Archive for the ‘ All posts ’ Category

Visa ‘Life Flows Better’ – with stolen sounds?

I was lying in bed recently, and caught the new VISA ‘Life Flows Better’ ad. It’s here for your viewing pleasure (YouTube embedded): This is all well and good…but being a massive geek, I noticed something. Play the video above again, and listen to the noise the camel makes at 0:20. Hear that noise? That’s not [ READ MORE ]

Mobile browser detection: WPtouch

Just a quick mention of a fantastic new Wordpress plugin called WPtouch. It acts as a mobile browser/agent detection script and displays Wordpress-based blogs in a more usable mobile-based theme. I’ve installed it on this blog, so from now on if you visit via your iPhone, Blackberry or other mobile device, it’ll use an optimised theme [ READ MORE ]

OMG Affiliate Network flog smut

As a web content type, I know it can be hard to ensure your copy is correct and error-free: hell, I’m sure that once I’ve posted this I’ll spot some typos. Anyhoo, at least I didn’t get it quite as bad as whoever is responsible for sending out the OMG Affiliate Network newsletter: Porn broker? Nice [ READ MORE ]

Site review: Virgin Holidays ‘Weddings’ section

Hello! I’ve not written a scathing review of a website for a while, so I thought I’d drop this little gem on you. For one reason and another, I was recently forced inclined to look for more information regarding weddings abroad – specifically in the Caribbean. Drop ‘caribbean wedding‘ into Google, and the Virgin Holidays (www.virginholidays.co.uk) [ READ MORE ]

New startup: “What Do I Do With This?”

Sorry about the radio silence: been working on something quite interesting in the background, and it’s now pretty much ready to rock! Introducing “What Do I Do With This?” (www.whatdoidowiththis.com), a site dedicated to recycling/reusing surplus building and decorating material. Designed to be used by both individuals and trades alike, it’s aim is to help reduce [ READ MORE ]

Google’s spam team still operational, slap Aviva for dodgy link-building

There’s been speculation recently as to whether Google actually pay attention to dodgy link-building tactics. eConsultancy carried a fairly damning article that implied the Google spam team weren’t paying attention – and judging by the articles, it was true… A bit of recent digging revealed that maybe the spam team have just been held up whilst [ READ MORE ]

Give the gift of Google Chrome

Just spotted that Google are touting a microsite called www.givechrome.com. It’s essentially a fancy ‘email a friend’ mechanism, but it’s been quite nicely done – with options to wrap your present and send a personalised e-card to your friend, informing them of their new present. It’s not ground-breaking, but I like it. Screenshots below! [ READ MORE ]

Site redesign: Alamy.com

In the latter months of 2009 Alamy.com, a stock imagery site, ran a competition to redesign their homepage. That in itself was all well and good: throwing it open to the public and offering cash to the winner is a great way of engaging with their users and – incidentally – getting shitloads of design options [ READ MORE ]

Review of National Rail (www.nationalrail.co.uk)

Travelling a fair distance (120+ miles) each day getting to and from work means the train is really the only method of transport that works for me. As such, I am a regular visitor to the National Rail site (www.nationalrail.co.uk), and have been for a number of years. Predictably (why else would I be mentioning it?), [ READ MORE ]

Duplicate content in search engines

There’re various opinions around how Google and other search engines deal with duplicate content. Google’s comments on the matter give an indication of how they deal with it, and the main takehome points are: They can usually spot unintentional (i.e non-malicious) duplicate content In the above case, Google will simply index the content it feels most relevant [ READ MORE ]