Steven Mooner Usher

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.

Harris Fowler Personal Injury Solicitors, based in Taunton, Somerset, have long established themselves at the fore of the injury solicitors market.
In their own words:
“What we do
Personal Injury
If you’ve suffered an accident or a personal injury you could be entitled to make a compensation claim. We have specialist teams of dedicated and experienced personal injury lawyers who can help you claim compensation on an no win, no fee, no risk basis.

Serious Injury
Harris Fowler has extensive experience of dealing with high value injury claims, typically involving brain, head and/or spinal injuries – normally referred to as ‘catastrophic injury’.

Military Injury
The Armed Forces Compensation Scheme is the compensation package for members of the Armed Forces. It provides compensation, irrespective of fault, across the full range of circumstances in which illness, injury or death may arise as a result of service.

Professional Negligence
Because of our depth of knowledge of Personal Injury work we can and do bring negligence cases against other solicitors for mishandling personal injury cases.”

There are many painful memories I hold of my childhood, force-fed runner beans, hand-me-downs, and my older brother to name but a few, but missing from this list, thankfully, is the doctor.

My doctor, that shall remain nameless, has never been much of child person, but nevertheless he treated me well, served my needs, and did the job that my parents national insurance contributions had part-paid for. Its’ been several years since my last visit to a GP, and I can only assume he is now a rock star doctor with scantily clad bubble-head blondes hanging from his arms, a tour of his luxurious penthouse due for broadcast on Cribs, and an unmerited ego based solely on the affections of a public that don’t know him. I base this on the fact that i was denied access to him, which i find just ludicrous. It appears receptionists in your local surgery now double as bouncers. I now have to return 36 hours later than I originally needed attention, having suffered terribly and weathered the worst of my illness without any medical help, after booking myself in to HIS schedule as to not inconvenience him…and there was me assuming his professional time was supposed to be dedicated to us! I’m so naive.

Now, I could very easily rant for a few thousand words about the diabolical state of our health system, and how it is only deteriorating, but the sad sobering fact is that we all know this, and I was not surprised by my treatment (or lack of it).

The NHS was once a beacon that other countries aspired to, where did it all go so wrong?

I was anticipating a fantastic series, one in which Freddie Flintoff was always going to make a return at some point, and one in which Kevin Pieterson was almost always going to steal the bulk of the headlines against his former countrymen, but unfortunately it looks as though the weather will play the largest part on the outcome, disappointingly, as is so often the case.

Now, After 3 days play and a batting collapse equaled only by the mediocrity of our bowling display, I fear we are doomed to going 1-0 down in the series. The selectors need to take a look at themselves and wonder what the hell they were doing in bringing in Bob Bollock or whatever his name is in to the bowling attack. Steve Harmison has been back at county level for sometime now, proving his quality and consistency over and again, and although he has retired himself from the labours of the one-day game, he has never hidden his desire to represent his country in the test arena. Here is a bowler of undeniable pedigree, fearsome aggression at times, and on his day, possibly the best bowler in the world. Lets’ take a rather unadorned approach to it, I know who I would rather face from 22 yards, and with Harmison firing 95/mph leather missiles, and generating vicious bounce and movement off the seam, it certainly wouldn’t be him.

England will lose, as the batting line-up is too inconsistent. Sure, Pieterson is a magician, but we need at least another two of him to match South Africa’s middle order, and with Vaughan looking as though he’s batting with a stick of Rhubarb, and the young Alistair Cook facing his first dip in form at the highest level, things are getting rather bleak after such a promising first test at Lords.

I may be made to eat my words, but its even likelier I’ll go just as hungry as our insipid batsmen.

This is the year 2008, and I may be wrong, but I very much doubt that 100 years ago, nay, 50 years ago, anyone could have anticipated the true Goliath that the internet has become. Sure, ARPANET was only 15 or so years away, and they were speaking to each other down phones, and receiving ridiculously polite visual messages through something called a TV (ironically one of the victims of the internet boom), but surely no one would ever have envisaged a day when when we could get home from work, turn a switch, and see/hear/type messages to our friends across the globe, exchanging photos and mp3’s, discussing the days events at a ridiculously cheap price?

For many of us this comes at no tangible cost, but for some, like myself, there is a price attached to the luxury of digital existance, and that price is my corneas people, my bloody corneas! I’m almost convinced I’m 70% blind, wheres’ a TFT monitor when you need one!?

Of course the price I refer to is in actual fact the lost art of conversation. I can already hear your cries of “hypocrisy!!” as I type my internet based views, and my defence is that i love the internet, simple as that, but why should we have to be restricted to purely one-sided views of something? As an employee of a web development company of course I embrace the internet, but the one major tendon of the web that really irks me is that with all this freedom of speech, we’ve forgotten how to talk.

ps; Emoticons can suck my balls thank you very much.

This is my first post on here, so I need to make it about something that means a lot to me, and that subject is coffee! This is really just a test post more than anything, so I will leave at this: if you are going to drink coffee, and I highly advise that you do, then make sure it is fresh-ground coffee using a caffetier, and unlike other forms of coffee, notably ‘granulated’, every brand produces a clean, tasty cup, packed with caffeine happiness. I personally use Tescos ‘Original Fresh Ground Coffee’ with the red band, but experiment and see what takes your fancy!