Archive for the ‘General’ Category.

Page speed vs Relevance in Google – What matters?

This is something us web developers struggle with knowing and it’s good to have the record set straight. It will also help you to know that relevancy is still king.

Alan

Twitter accounts being stolen!

Ok be very careful with your twitter accounts, and instead of me trying to explain it here is a great video that explains it really well.

Alan

Geekout – Rubiks solved by Lego

So if you hadn’t worked it out by now you’ll know I’m a bit of a geek, ok completely a geek, but I’m very comfortable with that stereotype. So when I cam across this video I just couldn’t help myself I had to share it with you all. Lego and Rubiks puzzles were two of my favorite all time toys when I was growing up, next was the computer (if you hadn’t guessed). This is really impressive in so many ways, engineering, programming and pure creativity.

Just in case you were wondering what the world record is for a human solving a rubiks cube, it’s not the fabled 12 seconds everyone seem to think it is, it’s actually 7.08s trust me that is super quick! Want some proof ok I can do that, just watch the video below.

Man that’s so cool, hey I did warn you that I was a geek and if you’ve read this post and watched the videos you may just be one too!

Alan

Bing maps – better than Google maps

Well Bing, Microsofts new search engine is really pushing what’s called Mashups. This is where different technologies on the internet are mixed together to essentially create a new experience. What they show in the video below is the potential for maps at street level, but with other peoples photos that are free to use from Fliker. They match up these photos to the buildings so you can essentially see what it was like when the person was there.

This is quite exciting for Photographers, but also everyone else as you get to experience things you may have missed, next step video??

Alan

Inkless printing, almost no consumables!

I was doing my usual rounds online and came across this printer that I thought I should share with everyone. It will take some time for it to come over here as it’s a Japanese invention, but when it does it will finally make all the other printing companies realise that they can’t charge ridiculous amounts of money for cartridges & toner. It’s only Black ink printing at the moment, which is fine for the majority of prints a business would need, but I’m sure they will work on a colour version as soon as they can.

Is this Microsoft’s answer to iPad??

Ok this hasn’t been confirmed in any way, but if it was to be built do you think it has the legs to be a contender to the iPad? I would be very interested to hear your comments.

Google Dispel SEO Myths

Today I thought I’d share with you this video and site as it should help anyone at the beginning of development and SEO for their own site.

Here is the link to the video and the rest of the article on Googles own blog.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/01/google-seo-resources-for-beginners.html

Alan

Linkedin Funny Video

Virgin Trains email, as bad as spam – Your flight details

Wed design Glasgow Owner of Contact MultimediaOk this isn’t spam, but it certainly felt like it when I got it through.

This email really peeved me off and wasted about 10 mins of my time and took me off my chain of thought while I tried to figure out if someone had hacked into my virgin account.

Had I just read the email a little bit more I would have discovered that this was them just trying to be clever. They wanted to show how much less hassle it is to take the train than fly to London.

The problem is had they not done it in such an alarming way this would have been a good email, but all it’s done is annoy me as a customer as I genuinely thought someone had logged into my account and use my details to book a ticket.

If you’re considering doing a newsletter campaign take this lesson and make sure you think about how it appears to the person getting it, you really don’t want them calling you up to complain about the hassle they’ve you’ve put them through.

Here’s the actual email content so you can see what I’m talking about.

Virgin Trains email as bad as spam

Got Windows 7, but can’t be bothered re-installing some apps

Wed design Glasgow Owner of Contact MultimediaSo you get the new windows 7 or you’ve had to re-install windows on your machine. You’ve lost all those great applications that you found online that were free.

What do you need to do? well here are the three annoying things that I had to do to find the programs I used, not just everyday, but occasionally once a year but it was handy to have.

First was that you had to remember them and find them online, second was to download them, then finallay third, spend all that time clicking next, next, next, tick the box I agree (of course I do if I don’t I can’t use the program and I’m never going to read you 1000 pages of terms).

If only there was a way to cut down on all that, if only some clever people came up with a site that had it all in one place, had a simple install procedure and only made you click next on the really important stuff.

Thank you internet and http://ninite.com

This is one of my favorite finds in recent weeks as there are many programs I use on there, so when I get my brand new laptop this is going to save me loads of time!

Alan