000 and I worked there for a few years, made some lifelong friends and have never really found anywhere else like it.
  8. Buying a Jedi outfit… that one’s self explanatory 😉
  9. Trying out Google Adsense when it launched in 2003, and at the time I though Commission Junction was the best thing since student grants. It made just a few cents a day at first, but sticking with it proved a brilliant move.
  10. Finally, and this one hasn’t proven itself yet but I feel it will, not selling my house at the beginning of the year. I risked financial ruin to keep it when I could have sold it and walked away with a few grand to my name, however I kept hold of it, went to wire and now it’s happily rented out and providing me with something for the future. That may still fall down on me, but I’m confident.

There you have it, the best ten decisions I think I’ve ever made in life, not necessarily in the right order, but equally important.

As I say I no doubt expect there’ll be another blog soon with the ten worst decisions I’ve ever made… though that might be in several parts 😉

Internet

Simon Billington, thickest person in the UK?

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Every now and then I received emails from people who have been offended by the website YourCarIsShit.com. They’re usually from thick chav scum who drive crap cars, naturally, and the quality of English in the emails is hilarious.

This latest email is from a moron called Simon Billington. This twat seems to think he’s Westwood, who’s also a huge twat, by coincidence.

I usually just put these emails up on the YourCarIsShit website, but I thought I’d expose this retard here, as I think he has a special sort of problem that can only be cured by laughter, laughter at him accompanied by pointing and sniggering.

Mate, you’re one of life’s losers. When I eventually meet you in person, and I will, could I get a Big Mac, large fries and a coke?

—–Original Message—–
From: Shit Web Page [mailto:simon.billington2@virgin.net]
Sent: 24 June 2008 22:11
To: Daz
Subject: Message about Yourcarisshit.com

Your web page is up-doc m8 nuf sed in-it

word is bond

Best Regards

Mr S S Billington aka(da ofority)

u iz a cuny

Internet

Facebook sexism

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I just had an email from Facebook (or rather one of the applications on Facebook, the Compare Friends I believe) to tell me which of my single friends were the fittest. How sexist is that!?!

I mean, people voting on who they think is hotter, and grading them in a table for everyone else to see. Absolutely terrible.

So without further ado, here’s the top five, according to their friends on Facebook!

* “Who is hotter”
1. Alexandra Eber (364 points, voted 410 times)
2. Julia Buckley (182 points, voted 304 times)
3. Laura Richardson (87 points, voted 136 times)
4. Anna Chu (59 points, voted 77 times)
5. Helen Keen (71 points, voted 138 times)

Hmm, I have to say I agree with the #1 choice, though they deserve their place in the top five. Well done girls. For those who didn’t make it, better luck on the next email!

Google, Internet, Michael Jackson, SEO

Universal Search for Michael Jackson

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I wrote an article recently for a media publication on how to optimise for Universal Search within Google. universal Search is relatively new within SEO circles and had been fully utilised by Google of late. When you search for something in Google, and it’s a popular search term with a lot of media, you may get videos, images and news results appear on the front page.

This makes regular SEO much harder, because you’re competing with other factors for first page placement. For example if your website used to rank at #8 on Google for your main keyword, and that keyword now shows results from Universal Search, you’ll be pushed down to the second page.

Ah, the horror!

However, it does open up new opportunities in SEO (as I wrote in the article) as SEOs are now able to optimise for Universal Search specifically, with the use of images, video and even Google News.

An example of this is one of the key phrases I’ve been receiving a lot of traffic for recently, ‘michael jackson thriller costume’. Not very competitive, but with Halloween not that far away it will start bringing in the numbers. Searching for this phrase in Google shows up some images on the front page, with my own personal Thriller jacket there too.

You can see Google’s SERPs for ‘michael jackson thriller costume‘ here.
Michael Jackson

Universal Search is something worth experimenting with if you haven’t already. You can see my original post, the one that ranks in Google’s Universal Search, here.

Internet

Friends Reunited is free, does anyone care?

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Friends Reunited unveiled yesterday that their website is now completely free. No longer do you need to pay £5 (or whatever it was recently) in order to contact your old school friends. Of course when Facebook launched, and was free, everyone found that using Facebook was much better for contacting friends, old and new.

The entire site is now completely free to use including sending messages!
Stay in touch more with your current friends with your new Friends list
We’ve improved your profile page and made it easier to share photos and videos
You’ve now got your own Timeline to record and share the moments that matter
And did we mention it’s free to send, receive and reply to messages?

Friends Reunited had the userbase, they had the monopoly, but by refusing to change their model they lost everyone to Facebook. Now Friends Reunited stands as one of those failed websites. One of those Internet businesses that has simply been passed by.

Now no one cares about Friends Reunited. If they’d changed their business model years ago and made the site free they could have been the company courted by Microsoft and valued at $16 billion.

But they didn’t. They sat in their ivory tower and watched as their users disappeared across the road into Facebook, and then acted far too late.

So, to the guys at Friends Reunited. Well done on spotting your mistake, should have realised it years ago.

Internet, Make Money

Earn money writing from home

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Sponsored Review:

You’ve probably all seen those sites and flyers that promise that you can earn money from the comfort of your own home, in your own time, to supplement your income? Most of the time those things are a bit of a con as they just want you to make cold calls for sales, where you’ll be on the phone all day getting abuse from people who really don’t want to tale to you.

Wordsofworth.co.uk however is a completely different proposition. With this website you don’t have to call anyone, or even speak to anyone. No, what you do here is simply write articles, news or blogs for websites. You’re given a brief and asked to write so many articles per month, in exchange for a set fee, which starts at £250 per month.

Earn money writing from home with Words of Worth

This is ideal for mothers who stay at home during the day, and students (who let’s face it, have more time on their hands than the unemployed). The website says it will take up no more than 8-10 hours of your time per week, so you could do a week’s worth of articles in a day. By those figures you could also do a month’s worth within a week, which means £250 isn’t bad for staying at home!

There’s also no limit to how many contracts you can take on either. Once you’ve proven yourself you can add a second, or even third contract to earn more money.

If you’re looking for a way to earn money from home, this is it. There are a couple of requirements though. Firstly you need to have a decent grasp of the English language, so if you don’t know your ‘their’ from your ‘there’, you might struggle. Secondly you need a computer with Internet access, but if you’re reading this the chances are you have that!

So if you fancy earning some extra money from your own home and have the time spare, take a look at the website and submit your details. I did it myself to try it out, it’s a nice way to earn some extra money 😉

Google, Internet, Just Search, Magazine Articles, SEO

I’m in this month’s issue of dot Net magazine

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dot NetFar be it for me to boast, but I’m in this month’s issue of .Net Magazine with an interview about how to make your website an authority site within Google. It’s quite a good read, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. The golden rule is content, content and more content.

It’s one of the reasons that this website ranks for so many different phrases and gets traffic for the most unlikely of search terms. If you write about it, they will come (simply building it is no longer effective enough).

Anyway, you can see the magazine on the .Net website here.

Here’s a shot of the extract, but to read it properly you’ll need to buy the magazine 😉

dot Net

You can read more tips like this at Just Search’s website, which features a daily blog about SEO and Internet Marketing.

Internet, SEO

Let Optimized Web Design spam you up

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Being a high ranking website for a great many terms, this site gets its fair share of spam comments from people hoping to promote their own piss poor websites. One such comment was from the jokers at Optimized Web Design.

These idiots spammed up one of my posts stating how they build SEO friendly websites. Well that’s nice to know, but what that’s got to do with the post I made?

I guess Optimized Web Design actually promote their clients’ websites in much the same manner, spamming them up like this in an attempt to rank them through the service provided by the spam merchants ‘myclicks.us’.

You can see that email was submitted by links@myclisks.us, who obviously have been paid by the idiots at Optimized Web Design to plug their shit on my blog.

Of course, reading between the lines I can guess that the idiot responsible actually got his email wrong, and it’s actually myclicks.us, another spam company.

Author : Ivaylo Kostadinov (IP: 62.204.137.170 , 170.direct-204-137.bgcell.net)
E-mail : links@myclisks.us
URL : http://www.optimizedwebdesign.us
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=62.204.137.170
Comment:
The Optimized Web Design is an innovative, SEO – friendly website design that has the option for quick search engine indexation and is intended to make websites attractive to both users and search engines. Check the new service and position your business now!

Stay off my website you spamming bastards. That’s not SEO, imbeciles.