Random babble by Paulh

Here’s a picture of a Northern monkey in a suit - not that unusual except this one was collecting an award and not in court. Newcastle will be proud!

Doug Scott, probably soon to be my ex boss after reading this, trotted off to the Travoloution awards last week for some free food and drinks. To everyone’s surprise www.carrentals.co.uk won best car hire website. Surprised because the other sites up for the award are probably much more widely recognised brands, and as i like to tell our web developers CarRentals.co.uk looks frigging ugly :). Fortunately for CarRentals (and doug) its not looks that count but having the most comprehnsive, fastest, and easiest to use comparator that matter (that now ends the advertisement for carrentals)

See what doug had to say

Been really busy for the last few months having fun setting up our SEO strategy and getting things put into action.

Can’t see me posting here much  for the foreseeable future, but just thought i would mention that DougS has started his own blog.

Dougs blog should be  regular read for anyone who likes to hear someone rant about search, affiliate marketing, making money, etc.

For the 3rd time in week i landed at Slightly Shady SEO and spent the last half hour reading a dozen posts; quality info, already given me some new ideas on what to add to my own toolbox. Now i know i have at least 2 readers here, so rather than msn’ing them a link i thought i would give Slightly(very) Shady seo a link too.

To be honest i was hoping my poor excuse of a blog would be more like http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com/ but i can barley write - think i just lost my only 2 readers by sending them somewhere else 

A few weeks after goolge announce their wikipedia killer Google knol Wikipedia  founder jimmy Wales announces the launch of a new search engine.

Be nice to see this project succeed but i think google will win the battle for both search and online encyclopedia 

Anyone, all you nasty spammers have a new site to influence from the 7th of jan- at least let it get off the ground before you kill it!

Few years ago it seemed everyone was slating Goddady and recommending Moniker. Thanks a lot!! Just glad i only used moniker for a handful of domains as a trial.

Apart from being ridiculously expensive, their admin interface sucks ass. I had a few domains up for renewal, but had to let them expire since it was impossible to pay for the damn things. Credit card after credit card failed to go through with dumb uninformative errors messages being the only sign anything actually happened.

Finally decide to transfer the few remaining domains to another registrar, what a friggin ball ache. Once you go through their shit interface and answer their question as to why you want to transfer, your domains are unlocked for 10 days. Great, so now start the transfer process with new registrar and await email asking for confirmation. And wait, and wait. Hmm this has always worked before, contact moniker for assistance, wait, 5 days for reply saying check your email host, not actually answering my question. So they can keep the fucking domains.

Has to hurt a hosting business when you make the front page of Google news for a security breach.

Whats gob smacking is not that Fasthost got hacked but the terrible way they handled it afterwards. If they had made a better job of keeping customers happy after the hack then they wouldnt be stil making front page Google news with headlines like this

Customers are protesting over the measures taken by web firm Fasthosts following a security breach.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7131431.stm

Might have just discovered the name of the company I now work for. Doug has so many sites it hard to keep track, but looks like I work for “ASAP Ventures” who made the news last week when the sale of www.recycle.co.uk went through for for a record £150,000($300,000)

 Looking forward to working on recycle, but probably be several months before i am finished with other projects.

Thought I would blog to raise my profile outside of the very small SEO click I mingle with. You need to make connections in this industry, and being well known helps - Have seen some average people and some complete tits do extremely well out of their self publicity. Which is a good demonstration of the power of building a brand around yourself, and a reminder not to believe the hype.

But blogging is such a chore! Well it is if you’re not a natural writer like me. Blogs are great seo and marketing tools, sometimes entertaining, or just a great way of keeping an eye on friends, but boy do I suck at writing.

Not sure I will post much in the way of SEO stuff in future. Bloggin about seo related stuff seems too old, too good to mention, has been told in confidence or will hurt a friends current strategy if blabbed about.

Had little internet access lately so that also dented my blogging efforts. On the upside the lack of internet means I have been able to finish a bunch of coding projects that have been in the pipeline for several months. May share some of the bits, if it doesn’t giveaway the whole project.

Left casino.com last week! Didn’t work my notice since I thought it best to leave before burning those all important bridges – once you tell people you are quitting your job they no longer have the same patience for sarcastic emails about… best stop!

Spending my remaining time in Spain working on several projects for Doug’s sweat shop at Car Rentals , and seeing some more of Spain.

Today I decided to go out on my mountain bike and see some more of the local area Plan was to cycle to a town called casares up in the mountains via the Roman baths. Not really done much cycling since being in spain, far too bloody hilly, and most of the time it’s too hot to do more than eat, drink, and splash about in water.

Word of warning if you have satnav and are in spain, be careful you don’t end up venturing on the minor roads, they are shit. Unlikely you’ll be insured on these gravel roads if in a hire car.

Well I got as far Manilva when my bike got a puncture. Great! Took me an hour to walk back, but at least I made a friend. I called a few people who might like a dog, but no one was interested except for a crazy girl called Carmen who wanted me to look after the dog in my apartment until she finished work. I obviously said no, but seeing as my Landlord as just given me a months notice to leave I kind of wish I had the little mutt stay and trash the furniture.

So if you’re reading this doug, now you know why I haven’t done any work today.

Lets make the magic happen!

More vegas weddings! Evilgreenmonkey to marry Lisa Ditlefsen in vegas and broadcast the wedding night live and unedited!

Cheers Mike