Murdering my darlings

Writers are sometimes faced with the task of having to remove sections of their work and characters from a book. No matter how much they love these sections, they must be removed or changed as demanded by the publisher, to make it ready for publishing.
The process is called “murdering your darlings”.
I’m going through a similar [...]

Keeping up with emails

I’ve always had a problem keeping up with my emails - it’s an organisational problem that’s being building up for a long time.
I prioritise client emails to respond to and always deal with those - but then there are all the other, non-client, emails I receive.
I usually end up opening a string of these other [...]

vbulletin 4.0: CMS but new URLs

Good news and bad news about vbulletin 4.0:
Good news! They finally built an official CMS around it!
Bad news! They’ve rewritten URLs!
The first is a very positive development - I’ve been using vbulletin for forums, but usually had to use Wordpress as a front end CMS. It would be great to be able to integrate both.
However, [...]

Naked scanner

This is just such a stupid idea:
‘Naked’ scanner in airport trial

A trial of a scanner that produces “naked” images of passengers has begun at Manchester Airport.
The authorities say it will speed up security checks by quickly revealing any concealed weapons or explosives.
But the full body scans will also show up breast enlargements, body piercings [...]

WPP predicts LUV economic recovery

One of the more astute observations that I very much agree with from Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP:

Market commentators have talked of V-, U- and W-shaped recoveries, but Sir Martin said it was more likely that economies would emerge in different ways.
“A ‘LUV’-shaped world economic recovery seems the most acute description in the [...]

The Value of Local Blogging

Originally when I started blogging I went straight into business blogging here at iBrian - not because I wanted to gain business attention, but because I just wanted to share some of the things I was doing or thinking.
The problem is, blogging about business is irrelevant if there’s no goal or return, so while it [...]

Firefox 3.5 doesn’t accept target=”new”?

Let’s get back to blogging…
Just noticed something strange while updating an affiliate link - Firefox 3.5 would not open a new window using the command target=”new”.
Had to go and change all of the links to target=”_blank” instead.
Strange - I would have thought that target=”new” would be a more common sense protocol to support, instead of [...]

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 [...]