World Watching

Google seem incapable of not making the news of late, usually for all the wrong reasons (street view, google books etc) but as one famous hollywood type whose name i have forgotten said “all publicity is good publicity” It seems google is battling on none the less.

The lastest brainwave of the internet giant is apparently called ’shop view’ where it seems they are trialling something similar to the much hated street view, just inside shops now. Coupled with an aquaintence bemoaning how it seems google are ignoring the noindex tags on his website, this got me thinking, If you don’t invite google or any other search engine to index your site i.e submit your url to them… do they actually have a right to be indexing your site, docs and pictures that you may have on the server at all?

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yes? whats stopping you? If the answer is along the lines that, its expensive to set up a credible online store and make a little cash working from home then read this e-commerce article because the truth of the matter is, that it can be done for free… yes FREE and no, i’m not trying to sell you anything either all information provided on the worldwatching website is totally free of charge. 

The credit crunch may still have it’s fangs into the country and economically times may still be hard, recession still causing hardship, ebays fee’s still high and the future uncertain… BUT if you can set up a small online business and make a small success out of it now the law of averages says it should be a bigger success in better times.

The fact of the matter is people are still shopping online, albeit a bit more prudently than in the past… So if your going to sell to them you have to keep your costs down and if that means axing ebay fee’s from your overheads it can be done.

The abundance of online payment processors today also totally negates the need to have business bank accounts etc until such time as you actually find your business has grown and a business bank account is a realistic option.

Well everyone has been saying it for years… Now its official, Broadband connections are not as fast as they should or are claimed to be! The BBC has reported that OFCOM, the telecommunications watchdog has conducted a survey and found one fifth of 8Mbps subscribers actually receive less than a 2Mbps connection.

On top of that less than 9% of users get more than 6Mbps!

The worst perfomers on average were AOL and the best on average were Virgin Media.

BT who didn’t actually fare too well in the survey as would be expected have criticised the survey.

Listen to the BBC’s Today Programme with OFCOM

So once again the british public are being robbed blind by big business.. only difference is it’s now official instead of just common knowledge!

Wow, i have just been reading an article by Marketing Pilgrim’s Jordan McCollum in which she is claiming that the month on month traffic figures are at best static and possibly now in decline.
Am i surprised? quite frankly no! Twitter is a novelty in many ways.. it has some possible commercial and corporate uses but on a domestic level its simply a toy for people to play with until they get bored and move on, in my humble opinion anyway.

What is Twitter?

At it’s simplest, its a glorified text messaging system. The idea is that the messages basically answer the generic question, what are you doing now? The messages are limited to 140 characters and available to those who choose to recieve your messages.

Who uses Twitter?

Well i don’t to start with, but many celebrities have been reported to have tried it out.. Ranging from the likes of Ashton Kutcher & Demi Moore to domestic TV ‘celebs’ and i use the ‘celebs’ term loosely where Jonothon Ross is concerned. It was reported that during his suspension from the BBC in the wake of the Andrew Sachs answerphone scandal that Mr Ross maintained a public following via the twitter service reportedly sending messages suggesting he was enjoying the break.

Marketing pilgrim’s Andy Beal has floated an interesting issue here, on page ad’s and a plugin to the FireFox browser specifically to block ad’s.

While i accept some ad’s may be irrelevant (and even annoying to some folk), do people have the right to filter out and take the content and leave the advertising that in all likely hood supports and funds the content?

In my humble opinion, quite simply NO they don’t. the equation is simple, if you want the diverse and fresh content that is delivered on the Internet today then some of it will by default be funded by or supported by advertising.

What a ‘vocal minority’ as they have been described, have failed to grasp is that many blogs exist to provide links and advertising and that the content is a vehicle for gaining those links. Would so many folk blog so regularly if there was no incentive to do so? hmmm i doubt it.

Comments have been quoted (in the original article) in Andy Beal’s post on the subject like

“I use Ad Block Plus because I don’t want to see adverts, any adverts at any
time. I will never click on them, I will always be annoyed by them.”

and….

“I use Adblock because I don’t want to see ads. Ever. Seeing ads is a bug, getting content is a feature.”

And do the ‘vocal minority’ think web site creators place ad’s on their webpages for the fun of it? Do they feel they have a god given right to anything and everything for free? given the only price attached to many web pages is a little advertising its hardly a world shattering, bank busting price is it?

The bottom line is that those ad’s are placed by the author of the page for a reason, and that reason is that displaying ad’s probably supports the content of the page.

My advice to those who dont like online advertising is move on to a page that doesnt advertise if it bothers you that much and leave the authors page and advertising behind, your NOT entitled to read it if you cant handle a few ad’s supporting the web page.

rant over…..

Heres a disturbing story for any facebook’aholics. Your employer may be watching you.

An un-named swiss insurance worker has been sacked for surfing the popular facebook social networking site.

The Woman had claimed to be suffering a migraine and needed to be laying in the dark and so was unable to attend her place of work where she used a computer and has accused her employer of spying on her by sending a mysterious friend request to her iPhone which she claims allowed them to gain access to her personal online activity.

Her employer, Nationale Suisse rejected any suggestion of spying stating one of her collegues stumbled across the employees regular ‘worktime’ facebook usage last November prompting the company to block access to the site on its computers.

Nationale Suisse, said in a statement the action had destroyed its trust in the employee and that is why she has been sacked, and not simply for surfing facebook.

Search Engine Journal’s Loren Baker joined the WebmasterRadio.fm SEO 101 show hosted by Ross Dunn and Eric Lander to discuss link building stratagies and techniques. The Broadcast is available on the Search Engine Journal website (approx 50mins long) and is well worth a listen.

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This country really is becoming a Busted Arse Backyard Operation

The new laws state that from March, everybodies emails will be logged, Regardless of whether they are incoming or outgoing.

The content is not being kept but a record of the email will be kept.