Is Google Two Faced on Privacy?

By John | Published: March 7, 2012

Google has now rolled out its SEO keyword referral encryption to UK.  This means that analytics packages and plug-in on web sites, as well as advertising based plug-in will find it increasingly difficult to know where the web visitors came from.

For years, web designers could query the browser when a visitor first landed on their web page. If they came from a search engine, such as Google, it was possible to find the search terms that the user had used to find their page.

Such search information was good to find if your Google SEO was working. However, it was also useful to advertisers. They could use this to help them decide what advertising message they provide.

So web sites will loose more information about their web sites visitors. Information which was useful for their SEO plans.

Advertisers will loose information which could help them target advertising better, which you may consider is a good thing.

What sticks in my claw is that these changes are done under the claim of protecting our privacy. Yet, Google has just changed its terms and conditions so that it can share all its data about us across ALL of its applications. So with one hand Google is stopping us using so much information about web site visitors, and with the other it is using more of that information for its own ends.

If you search for a holiday in Peru, don't be surprised to find holiday adverts about Peru when you next log into Google Mail. But if somebody comes to your web site because they searched for holidays in Peru, or just discussed it on Google Plus, you may not be able to tell!!!!

Rating 4.00 out of 5
[?]
Posted in Blogging, SEO Issues | 24 Comments

Case Story – Calne Firewalk and the Facebook effect.

By John | Published: March 7, 2012

At rather the last minute, I was called in by Bridie Nelson to provide some video and photography of her Calne Fire walking Challenge. She has over 50 people who had raised some seventeen thousand pounds for their charities to walk through a fire pit!

The actual firewall was due at 5pm, and at this time of the year there was a problem with low light levels. However, I setup two Nikon Cameras to catch still at the end of the walk and the drift video camera to catch a video.

Some 700 photos were taken and a good fifteen minutes worth of video caught almost everybody walking through the fire at least once. However, if you want to know more about the photography side of the project, you can refer to another post on the Camera Secrets Blog.

In this Blog we are going to look at the impact you can have on the web once you have generated such an event and content.

  1. A  Private Facebook Group was setup so that content could be shared and talked about within the Group.
  2. I posted the 15 minutes video with opening and closing captions onto my YouTube account. 52 people did the walk, yet this had been seen over 120 times within 48 hours.
  3. This video listed in Google as 'Firewall Calne' at number 3 or 4 in 24 hours. Even though 8 of the top ten positions were about the same event!
  4. People took the pictures posted and then made them their Facebook page.
  5. Some people asked me to process and deliver all the pictures of them, one set will be used at a school presentation.

So this Facebook activity brings great publicity to the organiser, and gives them an active Group with whom they can work in the future. People are talking about the event, their friends are commenting and so it is reaching a wider audience.

Already they are starting the conversation for what the next challenge will be.

It also brings JD publicity and access to a new group of people, some of whom I will be able to help in the future. We expect to be supporting more of these events in the future.

Rating 4.00 out of 5
[?]
Posted in General, Social Media | 46 Comments

Fans Pages change on Facebook

By John | Published: March 3, 2012

Hopefully you have seen the warning messages from Facebook, but there are changes afoot on fan pages.

This is to give a large top image the same as you are now seeing on your own personal wall page.  The change will take affect at the end of the month, so you have a few days to crate yoru top image.

Until you provide an image you are likely to see a list of a faces, which are the profile pictures of your members.

Make sure you are part of a group that keeps you in touch with such developments. You can like our facebook page for links to every post on this blog.

Rating 4.00 out of 5
[?]
Posted in Social Media | 8 Comments

Timeline on Business pages can kill tab offers?

By John | Published: February 26, 2012

As we have become more sophisitcated with our use of Facebook business pages, there has been a lot of like us, competition, signup pages being used.

This has proved to be a good way to get facebook users involved with your facebook page.

Unfortunately, that is all changing. Facebook is introducing its timeline feature to business pages. It also is forcing this to be the main tab for the business page, so you can not make your compeition, or offer as the first thing a new visitor sees.

This does not stop you making your custom tabs and then hadning our links to them on the timeline or from other links on facebook or other sites. So, Facebook business pages will need a little think about their strategy and information flow to keep up with this change.

You can make sure you keep on top of developments, just like our business page.

Rating 4.00 out of 5
[?]
Posted in SEO Issues | 18 Comments

Problems with eye strain on the PC at night?

By John | Published: January 13, 2012

During the day we setup our monitor to be bright, so that it show up with the stronger daylight. However, few of us will remember to turn it down at night.

That is how you get eye strain. What you really should do it turn down the brightness when you turn on the lights in the evening. Of course that is trouble and few of us will ever remember. I could also add the point that the light from our standard house lights is not the same as daylight, but you really should checkout my opinions on the different types of white light at CameraSecrets.co.uk.

However, you need not worry about this problems any more as there is a free piece of software to turn up and down the colour of your computer screen for you.

You will find it at http://stereopsis.com/flux/ . After installation, you simple let the software know where you are on the earth (my PC does not have GPS), and it will change the brightness and soften the light for you. If you need a 'true' colour for some work then there is an override from the controls that sit on the toolbar.

Available for PC, Mac and Linux!

Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]
Posted in 3rd Party Tools | 4 Comments

Clean up your PC

By John | Published: January 10, 2012

One of the most frequent comments i hear when people return from a break is. 'My Computer seems so slow!'

The Internet is full of suggestions and software which promises to speed up your PC, so i thought I better share the tool that I use.

AVG PC Tune-up is a simple tool from AVG. AVG is a good antivirus company, and is most known for its simple AVG Free application.  AVG PC Tune-up is really quite simple is what it offers.

  • System Scan
    I run this every few days. This operation cleans up all the temporary and junk files that windows like to leave around. it also cleans up fragmented files.
  • Disk Maintenance
    This allows you to specifically defragment your drives
  • Free Up Space
    This tool is great for removing duplicate files. It is amazing how much space you can waste, and confusion you can cause, when you leave multiple copies of the same file on your disk. This tool is just the job to bring everything into line.
  • Software Control
    Many software programs can be run on startup, and many are really not needed if they are used infrequently. You can remove software from the list.
  • System Tweaks
    AVG suggest small change to your system that will speed up operation.
  • Disaster Recovery
    Don't rely on this tool, but if you do loose a file by mistake and can not find it in the recycle bin, this tool may help you recover it.
  • Registry Maintenance
    The Registry keeps information about the launching and settings of software on your PC. It can get fragmented, and derangement will speed up it loading in a similar way to DeFragmentation of a disk.
  • System Status
    This is useful for knowing the settings of the machine, especially when you need technical support
  • Privacy
    If you are concerned about leaving 'traces' of files behind after you wanted them deleted then this tool will help you. You can 'shred' an individual file, or the whole of a drive. The latter removes all traces of any deleted files but dos not touch those being used. The erase history option will remove your tracks for web surfing etc
  • Speed up Internet
    This tool provides settings to speed up internet connection, al though faster broadband makes little change to this.

Glossary of some Terms.

Fragmented files – Fragmented files is caused when the computer tries to save a file on the disk and finds the space for it is not big enough, it will therefore save part of the file in one part of the drive, and the rest somewhere else.  As a disk becomes more fragmented, more files are spread around all over the drive. This causes performance issues because the disk head takes more time when it needs to jump around the disk drive to read a file.  De-fragmenting the drive will bring files back into one place on the disk.

Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]
Posted in 3rd Party Tools | 20 Comments

Google Plus adds business pages

By John | Published: November 9, 2011

Earlier today, Google announced the launch of the Google+ business page. Like much of the Google+ launch process, there is not too much detail yet, and it is limited to only a few selected companies to use in the first instance, but expect Google to role this out to everyone very shortly.

We will release a longer critique of this service in the next few days, after we have been able to look at the system in practice, but, it seems pretty close to the idea of Facebook business pages. You add them to your circles in the same way as contacts.

Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]
Posted in Social Media | 8 Comments

Facebook withdraws its reviews tab

By John | Published: November 2, 2011

It has been announced for some time, but still not getting the publicity it should do. Facebook is withdrawing the reviews feature of Facebook and expecting third party applications to come in and fill the space.

Facebook say it is not a core function of Facebook with a move towards the timeline feature.

However, revierws were a good marketing applicaiton for many sites who wanted to gather some review and feedback.

We have a number of third party review applicaitons that can be used on the facebook site to replace the Facebook feature, however, there is no easy way to download the previous reviews and re-use them..
 

Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]
Posted in Social Media | 2 Comments

More SEO noise with less effort

By John | Published: October 27, 2011

I have now counted 102 different social media sites. To put my message is going to take some time, and i am not the only person who has thought that. Fortunately there are numerous applicaitons and web sites that will help you move your message around. This got me to thinking…

Could I post jsut once and then let the technology push it around all my accounts for me…. the answer is yes. Although i found that I neede more than one app to do this.

However,  there was another group of  users that would spread my message.  You see that many social media sites allow other software applications to 'talk' to them. They usually call this process an API.  Now external apps can post onto any account that you get permission for.

e.g. I can request permission from you to be able to post things onto your facebook account.

 

So, now we look at not only the sites I can control directly, but those I can control indirectly and you can see the power of being able to post the same message across

Rating 4.00 out of 5
[?]
Posted in SEO Issues | 4 Comments

Is your reputation xxx?

By John | Published: September 23, 2011

The internet never ceases to amaze me with its ability to make money from thin air. Charges for domain names is a case in point.

Recently, permission was given for a naming authority to release the XXX extension. This allows people to register a name like VERYSEXY.XXX and sex is the main usage proposed for this domain extension.

Yes, after being abused by the Porn industry, they now have their own domain extension.

However, there is also now a new way to get the rest of us to pay up too. The sales presentation goes as simply as this. You would not want somebody to register your brand or name as XXX, so you better register it first. If you want to avoid your name being taken in xxx, you will have to take it first.

Can we expect blue language from davidCameron.xxx or adult content from 4Networking's very own Brad in GOYA4.xxx (PHOTO IS FAKED!!!!)FAKED Brad image

Will I be reregistering my name? Well I don't have anything really that impressive to show on such a site and if a look a like wishes to impersonate me, I will not be taking any action to stop them for now.

The register is now taking submissions from trademark owners who want to protect their brand. There is a one off fee of £199.99 ex vat which blocks your business for the lifetime of the domain.

On December 6th, non trademark owners will be able to protect their domain by registering it themselves for £49.99 ex VAT a year.

Prices taken from my domain name repository at fasthosts.co.uk

Rating 3.00 out of 5
[?]
Posted in Social Media, WebSites | 2 Comments
This site is protected by WP-CopyRightPro