Royal & SunAlliance, Stolen Car

Royal & SunAlliance tell lies

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This morning I telephoned Royal & SunAlliance once again about my car that was stolen 16 months ago now, in July 2006. You might remember that I sent them a final demand letter in September instructing them to fix my car and to pay me what they owe me. The letter was addressed to Zoe Banks, and naturally she hasn’t responded some 6 weeks later.

So this morning I phoned her up. Surprisingly she was on the other line and someone insisted I’d get a call back today about my car, as I explained that I’d been waiting 16 months for them to fix it and thought I’d waited long enough. Again the person apologised for my distress, as they always do.

Guess what? That’s right, I haven’t had a call back.

But then, why would I get a call back? Why would an insurance company actually fix a car they’re liable to fix? That would be crazy, like this whole situation. Suffice to say I will keep calling them and keep exposing their lies, broken promises and their utter failure to do their job right here on MrDaz.com – unless of course they actually fix my car…

What are the chance of that? 😉

Google, SEO

Regional targeting with Google Webmaster Tools

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This week Google added a new option to its Webmaster Tools allowing you to set regional targeting for your website. This is very useful because it answers the problem of having a non regional specific TLD hosted abroad still being able to rank for a regional search.

Google Webmaster ToolsFor example, the website featured in the screenshot is a .com hosted in Germany, but by allowing regional targeting as I’ve just done it will rank for a UK search.

Obviously you need to be very careful when making changes like this as you can affect your global rankings. For example the website WhatDVD.Net is also hosted in Germany but I won’t be regionally targeting that to the UK because I want it to rank for US based users as well.

Regional targeting is a great and welcome tool, but don’t shut out wider, potentially more profitable markets for it.

Halloween, Michael Jackson

Another student Halloween party

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It may be November 2nd, but as it’s Friday I’ll be off to a Halloween party in Leeds university tonight, just as I did last year. Thought I doubt tonight’s party will go the same way, last year’s was particularly good ;).

I’ll be taking my new Nokia N95 camera phone with me to give it a thorough field test so there should be some great photos on here some time over the weekend. I’ll also let you know how the N95 holds up as I saw a comparison with the iPhone on the Gadget Show this week that saw the N95 kick the iPhone’s ass.

As regular readers will know, this year I’m dressing as Michael Jackson from the Thriller video.

Star Wars

Yoda is a benefit cheat from Cwmbran

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Yoda with caneHere’s the conclusive proof, Jedi Master Yoda was a benefit cheat.

In Attack of the Clones he’d limp along supporting himself on that cane of his, acting all old and shit just so he could claim some invalidity benefit from the Imperial State. No wonder Palpatine wanted to eliminate the Jedi if that’s how they act.

As you can see from this photo to the right, Yoda, just like my ex-wife’s father, can be seen supporting his ‘frail’ body on a cane. But then when it comes down to it he drops the cane and his ‘inability’ to walk has suddenly gone away so he can bounce around like a muppet fighting Dracula.

I swear Yoda is from Cwmbran. The benefit cheating bastard.

Yoda

Movies

How I stood up Edgar Wright, director of Hot Fuzz

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Regrets, I’ve had a few… certainly not too few to mention. With my financial settlement with my ex-wife nearing completion today I looked back on some of the biggest mistakes I’d ever made in my life and surprisingly getting married wasn’t the biggest.

Oh yeah, I’ve made a bigger one than that before.

When I was 17 I made a series of what can best be described as spoofs such as Juliana Clary and Batman with the intention of getting these short films onto the TV series Beadle’s Hotshots. We never quite made it on (though did get Batman screened on Adam Buxton’s Takeover TV) but the researcher on the show would phone me regularly asking me how the shooting was going and what ideas I had for new videos.

He was a nice chap, and even edited all of the videos for the show himself. Even though we didn’t make it onto the show they gave us two tickets for the recording of two episodes, so myself and Steven Gane went down from Newport to London, to Waterloo, for the filming. As we walked in the same researcher called me over as he’d recognised me from Batman. He apologised for not using any of our videos and said we should meet in the LWT bar afterwards to discuss ideas for the next season.

Sadly, Gany and I had to travel back to Newport on the last train, which was 11:00pm so we couldn’t meet him.

If only I could go back there now. That guy’s name was Edgar Wright and he went on to direct both series of Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

Oh dear god. What did we pass up? As young film makers we were undeterred at the time, and even when the producer of the show, Liz Costellas, telephoned me and asked me to get in touch with her prior to the new series starting we were still a little casual. We never got back to her.

So we stood up the director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and we didn’t bother getting back to the producer of Beadle’s Hotshots.

That’s a mistake, my biggest to date.

Affiliate Marketing, Google

Mr Daz talks about Adsense – The Script

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I’m sure you’ve watched the video by now, if not, why not? Here’s the original script for the Mr Daz on Adsense video blog posted last night:

Oh, Hi there!

I’m Mr Daz and I’ve been an Adsense publisher since 2003. When I first started using Adsense, earning over $1 per day seemed like an achievement, but as you can see I’ve come a long way since then.

Adsense works for me because I follow the principle that content is king, and with good quality content comes good quality relevant ads. Obviously, the more relevant your ads, the more likely-hood your users will click on them.

One of the things I really like about Affiliate Marketing, and Adsense in particular, is that there’s really no limit to how much you can earn. If I used my skills to build websites for clients my earning potential would be limited to how much I could charge per hour, and how many hours I could physically work.

With Adsense, there are no limits. It really is a question of how much do you want to earn?

Plus with Adsense I’m earning money when I eat, sleep, drink down the pub, or in fact right now. I’m earning money right now. Isn’t that better than having to work for clients? Only getting paid when you’ve done the work?

With Adsense, I can spend time developing the website, caring for it, nurturing it. Building up its content, and then I can monetise it and it will begin earning me money straight away. Everything it earns from that day forward becomes mine, not a client’s.

Google pay the money I’ve earned from Adsense directly into my bank account at the end of every month, no fuss and no hassle. That sure beats having to chase clients to pay your invoices, and having to deal with slippery accounts departments who try to delay paying you for as long as physically possible.

The best tip I could give for anyone wanting to earn money with Adsense is to make use of Google’s custom channels. These will show you which of your ad units has the highest click through rate. When you know which of your ad placements gets the most clicks, you should make sure you put this ad placement first in the HTML code because Google fills the first ad slot it finds with the highest bidding ads.

This way, your highest converting advert will have the highest paying ads, earning you the most money. If you don’t do this, you could be losing out on some potentially massive revenues. A little tweak like this can make a big difference.

Good luck with your Adsense campaigns, and remember… how much do you want to earn

Direct Line Insurance, Stolen Car

Direct Line Insurance offer me insurance on my BMW Z3

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Direct Line Insurance Z3You couldn’t make this up. Not content with paying out the wrong person when my car is stolen and refusing to compensate me for the last 12 months, Direct Line Insurance have just emailed me (well, my ex wife, but it’s my domain) to ask if I have a BMW Z3 and if I require car insurance through them.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Why would I insure my Z3 with Direct Line Insurance when they’ve already paid out on it, to someone else?

This would make a good avert.

Customer: I’m tired of insurance companies that pay out when I need them.

Voice-over: At Direct Line, it’s our policy to pay out someone else when your car is stolen, place a stolen marker on the car and try to repossess the car from you when it is recovered.

Customer: That’s better

In fact, I think I might shoot that advert. Direct Line Insurance, you have been warned.

So much anger, so little time