Platinax restructuring and redesign very soon
Platinax is a desperately poor mess. Go to the homepage - what are visitors supposed to do? In the words of Seth Godin, there is no banana.
The site lacks functionality, has poor navigation, is a generally poorly presented mess, and suffers accessibility issues to boot.
I actually commissioned a CSS-only version of the template months ago, [...]
The internet in loving memory
When the website www.thisistheway.com went offline a few weeks ago, I received a frantic e-mail from one of the webmaster’s friends.
Bill Luther had died of emphysema in April.
When his website seemed lost, so did the last legacy of a man who turned to the internet as a form of communication as his lungs failed him. [...]
Whatever is happening to SMA-UK?
In July last year Mike Grehan blew open a big tin of flies when he launched a critical attack on SEMPO.
The original articles no longer exist, but Barry Schwartz luckily preserves some of the details.
Although the stipend awarded to Barbara Coll was one key complaint, another was that SEMPO were failing to communicate to members.
And [...]
Google print fails to honour writers rights
The Google Print project is under threat, as the Author’s Guild sues Google for treating copryright protection as an opt-in process, rather than automatic right.
Google makes a point on the Google blog that they only display a snippet of the author’s work and therefore claim fair use.
There can be few more naive comments. You would [...]
Who speaks for the SEO industry?
When Aaron Wall was sued by Traffic Power the story became a mainstream conversation on the internet.
It should have been a conversation about SEO - Aaron was being sued for comments about the SEO practices of one SEO company.
Instead it became a story about bloggers rights.
The story wasn’t hijacked by bloggers to talk about themselves [...]
Myriad Search - brilliant new search engine
I love the Myriad Search search engine. :)
Meta-search has always promised the potential of getting the best from the big search engines, but I can’t recall of any meta-search engine working across Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask - let alone offering the degree of flexibility to adjust results according to search engine.
The results on Myriad [...]
Privacy and respect in search marketing
So I asked RCJordan what he worked in…
He told me that at the first SEO Roadshow, everyone who turned up was told to be private about work, and not to reveal anything about their areas of business to one another.
After a while a group of SEO’s were all seated around a big table, when RCJordan’s [...]
Take care when setting up advertiser links on your site
When taking on advertisers, the webmaster is faced with the paradox of trying to keep visitors on their site, as well as providing clickthroughs from the site to advertisers.
After all, if the advertisers aren’t getting their clicks, why advertise?
I just made a big mistake on one of my sites though.
I thought I’d be clever, and [...]
Looking into content subscription models
I have a couple of sites which are difficult to monetise, because they are essentially reference sites in areas that are not very commercial.
One potential solution is to use the otherwise large traffic and strong user base to work on a basic subscription model for the sites in question.
I’m currently trying to find out [...]
Google fudge index size figures?
Danny Sullivan posts that Google are looking to increase the size of their index.
However, the practical result seems to be that Google have simply doubled the number of pages they claim indexed from any domain.
Conversely, Google now return *fewer* results for major keywords.
For example, back in December 2004 we saw Google reduce the number of [...]
Hitwise claims gender and age differences with search engine users
IT Facts at ZDnet raises the profile of a MediaPost article revealing differences in gender and age between search engine users.
Annoyingly, MediaPost looks as if it runs a system where a paid subscription is required to access articles once archived - but it does highlight information that wasn’t published on [...]
Katrina aftermath published by DigitalGlobe
DigitalGlobe, whose high resolution images are a foundation for Google Earth, have published a series of hi-res satellite images showing before and after Hurricane Katrina hit the southern USA.
The New Orleans before and after images are especially shocking, and the BBC in their extended coverage of Hurricane Katrina have also created a series of minimised [...]
Trackback spammers beat Typepad nofollow
So I checked out the archives on Seth Godin’s blog and found that trackback spammers have found a way to start filling his blog with pharmaceutical and gambling links from trackbacks - without getting the links hit by Typepad’s automated use of “nofollow” in trackbacks.
What I find particularly ironic is that this blog, and others [...]
Don’t buy from Comet
SUMMARY:
1. Comet thinks it’s cheaper to screw their customers and keep their money;
2. Consumer rights are civil rights, and can be costly to enforce;
3. Flatscreen TV’s have inherent faults the electronics and retail industry refuse to accept responsibility for.
Comet Electrical Store: abuse of consumer protections
You’d think that a big high street chain store like Comet [...]
Obituaries of London Bombing victims
The BBC has a section devoted to providing images (where possible) and obituaries of the victims of the recent London Bombings.
My thoughts are silent in respect.
Useful business & marketing links: August 2005
I’ve been covering so many interesting business and marketing sites over the past couple of weeks that if I leave them only in my favourites folder, I’ll simply forget about them.
A few of the interest sites/pages I’ve encountered recently I’ll list below:
Shak does blogging
Shak has started his own blog.
Shak is a frontiersmen on the [...]
If you buy DVDs you must be a film pirate…
As a birthday treat, I ordered myself Seasons 1 & 2 of Babylon 5 on DVD, from Amazon. At times Babylon 5 was the most innovative, imaginative, brilliantly scripted science fiction show ever shown on TV - but faded with ignomity after studio mismanagement led to a loss of plot focus and an insane depreciation [...]
Keeping accounts to date and falling for the VAT trap
When you start up a business, you have to do everything to set up the foundations right.
I should guess that most people who have launched themselves into the financial uncertainties of self-employment and desperately want to succeed, will therefore have spent at least their first year doing everything they can to set up secure [...]
