Aviva gets silly over rebranding

Aviva are getting aggressive with the big rebranding of Norwich Union to Aviva in the UK.
I’ve just received an email asking me to change all and any previous references of Norwich Union on any website I run to Aviva.
Yeah, right.
And the email also included a copy of the logo, with an attached terms and [...]

Google’s screwy spelling filter

C’mon, Google - your spelling filters are getting silly!
I’m trying to do historical research on the “Picts”, an early Gaelic people of Scotland, but look what happens when I search for “Inverness Picts”:

It looks like Google thinks “Picts” is the same as “Pictures” and “Pics”!
Let’s not see Google dumbed-down in this way, please, thanks? :)

Google Adsense: 2 weeks late

Noticed no Adsense payment into my account yet, so logging in, I checked the payment record - only to find that Google are going to be 2 weeks late paying out Adsense:

Google have been generally good at paying on time, so it raises eyebrows to see them late on payments for April - not least [...]

Google is killing its user’s experience

Google’s recent changes have done everything to damage my experience as a Google user, and I can only hope Google realises their mistake.
Problem 1: Search suggestion
I don’t want “search suggestion” on by default for two reasons:
a) Sometimes in Firefox the autocomplete box won’t close, so I have to refresh the page so I can click [...]

BBC releases Nuclear Attack script

The BBC has published it’s script of what would happen in the event of a nuclear attack on Britain:

BBC TRANSCIPT TO BE USED IN WAKE OF NUCLEAR ATTACK
This is the Wartime Broadcasting Service. This country has been attacked with
nuclear weapons. Communications have been severely disrupted, and the number of
casualties and the extent of the damage [...]

Watch out for Wordpress .htaccess hack

Just quick heads up for anybody who may have any older Wordpress installs running to check their .htaccess file hasn’t been hacked.
I had this happen to a major site a couple of weeks back, and a cursory look at some other sites found it occurring elsewhere.
In short, the original .htaccess file is replaced with one [...]

The Farce of easy A Levels

What a surprise - A Level results continue to show record improvements, with record pass rates and record A grades awarded.
A Levels have become a farce - they are absolutely getting easier, and I know because I have 9 A Level passes over a 4 year period, and saw them getting easier as a student [...]

Miss Threadwatch? Time to rebuild it…

I began writing a post on Internet Business for June 28th, pointing out that Threadwatch had closed 1 year today.
I started to write about the standard of members there, the quality of stories, and how basically no other site has been able to replace it.
Simply put, no other news site I can think of focuses [...]

Thomson has multiple adwords accounts?

Noticed this on one of my sites while coding today:

How does Thomsonlocal get multiple Adsense listings for the same domain?
Multiple Adwords accounts, or a glitch with adsense itself?

Admiring other content networks

I’ve taken the route of trying to be small publisher covering different niches, and sometimes can’t help but admire the strides some other sites have taken.
Of course, certain networks such as internet.com and ientry have been on webmaster radars for a long time, and give the impression of being somewhat corporate.
However, there are plenty of [...]

Important Notice - please read

I’m now blogging my secrets away at Internet Business.
More explained here: Everything now changes on InternetBusiness.co.uk

I work with small businesses you have never heard of - I work with massive corporations whose brands you walk past routinely on the high street.
I’ve been interviewed by national media, national press, and spoken at international conferences.
It’s time to [...]

Hardest lesson in business: Managing growth

I’m at something of a business crisis point at present - managing growth.
Simply put, my workload is far too large for me to handle.
This is a big part of trying to expand my business - not so much client side, but general services side.
Because I’ve always been a hands-on person, I used to do everything [...]

Lessons learned from speaking at SES London

Speaking at SES London was exciting and daunting - to be honest, I’ve *always* wanted to speak at SES since I started doing SEO, and having two sessions to cover on link building was a dream - many thanks to Mike Grehan for the opportunity.
A couple of clear lessons learned, though:
1. Presentations are Linkbait
The two [...]

Google vs Links sales: the worst is yet to come

Aaron Wall posts about a trend that’s opened up to a lot of webmasters over the New Year - falling Adsense revenues.
The chatter has been around for a while, and it seems the recent move to reduce the clickable space in Adsense could well be contributing - but the economic downturn hitting big corporate advertisers [...]

Microsoft to buy Yahoo

Microsoft have pitched to buy Yahoo.
I’m gutted.
Last Autumn it was obvious that Yahoo stock was seriously undervalued by comparison to Google, Amazon, and other major internet companies.
However, not only did I not have an investment portfolio, but the promise of the stock markets tanking made it a bad time to set up a portfolio [...]

Needed: WP coder & webmaster

I am so busy at present - far too busy in fact - and desperately need some freelancers to help on webdev work.
I currently need:
1. Wordpress Webmaster
Must be comfortable using CPanel, including for setting up databases
Must be able to set up Wordpress installs
Must be able to modify Wordpress settings (such as permalink rules, set up [...]

Intel CEO’s amazing risk quote

I was amazed to see this quote from Intel’s CEO, Paul Otellini, on the BBC today:

Our business model is one of very high risk: We dig a very big hole in the ground, spend three billion dollars to build a factory in it, which takes three years, to produce technology we haven’t invented yet, to [...]

iBrian to speak at SES London 2008

I have *always* wanted to speak at SES. I love SEO and especially link building - my speciality. I love talking about the subject, and I love talking about my experiences with link dev work.
The trouble is, I’m usually too busy to keep any pace with blogging the subject - plus there’s also the concern [...]

Drupal: The Next King of CMS?

UPDATE: It appears there are some very interesting complaints about scalability with Drupal which apparently still hold - ie, great for a small site, but if you want it to run something larger, you’d better have some good developers on your books. Conclusion? Drupal promises much, but could still be a victim of its own [...]

How to determine brand potential

One thing I’ve struggled with - not least through trial and error - is how to determine a brand and build it.
Lessons I have learned include:
1. Use familiar words to define a brand where possible
2. If using made up words, try to avoid more than 2 syllables
3. Thriving communities confer brand by sheer familiarity
And of [...]