Sunday, December 09, 2007

Weird or What?

Have you heard this story about Debra Lafave?

Essentially, she was a teacher in Florida who when 23 started shagging one of her 14 year old (male) pupils.

OK, so she gets caught and ends up being sentencewd to three years parole (actually closer to house arrest). Now, two years later, she's working in a restaurant and gets arrested. For breaking her parole.

Was she shagging an underage bus boy or something? Nope, she was talking (yes, talking) to a 17 year old waitress about boys n'stuff.

That law can be an ass, can't it?

Monday, October 29, 2007

Ink and Toner

One of the things that people so often forget about buying a printer or fax machine is that the actual box itself isn't the important point or cost. It's actually the ink or the toner that will cost you far more over the life of the machine.

In fact, many manufacturers actually sell you the machine at a loss, so as to get you hooked on buying their ink. There's plenty of basic printers out there where they sell you the printer, plus the ink jet cartridge, for less than the cost of the replacement cartridge.

So what you actually want to do is be very careful about where you buy your replacement supplies. One extremely good such place is Inkers, where you've got a huge inventory to choose from, great shipping and even better prices.

Given the way that the whole industry works, you owe it to your self to look for the best prices on these things and Inkers is about as good as it gets.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Coupons! Coupons!

Now we all know how and wherre to get our coupons, don't we? Yes, you look in the newspaper, clip the ones you want and then off you go to save money. However, when you're about to go shopping online, thenwhere do you go? You're not going to get online coupons out of the newspaper now, are you? This is where those fine people at Coupon Chief come in.

They offer a serive where you can simply get into their site and download all of the coupons you could possibly need for your online shopping. For example, here's their page of Dell coupons, here's the Target coupon codes and here's the Overstock online discounts.

There's two ways of using this money saving resource: go and look and see what great coupons there are and then use them to save: or, do what I do. I make my decisions on what I want to buy, then I check the site. If they've got a coupon for money off something I've already decided to buy well, that just makes my day.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Getting Your Website Right

Of course, we're all trying to work out how to make money out of this here intarnetweb thing and it can be frustrating trying to work out how to do it. One of the best things to do of course is to go and pick the brains of someone who has already worked out how to do it. If they'll tell you, of course.

One group that will are over here. Their PPC tools page is clear and informative, their SEO tools one equally so. With those two covered you'll know how to make sure that your site turns up in hte engines properly and also how to monetize the resultant traffic.

There's also this very useful page of search engine marketing hints. The point is, it's better to work clever and to do so you'll want to take the advice of those who have been there, done that, before.

So click through those links and see how it's really done!

Friday, August 03, 2007

Toner and Ink Supplies

One of the things you need to know about computer printing is that the printer itself is the cheapest part of the deal. The ink, famously, is more expensive (per ml) than the finest champagne. So it's worth remembering two things about your printer supplies.

The first is that you need to look around to buy them as cheaply as possible. Fortunately, discount toner is a simple thing to find: just go to Inkers for the best prices and deals around. As it costs them the same amount to process a $500 sale as it does a $50 one, they make sure that they offer the best bulk toner deals around. They've also got free UPS ground shipping on al orders, savin you even more money.

The second thing you want to remember is to make sure that you look at the prices of toners and inkjet cartridges before you buy a printer. It's only this way that you can balance the original purchase (or capital) cost againt the ongoing running costs. If you print very little it might make sense to buy a cheap printer with expensive inks. If you print a lot, you might get a lower total cost of ownership by going to the brand wth cheaper ink, whatever the cost of the actual printer.

So, two goo reasons to check out Inkers, either before or after you buy your printer.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Saving Money!

Yes, we all like to do that, don't we? By saving money we can either buy more stuff with our pay check or buy the same amount of stuff and actually put something in the bank. So, if saving money is good how do we manage to do this with the online stores? Doing this normally we all know: cut the coupons out of the newspaper.

Well, actually, you do it just the same way, you get the online coupons. And you do that by going to Coupon Chief where they've got a great selection of savings and discounts for the online stores.

For example, now's the time of year to be looking for home and garden discounts. How about Home Depot coupons, as you're about to do the maintenance now that spring is here? Or maybe you're more into the garden, so you should be looking for Spring Hill discounts?

Whatever it is you're looking for click through the links to see what you can save on today.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Suri, Tom and Katie

If you want to find out more about Katie Holmes then I've got good news for you.

There's a site that has information on Katie Holmes' marriage to Tom cruise, facts and information about them and the baby, Suri.

There are also photos, news stories and even video stories about Katie Holmes.

If you're into celebrity news and even gossip, then it's a muse see site for you.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Hacking away at them

So, should we? I mean baby todgers: shoud we use circumcision or not?

O nhte one side there's the health matters, things like STDs and even penile cancer.

On the other there's the decreased sexual sensitivity that goes with circumcision.

However, that in itself might not actually be a bad idea. In fact, it might even be a good idea and justify circumcision all on its own.

Click through to find out how the moels might be doing everyone a favour.

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Sportsbar Cascais

If you get out to Cascais on your hols this year you'll want toknow where you can find a decent pub or sportsbar in the place.

The Cascais Sportsbar of choice is actually the Beefeater, right on the main square.

They've the usual big screen TVs and associated satellite links and yes, of course they serve a fry up for breakfast.

If you're up for a beer, or to watch the cricket or Wimbledon, this is the place in Cascais you want to go to.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Phil Spector Trial

Not looking good for Phil Spector, is it?

A MAN considered the star witness in the Phil Spector murder trial has described the morning when actress Lana Clarkson died, saying he saw the music producer with blood on his hand, carrying a gun.

Spector then said "I think I killed somebody", chauffeur Adriano DeSouza testified.

For almost two hours on Tuesday, Mr DeSouza described the night of partying that began on February 2, 2003, and ended about 5am the next morning.

He left the nine-man, three-woman jury with the image of Spector leaving his home in Alhambra, Los Angeles, gun in hand, and saying the five words the prosecution views as a confession.

Nope, really not looking good for him.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Optimising for Search Engines

So yes, we've all tried it and all found out that it doesn't quite work that way. The "it" being that exciting new business on the internet.

You've got a great website, cool products and the finest prices. Yet the world is still not beating your door down to thrust their money at you. You see, there's one more step you need, the evisibility search engine optimization campaign.

The thing is, how are people going to find your offer amongst all those billions (yes, literally, billions) of other web pages? As you yourself know from your own use of the net, they use the search engines to find what they're looking for. But few look beyond the first page, meaning that you need to get your site onto that first page of the results to get any traffic. That's what the evisibility search engine optimization campaign is all about.

You can do this via cost per click campaigns or by both optimising your site to be read by the search engines and also creating links to your site to boost your rankings. For more details on how the evisibility search engine optimization campaign works to do this go here to read their fuller description.

But let's just reiterate the important point. Unless you do some work to make your site stand out from the crowd, no one will know it's there and thus no one will come to it.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Steve Ballmer on Google

It takes a certain sort of nerve to attack a company for only being good at one thing when you're worse at that one thing yourself. Also, in news for Steve Ballmer, Google is good at two things, search and advertising:

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer yesterday bad-mouthed Google for being successful at only one business (even though it's a business Microsoft has been trying unsuccessfully to break into). But the target doesn't matter. It could have been Linux. Or Apple. I'm just worn out by the repetition. Ballmer's trash-talking is a tired routine. He needs to get a new act.

For a couple of years now Microsoft has been trying to figure out how Google does it -- how the world's premiere search company provides Web-based services and makes its money by selling advertising. Google has done extremely well at both, and its success has made it the darling of Wall Street.

By contrast, as hard as Microsoft has tried with MSN and its confusing Live announcements, it hasn't done very well at either: Its search services are mediocre, and its Live OneCare antivirus software has famously failed a couple of tests recently.

As far as I can see, Microsoft will never have any success in Web-based, advertising-supported services for two reasons. First, it doesn't trust the model -- Microsoft is unwilling to give away for free any service that might be really useful. And second, it doesn't trust its customers.

It's also true that Microsoft is only good at one thing: controlling the OS market.

Water on Mars

Nasa's made this great find, that there's enough water on Mars to cover the planet, to actually make a planetary sea.

 

MARK COLVIN: There's little in outer space that fires the imagination more than the possibility of life on Mars.
For life there needs to be water, and the latest news from NASA is that there is plenty of that.
A new radar that's measured ice deposits on Mars indicates that there's enough frozen water there to cover the entire planet to a depth of about 11 metres.
The find doesn't bring us any closer to knowing whether there was life on Mars, but it has revived the hopes of some that there could be life on the planet in the future, as Paula Kruger reports.
PAULA KRUGER: It has long been seen as the dry, dusty red planet.
But the latest discovery is pouring a lot of cold water, or, more correctly, ice on that belief.
In a joint effort by NASA, the Italian Space Agency, and the European Space Agency's Mars Express Spacecraft, scientists have discovered the frozen mass on Mars' South Pole is more than three and a half kilometres deep.
Dr Jonathan Clarke is an associate at Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University. He says the find is a welcomed surprise.
JONATHAN CLARKE: Well, people have known about the layer deposits at the pole regions of Mars for a very long time, since the early 70s. Some very spectacular satellite images have been acquired from various missions since then, but we haven't really known what they've been made of. People have suggested there've been layers of dust or layers of ice mixed with dust, or other materials. What this recent finding shows is that they are almost pure water ice, at least 90 per cent pure, which is really very amazing and quite unexpected.

Roll on hte terraforming project!

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

New Directory!

As we should all know by now, the success or not of our efforts on the web depends upon how well we can get our results read by the search engines. Get a decent result, high on the listings, and you can make money. Even if money isn't the aim, visibility still matters, otherwise why are we bothering to do this?

In order to gain that visibility some form of marketing is necessary and the old methods really have been tried to death. Which is why this new directory looks so interesting. Based upon Wordpress software they've been very clever in turning the advantages of blogging software into a benefit to a directory. In effect, a Wordpress Directory.

For example, blogging software includes automatic (or semi- at least) pings, which are what tell the search engines that there's new content for them to spider. The traditional directories don't so this, they are simply static and don't tell anyone at all when the underlying sites have changed.

It looks like a very interesting approach and at a mere $3 per entry into the directory I have a feeling that they will be flooded with applications. Might be worth getting your's in now.

Monday, February 05, 2007

.EU domains

Those companies that have one think they're lovely, yet a majority of companies don't know what they are.

A large majority of British businesses with a .eu domain name believe it to be an effective business tool in a recent survey, while a separate survey found that half of UK businesses do not even know what the .eu domain stands for.

The surveys were both carried out by domain registration and hosting company 1&1 Internet, and found that business sentiment for .eu addresses across Europe was surprisingly positive.

...

The research, though, suggests that the businesses which have adopted European addresses have found it a useful experience. It found that 68 per cent of UK businesses which use a .eu domain thought it was effective, while half of users said that the domain enhanced their business's image. Around 43 per cent said it increased accessibility to vital European markets.

French companies were the most enthusiastic about the addresses, with 88 per cent of them willing to recommend using an address, 75 per cent believing them to be effective and 72 per cent saying that it enhanced their image.

Not surprising that the French companies love them. Have you heard about the bureaucratic hassle you have to go through to get a .FR?

 

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Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Gmail Trademarks?

Now here's a surprise, it's not often that the little guy wins these sorts of suits:

Google has failed to win the right to register the term "Gmail" as a wide-ranging European trademark.

The Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM), the body which is responsible for European community trademarks, rejected Google's appeal after a stiff battle with German-born venture capitalist Daniel Giersch.

This is the way the law is supposed to work:

Giersch, who has held his trademark for six years, has been fighting this battle since Google launched its email service in 2004. The German entrepreneur founded a same-day mail delivery service called GMail designed to offer a swifter alternative to the Deutsche Post.

Last year, a district court in Hamburg already handed Giersch victories at both the preliminary and final stages of the litigation and Google was ordered to remove all Gmail references from its German service.

It's just that it doesn't always do so. Good for the courts.

 

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