Monthly archive: April, 2009

Swine Flu Pandemic – Tips to stay Safe.

April 30, 2009, by No comments yet

Woke up this morning to an announcement that the swine flue pandemic rating has been bumped up to 5 of 6 which means its almost a global pandemic – the conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this one!

Just thought I’d put together a few issues to watch for and tips to keep you safe in case you’re worried.

As a virus, Swine Flu is being transmitted through contact which means that face masks aren’t going to be that effective as even the moisture from your breath on the back of the face mask is a place the virus loves to party. This problem is made worse in that if you catch the virus and are using a face mask you will contribute to the contamination of your surroundings as the virus gets passed to your hands (when you take the mask off) and onto the area where the mask is disposed and from there, any places you touch with your hands.

In lieu of there being no personal bio domes to retreat to, my tips are…

Be careful of exposed community accessed surfaces like:

  • Door Handles
  • Work Surfaces
  • Cups and Handles
  • Toilets
  • Sink Faucets
  • Pumps on Dispensers
  • Public Transport
  • Vending Machines
  • Shared Appliances (printers, telephones etc)

…I haven’t even scratched the surface with things to watch for – scary stuff indeed.

How can I be Safe from Swine Flu?

Short of having bought and lived in an NBC suit a few days ago, chances are that you are going to come into contact with someones who is infected or a carrier of the flu virus.

  • Buy some hand disinfectant and wash your hands regularly (silver is also a disinfectant as is ultraviolet light)
  • Wipe down communal surfaces with disinfectant frequently
  • Limit your exposure to any gatherings of people
  • Be mindful of people coughing (ask them to cover their mouths and/or go outside)
  • Use tissues when you cough or sneeze and dispose of them in a sanitary manner
  • If you are sick, stay indoors and call your doctor or NHS Direct – DON’T go to the doctors surgery or A&E as you’ll risk infecting other people so stock up on a few weeks worth of food and water
  • Ask for contingency plans at work
  • Hopefully by following these tips and being mindful of your surroundings you can limit your exposure to this nasty swine flu virus and help avoid the pandemic.

Swine Flu Resources

1 Position on Google for Chesterfield Sofas

April 29, 2009, by No comments yet

Rejoyce!

It may only be a temporary thing but after only 2 months working on the Distinctive Chesterfields website I’ve now achieved a #1 position on Google for the term Chesterfield Sofas with a #2 position being helf for the singular term Chesterfield Sofa. We’re also knocking about on pages 1 and 2 for the terms Chesterfield, Chesterfields, Leather Sofa, Leather Sofas, Sofa and Sofas.

I love it when a plan comes together.

I <3 This Advert

April 28, 2009, by No comments yet

This advert and its song are amazing. It makes me sit up and jig along every time I hear it to the point that my GF gives me a slap and tells me to calm down lol.

Geocities Closes Down and Part of My History Dies with it

April 24, 2009, by No comments yet

Techcrunch is reporting that Geocities has finally closed its doors.

Back in the mid 1990′s hosting was expensive and a young design student at Staffordshire University had to resort to one of the many free hosting accounts that were ad sponsored at the time.

Having cut my teeth on the basics of HTML via online chat forums (remember having to manually refresh the screen to update the chat lol) I needed somewhere to host pictires that could be dropped into my conversations which is where Geocities came in. Later I learned how to use tables for layout and put togther my first single page portfolio .

I remember my geocities address was something like geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/1944/ (notice no vanity URL’s in use yet) and everything had to be managed via a web interface which made file management and document creation a nightmare. I even posted an interactive 3d flash environment there lovingly ‘scripted’ in flash 2 lol.

There were other free hosts at the time like Angelfire and Fortunecity but I Chose Geocities because the ads were less intrusive which made for a better page.

I remember that for years my pages were still live but with vanity URL’s being implimented early in the 00′s I guess they decided to close all inactive accounts.

UK Social Bookmarking / Networking Sites – Are There Any?

April 21, 2009, by 1 comment

Just a quick shout-out to see if anyone knows of any UK hosted Social Bookmarking or Social Networking sites. I ask because I’m keen to build links to one of my sites purely from UK sources to see if this helps with SEO for UK centric sites.

If you know of one, please let me know and I’ll list it here.

I <3 Social Networking and Bookmarking Sites for SEO

April 15, 2009, by No comments yet

I’m working through around 2000 social networking and bookmarking sites looking for sites that will help with my link building tactics. Yes I openly admit that im not interested in being on page 1 of Digg, Redit or Sphinn, instead my interest centers around developing a niche section on a 3rd party domin which in this instance just so happens to be social bookmarking and networking sites.

There are a few key factors that I look for when building my content:

URL – my content needs to be indexable and as such im only interested in sites where my profile can be accessed directly through a URL.

Scope – Im mainly interested in sites where I can command several pages of content including profile, feeds etc

Versatility – Ideally the content would work on several levels, linking across to other profiles, having and/or pulling content into the site, allow significant on page original text content

Name – The profile name needs to be my keyword.

I use Social bookmarking sites to cross link throughout my social networking profiles and drop a few external links in to get the juice flowing. it also helps to join in on some of the fun as profile links from comments ensure that your pages aren’t orphaned from the sites root pages.

Lots of people scoff at this approach however in my experience, it’s a great way of building lots of low quality links which over time grow collectively into a stable and high value platform for controlling authority, trust and rank for your core domains.

Its exactly the same as developing your own content network, only less spammy than those used by some of the agencies ive experienced and it works every time (to date)

It’s My Birthday

April 5, 2009, by No comments yet

Today I am celebrating my 33rd birthday.

I got Lego :)