SEOClass Edinburgh

25 Jun 2008: Interesting couple of days in Edinburgh at Jim Boykin’s SEOClass with contrasting presentations from the likes of Lyndon Antcliff, Ammon Johns from Fresh Egg, Brian Turner from Britecorp, Shaun Anderson from Hobo, the extremely entertaining Quadszilla from seoblackhat.com, and of course Jim himself. As ever with these events, the presenters seemed to be learning as much as the delegates, but even so, I’d like to thank Jim and the presenters for their efforts, given that it was a very small class, which was offered as much as anything in support of Jim’s brilliant Internet Marketing Ninjas subscription service. Veterans of this type of conference know that the standards of presentation are going to vary hugely (and they did) but that [...]

How to broadcast an event live on the web

9 Jan 2008: So, my God-daughter called me a few months before her wedding in Canada to ask: “Would it be possible to broadcast the wedding live on the internet for the family back in the UK?” And my answer was: “Er… I’ll find out”. Which led me into the fledgling world of live event streaming on the internet. After a short while Googling for appropriate services, I decided the most usable was Ustream.tv, which, incredibly, was also free to use. I set myself up with an account, and made my first broadcast, using my Mac’s built-in camera. It worked fine! I rang up a friend and got him to “tune in” to me waving at the screen, and all seemed well. So [...]

In-car phonograms – the next big thing?

21 Nov 2007: I’ve just had a demo and an extended test drive in a Lexus RX400h. Very nice, and I’d certainly like one. But why is such a technically advanced car let down by such an antiquated audio system? The dealer kept telling me all about how the “Mark Levinson” label meant audio quality of the highest standard, but he was reduced to mumbling excuses when I asked where the DAB radio was. For goodness’ sake, it’s 2007, surely we shouldn’t have to listen to BBC Radio Five Live on medium wave in a car which costs more than my first house? Quite ordinary in-car audio manufacturers seem able to make complete digital radio/CD units for well under a hundred quid. I [...]

Importing to WordPress from a text file

19 Nov 2007: I had a website of football reports which was managed by a homebrew flat-file database, and it really needed dragging into the 21st century and being managed by WordPress, or something like that. But how to transfer the hundreds of entries, with all their dates and categories? It turned out to be surprisingly easy, assuming you can export from your database in a specific, user-defined format. Wordpress has a whole list of import filters (see the “Manage” tab), each dedicated to a specific format. One of these is “RSS”, which takes an RSS feed and converts it into WordPress posts. That’s the one you need. Here’s the procedure: 1. Create your WordPress blog, which – when new – should have [...]

Born to Jump

9 Nov 2007: I’m always amused when Google’s AdWords ads go wrong. They’re supposed to be “contextual”, assessing the search query and matching the right ads to it. My amusement at coming straight in at number one in the Google search results for “discount booze for tramps” (following a blog post about an off-licence yesterday) turned to even greater amusement to see a column of AdWords ads about trampolines. My first thought was that maybe the word “tramps” confused Google because they don’t use the term in the USA. But tramps like us, baby we were born to run. So clearly they do, at least in New Jersey. Perhaps these trampoline advertisers have all chosen “tramps” as a keyword. Or maybe there’s a [...]

The case of the disappearing login items

9 Nov 2007: I’ve always had a problem that login items disappear under OS X, and it hasn’t gone away with OS X 10.5 Leopard. I’ll add something to the list in the conventional manner, and about 50% of the time, when I next startup the Mac, the application fails to do so – and on investigation, has disappeared from the list. So here’s my home-made solution. Take all the applications out of the login items list and replace them with an “Automator” script. You can then put this in the login items and with any luck it’ll stay there; it did for me. You can also add some nice pauses between each, so the Mac doesn’t go mental trying to open everything [...]

The true cost of that OS X Leopard Upgrade

2 Nov 2007: Let’s get things straight from the start. I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) this week, it was painless, and it’s a worthwhile upgrade (even if some of the interface changes are “insane”). At £79.98 from Amazon UK, it’s not unreasonable, especially as there hasn’t been an OS update for so long. And it comes in the freakiest holographic box I’ve ever seen. But the cost doesn’t stop there. Oh no. Firstly, there’s a great new automatic backup feature called Time Machine – but that needs an external hard drive to work properly (well, it is a backup system). Now, many people already have external hard drives, but chances are that even if you do, you’ll probably think this [...]

Web 1. Everything Else 0.

30 Oct 2007: There was a time when you had to wait for weeks to get a decent review of a new product. Broadcast media has never stepped up to the plate, and only dead trees would do. It may have taken ten years or more for the internet to find a business model which could support in-depth analysis to accompany its immediacy, but there’s no doubt we’re here now. Case in point: the launch of Apple’s new OS X release, Leopard. The software is launched on the Friday, and by the weekend I want to see a decent review. And by that, I mean something unpatronising written by a genuine techie, not something written by a Sunday paper columnist for my Mum’s [...]

How to convert email to RSS for your phone

19 Oct 2007: I came up with a neat workaround this week which might interest those of you who like to get news on your mobile phones, or would like to if it was easier. There’s no chance this is an original idea, but I was pleased with myself, nevertheless. Many new phones (such as my recently-acquired Sony Ericsson W880i) have a neat RSS reader which is a great way of getting information on a cellphone. Despite manufacturers’ claims, web access on mobiles is clunky, so if it’s a chore checking the same website regularly for information on a PC, it’s so fiddly to be out of the question on a mobile. Email alerts are OK, but unless you’re a Crackberry user whose [...]

Music download services compared: a Mac user writes

9 Sep 2007: There is intelligent life out there beyond the iTunes music store, you know. Over the past few months I’ve used two other music download services, mainly because for all its good points, the iTunes music store sells all its music with some godawful “copy protection” system which keeps nagging you about “authorised machines” and once – when I tried to load my music library onto a new Mac – even told me I was no longer allowed to play songs I’d paid out 79p a track for (which in many cases is more expensive than an old-school CD is!). So here are my thoughts on three music download services, from the point of view of a Mac user (although for [...]

Woo. Of course the iPhone had to go in the blender.

11 Jul 2007: Of course, Willitblend? is one of the best examples ever of a corporate blog, and a company using the web to sell its product. And of course they’ve “done” the iPhone and probably got a gazillion hits out of it too. And the presenter is a laugh, even if he’s not exactly the great Dr John P Kilcoyne of Brainiac Science Abuse.

Exclusive: the iPhone Shuffle

2 Jul 2007: No, only kidding. I don’t believe for one moment that I’m the first person in the world to think of this, and I really can’t be bothered to search Technorati to see how many people got there first, but I want a shuffle feature on my iPhone when I get one, eventually. So it rings random mates just for a laugh. Or perhaps even sends random texts to random mates. That’s what I want.

Hands-on Review: Panasonic SD-255 breadmaker – Beat the supermarkets’ cash extraction strategies

11 Jun 2007: So how can owning a breadmaker actually save you significant amounts of, er, bread? Easy. Quoting from my own Panasonic SD-255 breadmaker review (highly recommended, by the way):

Smarter smart playlists

16 May 2007: OK, I think I’ve got my best ever smart playlist worked out for general day-to-day listening. What I want is to hear stuff I haven’t listened to for a long time, or stuff I’ve recently added, but not podcasts or really long tracks.

Motorola Surfboard SB3100 cable modem not up to 10Mb speed

24 Apr 2007: With heavy heart, I’m about to say goodbye to my first, and extremely long-serving, cable modem. I can’t find a birth date for it, but I must have had it the best part of ten years, during which time Cambridge Cable/ntl/Virgin Media have increased speeds from “not that much faster than your old dialup modem, but hey, it’s always on!” to an impressive 10Mb.