sears-online

Broadband Woes

2011-04-03T09:55:00.003+01:00

After being with TalkTalk for the last few years and a broadband connection of around 1.8mb it was time for a change, mainly due to the incredibly slow connection in the evenings.

As a Sky subscriber I decided upon them for my nexct connection. A new line from BT was installed in January. February saw me connected to Sky at around 1.8mb again, but with no loss of speed in the evenings.

After the DLM tests and 4 weeks of steady broadband it decided to give up with constant disconnections and connecting back at around 0.25mb. Sky customer services were quick to answer and the end result after a few calls was an engineer visit by BT. BT fitted a new pre-filtered socket and again everything was good for about 5 hours. A call from Sky on theanswerphone stated 'Your connection is stable now, so we are going to tweak the line for best speed and close the case'.

Well that did it. Back to normal 0.19mb and constant disconnections. More calls to Sky.

YES I am in the master socket

Yes I am using the correct filters

NO I am not using an extension lead.

So I get a new router sent. 4 days later on goes the new router. No difference. Call Sky again, another BT visit ordered. He rewires the line all the way back to green box, and says the line can handle 2mb. But still the problems persists. Another router is organsised from Sky. 4 days later it arrives and again a connection that is unstable and eventually settles at 0.25mb.

This is where I gave on up Sky and got them to give me a MAC code to migrate out to another ADSL supplier.

I have now re-ordered broadband with BT for my sins. More expensive but hey lets see if it works. Meanwhile while I wait for my new connection I suffer my excellent 0.2mb connection.

Vodafone, Customer service.... or not.

2010-08-17T14:39:00.004+01:00

Below can be seen the message which is what i had to result to wrinting to get any response from so called customer service at Vodafone UK..

Some 4 months ago I called to cancel my contract. I was told I had to write which I did so, I also emailed. All three methods of contact have been ignored. I now have a letter from CapQuest to whom I am also replying. Please cease this account immediately as it is now out of term and has been for some while.

I expect a full refund of all billed sums since my initial request. I no longer require the contract or insurance as I have now moved to a company with ACTUAL customer service o2.

If you wish to persist in ignoring matters than I will gladly allow this to go to county court where I will also be seeking damages. This email has been witnessed and I expect a prompt response within seven days

After a bit of back and forth twittering to @VodafoneUK and submitting emails on their website, I finally get the following response.....

I`m sorry to learn that you`re unhappy with regards to the charges on your account.

Just to let you know that to cancel the account, we require 30 days written notice either through a letter or through an email from the account holder.

If we have not received any notice from the account holder to cancel the account then the account remains active even after the contract is completed.

Furthermore, Vodafone will not place a disconnection date at the end of the contract terms because if this happened many customers would be disconnected when they clearly want to carry using the service beyond the initial contract term.

This is the reason why Vodafone places the onus on the customer to inform us of any changes in circumstance or any intention to disconnect.

Having checked your account and I`m sorry to inform you that I`m unable to find any letter or email on your account stating the cancellation of your account. Just to let you know that if we have received any letter or email then it would have been updated on your account and some one would have replied to you.

However, I`ve spoken with my manager and as a one off case, I`ve scheduled your account for cancellation on 31st August 2010. I can also confirm that the charges on your account are correct and I`m unable to credit any charges back to your account.

Mr. Grant, once the contract for the above number is cancelled, you`ll receive a final bill on your normal bill generation date. The final bill will consist of the line rental and the usage charges (if any) until 31st August 2010.

I can also confirm that your account is suspended since 16th May 2010, by our Collections Team due to non-payment of the following bills:

- Bill for the month of April 2010 of £52.93
- Bill for the month of May 2010 of £50.47
- Bill for the month of June 2010 of £50.46
- Bill for the month of July 2010 of £50.47
- Bill for the month of August 2010 of £50.47

The overdue balance on your account is £254.80. Furthermore, I can see that your account is now handled by external debt collections agency. In order to make the payment of the above overdue balance, please contact the following debt collections agency:

- Cap Quest Debt Collections Agency

Well there you go... as a 'one off case', arn't I the lucky one!, my reply to them is below, while I look into this further.

Thank you for your reply, but as I have previously said, I complied with everything you asked, and it now seems that as you failed to reply to me on the previous communications that I am now left with the debt. I am not disputing the onus on the customer to cancel the contract or the fact that 30 days notice is required, which is what I have tried to do on numerous occasions, by telephone and writing.

Indeed I have received communications from Cap Quest and have also contacted them, (surprise surpirse no reply).

As from now I will escalate the complaint, through whatever means required.

Regards

(Nike) RED Lace Up Save Lives

2010-03-13T09:28:00.007Z

This weekend see the UK, Spanish & Italian football leagues turn (RED) with the special edition (NIKE) RED T90 Ascente ball to be used in all home fixtures.

To support for the 'Lace Up Saves Lives' campaign designed to raise funds and awareness for the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa. The (Nike) RED ball is a specially designed T90 Ascente - the ball currently used by all three leagues.

Previsously the Arsenal v Manchester United game at the Emirates stadium turned RED in support, with red goal nets, and players lining up in red jackets and laces.

Special edition Nike RED Laces, Footballs and Jackets are available from Kitbag, Turn RED and show your support. CLICK HERE

New Pay Monthly Tarriffs from O2

2010-02-27T16:27:00.001Z

26th February saw O2 review their pay monthly tarriff offerings.

On an 18 month standard contract the some of the tarriffs on offer are:

£15.00 per month - 50 inclusive minutes and unlimited Texts
£20.00 per month - 100 minutes and unlimited Texts
£30.00 per month - 300 minutes and unlimited Texts + Free Bolt-on

On an 24 month standard contract the some of the tarriffs on offer are:

£10.00 per month - 50 inclusive minutes and unlimited Texts
£15.00 per month - 100 minutes and unlimited Texts
£25.00 per month - 300 minutes and unlimited Texts + Free Bolt-on

The plans offering 300 minutes or more and offer a free bolt on, this can be:

Unlimited 02 to 02 calls
Unlimited landline calls
Unlimited web

For mobile users that are currently on pay-as-you-go the £10 per month offering could be a usefull alternative, with the 50 free minutes, unlimited texts and you can choose a free phone such as the LG POP, Sony Ericsson Naite and Nokia 6303 and others.

Click For more on the latest tarriffs from O2

Cheap Network Storage with the WD My Book

2010-02-19T10:26:00.002Z

I received a report of some problems with an old server at one of the offices I look after.

The server was Linux based and old used as a shared file store, and also a DHCP server.

After looking around at possible solutions. I decided to pull the service and its 80GB drive, configure the wireless router as the DHCP server and look for an alternative storage solution. As per usual costs had to be kept to a minimum.

The item I went for was a Western Digital 1TB My Book World Edition. A simple NAS and media server. I was surprised at the size of the unit which was little bigger than a standard external drive.

Set up was simple, connect the drive to the router, insert the CD and setup through the menu system. The drive allows me to have log on private storage for each employee, a public folder and easy to set up file folders all on the hefty 1TB drive.

Within a couple of hours all the old server data was put onto the world book and all the shares set up and back in operation. Looks tidy, takes up far less room, and even allows me to add more storage via a USB port on the back.

The cost for this unit was just under £100+VAT and fully recommended.

More info on the Western Digital My Book

Thumbs up for Barclays insurance!

2010-01-01T22:19:00.005Z

Shortly before Christmas my son spilt a cup full of Cola onto his MacBook, now it was totally dead, and thought well thats that.

After a few days I realised that maybe it would be covered on house contents insurance, check the policy and hmmm no accidental damage cover, but I did have possessions cover.

Called the insurance company and was told no, laptops are not covered, deskops were ok but not portable equipment. At first I took their word for it, but on reading about the personal posessions cover decided to give them another call.

This time I was told (by a different person) of course my insurance covered it, they took my details and told me the people handling it would call me in a few days to arrange everything (this was 23rd December) due to the date I thought I would not hear anything until the new year. An hour later they called, took the details and said Macbook would be collected on the 29th December.

29th December came but no collection, however at 7pm on the 30th they DPD turned up packaged away the laptop and told me I would get a call in a week or so.

31st Decmeber 9:30 AM some 14 hours after collection I was called to say the Macbook had been inspected and deemed uneconomical to repair, paid my £75 excess and was told a new replacement MacBook had been ordered and will be will me on 5th January.

After the initial rejection, I have to say this is the best service I have ever experienced.

My shopping online....

2009-12-12T14:21:00.003Z

Quite surprised this year with buying online, although I have always preferred to get out to the shops and buy myself rather than order online, but this year I decided to do a bit more online, did I save money? of course!

My fist buy was WWE Smackdown v Raw 2010 for PSP a little hunting around and I found this at Game for £15.95 just about half price.

My second item was Need for Speed for Xbox 360, Gamestation came up trumps here at an amazing £24.95

Off to sportsdirect.com where this time I purchased World cup replica ball at £12.99 (£2.00 less than most places) and Nike Mercurial Veloci V Junior SG for £24.99 another good saving. What impressed me most about this was that I placed the order Wednesday lunchtime and the order was delivered Thursday lunchtime.

A Kodak ESP 3250 Printer from Currys although not ordered online, I reserved to pick up and saved £8.00

One thing I did purchase instore was an iPod touch 32GB, which as my wife works for Sainsburys we used her discount card and got 15% off, the bargain here was I also got a £25.00 itunes gift card free with the multi-buy offer. ipod touch and gift card £195.00

So not a bad shop this week, with good savings too... Thanks merchants!

Good or Bad 2009

2009-12-06T08:05:00.002Z

An bit of an dodgy / slow start to the year. Especially with Justsalou website, which I thought would have done better at the start of the year when people are thinking about their holidays.

Come March things started to roll and I soon started to see it was not going to be that bad after all, with the site now in its second full year. 2008 saw 13184 visits and 43675 page views with 2009 to date coming in at 23,814 visits and 78,332 page visits, which considering the Euro and the recession I was quite pleased with.

Last year I decided to have a go at the Gift and presents market, nothing big, more of 'something to do' than anything else. In November this year I decided to have a play around again with JustThese, much happier with it now and just need to get some content on there. An ond link from the TimesOnline christmas gift guide for 2008 is getting more visitors to the site than it did last year, even though the product it was linking to is no longer available on there.

Most visitors from Google are for the phrase 'gifts under £5.00' which I seem to be placed No2 and No.3 for so can't be too bad. As for sales nothing great as yet, but there are sales and good commission sales too with the highest priced sale from the site at £154.95.

All in all not a bad year, with better results than 2008 so I cannot grumble, but most of all it has given me that push to carry on for a 2010.

New broadband new router - Solved...I hope!

2009-08-29T21:58:00.002+01:00

With the problems I hve been experiencing with broadband lately, it was time to sort out a bit of fallover security. Looking around the different suppliers I decided to go with BT this time and get a new line installed and broadband together. I was amazed BT said this was going to be completed within 7 day, new line, new broadband and install.

Keeping my exisitng broadband with fixed IP addresses, the idea was to split the LAN with servers etc on the fixed IP's and the desktops using private IP addressing. The next task was to find a suitable router to achieve this. The router that was recommended was the Draytek 2820n Wireless router.

Now tis router is a remarkable bit of kit allowing a second ADSl connection to be added (this can even be a 3G wireless dongle). The router also offers static nat and a host of routing features that will suit me just fine. The best amazing thing about the Draytek 2020n is that it comes in at under £190.

Take a look at the Draytek 2820n

Crap service, Crap ISP's

2009-08-25T22:00:00.002+01:00

Over the last few months I have spent weeks of it battling with an ISP about broadband connections so bad they were off for hours on end. My calls to support were met with, change router, change filter, time and time and time again. Whenthat failed I am told it must be BT they supply the line, so I am left with the dilema of getting BT to check the line (at my cost) no problem found. I am advised to try a different brand of router, another £80 down the drain.

In the end I fire off an extreme email telling them how bad their service was and that paying £49.99 for business class broadband was a joke as my free Talk Talk broadband was faster and worked perfectly with no problems at all, I then concluded I was about to change another provider for our four sites.

Next day, I get an email from support telling me they changed my adsl profile and all will be fine now. (to which it has). All the b*****ks and then then put it right, not bad for something that they supposedly cannot do anything about.

This week, our email provided notified us the server had failed and there was no email server for a day, emails from two days had been lost and all archived email which some of my customers use via webmail system was also lost. I could have it back from backups but this will take days I am told and any email that come in meanwhile will be overwritten by the back up restore.

The email supplier also notified us they have no fall over system or backup email server. More absolute b*****ks.

Sometimes I wish some of these companys did not make it through the recession.

Adobe helping me big time

2009-05-05T08:13:00.002+01:00

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

2009-02-23T23:01:00.002Z

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

2009-02-18T13:56:00.002Z

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

2009-01-18T21:39:00.001Z

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...

2009-01-07T11:29:00.002Z

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

2009-01-05T12:56:00.002Z

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

2008-12-18T13:23:00.003Z

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.

justthese - getting out of a hole.

2008-11-16T09:40:00.003Z

For a good while now I was intending to get somoething up and running in the gift and gadget area, but never quite had the time. Still not fully there yet again lack of time, but justthese is taking shape.

One problem I created for myself was restricting the products to everything under £25.00, I thought it was a good idea at the time, and to be honest started to climb into google for the under £25.00 phrases.

The problem was that not only all the product filtering I had to do but in reality the products left were not that inspiring. I kept seeing new thing hitting the market place and everyone jumping on them but ahhhh everything seems to be over £25.00.

With beanbags, slankets, ride on dinosaurs and some cool gift video content from buyagift I wanted to edge out my pages. So in goes 'A bit more'.

In future I will try not to restrict myself so much and think through things a little better, buy hey by Christmas 2009 those under £25.00 phrases hopefully will be gone....

No issues with issuu.com

2008-11-16T09:32:00.003Z

The other day I was introduced to issuu.com (pronounced issue). I web portal where you could publish you pdf files into an alternative format for on-screen reading.

I often have to send our our companies PDF files for marketing, normally these are given out in printed format.

I gave issuu.com a go and was quite impressed with the result. My first try at this can be seen clicking on the link below.

http://issuu.com/salou/docs/literature-pack

Was easy to use, free to use and worked well.

A hell of a week..

2008-10-16T23:02:00.003+01:00

So a couple of weeks ago I am ready to go on a freebie holiday courtesy of Sunsine, but sods law sticking its nose in put an end to that with my wife going off on a singles holiday with the NHS.

My full-time (non-affilaite job) is buzzing at the moment with some drastic changes going on and keeping me on my toes in the worlds of Windows 2003 servers, phone systems and cat5 cables.

I also decided to give the gift thing a spin as the festive season is approaching and set up justthese.co.uk it has been around a few weeks but with little being done with it and nothing on Google. The last few days I have spruced it up a little and Google is getting to grips with it and the visitors have started.

Looking at the stats, I see the strange google searches...

mysterio fortune telling baby

andralok

They emant nothing to me, until I searched a little deeped to find out what tey were, it wasn't until I started searching that I realised I was listing delecacies such as...

Milk Chocolate Naughty Bits

Candy Cock Ring

and Jelly Boobs

tis amazing what is in them feeds.....

fscore running - track youth football scores and goals

2008-08-26T12:56:00.003+01:00

I was finally able to get fscore ( www.fscore.co.uk ) up and running late last night after working my way through the first bug list.

I know there will be plenty more, and there is a lot more to I want add to the site as well.

Fscore started purely for personal use by myself to keep track of my sons footie scores and goal tally. It seem to work quite well so developed it a bit more to what it is now and opening it up to anyone that may want to use it.

Although the purpose of the site was not for it to be an affiliate website like any website if it can build up the visitors then there are possibilities. Hence why I added the sportsshop pages, very simple use of a few feeds to try and bring in the relevant products to the site.

Now just have to put it about a bit and see if I can attract a few of the hundreds of thousands youth football players around the UK to use it.

Ryanair blocks 'illegal' bookings

2008-08-08T23:03:00.003+01:00

So Ryanair are not happy with certain 'scraping' of flight by internet travel companies and threaten to cancel flights of passengers already booked.

As quoted on the BBC ...

Ryanair is to cancel thousands of its own customers' bookings after they were made through internet travel agents whose activities it says are illegal.

Full Story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7549547.stm

ABTA are quoted as saying Ryanair are being "foolish and unreasonable" and I think I have to agree, low cost carriers as well as main airlines are starting to struggle many have cut their winter flight schedule. Now by doing this to passengers of their own airline can surely only make things worse for them.

Surely bookings are bookings whether direct through their own website or a second party website, a pretty lame excuse is given of slowing down the booking process for passengers booking though the Ryanair website.

Or is this a way of ridding passengers of half full flights and allowing them to cancel a few more flights.

What significance of Google sitelinks

2008-08-04T22:57:00.002+01:00

So Google webmaster tools tells me I have site links for www.justsalou.co.uk , up to the weekend i only had 3, now I have 8.

Now I suppose 8 is better than 3, but what of it? I cannot seem to see these, so how do others.

Does anyone know what affect this has on visitors? My only observation I can see since I have these links is that clicks for PortAventura tickets has gone down, and clicks for hotels has gone up, not just hotels but specific names of hotels.

Visitors are up, conversions better, and for some reason higher value sales, but why? I cannot tell you as I have no clue as to what goes through that Googles mind.

A night off from the PC and locked up.

2008-07-03T07:56:00.004+01:00

After the threat of manky weather yesterday evening and the fact it turned out rather nice. I decided a night off was in order and a drive out to some local woods for a walk.

These woods surround the old USAF Chicksands base in Bedfordshire, it is also slowly being cut down and destroyed (Centre Parcs here they come).

So park the car, not a care in the world, youngun climbing trees and having a good time.

Wandering back to the car on this lovely light night at 7:30pm (not really late) . SHOCK, there is my car, lonesome in the car park and the barrier padlocked shut! Imspecting the gate and lock I notice the bit of paper hanging on the gate witht he words scrawled 'LOCKED AT 7PM'.

Sheer panic by littleun and the missus.

A little moving of tree stumps and brambles and 30 minutes later we were free!.

Woods locked up at 7pm on a summers night....must be Britain!

Next time I will stay in and check my stats

Stealing my pics

2008-06-29T10:15:00.005+01:00

In the webstats for justsalou I notice a lot og hits from http://www.eekjes.mygb.nl/

I take a look and find it is because they are lift an image from http://www.justsalou.co.uk/

So....A little bit of renaming and this....

Becomes this...on their website..

well... every little helps.

Up and Down and all over the show

2008-06-10T09:57:00.003+01:00

After what I thought was a promising start in Affiliate Marketing, strange things started to happen to JUSTSALOU for no apparent reason.

From climbing my way through Google all of a sudden I disappear, from 60 organic searches a day to zilch overnight. OK, Google throws a wobbly now and then.

When the Google traffic stopped, the next day traffic starts from Yahoo (not a lot just a little).

Fear sets in that I have done something really bad and have been penalised, but... with only a minor amount of traffic the sales still happen, in fact things got a little better.

Have to say here I am only a little fish in the market, I set myself a target of £20,000 in sales and £500 commission for the first year.

After 10 months I have £23,000 in sales and £1150 commission, so pleased so far.

Back to the search engine thingy, the last few days has seen the Google traffic return, around 110 visitors all organic. (i don't do ppc), and also a good deal of returning visitors to the website.

I was also pleased to see a broader range of search terms heading to my site (after a reshuffle and update of the pages and menus).

The problem, not a single sale from this traffic, and click-through down too, Page hits for the relevant searches looks OK, and the traffic looks well targeted.

So do I leave it, do I fiddle around, do I completely ignore and move on to one of the many other sites I want to get running.

I don't think I shall ever know..!

Sunshine and definately no showers - Mission #7

2008-04-29T21:44:00.008+01:00

There has been a lot of Sunshine lately, with a certain company causing a stir in the affiliate marketing arena. A good stir though.

They gang over at Sunshine.co.uk have hit the travel market with a certain rush, that has got people not only talking but building their first travel sites.

The sunshine.co.uk affiliate marketing incentives are real incentives with rewards that will give you your own dose in sunshine. We are not talking putting up the odd banner here, these guys give you everything you need to get your travel site on the road to success. Product feeds, dynamic banners, customisable and white label search boxes, rss feeds, email templates...the lot. Oh and not forgetting staff that do not seem to sleep.

The last few days I spent trawling their site for a cheap holiday, this was in aid of one of their incentives 'Mission 7'.

The simplicity of the sunshine website also made this a pretty simple task, although by the end I was going a bit cross eyed.

The best bit was receiving an email from Chris C at Sunshine.co.uk informing me I had won, I was amazed at this but soon started to realise I also had gained a free holiday but also the problem of knowing what to do with me 8yr old lad while I was sunning it up in Majorca. Again sunshine came to the rescue and threw in a ticket for him as well. So now I have a free holiday and an 8 year old with a big grin.

Chris got us booked up in a jiffy, with an upgraded apartment, good flights and transfer as well. So thanks again Chris and all at sunshine.co.uk.

And lastly a quick word to the other travel merchants.... look and learn!

Time for me to change to AM

2008-04-20T09:44:00.003+01:00

Over the last three to four years, I have been dabbling around in web design for local companies, (and some not so local). The amount of hours put in for the reward that came has become unjustified especially when there is so much I want to do with my affiliate marketing.

I am still new to affiliate marketing and learning day by day, each sale that comes prompts me to do a bit more.

This week see my commission so far pass through the £1000, I know it is not much compared to the majority of souls in affiliate marketing, but it is enough for me to say goodbye to web design and hello to putting in more hours to developing sites for myself.

I realise the amount of hours I put in will probably go up, but its still nice to see those sales click up.

Sunshine's working hard to get that tan

2008-04-16T16:04:00.004+01:00

The people over at sunshine.co.uk have been working hard lately promoting their new affiliate scheme and throwing incentives at its affiliates and would be affiliates left right and centre.

Macbook Air's, Trips to Barbados, and undercover spying trips to the Costa's are some of their latest carrots put before us.

As travel companies go, they seem pretty clued up, the Sunshine site itself is easy to use, offers good flight and hotel selection and now I hear even hotel transfers too.

I first made contact with Chris at Sunshine when he replied to a cry of help for my own www.justsalou.co.uk website, and again what he told me did make sense and is proving to make sense in the number of visitors to the site and also the time on site they spend.

What Chris doesn't know yet is I will be beating at his door again shortly, with some help for hotel pages.

As soon as sunshine.co.uk was put to market, Chris and the gang at Sunshine were there with hotel feeds, destination feeds, shortly followed with search boxes, special offer banners tailored to what you want and even code to prepare your own email marketing.

The end result of all this is an affiliate scheme that is user friendly with all the info you need to get into travel, whether you want to promote a broad range of destinations or that little niche destination that you want to push, and also enough info to make me want to push more and get on with it.

Nokia N95 @ O2 - Free on £25.00 month tarrif

2008-03-16T11:43:00.004Z

I have now taken delivery of my Nokia N95. Looking around the O2 website at the phones available I opted for the N95 to replace my O2 ICE.

My package was a two year contract, with 400mins a month and 1000 Free Text, also free O2 to O2 calls, the price £25 which included the Nokia N95 for free.

The phone itself is quite chunky and solid, good spec, easy to use and allows me to pick-up my email as well as browse the web. (although I have never been a fan of web browsing on small screens).

It is worth looking at all the tarrifs and phones as there are many combinations of tarrif and length of contract that can give you the phone your looking for, and with contracts from £15.00 per month and a free phone it is worth a look.

Visit O2 for great offers

Wicked and Sound of Music 30%!!!!!!

2008-02-25T13:21:00.002Z

A superb offer from DiscountTheatre, 30% off!!!!! both Wicked and Sound of Music.

This is for a strictly limited time.

Buy Tickets

Broadband on the Move

2008-02-23T18:55:00.003Z

I have looked at the 'broadband on the move' principal before but had been put off by the very high cost and poor download limits for your monthly fee.

It has now started to come of age, with USB modems. Simply pop the SIM card into the modem and plug the modem into the USB port of your laptop or PC and you are basically ready to go.

No wires, no having to be in a WI-FI enabled area. With monthly data allowances of between 1GB and 10GB and monthly tariffs as low as £10, it's a great time to get mobile broadband enabled.

Available on a choice of carriers, such as 3, T-Mobile and Orange and on a payment plan to suit you. ... some plans even offer a free laptop! (p&p to pay)

Check out mobile broadband now. CLICK HERE

Safer Internet Day

2008-02-12T09:58:00.000Z

With an 8 year old boy learning about the ways of IT and the internet at school, this BBC news item caught my eye.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7239395.stm

I admit to cringing a little each time he sits at the PC at home, typing in various words into Google to aid his homework, and always worried on what pages are going to pop up.

After the half term, he will be learning to send emails and further internet searching skills. How long before they teach affiliate marketing.

Premier League Abroad?

2008-02-09T08:16:00.000Z

So the Permier League want to take top flight English football abroad for 'Global Games' supposedly to give the league more recognition.

Some things appear to me to be wrong with this, the first 'English Football' which to be honest is more global than English to begin with. So many player bought in from abroad it is a bit of a joke to English players.

Then we already have global football, it is called the World Cup, true England are pretty crap at it. (oh I better mention 1966 here).

Then there are the fans, the fans that have to pay overpriced tickets to watch their favourtie team, the ones that support and put the money into the clubs.

It seems the only reason for this is to get MORE money in from the rights to games, and probably end up with fewer games being able to be watched. Current I subscribe to Sky Sports to watch premier league games, this season I find I had to subscribe to Setanta as well that is if I wanted to watch the other premier league games. So with my £55 sat tv subscriptions a month, and the odd visit to Emirates to watch Arsenal it all adds up to a pretty penny.

When are the people behind the league going to do something for the supporters as opposed to making even more millions.

My own answer to this to promote the leage further is for the season to be ended with a summer tournamount, running after the season has finished. Nice weather (perhaps) keeps the players fit, and give the game year long activity. Why take it abroad, there is already the European cup, Chamions League, EUFA cup and World cup.

Dump the old farts behind the Premier League management and get some real activity going to promote football, not promote the rights for more millions.

Great days out at Half term and Easter

2008-02-07T20:28:00.000Z

For great days out and great value tickets visit www.justtix.co.uk, theme parks, zoo's or maybe a day in London.

Email, EDI, Usernames, Spam, its getting too much.

2008-01-16T15:54:00.000Z

During the normal office hours I look after the IT for an engineering company, not big but spread over 4 offices.

Around 35 email accounts all bringing in spam by the bucket load on a daily basis, when we try to block, ALWAYS there is an important email go missing, It seems to be getting to the stage where the viability of true business email is going down the pan.

We have customers that required invoices delivered electronically, (we have to pay for this privilege too), the main system of one big client constantly mucks up, invoices not received, receipts not sent back, usually result in submitting paper copies... on one occasion the clients own accounts people told us they had no access to the electronic invoices.

It would not be so bad if there was one system, but no, different clients use different systems and vendors for EDI, and all demand we use their system.

Coupled together with the vast amount of user names, passwords, security certificates it seems we are getting bogged down in the world of IT, but with little benefit.

The paperless office is getting full of reminder post it notes and checklists to cover the errors elsewhere in the system.

We have now managed to implment the filing of job packs electronically as PDF's after scanning the engineers worksheets and job paperwork... now what to do with the black sacks of shredded paper which seems to be more than before it was shredded.

My headaches this week, iIE6.0. and product feeds

2008-01-13T09:41:00.000Z

This week has been a bit iffy to say the least with www.justsalou.co.uk.

First the increase in traffic for the new year surprised me a bit, not massive traffic, but a massive increase on what there was. A bit of tarting up around the website and a few menu changes, Opera o, Firefox ok, IE7.0 ok, I was soon told of IE6.0 and no content showing, Ahhhhhhhhhh, a day or so and this was fixed.

Next up I noticed a big increase on clicks on a couple of products, but no sales. Checking this out I notice a content with is showing one price but on click through the price rises from £39 to £50, checking anouther supplier and notice the same increase, but also notice the product completely removed from the feed. On the price issue surely the content windows should be updated the same? does not look good.

On correcting the price issues (removing them) two sales followed for that product within hours.

As a travel website, justsalou has the usual flights, hotels, car hire, transfers, it also has tickets for the local theme park. 90% of the traffic to justsalou is for either theme park tickets or transfers, the odd 1 or 2 hotel room is booked but thats it, no flights, no car hire. So its tinket time again to see if I can get traffic and clicks on the other items on the website.

Free wii jackets

2008-01-13T09:29:00.000Z

Aching elbows and shoulders, but no more head bashes. Nintendo are now offering free silicone jackets for your wii remotes.

I received mine last friday and have to say they feel quite good on the remote, but the best thing about them is the slightly better noise they remotes make when kids drop them on laminate floors.

Something for nothing, that I find usefull and do the job. Get yours on the wii website

BBC Micro - Where I started

2007-12-29T08:28:00.000Z

Back in the 80's I started peeing around with computers. Today I see that one of the designers of the BBC Micro is honoured, well done to Steve Furber, of the University of Manchester, is made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7162935.stm

This machine had a massive 32k memory and a 6502 processor. These are the days when Watford Electronics were in Watford, in fact the first micro we bought was from there an Acorn Atom that came in kit form with 0.5k of memory. I remember travelling 25 miles to Watford Electronics to buy the 0.5k memory upgrades. The Atom's keyboard even had to be assembled key by key.

When the BBC Micro arrived we were presented with colour computing for the first time and we started on our first projects. With my brother doing the assemble code and me doing the graphics we launched two games through Kansas City systems, Turbo and Tomahawk.

looking around the net these can still be found for download and run on a PC using a BBC Emulator. http://www.beebgames.com/games.php?company=150&start=21

The BBC Micro was developed by Acorn for schools and also had it's own weekly TV show.

Another curious feature of the BBC Micro was a speech synthesis chip, this gave the micro a real voice and a voice that was English accent and with a clarity that outshines many of today's voice systems. I seem to remember it was the BBC's own Kenneth Kendal that had his voice digitsed for this system.

But the most aspiring point of the BBC Micro was the BBC Basic language, which was easy to program with quick results and really did give me a good start in logic and what computers had to offer.

Does Christmas seem tired this year...

2007-12-19T12:40:00.000Z

Done the Christmas shopping, battled my way around the town centres, and browsed away online.

One thing that I seem to notice this year is how tired everywhere seems to look. The supermarkets have half hearted efforts, low stock etc.

The main toy stores look just as bad, half of the items I would not give to anyone with the packaging looking like its been opened many times.

Computer superstores look like they cannot be bothered to re-stock the shelves.

No matter where I seem to go, the customer service is poor, stock is poor, and the general look is shabby. I do not remember a year when so many 'top' items are out of stock or withheld from stock only to be sold as priced up packages.

Maybe it is just me but there just seems to be no sparkle this year. I now wonder what the January sales will bring, will there be anything left to sell, would anyone actually want to buy the remains of this Christmas.

Ding Dong Merrily oh *sigh*

Size is everything whatever the years

2007-11-26T12:45:00.000Z

This week had a few problems with the height of my 7 year old son. He is 154cm.

After winning a competition, the prize was a kids jacket. They called to ask what size, I said he is 7 but in 10 to 12 year old clothes. They completely wrote this off stating their own child was a 'big' 7 and that a 7 year old size would fit fine.

The prize turns up and was tiny, we gave it to someone who was 5.

Next I try to buy a Nike thermal sports top, (an expensive vest) for his football. Bought a 10 year olds size and it just fits him. (had to buy the Reebok one in the end, no Nike's left much to my sons disgust).

Next up was a new bike for his birthday, looking through many websites and the like could not really find what wouold be the right size, but had made my mind up the 24inch bike form Halford would do it.

In the end, I decided to take him with me to get the bike just to check the size. At the shop I get 'a 24inch bike will be too small for him' this bike is supposed to be for 8 to 12 year olds. I ended up buying a Gents ATB bike with 26inch wheels a full size adult bike, and... its the right size.

It is time to abandon the sizing of thing by childs age, and go purely by height of the child, an expensive week in the life of a child.

Medical Science

2007-11-23T13:10:00.001Z

As some of you know, I am currently on the work-up program to donate a kidney to my wife. A shed load of test were done on Monday. With good results I am pleased to say, but... some of the things they found out.

I have been bitten by a dog? (Toxicplasmosis)

I have had chicken pox.

and I drank too much wine the night before the blood tests. (Haemaglobin)

I don't have Syphilis

And apart from a hyperfiltering kidneys (which is good i am told), and a bit high on the Colestrol, I am healthy and can feel that scalpel getting nearer.

The web and small small businesses

2007-11-21T13:11:00.000Z

An intresting article on the BBC Business website, 'Do small firms really need a website?'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7096900.stm

It claims that no more than half of the UK's small to medium businesses have a web presence, this is according to the Federation of Small Businesses.

Theres a section on the concerns of one business worried that their business might grow too fast and they wold not be able to cope. Another states they did not receive a single phone call from a customer in the nine months since their website went live.

My own experience of providing web design, see the majority of enquiries from new start-ups as opposed to established businesses wanting to get onto the net.

I started to offer and leg-up onto the net with a single page, domain and email address package at under £100. Again this never seems to get taken up, yet I get enquiries from people wishing to spend hundreds of pounds on websites that sometimes they do not really need r even know they need.

It takes all sorts, and there will always be a stay hard group that will do allthey can to avoid the net.

So the iPhone has descended upon us

2007-11-09T21:18:00.000Z

With todays launch of the Apple iPhone, the television news channels appear to relish the story, showing off the phone and showing the queues of people eager to get their hand on it. There was even a clip about the hacking of the new phone.

Yes it looks good, but at what cost? It is expensive, and comes with a simple low-res camera compared to other offerings, there is also the question of the lack of 3G.

Myself I went for the new LG Viewty, better camera, 3G and free on O2 £35 tarrif.

Oh it has a touch screen too.... Click Here to View the Viewty

Re-cycling? Carbon Footprint? or load of rubbish?

2007-11-03T19:51:00.000Z

Here in North Hertforshire we have just moved to rubbish collection once every two weeks. One week general rubbish is collected the next re-cycling and garden waste.

What they failed to mention was that they changed the way the collection were made and instead of the wheelie bins being collected from the front of the house, they now need to be at the end of the parking space. This resulted in the rubbish not being collected for two weeks.

Now the new collections have begun, and this week its re-cycling week three bins lined up one for paper, one for glass and one for garden waste and cardboard. Glass and paper collected but alas this week it was the turn of the brown compost bin to be ignored.

Fed up of complaining it now looks as if the re-cycling and green issues concerned with all this are in fact thought of in second place with cost and time in first, but then I thought this is one of the things the council tax was to pay for?

A couple of years back I also recieved a formal letter of complaint from the North Herts Council regarding trade waste in the re-cycling bins, this was actually four local newspapers that were left over form the lads paper round. So again to save cost and re-cycle was not the point as they took the time and effor not only to check what paper was in the bin but also to employ someone to write to me and tell me.

Now I am thinking if a client come to the house to discuss their website and I make them a cup of tea... Does the teabag count as trade waste? compostable waste? or general rubbish.

7 - 0 to the Arsenal

2007-10-23T23:13:00.000+01:00

These days I see my life getting taken over by football, a 7 year old son heavily into youth football and who knows one day may make it.

Tonight we sit and watch Arsenal perform at their best, with Theo Walcott starting in the line up and making an impressive mark on the match. My son Daniel was over awed by the match, he only has one thing in his sights and that is to play on the Emirates turf.

I have to admit that I love it all, from the freezing cold foggy morning screaming my head of at him to 'SHOOOTTT' to watching the Arsenal play.

I track Dans scores and matches and find it good to see how he progresses, which led me to start www.fscore.co.uk just completing the BE Datadase at the moment but an example can be seen at www.fscore.co.uk/myscores.asp now have to fill it will youth footie content.

A couple of websites

2007-10-22T23:23:00.000+01:00

Just recently finished two website http://www.hillbillycreek.co.uk/ and also http://www.startthecar.co.uk/ both written in ye old ASP with backend MySql.

The Start the Car website is a re-write, and now has a database attached for the bands gigs, message blog and gallery.

Next up is a website for Graveley School in Hertfordshire a new set of rules and a new challenge.

Adobe Lightroom 1.2

2007-10-22T11:58:00.000+01:00

I had tried a beta version of Adobe Lightroom and to be honest, did not think much of the software, slow loading, confusing interface and poor performance.

Recently I downloaded the trial of Lightroom 1.2, and after sitting down with it for an hour, can now see what a useful p[iece of software this is. The organsing of image is a chore and have not realy bothered before, just dumping them in a folder with the date on.

Have to prepare a presentation I recieved images from various engineering worksops throughout the UK. Images that were taken indoors with basic digital cameras, the quality of the returned image were abmismal. It took me a few minutes to sort, correct, lighten and prepare these images using Lightroom which did a fantastic job.

It's one of those pieces of software, where I think in a few weeks I will be wondering how I ever managed without it. - More on Adobe Lightroom and trial downloads

Fotolia Freebies

2007-10-22T11:46:00.000+01:00

I received a lot of activity on my Fotolia account recently, in particular an image I took of my son Daniel's eye. This image is in the free section of Fotolia and from time to time appears as a free download. This particular image now has over 100 free downloads, who knows where Dan's eye mat pop up.

Fotolia is a huge resource of images, here I always seem to find what I want for a particular project, and at a £1.00 an image doesn't break the bank.

You can view the rest of my images on fotolia here - Fotolia