Adobe helping me big time

When I fired up Dreamweaver last time I noticed a small piece on the welcome screen referring to in-context editing.

Being a web designer for local business and such, I  am often asked about the end user being able to update pages themselves. The problem is I find more CMS systems pretty awful and make a hash of any layout design  in place. 

A little flick through the Adobe offering and here I am presented with a wisiwig page being able to edit the text and images from a web browser. In Dreamweaver I can set what is and what isn't editable. 

Just what I was looking for and makes life a whole lot easier, I love it!

http://incontextediting.adobe.com/

Metatag rip offs

Doing my usual placement checking and google checking today, I notice a website come up in the results witha  familiar title.

A little bit more check and I notice that I have a competitor to www.justsalou.co.uk.

Intrigued and after a little digging find my new competitor has decided not only to copy my page description word for word, but also my keywords word for word and in the exact same order.

Time will tell where the copying will end, as this new site has little content at present. I am not even sure it is a problem as such, how does Google fair with this, will it be frowned upon and Justsalou dropped from its clutches due to duplicate content, or will it go unoticed.

Only once before have I noticed any infringement from another website when an image was being lifted and used on another site, that time actually resulted in quite a few visitors gained from the other site after I splashed the JustSalou url across the image, which was then subsequently displayed on their site.

My first competition on justsalou

This week I decided to try a first for me and run an online competition and something to get my teeth stuck into, deciding upon a photo competition on my justsalou website

My first email off to scrounge some prizes resulted in one merchant coming back to me within a few minutes and some giveaway goodies arriving at my door the next day. (thanks to Peter at AttractionTix).

With a couple of days off from my full time job, was an ideal time to start putting the pages together. http://www.justsalou.co.uk/salou_photo_competition.asp Currently writing the comps terms and conditions trying to make it more fun rather than a megger serious competition.

I intend to launch the competition on 1st March, how it will go, I have no idea, never tried this before although seems to work well on other sites. I also think it may give some good content as the entries come in and who knows may get people to stay on the site a little longer. 

Tony Hart - RIP

Sad to see Tony Hart pasing on. He was my creative inspiration from years gone by, even though I never managed to get a pic on the Vision On gallery.

RIP Tony Hart.

What I want...

Firstly on my last post I commented on quick merchant accpetance and how things looked to be getting better.

Spoke too soon... although not realy a problem. Yesterday I receive an email telling me I am on hold with a merchant, one I have to add I was just about to start promoting again on DigitalYou but hey ho.. it seems To have me accepted is too much work so better if I am on hold until I start doing a bit more.

Now... what I want

1. Wouldn't it be nice to extract datafeeds from all merchants just by entering a search to filter it down. i.e. I enter 'television' out comes my CSV datafile, without washing machines, hoovers etc.

2. Banners that get removed or updated when they are out of date. Cannot the Christmas banners be replaced with Valentines etc. To think of it,  the christmas banners yes lots of em, some even Christmas 2007?

3. Self assessment outlawed.

4. Everyone else to stop promoting the same products as me! ;-)

5. two euros to the pound

Quick to go with digitalyou

Over the Christmas break I started to out together digitalyou.co.uk. 

The normal applying to all the merchants I felt would be appropriate. What I noticed compared to the past was how quick 99% of the merchants accepted me to their program. In the past this seemed to take an age, with some of the programs actually closing before they even got around to condsidering my application.

As it was Christmas I expected to have to wait a good few days into the new year, so well done all concerned for speeding things up.

And out of all the merchants I applied to only ONE single merchant declined my application, a cable tv company, oh well 1 out of 25 is not bad!.

The Perfect Roast Spud for Christmas

1. Choose a good quality potato, Maris Piper, King Edward

2. Cut to a good size not too small (or they will go too mushy too quick)

3. Place in boiling water and boil for around 5 minutes, until the outsides of the potato start to soften. 

4. Drain and leave in saucepan, while steaming hot, place a couple of good  size knobs of butter in the pan and put lid on.

5 Shake vigorously until the outsides of the potato have fluffed up and absorbed the now melted butter.

6. Drain to remove any residue liquid and sprinkle with a little salt.

7. leave for an hour (or even two) in a sieve to drain and air dry. Plenty of time to check your stats and have a glass of pre-dinner red.

8. Heat fat in roasting pan to 220degC, place potatos in fat and roast for further 40 min to 1 hour until golden brown and crisp. Remember to baste every 20 minutes or so.

For more taste 10 minute before end of cooking sprinkle with chopped thyme, garlic or red onion or anything you like to add more flavour!.

Merry Christmas everyone.