Steven Mooner Usher

July 1st, 2009 | Category: Google, SEO, Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engines, Technology, personalised search | Leave a comment

Mrs Moon and I were sat watching ‘Stephen Fry In America’ on Sunday evening, whereby he tours the United States as the name would heavily suggest, and within this particular episode he visited Chicago, apparently a home for many of the worlds charitable organisations.

Unsurprisingly, they did a small piece focusing on this element of Chicago, and showed volunteers from what I believe was a branch of Barnados, who undertake all manner of activities to support under-privileged children.

Sat cuddled on our comfy sofa, glass of wine in our hands watching this unfold on a widescreen TV, we both, almost telepathically, looked at each other in a way that suggested we both knew exactly what we had to do.

Within ten minutes we had found a project that would inspire us both to commit ourselves for the good of others. This project is called Promise, and is a council driven initiative to mentor young people up to 18 years old, with a mixture of learning and behavioural difficulties.

Today (the day after), I took the first steps in to what will eventually be a minimum two-year commitment. Now this is all well and good. Charities, great, helping others and feeling good about it, fine.

But on my path to this point there involved plenty of research, and even more phone calls. I tried so many options, investigated so many potential avenues, and in doing so there became apparent a sad fact about many of these organisations, they simply make it too difficult and too convoluted to get involved.

There I was, on the end of the phone, begging these people to let me help them, and, most shocking of all for me personally, many of them simply didn’t answer their phones. I won’t name any names, as this would be entirely against my new-found desire to contribute to the success of what are fundamentally well-intentioned set-ups, but I simply can not hide my disappointment at the naïve approach to recruitment by too many of them.

Those that deserve special mention as being entirely capable and welcoming are indeed the Promise commitment, a division of the Somerset County Council, and Barnados themselves.

Part of my research involved a conversation with a close professional contact who sits on the board for the fantastic charity CLIC, (Cancer and Leukemia In Children), who immediately advised me against starting my own charity, and rather contribute whole-heartedly to causes already set-up and ready for my assistance, very reasonable advice indeed.

Furthermore, she advised me that I need to spend time with several causes, understand how they operate, determine how the money raised is allocated, get a feel for their intentions, and find one that I feel comfortable associating myself with, and dedicating my time to.

I had never even considered that there could be a charity that I would look at in a negative light, but having found myself repeatedly directed to the answer phones of people with job titles such as Volunteer Recruitment Manager, one of which even went as far as to say that they ‘may be unavailable for days at a time, so just leave a message’, I can certainly state that my opinion has changed.

A lot of charities, and in particular the smaller organisations, which is the exact type I was approaching, rely solely on public donations, with perhaps very small supplementary funding from non-commercial investors including the government. That funding can only be achieved by exposure of the cause by, you’ve guessed it, fund-raisers, be them volunteers or not, and to allow that area of the cause to be so crippled by disorganisation seems ludicrous to the point of shooting oneself in ones foot with a sawn-off army tank.

Another point my respected colleague raised was to identify areas for improvement, as many of these organisation do not have ‘professional’ standards, by the very nature of them running voluntarily, and given my skills I can certainly see where part of my focus will be.

Of course these people are busy, often with full or part-time private employment commitments themselves, but why cut off your life-source?

I intend to write several updates as this journey unfolds, and, within certain boundaries, I intend to give an honest account of my experiences, but I hope for the sake of the unfortunate target beneficiaries of my endeavours, I have nothing of a negative theme to report.

June 29th, 2009 | Category: charity work, voluntary work in somerset | Leave a comment

Today, Mrs Moon was attacked by a customer in the pharmacy that she works in. The customer failed to give over enough money for the prescription first time, so Mrs Moon asked for the outstanding balance, an entirely appropriate response I thought. But no, this prompted the customer, who I can only assume is a one-time mathematics prodigy thats lost her way in old age and is failing to deal with her demise with dignity, to bark at my girlfriend:

“Oh shut up you silly little girl”

She then throw the change at Mrs Moon. The problem with this, is that unbeknown to the customer but in no way alleviating her pathetic attitude, is that Mrs Moon recently burned her arm very badly, and the coins caused her arm to bleed and puss, and she had to run out of the shop both in pain, and in tears.

This has truely infuriated me, and not wholly because of her malicious attack of my girlfriend that technically resulted in a prosecutable case of GBH, but more because of her response thereafter.

We have all lost our temper and reacted badly to situations. It’s natural, without a release valve we would go crazy. But the test is to evaluate those actions and respond accordingly, usually starting with some form of an apology.

I recently lost my temper very badly on the phone to the customers services of my previous mobile phone network providers 02, and although in hindsight I realise that I acted ridiculously, and should not have shouted ‘quite’ as loud and vociferously as I did, at least the next time I was on the phone to a customer services department I made a conscious effort to conduct the conversation with a degree of consideration.

My fear is that this lady clearly has no rules to abide by except her own. Punk grannies, who’d have thought it.

This led me to wonder how customers react when something doesn’t go their way, so I would love your examples, either of your own actions or those that you’ve witnessed, and don’t be shy, we’ve ALL been idiots at some point or another!

June 26th, 2009 | Category: mrs moon, punk grannies | Leave a comment

Michael Jackson, the man they call the ‘King Of Pop’, has passed away aged 50, in his rented Los Angeles home in Holmby Hills.

Jackson collapsed at his home and was rushed to hospital by paramedics before being pronounced dead at 2:26 pm (09:26pm GMT) on Thursday. Although there will be an official autopsy in due course, the general consensus is that he went in to cardiac arrest and will be confirmed as dying from a heart attack.

There, that’s the official lines out of the way, the lines that have sent shockwaves throughout the world. So now I can add my personal element to this event that will surely dominate the media and more in the coming weeks.

There will be the jokes, the sniping, the paedophilia claims, and the plastic face masks in “tribute”, but essentially we need to realise that this guy was thrust in to the public arena at an extremely young age, which destroyed any chance he had of developing a natural understanding of interaction and human behaviour.

He lost his life through the bullying of his father, and although I obviosuly do not condone any innappropriate approach on a minor, I believe his was not of a sexual nature, but instead a twisted attempt to retrieve a stolen youth by befriending people in whom he saw himself. No jokes there please.

I’m not going to go in to a history of his life, detailing all his records and achievements, which are superb, I’ll leave that to the people that know his music, career and life better than I do. But I will say that he was clearly a huge artist, for the very fact that someone like myself, who is not a fan, feels compelled to mention it on their blog.

I sincerely hope I am correct about his behaviour, and that his money hasn’t bought his innocence like so many stars before, and if i am, then i wish Michael Jackson a peaceful fairwell.

If however I’m wrong and he was indeed a kiddie fiddler, then rot in hell.

Thats not the nicest note to end it on really is it for a chap that bought so much to the music industry as Jackson did, so, ummm…hmmm….don’t touch kids.

June 26th, 2009 | Category: king of pop dead, michael jackson, michael jackson dies | Leave a comment

Today I wrote a review of Microsoft’s new search engine Bing, and, following some reflection on the overall subject, I had an overwhelming desire to track down the worst search engine of all time. Its worth noting that this is not a reflection on Bing itself, as I’m pleased to report to those that haven’t read the article, its really rather decent…in comparison to past efforts of course.

Now, my initial thought was instantly Cuil, a quite horrific search engine that, given the intellectual resources available to them through the founding members associations to Google, really does exceptionally well to dissapoint me more and more, every time I check on their progress.

But, perhaps with a soft spot for their rather nifty search interface, I put this at number two in the ‘worst search engines of all time’ list.

Yahoo also came to mind, as I absolutely loathe their cluttered presentation and difficulty of use. But, as the second largest search engine in history, they really can’t be classed as the worst, that would be like saying boiling water on the hob is crap simply because the kettle was invented. The trusty saucepan did us well for many a year, as did Yahoo, so on that basis, they avoid my attentions here.

I think DogPile deserve a mention purely because of their name, which again we can include Cuil in that category, and Lycos deserve special mention for being the French Army of the internet. I’ll go as far as to say Excite have at least managed to evolve and keep up with the pace, but it says as much about their inward view as it does about their non-existant public presence that they rely on contextual advertising for revenue. Can you really imagine Google selling text-link ads within their own news articles or articles clearly marked as endorsed by themselves?

For sake of clarity we’ll dismiss Archie, Judhead, Veronica, Gopher, Infoseek and the rest, but Ask are certainly worth a mention. They provide decent results combined with ease of use, but for the life of me I can’t stop thinking that its mandatory to actually ask a question in the search field or else my results will be irrelevant. So on that alone, they’re crap, but they’re certainly not the worst.

No, this title goes to a search engine that I found completely by chance in the dark alleys and gutters of the internet via a completely conspicuous avenue of searches and clicks. But before you go and check for yourself, you really need to be aware of how awful this search engine is, and I use the term search engine extremely loosely.

Imagine you have an eight-year old daughter, heck, if unlike me you’ve had sex within the last 8 and a bit years you might even have an eight-year old daughter, and imagine you gave your god-given angel a ‘HTML For Dummies’ book for christmas, and on boxing day she ate it, it gave her diarrhoea, and she threw the liquid poop at a computer screen…that would be a reasonable improvement on the stunningly painful aesthetics of the site.

Now imagine her case of diarrhoea progressed beyond medical control and, god forbid, rendered her incapable of coherent speech. Well, that would be the search results.

In real terms, web terms we know and understand, simply imagine that whilst reading this article time has reversed all the way back to 1992.

If they have any grasp whatsoever of how to develop an algorithm capable of both understanding the informational inflection of a web page, and the general web’s opinion of that page by the links that point at it, then they will surely appreciate my final effort of this review.

Now, go and enjoy.

My nans pubic hair is more appealling than this horrendous search engine

June 24th, 2009 | Category: Google, Search Engines, bing, microsoft, search engine comparison | Leave a comment

The beginning of June also bought the latest beginning for Microsoft and their flirtation with search. They’ve tried MSN, that failed, they tried Live, that failed, and so now we have Bing.

There will be many hundreds of reviews out there on this well-documented launch, so my focus will be to evaluate not necessarily where they are now, although of course that’s rather important, but instead where they have come from to get to this point, and whether it was worth the wait. If you’re of a nauseous nature then I’d advise you to either not read on or fetch yourself a good bucket, as I come scarily close to complimenting Microsoft.

The History

Microsoft, the kings of market domination/manipulation, have been kicking themselves from day nought where search is concerned. They cornered many important markets in the formative years of ‘information technology for the masses’ and bled them dry, but they failed to see the value in search, or at the very least, failed to do anything note-worthy about it.

Their first real foray in to this lucrative area came of course with MSN Search, which formed just part of a greater portfolio of offerings within the MicroSoft Network. This offered a search facility originally based on the results from other search engines such as AltaVista, although they did eventually stop looking out of their Windows and finally create their own algorithms. But usability was always an issue, and much akin to Yahoo!, they have failed to realise that the saying ‘if you chuck enough mud at a wall some will stick’ just isn’t the case with web design. Having plenty of features and toys for your users is great, but filling them all on to your standard interface and expecting people to fully engage with the site visually and emotionally is a bit hopeful at best.

There are many reasons MSN Search failed to dominate the market as it had in previous areas, but fundamentally a search engine needs to meet two citerion:

• A clean, easy-to-use interface, and…
• Relevant results

Well, no one has ever really complained too much about the relevance of MSN’s results, the fact their algorithm can decipher the important information from sites is undoubted, but it’s what Microsoft choose to do with it thereafter that has always puzzled and alienated their users.

A good point to emphasise this view, a view that Microsoft themselves have always shared, would for the cynical be the unashamed promotion of their HotMail service, which as an entirely seperate entity to search made available through the same interface, can be considered as an attempt to create a core-base of users to the domain in the knowledge that capturing their presence on the site will increase the use of the search facility.

But, thats pure conjecture, and who am I to query Microsofts ‘business moral compass’. I’m sure they’re stellar chaps and chapettes.

Following a relatively decent innings at the crease, the emergence of more astute engines and even more astute businesses behind them left MSN Search somewhat dead in the water, and through a wildly meandering path and many permutations, along came Live in 2006.

Clearly their attempt was to seperate the offer of search from the offer of viagra adverts in your inbox, news, sports, alerts, weather, kitchens, mole suits, clay queens, book markers, foot amputation and whatever else they offered. To this end, the general consensus is that Live succeeded, the interface was clean, simple to use, and offered good results. So why didn’t it take off as they wished? Well, first off, we need to make it entirely clear that this is Microsoft, which, within their prospective market is a double-edged sword.

House-hold name with the ability to launch products with huge interest? Yes, undoubtedly. Popular choice following a series of high-profile court cases relating to business practice? No, most certainly not.

And following the anticipated surge of queries post-launch, this eventually settled down to a rough market-share of approximately 5%. One failing of course, is that they refused to remove the search facility from www.msn.com, in fear of losing potential users one would assume, and thus flourished only in obscuring their public focus, and although combined this totalled approximately 7-8% market share (fluctuating hugely over time of course), a goliath like Microsoft see’s themselves as the Manchester United of this world, and mid-table mediocrity just wouldn’t suffice.

And this leads us to June of 2009, and the launch of Bing, surely the worst use of cooking related onomatopoeia ever. Google is a clever play on words of a numerical representation, Yahoo at least sound happy, but Bing is nothing but a microwave in working order, and microwaves are so very 80’s.

Thankfully for Microsoft, the search engine achieves more than its name might suggest. The results appear very much like they have been dragged kicking and screaming straight from Live, if a little more refined, which is no bad thing remember, and they have presented them in what is finally a great interface.

However, unless they have recently employed an amateur photographer I see no benefit in the randomised background images of rocks, plants, and panoramic sunsets. Another small thing that irks me is the location of the search bar within the background image. Why offset it? This needs to be centralised, but perhaps this is more a deomonstration of my OCD than their ability to design?

But there are far greater issues with this than just images and search bars, most important of which would be the spelling suggestions. This concept is nothing new, heck, they already utilise it to great effect in Word, so why can’t they make that small jump to search? This baffles me hugely. To emphasise the importance of this, Google has gone to so much care to cater for a society of varying literacy levels that they have over 1,000 permutations of Britney Spears, all returning the right results, accompanied by the correct spelling of course.

They have such a superb grasp of both coloquial and official languages that I often use Google when I am unsure of a spelling by typing in what I believe to be close to the truth and having the correct spelling returned to me.

On this front, Bing fails with aplomb, pure and simple. If they could sort this out, and perhaps have a standard image to promote familiarity when you visit the site, then I will forgive them their other failings, such as an entirely US based auto-suggestion tool, and no business listings outside the US, or even the inability to create an effective image-indexing algorithm.

As a final note I think it’s worth leaving Microsoft fans with optimism, yes, all two of you, ( hello Mum and dad, sorry I forgot Fathers Day, I was too busy trying to spell things correctly in Bing. )

Bing is by far Microsoft’s most accomplished effort to date, and they have added an extremely endearing touch by not just allowing, but encouraging user-feedback on the Beta version. But, and unfortunately I lied when I said I’d leave it on a positive note, the problem I still have is that Google was more accomplished than this nearly a decade ago, and they’ve only tightened things since then.

There is a reason Google are market leaders, and its not brand allegience, quite the contrary in fact, its because they offer search, bloody good search, and fundamentally when you strip away the Earth’s, Android’s and Chrome’s of this world, nothing but search. But … and this is probably the biggest compliment I can pay Bing … at least their not Cuil.

June 24th, 2009 | Category: Google, Miscellaneous, Search Engines, bing, microsoft, msn, msn search, search engine comparison | Leave a comment

This article will leave you breath-taken, you will wake in cold sweats when you haven’t read it for a couple days, you will come back time and time again to read the astonishing, life-affirming facts that will be bestowed upon you through this article. You will make small mud statues of the images this article entices in to your brain, you will then bake said mud statues and paint them the colour of happy, and kiss them sweetly as you go to sleep at night, frightened by the thought of 8 hours without this article.

You will print this article off 34,918 times and mould it in to a papier-mache Angelina Jolie, stick two tea-candles in its face and walk it down the aisle as your father weepily looks on with pride, a small creeping smile spreading across his face that says simply…”thats my boy”.

You will ask your friends not to be so flirty with the article as your down the pub together, the article laughing whimsically at all your friends jokes, and even though you know deep down that this is all just a very honourable ploy to befriend them and make it easier for you, you still feel threatened that this article could be interested in your mates as well.

When you ge home from the pub you will shout at this article and damn it to hell for being such a tart, you will sleep on the sofa out of pure stubborness while this article tucks up in to your beds warming embrace, surrounded by all your photos of you and this article as the zoo and disney land, before all this animosity and jealousy started setting in.

See, at the start you trusted this article, you would never expect it to consider the advances of another man, but then, back in those days you were so blinded by sheer love and lust that you were unable to feel anything but joy, a lawyer might even go so far as to say incapacitated. But the truth is, this article is faithful to you. It always has been, that day at the wedding when you were convinced this article was flirting with Susans brother as they danced, it was only thinking of you, wishing you would have the guts to just get up and dance with it, instead of being so coy.

Because your smile is beautiful, and this article loves to see you smile, but it gets so upset that you see a different you to the one this article sees.

You will wake up on saturday mornings and where you used to spend hours play-fighting and joking naked under the covers, now you will just get straight up, make a cup of tea, and get dressed ready to go in to town and see your mates, forgetting to invite this article.

You will stumble home after several hours at the pub, trying in vain to get your keys in to the front door, and you wake this article from its sleep, which then has to come down stairs and let you in, livid at your behaviour and the state you’ve got yourself in.

Its then this article finally sees you for who you are and declares at the top of its lungs “I’m leaving ,I can’t do this to myself any longer”, and as this article packs its bag and heads down stairs your eyes glaze over with a mist and your thoughts are clouded by the fear of losing this article so in a panic you push this article down the stairs…

…several tense seconds later you hear a slight groan…”phew”, you say to yourself, at least you didn’t kill the article. But the arm, the arm just doesn’t look right. Why is shaped like spaghetti? Oh no, you call the ambulance and they take this article to hospital for treatment, where they reveal a severely broken arm and two broken ribs.

Perhaps out of mercy, this article says that it fell down the stairs, but you know the truth. You know that you couldn’t handle the feeling that engulfed you after first reading this article, you know how mesmerised it made you feel to know that this article could even have the slightest interest in you, and you know that you should never have even read this article. But the truth is…the truth is you treated this article like crap.

It was there for you when you were mourned, there to lift your spirits when they dipped, and what could you do? All you did was treat this article like something less important than you, and that’s why this article will not consider marriage councelling, and why the divorce papers have been filed.

Remember, reading an article can change your life forever.

May 27th, 2009 | Category: Miscellaneous, article, best article ever, best article in existance | Comments (1)

Is your website failing to have the impact on your business you were hoping for? Has the extra revenue you anticipated failed to materialise? Well, do not fear. The simple answer is that your website has not been search engine optimised. By this, we mean that your website does not appear high on the search results associated to your business or industry.

This is where the near 20 combined years of programming knowledge and professional expertise of myself, and my far more illustrious SEO partner David Hurst can help you out. Whether you are looking to take away the core knowledge to empower yourself to edit your website on your own, or whether you need to de-mystify a few of the myths to make you confident in choosing the correct Search Engine Opmisation company for you, Davids renowned professional workshop, (ably assissted by myself of course!) will deliver you these tools and more in what promises to be our best public appearance to date.

David and myself will be presenting the latest edition of our Search Engine Optimisation workshop for Connecting Somerset on the 18 June 2009. The venue will likely be the splendid surroundings of the recently opened Monks Yard Business Complex, just outside Ilminster - easily accessed from the A303 or M5.

There is a nominal fee levied by Somerset County Council to cover the cost of hiring the venue and the buffet lunch. This is normally about £20.

To register your interest or book your place, please call Matt Ballard of the Economy and Europe Group at Somerset County Council on 01823 355867, or call David at HigherSites on 01935 426958.

If none of these options suits you, how about just leave me a comment here, making sure to leave your name and your preferred telephone number, and we will get back you ourselves to ensure your place is booked.

But do hurry, places very often go quickly, and unfortunately we can only accept on a ‘First Come First Serve’ basis.

May 22nd, 2009 | Category: Search Engine Optimisation, seo somerset, seo workshop, seo workshop somerset | Leave a comment

I highly doubt (hope) I am not the only one that year-on-year has no idea when the bank holidays and public holidays are. So, perhaps even for my own reference as much as anything else, here is a full and comprehensive list of the days you’re allowed off work without getting told off by either your boss or your wife:

• New Years Day - January 1st 2009
• Good Friday - April 10th 2009
• Easter Monday - April 13th 2009
• May Day Bank Holiday - May 4th 2009
• Spring Bank Holiday - May 25th 2009
• Summer Bank Holiday - Auguest 31st 2009
• Christmas Day - December 25th 2009
• Boxing Day Holiday - December 28th 2009

These dates legally free you to a few beers the night before, so jot them down, make sure your friends are aware of them, and get planning those barbeques for the few days that are remaining.

Remember, its important to have fun, but please make sure you drink completely irresponsibly!

May 6th, 2009 | Category: bank holidays 2009, public holidays 2009 | Leave a comment