“Your AdWords Account Suspended Due To Repeated Site Quality Violations”

27 Sep 2009: Google seems to have decided it doesn’t want the money from many people using AdWords to drive traffic to thin affiliate sites, which it’s already been penalising out of its organic results for several years. The move became clear on Friday 25 September 2009, as noted here, when AdWords advertisers were sent the following abrupt message: Hello, Your Google AdWords account has been suspended due to multiple submissions of poor quality landing pages. We are unable to revoke your account suspension, and we will not accept advertisements from you in the future. Please note that our support team is unable to help you with this issue, and we ask that you do not contact them about this matter. As I [...]

Documenting a clean install of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

13 Sep 2009: I’m one of those obsessives who likes to reformat his hard drive and reinstall everything from time to time. Even if it doesn’t speed the system up with Macs like it so obviously does with Windows, I just feel better knowing that my machine only has on it what I need to have. With major operating system revisions coming along every year or two, coupled with buying a new Mac every two or three years, I probably end up doing a fresh installation once a year. I’ve done this so many times that I have a list of core applications with any installation notes/codes, which makes things a lot easier (a bit like having a packing list for holidays). However, [...]

Natalie Williams at Alimentum, Cambridge

11 Sep 2009: OK, being at The Rock on Wednesday to see England thrash Croatia was a cracking evening out. But it turned out to be my second favourite night of the week, trailing a little way behind the quite superb meal we had at Alimentum‘s Jazz Club. The wonderful Natalie Williams was the attraction, but I have to say I was more than a little curious about how good a £29.50 three-course meal could be at such a well-regarded restaurant. We needn’t have worried, it was fabulous. Great (cold) tomato soup, gorgeous pork belly, and a chocolate bavarois to die for, as they say. Sure, you end up dropping the same amount again on wine, water, coffee and service, but even at [...]

Prefab Sprout – new album (September 2009)

2 Sep 2009: You can’t imagine how excited I was when I read the interview with Paddy MacAloon in Word magazine‘s latest issue. But perhaps not half as excited as I will be when I get my hands on the Prefab Sprout new album Let’s Change the World With Music in a few days’ time. I don’t trust any of the local stores to stock it, so I’m preordering it tonight – it’s about nine quid on both Amazon UK and Play. What makes the album so exciting is that it’s not new, it’s a previously-unreleased follow-up to the incredible Jordan: the Comeback from 1990. What did Paddy have in mind to follow up such a great album? We shall soon find out.