The adaptation of technology has been so vast and it's hard to imagine how hard our lives would be without it. This includes the simple art of 'getting around'. If you're reliant on tech and looking to visit Ireland then here's the apps you'll need.

Today a friend shared on Google+ one of the greatest things I have ever seen online. And I have so far only managed to watch about 2 minutes of it! (son trying to sleep). A crowd-source project was set up to create a new version of Star Wars: A New Hope. The film is available on Vimeo.com (like YouTube, but not) and was put together as part of Starwarsuncut.com. The idea, and the outcome, was that people would make short scenes from the film of no more than 15 seconds and send them in. The scenes are then mashed together into a film. The outcome is excellent. Well, excellent if you know and love Star Wars. It probably looks bloody stupid otherwise. In fact, looking more at the website, the procedure was as follows: We cut up the movie into 15 second clips You claim one and refilm it however you like We put it back together and watch the magic The 2 minutes I have watched so far sees animation, people running around in offices, lego and other toys and a lot of really cheap costumes. It looks great fun! I cannot wait to watch it all. You do not have to [...]

Today James Wells took the decision to take the English language section of Wikipedia offline to mark his protest against the SOPA and PIPA. The home pages says: Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia. Learn more. Clicking Learn More takes you through to an active page on Wikipedia that explains why it is taking a stance against these bills / rulings. SOPA and PIPA are 2 bills, the first in the United States House of Representatives and the second in the United States Senate. They are designed to protect intellectual property rights and stop online piracy, however, there are great concerns that they will be abused in the future by people in positions of power and mark the end of “freedom of speech” online. Apparently Barrack Obama is against the bill. Examples of possible abuse have been discussed in various forums and social media networks on the Internet, and include shutting down websites and blocking their advertising if [...]

I have been running WordPress sites for a few years now. I started with plain HTML, then moved to HTML/CSS, then started using Blogger to FTP pages to my domains, and then finally I moved to WordPress a few years ago. Here is a collection of the posts I have written on managing WordPress. Some reference specific plugins, some are more general. I hope you find this useful. Most Important WordPress Plugins Reviewed Feb 19, 2009 WordPress is possibly the best blogging tools for people who have their own domain, and PHP/MySQL capabilities on their server. Out of the box it is a solid performer, with a lot of useful features. However, what makes WordPress really good is the fact that as an open source content management system, there are many add-on modules available which enhance the core functionality. These add-ons are called Plugins in wordpress. There are far too many Plugins to list, a full list can be found on the WordPress.org website, under the extend menu. Here we review the most important Plugins to get you started. There is now no need to download Plugins and then FTP them to you web server, as the process can now [...]

This page lists various posts that are specifically about SEO for Google, which really means, advice from Google, or advice from me about Google. I have learnt a few things over the years, and made several mistakes, so have documented here. Newest posts first. Is the Google Webspam Team Too Draconian? Jan 4, 2012 “Even though the intent of the campaign was to get people to watch videos–not link to Google–and even though we only found a single sponsored post that actually linked to Google’s Chrome page and passed PageRank, that’s still a violation of our quality guidelines,” - Matt Cutts on Google+ This led to a 60 day penalty. It still shocks me that Google will penalise a website even though it knows that there was no intention to game the system. People make mistakes. Someone could spend years raising awareness about a product or service and then 1 poorly constructed bit of code could lose them 60 days of business (at least). The argument for this seems to be that the client (in this case Google’s own Chrome) can ask for a reinclusion request once they have cleared up the problem. However, reinclusion requests are only possible when you [...]

Internet, or web, browsers are probably the most used application on any PC today. For many people, the browser is the Internet, in much the same way that Google is the Internet for others. Many PC owners do not realise that they have a choice of browser, although in recent years we have seen more people start to move away from Internet Explorer (Microsoft’s browser) and start using Firefox and Chrome. Here is our round-up of web browser news from the last few years. Latest news first. 2012 Web Browser Stats Following on from our previous posts, it is time to review which browser is the most popular at the moment. Using our same non-techy website, here are the stats for the last month: Browser % visits Internet Explorer 32.63% Chrome 22.73% Firefox 22.11% Safari 13.47% Mozilla Compatible Agent 7.27% Opera 0.96% Opera Mini 0.19% IE with Chrome Frame 0.16% Android Browser 0.11% Playstation 3 0.10% Yahoo! Slurp 0.06% RockMelt 0.04% Mozilla 0.02% Netscape 0.02% Camino 0.02% SeaMonkey 0.01% I decided to add a more complete list this year. After SeaMonkey (an open source continuation of Mozilla, available for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS) the next browsers are recorded as [...]

The First Signs of Recovery Came Early After being struck down by Panda on April 11th 2011 I got to work and made a whole bunch of on-site changes. I made a small recovery quickly, however, soon learned that there was still a lot of work to do. Apr 19, 2011 Glad to report that this morning it seems that the work I have been doing over the last week is paying off. One of the sites that I manage saw a drop in traffic after the UK Google Panda update last Monday (11th April, 2011). Since then I have been working relentlessly, pretty much around the clock, to try to learn what went wrong and then to resolve the problems. Google Panda is essentially a website quality update. It is the first step towards search engines returning quality sites that are not based on webmaster votes (i.e. links).” I have been working about 12 hours a day, probably more some days, and have a change log with over 500 entries. I spent a lot of time reading through the various Google webmaster forums and speaking to people that were trying to recover. The general concensus was always that “nobody [...]

I have blogged about Google a lot since firing up the Webo blog in 2006. I have decided to compile the blog posts here in one handy and easy to read page. I may add an index to the top of this page if I can find that WordPress plugin again. These posts are in reverse chronological order, starting in 2007 and going up to 2009. Again, this blog post is in reverse chronological order, so oldest posts down at the bottom. YouTube is Broken! It does seem that in years gone by Google had a lot more server issues than they do today. Just gone to YouTube.com to see the latest video clips from the top vloggers in the SEO and web design industry and it is not working. All I get is this: Internal Server Error The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator, web@youtube.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error. More information about this error may be available in the server error log. Apache Server at www.youtube.com Port 80   [...]

When Google Streetview was launched it caused all sorts of controversy. I took a good long look at it and found a few amusing things myself. Here is what I found. Google Proves that Sunglasses and a Moustache is a Good Disguise Apr 6, 2009 I just walked along Santa Monica Pier, which is impressive seeing that I am currently sitting in my house in the UK. I was using Google’s 360 Street View photos, and pretty much took a personal tour of LA. Great fun. While taking my tour I noticed that one individual did not have his face blurred. There were actually 3 or 4 photos of the same person (I assume that on the pier the Street View camera was pushed at walking pace for safety reasons) and in all the photos this chap was not blurred. But he was wearing dark sunglasses and has a large moustache. So maybe Google does not recognise this as a face. Which means, it is the perfect disguise! Man with Bushy Moustache and Sunglasses is not Blurred Out by Google One other thing I discovered while taking my tour of Santa Monica Pier (the geographer in me really loves this new [...]

It’s funny. In a world of constant change, nobody really likes change. Every time Facebook makes a minor change to its service people complain. However, the Internet is a fast paced environment. Products, services and websites come and go. In the last few years we have seen many old names disappear as product are abandoned by their hosts. The global economic crisis, fuelled by the credit crunch, has seen many large companies shut down loss making services. Here is my roundup of the biggest (maybe only to me!) Internet deaths in recent years. Pligg Open Source CMS Goes on the Market (the one that was saved) Sep 9, 2007 Update: Turned out to not be major news after all! Pligg lives on, and is still an open source CMS – http://pligg.com/about/. The much loved Digg-style CMS, Pligg, has announced that it is for sale. Many website owners have installed the Pligg CMS to build web communities, to share stories and videos. As the Pligg code is currently open source, meaning that everyone is free to download it, and tinker with it, to make their own perfect web community, there is concern that a new management may focus more on commercials and [...]

The credit crunch has affected the technology and Internet markets in many ways. There have been some irreversible changes since 2008, with many popular services closing down forever. Here is our round up of the effects of the credit crunch so far. Credit Crunch Hits Tech and IT Jobs Oct 11, 2008  The credit crunch has so far been most prominent in the banking and finance industries. Many internet companies have spend the past months in a state of denial, falsely beleive that technology stocks are somehow immune to the pressures of the global economy. But all that appears to be changing rapidly. News came out this week that eBay may be slashing thousands of jobs, with some reports saying that up to 10% of the company’s workforce will be made redundant. Many eCommerce analysts are still saying that the internet is a growing sector, with eCommerce set to grow by 20% over the next year. However, news from eBay seems to be contradicting the tech analysts predictions. A few weeks ago Eric Schmidt, Google‘s chief executive, dismissed the idea that his company could be in for difficult times if a deep recession took told. Google is increasingly reliant on the advertising industry [...]

This page covers Google Analytics changes and developments and it presented in reverse chronological order (latest news on top!). Google Analytics Accounts are Being Updated Nov 21, 2011  Please note – this blog post serves to vent my frustration mostly. It is a rant. If you have been using Google Analytics for a few years then you will be well aware that a major change is happening. I am so far finding this new version a royal PITA. Although the old version had its problems, it was easy to set up a dashboard that displayed useful information that I could work with. I just posted a question to the Google Analytics help forum and am now waiting patiently for an answer. I have been playing with the new version, trying to find some useful documents on how to set it up, and mostly failed so far. This is my question to Google, copied from the forum (I see no reason to re-write my own words): I am really struggling with this new version. I used to be able to get all the information I needed from my dashboard but now cannot get it to show half the info I use to work [...]

After I got my T-Mobile G1 Google phone in early 2009 I had a lot of issues with it. I blogged about the problems, here are the main points I raised. Overall, I am of course extremely pleased with the G1 and 3G, so much so that I still use my G1 phone, even though it is now considered to be an ancient relic by many people in the business! 3G Very Disappointing – Did I Test it on Wireless? February 11, 2009 I have had my Google phone for 5 days now, and the last couple of days have been a disappointment. My internet connection has been very slow, often unusable. Wi-fi is also a waste of time outside of my home, as it is often slower than 3G or you have to pay. I can pick up Liverpool Street stations ‘cloud’ from here. But I need an account. I can also access Nero’s network. But again need an account. These companies should really provide free internet. But the thing the is bugging me, is that when I looked at the phone in the T-mobile shop, the connection was very fast. Was I on wireless in the shop, or [...]

If there is one paradox online it is the concept of natural link building. For a site to be discovered it needs to have PageRank so that it appears in the search engine (OK, Google search engine). But Google ideally wants only natural link building. So if you have no PageRank, you have no traffic and therefore no chance of natural link building taking place. Classic Catch 22 situation. So, as every SEO worth his / her salt knows, you have to build your own links. Not natural as such, but consider it a part of your marketing campaign to raise awareness. Over the years I have dipped into link building. My thoughts on various methods have changed over time. Here I simply have compile a list of articles I have written on the topic over the last few years. They provide a good starting point if nothing else! Topics covered are general SEO research, making use of directories, the pros and cons outsourcing SEO work, what good directories look like, what bad deals smell like and some other link building stuff. What follows was once a series of mini blog updates, now we have one complete resource. The dates [...]

Over the years I have blogged on various mobile phone news items. To make your life easier, here they all are in one easy to read article. The news starts with Google, then there are updates about Vodafone, Nokia and Microsoft. Not breaking news anymore, but then that is why they are being archived!