Steven Mooner Usher

This is a shockwave file from a client of mine.

So Andy Murray lost the US Open Final to Roger Federer, big whoop. I’ve had more exciting diseases than the Scotsman’s run to the final. That’s not to say he hasn’t done well, because let’s face it, I have as much chance of reaching a Grand Slam final as, well, Tim Henman ever did, and Murray has done well. The lad is obviously talented, and will go further in his career than any of the last mediocre generation of British tennis players, but ultimately we need to ask ourselves why we are supporting him.

He has publicly stated he is not British, he is Scottish. So either his history is terrible, or he is making a point of his ancestry, and it is manifestly the latter. No self-respecting Scottish person would ever claim to be associated with the English, which in declaring yourself British you would very much be doing.

The English press are fantastic at choosing when to be British and when to be English. Note Andy Murray, and Team GB of Olympic fame, but as soon as the English football team do well (do not hold your breath) they will be laughing in the face of the Scottish national team as they drip out of another qualifying campaign.

The greatest example of this patent ambivalence comes in the form of this years Junior Wimbledon champion, the ‘English’, ‘Home-grown’ Laura Robson. My solution is to do away with one of the other, to remove all borders and merge as one United Kingdom with no alternatives, or to eradicate any doubt of identity by obviating the monarchy, killing off any suggestion of United Kingdom, Great Britain, or any other unifying term that might be out there that these days solely acts as a way of tapping in on sporting success for media sales. Clearly define the lines, and we can start to gloat with genuine reason.

There are many controversial practices within certain industries, cosmetics have animal testing, sports events have ticket touts, cinema has DVD piracy, and farming has seal-clubbing…don’t worry, I’m joking. No, possibly the worst of these (excluding seal-clubbing) is that arm of marketing and advertising that leaves us so infuriated that we often resort to abuse, Tele-sales.

As with everything maddening, there are degrees of annoyance. I would much rather receive a sales call than, say, see my house burgled, by a Big Brother winner, on a Monday, in Hemel Hempstead, whilst the salient realisation dawns on me that I am in fact naked. Thankfully that can never happen, as it almost technically illegal to move to Hemel Hempstead, but nevertheless, there are degrees. So where does telemarketing stand on the great scale of vexation? Do we really hate these calls as much as we claim? Or are they just an excuse to vent our daily angers at a faceless innocent?

We have within our power the ability to hang up the call at any moment, so why do we make such a drama of how these calls are the plague of our existence, steaming like a pot of mussels after each and every call we receive? The main reason I can attribute this to is the interruption, the glacial nonchalance of the sweaty, spotty post-grad student sat in a call centre somewhere in between a village called Affluence and a city called I Wasted Three Years On A Degree.

Having had first hand experience of working in a call centre, for which I apologise and feel remorseful to my very core, I can unequivocally declare that there is a beating heart of unalloyed malevolence pumping nothing but a disgustingly nefarious ethic in to the minds of their staff, many of whom are still relatively impressionable. On a day to day basis we would be taught how to deal with the anger and retaliatory nature of a large percentage of our unsuspecting victims. We would be trained to react with politeness but determination, and to keep selling until the potential customer had hung up. That for me was the hardest element of the job, I have no objection to speaking to strangers, and to some extent I have no objection to a hard sell, but I could not bring myself to bludgeon my way in to these peoples lives, pretend to be their best friend, and worst of all act as though I was working for someone I wasn’t.

Without naming names, I was told that my introductory speech should read something akin to “Good morning sir/madam, my names Steve and I’m calling on behalf of xxxx”. Like i said, naming no names, but for the xxxx you can replace with Google, O2, Microsoft, and many more.

‘On behalf of’, what a ridiculously ambiguous statement, and I completely understood the callers need for clarification, which happened a large number of times. The largest chunk of my time was spent appointment setting, and seminar booking, which is the easier end of the scale in terms of the product you are trying to sell. These seminars were aimed largely at the technology sector, so I was calling IT Technicians and Directors, who frankly will have known of my ‘products’ beforehand through alternate media if they were in the slightest interested, and the bookings I made I can only accredit to luck.

So where is the defence for telemarketing? I don’t believe this case is quite finished just yet, although I know I can not metamorphose the truth in to something truly acceptable.

If we remove all inimical thoughts and take a look at the calls through set of clean eyes, or should that be ears? We see that in most cases there are offers here that would be beneficial to us, they would enhance our life should we accept them and give these calls a fair chance. One of the most common calls I receive is from Vodafone trying to extend/modify my contract, and recently I came to the end of my contract and predictably got that call to renew. I took this as an opportunity to see if I could work this to my favour, having heard many stories of people bartering a good deal. I was originally paying £40/month on a fairly comprehensive package, and had just a couple of months previously received a new phone from them, the model of which I forget, but suffice to say it was nothing remarkable. Having nothing to lose, I said I would renew so long as they sent me a Nokia N95 8Gb, and dropped my monthly rate for the same package, and to my joy this is exactly what they did. I am now on exactly the same package, with a rather brilliant phone, and paying precisely half of my original monthly fee.

This is just one example, but I’m sure if we were all truthful with ourselves, we could admit to other examples of this nature of experience, an experience that would never have happened were it not for some sweaty, spotty post-grad student sat in a call centre somewhere in between a village called Affluence and a city called I Wasted Three Years On A Degree.

My view is that rather than instantly becoming irritated at hearing that overly polite introduction, is to disregard the voice, and listen to the words, to take away from the call the information to make an informed decision as to whether their offer will benefit you or not. This is not an easy achievement of that I am acutely aware, but the person on the other end of the phone may be someone just like me, who needs an injection of cash after a relocation and actually doesn’t want to ruin your day at all.

Anyone that uses Google, (the qualifier for this is the fact you are human) will have noticed that beneath that iconic search bar is a new link, directing you to Google Chrome, a Google web browser that as with all things Google, comes with a hype that could perhaps be hugely unmerited.

Before we get to the ins and outs of its functionality, appearance etc, let’s just take a look at the history of the web browser, and why Google would take this route.

The web browser was really born in the late 1980’s, when a variety of technologies, most famous of course the WorldWideWeb, laid the foundation for the first web browser, which brought together a variety of existing and new software and hardware technologies. Web browsers communicate with Web servers primarily using HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) to fetch webpages, which are located by means of a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). In simple terms, they interpret the information that webmasters want you to see, and present it to you in the form of a webpage.

Historically, Microsofts’ Internet Explorer has dominated the market, and currently still holds approximately 75% market share, Mozillas’ Firefox pulls an impressive 20%, and the rest divided between the likes of Safari, K-Meleon, Flock, Konqueror, and Opera.

The market is packed with perfectly capable alternatives…ok, perhaps perfect capable is stretching their achievements, but there are many variations out there that offer you slightly different takes on the idea, and personally Firefox is my browser of choice, but thats largely due to the fact it is not IE.

So why a browser? Well, Google have a suite of Applications, Programs and Indentures (API’s), most notably Google Maps, Android, Google Earth, and Gears, in addition of course to their search services. Could Google be aiming to unify their API’s with Chrome? This is an opinion I’ve seen and heard touted about the internet, but I feel there is a far bigger picture here.

Google Chrome may appear to have its teeth cut for a battle with Internet Explorer, but the Microsoft product that Google is ultimately setting its itself up to destroy is the Windows operating system. In reality, the search titan hopes that its browser, in the short term, will simply make it easier for businesses to deploy their online applications.

Anyway, that’s one for the future, right now we have the issue of where Google Chrome fits in to the current landscape, and my suggestion is that we tuck it discreetly behind a bush and forget about it for the foreseeable future. With it being Google, that may prove to be more difficult than it should be, but in the core elements of its functionality it offers nothing new, nothing exciting, and certainly nothing to challenge Firefox for my attention.

Google’s first major publicity of Chrome came in the form of a 38-page comic that resembled the in-flight instructions of a plane more than it did the release of a major weapon in Google’s considerable armoury. Suffice to say Marvel will sleep easy. The sedate nature of its release suggests Google really aren’t all that bothered about the success of this project, at least not in the near future, and were really just hoping for a little bit of the limelight following Yahoo’s protracted kissing and cuddling with Microsoft before their acrimonious fall-out and subsequent fisticuffs and chest-pumping. Google love a headline, if they were a film star they’d surely become Scientologists and marry some failed actress from Dawsons Creek, but where they normally maneuver that attention well, here I feel they fail on the basic principle of the product letting them down.

They have introduced something called an Omnibox, which is just the search bar wearing a tutu, and fails miserably as a nonpartisan addition to the browser. People have the option with most other browsers of selecting home page etc, but this bar doubles as a search engine on … you’ve guessed it, Google. The merging of the address bar and search bar gives Google too much control over navigation. It separates companies and website operators from their website addresses and brands. Companies spend heavily to establish and maintain brands. Google has just imposed itself between consumers and businesses. Direct navigation has now become proprietary search, whereby Google uses its discretion to filter out web addresses and domains that it deems less relevant. I object heavily to this and see it as no less than bullying, so for this alone I have boycotted the browser, but more poignantly, they have thus far failed to release a Beta version for the Mac. As a Mac user i find this rather insulting, and as an opponent of Microsoft and every filthy moral they stand for I am infuriated.

I shall leave it at this: as a writer/consumer this story is fun, it sometimes even shakes hands with endearment, but as an employee of a web development company, and having test-driven it on a PC, I am more excited by the recession thats’ somewhat fallaciously drowning the spirit of a perpetually melancholic UK. Chrome will not affect things for my employers within the next 3 years at least, and I predict that it probably never will.

In a quiet Somerset bedroom, shuffling away manically, at the latter end of the last millennium, sat a young gentlemen, robust but malleable in build, nonchalant and apathetic in character. In the room below him bustled dozens of atypical gentleman, all handing out ludicrous money in exchange for pleasures of the throat, unbeknown to whom, the little fella upstairs was only years away from climaxing his efforts. Ryan was, of course, masturbating his guitar frets with feverish enthusiasm, pursuing the excellence that now epitomises the crisp clarity of his live performance, and the gentleman were no less than the paying customers of the Crown Inn, Ilminster.

On Monday 18th August 2008 was a double jamboree for those close to Ryan, as that fateful day not only saw the release of his Album, cleverly titled “” (the album art is a Scrabble rack with the tiles all blank), but also we had to waste money on buying some presents that he scarcely deserved, by virtue of it being his birthday. Ten years on from a deluge of fond memories of knowing Ryan before he was ridiculously good, the fruits of his dedication have ripened in to a sublime acoustic collection of genuine quality, a reservoir of sometimes melancholic, sometimes introspective, always alluring insights to a genuinely dear person.

Having grown up with many of the songs as backdrops to an eventful youth, and progressive adulthood, its apt that songs such as ‘Feel Any Feeling’ are opening the album in the finest possible fashion. I’m not one to pigeon-hole and typecast, but fans of John Mayer, Howie Day, Josh Groban etc would find more than enough moments throughout the album to ask themselves “why is this boy unsigned exactly?”.

The track listing is as follows:

• Intros
• Feel Any Feeling
• For You
• There’s A Scene
• Forgive Me
• My Weaknes
• 3D
• If I Fall
• How Things Change
• Footprint
• Destiny
• Panic
• Mellow Rumours
• Look FWD

Without any deference to the rest of the tracks on the album, highlights definitely include ‘Feel Any Feeling’, ‘There’s A Scene’, and ‘Destiny’, and the instrumental ‘Mellow Rumours’.

‘Feel Any Feeling’ exerts a confidence in his clear ability to manipulate the guitars limitations to his advantage, delicately dancing a cultivated wire, with a less than simple technique when coupled with the mundane tasks of both playing the tune and singing whilst holding a gloriously pain-soaked reverberating ‘drum’ rhythm by using the body of his acoustic guitar. There is also a noteworthy extension of his vocal chords, that perfectly parades the aforementioned dedication, drenched in integrity and fidelity to every word he sings.
‘There’s A Scene’ offers a glimpse of the soft-romanticism that flows through him on stage, with a Kooks-esque rhythm that if it doesn’t sucker you in on first listen I would sincerely question your existence.
‘Destiny’ sees Ryan extend his arm to a more popular and accessible sound, and with no detriment to the music at all, a simpler structure. The result is a gorgeous array of vocals and guitar that could easily be a throwback to any genre as much as it could be the new sound.

To listen to some of the songs from the album, and to place orders and contact Ryan himself I urge you to get over to his Profile and allow yourself to discover a talent of unbridled capacity.

The greatest crime in the world is not developing your potential. When you do what you do best, you are helping not only yourself, but the world. I sincerely hope the world are one day beneficiaries of his gift.

To you my dear friend, I raise a glass and say ‘congratulations’ on a fine album that will most certainly act a stepping-stone to stronger rewards, and I look forward to witnessing the development and release of your second album, which will be released through a label, of that I am certain. I do find you rather annoying and tiresome though, and fat. Well, I say fat, you’re more just…an irregular shape, like a garethlellogram. So… just email me when you release it yeah.

I recently wrote about Advanced Web Ranking, and the issues faced with that, but it transpires that Google has blocked all ranking software available for SEO’s and webmasters. Google is successful at presenting information to the world almost purely because that information has been presented to them, and by who? SEO’s of course. If it weren’t for us we’d have titles like “home”, and alt tags missing, which, although they can get abused at times, are still providing much needed information to the blind community. We use these softwares to measure how successful we are presenting our clients web-pages, and we require them to provide proof of our efforts.

Google has put itself in a position of authority, and is operating an intentional maneuver to secure more PPC business. I had never viewed it that way until my boss brought this to my attention this morning, and how very right he seems now. Google shouldn’t necessarily embrace SEO, but they are abusing their position as the worlds number one search engine and manipulating businesses to part with their cash in their on-going pursuit of becoming the internets China. Google and SEO need to be like two old band members that just tolerate each other for the greater good, occasionally we’ll bicker and we may even exchange the odd blow, but we’ll still stick together and maybe even swap Christmas cards, but right now Google has an AK47 pressed right between our eyes and they’re not afraid to pull a trigger or two.

For the uninitiated, Matt Cutts is God. He invented life and gave it some order. If he were to cry I would drink his tears and never wee again. Either way, he’s posted a rather bizarre story on his blog, or, whats more likely is that he’s posted a great story and I’m not worthy enough to understand.

In actual fact, the post itself is fine, an informative tutorial on Javascript Bookmarklets, but within this he’s referenced a service that just plain confuses me, particularly from an SEO perspective.

The site serves as a URL shortening service. You type a long URL in, and hey presto you have a shorter version that when published and clicked on a webpage will go through them. What the purpose of this is I really do not know? I have never needed to shorten a URL that badly, and yes, with SEO you need to make URL’s more search engine friendly, but to drive them through another site would obviously defeat the object of this. the standard practice for this is Mod ReWrite, and it works wonderfully, is easy to understand, and easy to put in to action.

There is obviously a point to the service they provide, but I’m not the man to understand it, so if anyone knows why this is helpful then please, let me know!

Those in the SEO industry will be familiar with Advanced Web Ranking, a software that collects hundreds of search results for selected keywords in selected search engines, and displays the results in an easy-to-report. You can customise the display to include results for the top 1000, 500, or 100 results, but recently it has only been displaying the result if it is in the top 10, and any result there after is deemed to have dropped out of the top 100, and is displayed as such.

I have wrote to AWRs’ support team, and have had zero response, and it has no been approximately a week since my correspondence to them.

The problem is, in an industry that demands results, I am exposing myself to the claws of disgruntled customers, and I feel Google should acknowledge their responsibility to the hundreds of thousands of SEO’s out there that rely on these statistics to prove the fruits of their labours. Google needs SEO as much as SEO needs Google. Without the optimisation work we do on sites all over the world, there would be a deluge of technically poorer sites, our work is to present a website in its optimum state, and only black-hat SEO should be punished.

Still, there’s always Cuil.

Personal Injury Solicitors/Lawyers operate on a very fine line between hero and harassment. By the nature of their work, ie; accusing businessmen and women of malpractice in its various forms for financial benefit, you could argue they are soaked in hypocrisy, and using the money of innocent business owners across the globe to dry themselves off. But what of the claimants? Shouldn’t these people be the bearers of the blame? Are they really only making the claims they are because of all the television advertising? It’s my personal opinion that these claimants are entitled to their day in court, and the injury solicitor in charge of the claim is entitled to represent his/her client as so they wish.

Its’ too easy to suggest that they are carrying out the devils work, when in actual fact this industry would not exist were it not for complacent business owners, motorists, medical practitioners, and everyone else it seems. A claim would not succeed if the person/business accused were not at fault. And I dread to think of the day when a drunken motorist or faulty highway causes me to lose my legs and I feel unable to claim for the devastation to my life for fear of public response.

Of course, there is a clear distinction to be made in severity of case, and it’s true to say that America has ran away with the idea to no limit, and people are now making claims for being born with hair, and not having enough fries with their Extra large McDonalds’ meal. But when we consider that this is a country who willingly put a small child in charge of their economy it comes as no surprise.

In the 90’s new practices were introduced that allowed legal firms to operate a no win no fee strategy, and in doing so this opened up the market to many new and potential clients, but it also forced them to consider each case carefully, only moving forward with legitimate and worthy claims.

It is this distinction that determines whether a case is blatant money chasing or legitimate need for compensation. If there is a genuine claim, my view is that the injury solicitors are doing a fair job for a needy victim, the problem arises when we’re compelled to claim for a paper-cut after buying an A5 note-pad on which to write down all our woes.

No Win No Fee

Article Source: Here

There has been much in the way of ‘hype’ surrounding the search engine Cuil, but I’m struggling to see anything close to interesting about this whole sordid affair other than the 4 original developers have all at some point been employed by Google. And unfortunately for Cuil, unless there are some seismic reassessments of their aim as a Search Engine, that’s exactly where the Google parallels will end.

My Firefox home-page is set to BBC News, and every morning I will read the Technology section with keen eyes, seeking out any developments either by or affecting the search market, (and the occasional post of purely personal interest,) so when, one morning recently the leading story had been put up with the headline: Search Site Aims To Rival Google, I’m sure it will come as no surprise that I wee’d myself a little. It’s the equivalent of a Premiership footballer falling in to a deep vat of dangerously young girls, or Duffys’ record label giving her the green light to write another album of horrifically crap wankery, or me watching Fern Cotton dying painfully…anyway, this was the kind of headline you can wish for, but never truly expect to see. So I read the story, became intrigued, and went to test out Cuil.

Now, I remember one Christmas really REALLY wanting a mountain bike, and getting a pair of green corduroy trousers instead, so this is perhaps the second most disappointed I have ever been, but try it for yourselves, and form your own conclusions. It’s not the worst engine I’ve used, but a serious rival to Google it isn’t. I’m a more serious rival to Google, and as you’ve probably figured, I’m human, albeit a poorly assembled one.

To save me the rigmarole of ridiculously detailed critiques, I’ll resort to the age-old tactic of statistics, 90% of which are made up anyway:

• Aesthetics 6/10 - Its’ best point, but trying too hard in fact
• Functionality 2/10 - My personal opinion is that semantics are for people without the intelligence to know what they are looking for in the first place
• Relevance of Results 0/10 - It’s insane, i think it must genuinely randomly pick some pages from its all too boasted of 120 billion index

That is truly the most damning statistic of them all. I could go in to huge depth about no-one having an allegiance to Google, and how all we want are the most relevance results, but I suffice to leave it there for the sake of the hernia thats been growing in the process of writing this.

Lets allow the results to speak for themselves. Given that my personal site did not appear in their indeces, I searched for “submit URL cuil” (without quotations), and the results were fascinating, completely irrelevant, but fascinating. Furthermore, it returned only 7 results! What happened to that 120 billion index? Googles’ minuscule index returned me a paltry 35,700.

“Cuil” is supposedly the Gaelic for “wisdom”, and I’m obliged to report that this shambles of a search engine clearly think we are not as Cuil as we merit.