Rats!

So we’ve been living in our new house for over 6 months and everyone was nagging me for a pet.
I don’t feel settled enough to have a dog as yet - especially as I know I’d be the one who ended up walking it twice a day, which I seriously do not have time for. […]

Madeleine McCann - what about parental responsibility?

What has happened to far to Madeleine McCann and her family is obviously tragic and heart-wrenching.
There are so many campaigns going around to help find her that I couldn’t even begin to start.
But - am I the only person thinking “Parental Responsibility?” Such as you never leave a 3 year old unattended in a room […]

Windows XP - anyone seeing weird behaviour past few days?

Anyone else had any problems the past few days with Windows XP programs?
McAfee crashed a couple of days ago on an update, and after the PC restarted McAfee wouldn’t load up.
I contacted McAfee, where a technician told me it was a known conflict with Zonealarm.
I unstalled Zonealarm, uninstalled/reinstalled McAfee and it worked fine again.
However, WS_FTP […]

BBC shows live torture pics - not

Another heads-up on the dangers of too adventurous automation…
The BBC have a page showing the most popular news stories for Scotland in the week.
Unfortunately the automation process of assigning pics to stories seems a little screwy - the story on the payrise for nurses simply has a pic of an empty road.
Meanwhile, a picture of […]

The Dangers of Romantic Candles

I wanted to make the bedroom romantic, so over the past couple of months I’ve developed a collection of dozens of scented candles.
They’re spread about the bedroom furniture and laminate floor, and when all alight the room is very romantic.
Last night my trousers were thrown off in a moment of passion - then moments later […]

Ouch! Delisted from SEOmoz!

[EDIT: It was only temporay, due to the changes being implemented, such as the introduction of YouMoz and similar. Either way, no offence or disrespect intended by Rand, and he’s been happy to ensure Britecorp were back on the SEOmoz recommended list. :) ]
Rand previously had my company Britecorp on his list of recommended SEO’s.
After […]

Secret hideout found on property website

So while having lunch I decided to idle time surfing a few property websites.
Found myself looking at Irish property for comparative research, when I happened to note an interesting location on one of the pages:

Someone should inform the Garda about this? ;)
More seriously, though, there are some nasty little formatting errors on the page […]

Losing out by not using PPC?

The backbone of my business is SEO, but I’ve come to realise that I am completely missing out by not having embraced PPC.
For example, I started my first real affiliate program recently. I can sit and wait for leads via SEO. Or I can push traffic in via PPC and generate instant revenues, and tweak […]

Someone’s using my brands - time to look into Trademarks

I just tried to sign up with Google Talk in order to chat with Aaron Wall via IM.
A username is required, so my first attempt was for iBrian. Sorry, not available.
Okay, no big deal. It was popular enough to see the .com registered.
So I tried platinax. Sorry, not available. Huh? Platinax is my own unique […]

British Telecom just doesn’t get it

I received bills from BT to pay my business line and business broadband services.
Telephone support warned of long delays in answering the phone, but mentioned paying online.
Ok, so I signed up at BT’s website to pay both online, set up a user account, set up my billing accounts for both services, then went to pay.
Oops. […]

When a hacked site isn’t a hacked site

Google News can experience problems with news items if their titles only appear as links. So my news sites always have a h1 header with a separate permalink to the article.
So when developing one news site today, I was shocked to find a couple of posts had links in them to a third party […]

Blogger hit by autogenerating account bot?

Has Blogger been hit by an autogenerating account bot?
Over the past few days I’ve been receiving a wave of blog spam from SEO lab - all of it to blogspot accounts - and all built around hyphenated money keywords ending in a seemingly random 2 or 3 alphanumeric characters.
For example:
college-loans-zet.blogspot.com
free-slots-lol.blogspot.com
flexeril-huf.blogspot.com
All of them are running a […]

ArmA: Armed Assault

UPDATE: Okay, played the multiplayer demo. It *is* Operation Flashpoint 2 - more precisely, Resistance 2.
The graphics are better but not by a huge margin, and improving textures does not a new game make.
Playability actually seems reduced - menus are a little different from OFP, but so far it’s neither felt intuitive nor […]

Pros and cons of working for clients vs working for yourself

When I’ve chatted with more experienced SEO’s, the one thing that becomes clear is that SEO’s start working with clients, but many drop these to work for themselves.
The argument goes that if you’re good at making someone else money, you should be good at making that money for yourself - and much more than you’re […]

The perks of running a big sci-fi site

So I sent Peter Jurasik - Londo Mollari in Babylon 5 - an email, asking if he’d do an interview.
Just got a reply and all looks good to go - which is great!
Got to admit, I feel really excited about this - Babylon 5 was, at it’s height, the greatest science fiction TV series written […]

Scottish Drivers Association (satire)

Today the Scottish Drivers Association held their annual meeting:

Among the general discussions the following seminary courses were offered:
1. Overtaking On Blind Corners Is Fun
Learn how boring long journeys can be livened up by over taking traffic on blind corners. TIP: Make the experience more fun by over taking only speeding traffic.
2. You Too Can Drink […]

A little Google humour

While redeveloping Platinax I found a couple of pages I hadn’t published before.
I had intended to write a humour section, but only wrote a couple of SEO humour items before deciding it wouldn’t fit with the site.
Anyway, figured I’d publish them, so see if anyone like’s them:
The Four SEO’s (after Monty Python)
Presidential Speech Against SEO
A […]

A Public Apology for Michael Gray and Todd Malicoat

My comments at Threadwatch could be read as questioning the character and professionalism of both Michael Gray and Todd Malicoat.
I don’t want that to be the case, and where this is construed, I offer my unreserved and sincere apologies for the misperception.
It was obvious from the start that the hacking of SEO blogs wasn’t […]

Sexy clothing for my girlfriend

I took a risk and bought some lingerie for my girlfriend this Christmas.
I’m now developing an increasing interest in women’s clothing, which means I’m either:
1. Gay
2. A pervert
3. Looking at ecommerce options
I’m becoming seriously interested in option 3, precisely because I don’t see the current UK market being well served - specifically in more […]

iPhone - I want one!

Looks like the Steve Jobs presentation at MacWorld is winding up: but it’s now official - the iPhone is coming.
I’ve already written up a report on Platinax News - must say, this feels like a really big story.
CNET have been frantically trying to write what’s happening live, typos and all, while Engadget are posting […]