It’s a feeling that I’m suffering all too often. There are a few sites in particular that seem bad, probably because these are locking out the logon buttons until the entire page is loaded.

But I have noticed what is stopping these pages from completing their loading. Quite simply put, it is the all encompassing Google. There seems to be an issue with Analytics that will sometimes make a page take forever to load.

If you can, take a look at what your browser is waiting for (some display this information). Quite probably it is saying “Waiting for google.com”. I’m not sure why as this is different to the google analytics address that serves the code, but this is what is holding us up.

For me the answer was simple. Log on to the router and block all access to google.com. As soon as I do that (and I’ve tried it several times) the pages open instantly. There’s only one downside – if the .com version is your default browser you will need to swap to another one. But if it speeds up your browsing, isn’t that better?

                          

Anyone can put together a fantastic looking site and start taking deposits for holidays. You contact the owner, pay your deposit and probably even the balance and then wait for your holiday.

But for a small percentage of people this turns sour when they arrive to find the rental does not exist and they have potentially spent thousands on holiday accommodation and got nothing back in return. Bad enough when you are holidaying at home, even worse when abroad in peak season and finding alternative accommodation is difficult.

Take care when booking
There are precautions to take. Forget what the site looks like, that’s no indicator. A scammer can produce a top quality or a cheap looking site and many owners will pay for high end sites whilst others put their sites together in an hour or two.

Credit cards are the safest option
Where possible, pay by credit card. It’s not going to stop you from being caught out, but you should at least get your money back if it all goes pear shaped when you arrive.

A telephone number helps
Also, look for properties which provide a telephone contact number. I’ve experienced the situation whereby the owner went on holiday the week before I was travelling and not checking emails. But I was able to phone to find out the exact address to go to.

But more than that, you want to speak to the owner and talk to them and try to get a feeling of whether they are there to help you or to scam you. Do they ask the right questions, such as how you want beds made up, or are they just trying to get payment ASAP?

Look where they are listed
Finding the property on a reputable directory is also a great way to reduce the risk. At least if previous holiday makers have had problems then there should be reviews, but hopefully the directory will also mention when the property was first listed. The longer it has been on the site the more chances there are that people have booked through that site and experienced a good holiday, so you are safe booking with them.

Think why they want paying how they want it
If an owner only wants to accept payment through non-traceable means such as Western Union, do ask them why. Credit card payments are the only safe option, but at least if PayPal is involved there is a slight chance of a complaint. If they won’t accept credit cards, offer cash in hand upon arrival. It can be safer for you!

Not all advertised cheap holiday rentals are scams, but take time to be wary and make sure that the one you are booking is genuine.

                          

Sadly, Michael Macintyre did not give him a “yes”, leaving him scraping through to the second round with a yes each from The Hoff and Holden. Whether he continues through to May’s live semi finals will only be decided in a few weeks, but he has been in this situation before.

If you take a look at the bfreestyle website (yes, one of my sites) then you will see a yourtube clip of John Farnworth’s 2009 Britain’s Got Talent audition – you have to give the guy credit for trying hard.

For those interested, John is a freestyle footballer and basically does several tricks with a football. At one point he replaced the ball with a burning globe and as he flicked the ball off some of the fluid spilt onto his shorts, leaving flames flicking around his shorts.

What was interesting was that he was the last act before the break and during the break they immediately tested the fire safety curtain! Were they that worried that his tricks could result in the Liverpool Empire burning down?

                          

And they are incredibly expensive to build. Quotes typically range from £1,500 for a simple App right up to £5,000, still for a very simple App.

But why? Yes, the code is difficult to write, but if I had the flow of work I could easily churn out a few similar basic Apps per week. In fact for some of my targets I expect that I could probably manage just over 1 per day. Is it fair to charge £5,000 for less than a day’s work?

The problem is though the hardware. To include iPhone Apps you must develop on an Apple Mac, not as cheap as a PC. Then to test them you need a few platforms, so an iPhone, an iPod, an iTouch, an Android device etc etc. And what is the monthly running cost of the contracts on that little lot?

And for me to be creating 1 per day needs a team of sales people in the field selling the Apps, collecting payment and being the go between for me and the customer. And all of these sales people need to be able to demonstrate the Apps on their bank of phones.

Suddenly something that should take a day has escalated to 3 man days of effort and a huge amount of hardware – probably 9 handsets at least and their monthly running costs just to keep it all going.

Maybe that is where the costs are!

                          

All being well the first app will be completed tomorrow, once a data feed is provided by a customer and the sales side has promised me that there are more potentials on the way, possibly even this week. Once the first couple of apps are live those that are doing the selling are desperate to get their teeth stuck into the job and they could be flying off the shelves, or into the Apple Store anyway!

I’ve also been promised a few new sites are in the pipeline including a 50-page site with fully CMS. So it sounds like the quiet time that has been just around the corner and threatening to allow me to get up to date with the in house projects could be on hold for a while and pushed back. Shame in a way – I was looking forward to redeveloping a few old friends!

But the big news is the iPhone Apps are finally with us. Kicking and screaming I was unwillingly dragged into the field of developing them and now I think they are great fun. Whether after 6 months of Objective-C programming (and everything else I have to get my head around for other platforms) I still think they are fun is yet to be determined!

                          

The answer is quite simply, do you use it now and, if so, what for? If you just admire that green bar then you can probably find something else to admire on your website. Maybe install a hit counter and work on getting that to improve?

Link buyers & sellers
But for those in the business of buying and selling links it is crucial. Even though it has not updated for 8 months (and counting) these people still use it. Talk to the company representatives of the paid to post schemes and they will probably tell you it is a pain to use, but one that they still use because ‘it is the industry standard’.

A standard based on data that is 8 months old and growing staler. I’ve got websites of my own that have barely been touched in that time and deserve to lose their PageRank, and others that if there had been an update would have done well out of it. It’s an old and outdated measure that people still insist on using.

Is there an alternative?
So, what’s the alternative? Well why did it become such a far reaching standard? Simply because (1) it’s from Google and (2) it’s a measure of the quality and quantity of incoming links. And whilst quality & quantity of links drove search engine positions, that mattered.

But with Google’s dominance in the market and it having better, and cleaner / fairer ways of monitoring true popularity of a website, it seems that eventually PageRank will be dropped in favour of watching how visitors behave when they visit a website. It can easily do this through its own tools such as Feedburner and Google Analytics (and it is interesting to note that as Analytics grew, the frequency of PageRank updates dropped).

So when will the ‘industry standard’ for selling links change and what will it change to?

What does the links industry want?
Well the industry is interested in increasing search engine positions, not creating a buzz about sites. So I suspect that (except for those sites selling links for a “buzz”) many will hold on to PageRank for as long as possible in the hope that Google does decide one day to update it again. But, other than that?

Once the marker gets really out of date – too many new sites with 0 rating, too many poor sites with a good rating – someone might be brave and take the first steps. However, I expect that it won’t be towards monitoring traffic. We’ll probably see either some brand new industry standard that tries to compete with what PageRank used to show us, or people might instead just sell links based on their Yahoo, or Google, back links count.

In the future
However, I do not think that PageRank has a huge life left. It is, quite simply, a pointless measure. We would be far better off looking at our Alexa ranking, which measures traffic, then some green bar that tells us the total PageRank of all the pages pointing at our own.

In the end, it is true visitors and their interactions with our sites that tell us we are maintaining our sites well, not some little green bar.

                          

Looking at the map (right) from the University of Dundee’s satellite receiving station, most of the country is covered in snow.

Yet our little corner of the NorthWest seems to be one of the few areas that has escaped the blanket of snow. We still have our green fields, the schools are open and I am still doing daft runs on slightly frosted pavements in the icy breeze.

We are forecast for some slight snow showers over the next 48 hours, but with daytime temperatures hitting 6c, I doubt that anything that makes it to the ground will be around for long.

The kids might be sad to see the rest of the country enjoying the snow, but at least we can drive around reasonably easily.

                          

What originally started as an idea a year ago to help to keep my own web design website fresh (by posting once or twice a month) and hopefully a way of launching my customers’ new websites quicker evolved in a way I could not have predicted at the time!

500+ posts in the first year and the start of a venture into paid posting, it has given me a new insight into the world of blogging that I have very much enjoyed.

The traffic levels are not yet something to shout about, with most people hitting the blog looking for details on the various scam emails etc that I have mentioned. But hopefully over the next 12 months it will continue to evolve into a useful website design resource as well as continuing to report on all of those dodgy spam emails that keep arriving on my desk.

                          

She owns the .co.uk version of a domain name and the email was to inform her that the .com version is coming up for sale very shortly. She was worried as to whether this meant that someone was trying to poach her trade.

However, a quick search around a few other websites on snippets of the email along with a little investigation soon turned up the truth. The .com version of her URL was owned by someone else, who let it expire about 2 months ago. In two days’ time, it will become free to register again.

InTrust Domains are simply matching the list of expiring domain names with a list of live domains and hoping that owners will want to buy the .com when they tell them that it could be bought by someone else.

From what I read, there is no guarantee of actually getting it, they are just offering to compete when it does become available.

However, if someone else having the .com version of the domain name has not affected your business before, is it really likely to now? Unless you really want the .com version, just delete the email. And if you do want the .com find someone else who offers this service without resorting to spam to find customers. Teach the spammers a lesson!

Here’s the email she received.

Regarding the upcoming sale of [removed].com:

Sincerely,
Arthur Simmons
InTrust Domains
PO Box 88049
Colorado Springs, CO 80908

                          

Take the recent customer who wanted a new website, because although his existing one is top of the search engines he is getting no orders, unlike his competitors that are listed below him.

It was clear to see that on a business to business website a that looks like it was knocked up 10 years ago in a spare 10 minutes is not going to cut the mustard.

So I produced several samples, but with every one of them the customer doesn’t like them – not enough different colours, fonts & font sizes, not enough movement, every page of the website has the same format etc. Near enough the list of everything you should do as why it didn’t look right.

And then he would show me his non-performing site and ask why it can’t look more like that…

Maybe because you want a new website that actually gives customers the confidence to buy from you?

It all seems very pointless. It is very obvious what this customer wants – me to build a website that looks like the one he built. But, just because it is professionally built does not give the confidence, it is the way it looks that gives it what it needs.

So if you are paying someone to tell you why orders are not coming in and they give you advice, why not do what they say?

                          

In short, there was a small piece of javascript added to links in tweets. Instead of the reader having to click the link to view the site, just the mouseover action was enough to trigger the opening of the new site. And these new sites were, on occasion, less than ‘family friendly’.

But the code didn’t just open the undesirable website, it also sent a Tweet from the user’s account, spreading the worm through thousands of accounts.

The worm managed to pack so much into each Tweet by exploiting XSS – cross site scripting, where a small piece of Javascript calls a larger piece of code that is hosted elsewhere. Mainly used for innocent purposes, it does leave the hosting website open to such problems. However, there should be no good reason for including javascript in Tweets, so the fix must be quite simple.

Twitter assure users that the vulnerability has now been fixed, presumably blocking all Javascript from Tweets.

                          

You might not have seen what they have recently rolled out and I suspect that this change is why no pagerank updates have got through in a while.

In short, if you are signed into Google and go to the home page, the moment you type your first letter of the search Google switches you to the results page and ‘guesses’ what you are trying to search on. For example, trying to find ‘Liverpool Airport Arrivals’, pressing ‘L’ gave me thousands of results showing the lottery results. Continue typing Liverpool and then results relevant to Liverpool arrive. Start on Airport and the results are narrowed.

It is very interesting, if very annoying, this new technique. As the guesswork changes so do the results, and the Adwords adverts. Does this mean that those advertisers are being counted as having displayed their advert in their stats?

Also, how does it work? Can Google really trawl its results that quickly, or is there now some clever caching of popular search terms? If so, then how often are they being updated and when new sites fit the list, when are they being inserted?

This could even mean the results are being worked out backwards, which would be fascinating and from my history in data warehousing, not only possible but extremely quick. However, that would mean examining each page as it is added / changed and deciding what, if any, of the popular search terms it is relevant to and where on the results it should be added.

This back to front approach would certainly give fast results and would save Google searching its ever growing list of webpages for ever search, which must become impossible with the growth of the internet. We just have to think how that will affect our work as website owners.

And I just need to remember to sign out of Google before running any searches as the constantly changing results just do not do it for me!

                          

The idea is that by programming this dinosaur of computers, the students would really get a feel for what is really involved in programming and learn about taking more care.

Without features such as copy and paste, every part of the code has to be typed very carefully into the correct place. Make a single mistake and you are left potentially retyping a large section.

I am all for this! I myself learnt my programming skills on BBC Model Bs, Acorn Electrons, Atari 400 and the likes. The skills that you learn programming these are far more advanced to the skills you learn coding the more modern computers with their easy to use and ultra friendly interfaces.

“Syntax Error at line 1000″ was about as much information as we got when it went pear shaped. These days, code such as HTML will quite often just ignore the errors and make the best of what it has, which might not actually give the correct result. With debuggers and easy to edit WYSIWYG interfaces a lot of the programming skills are not as needed, until it is too late.

I have worked with excellent graphic designers who have been stuck with big name web design tools with, for example, a thin blank line appearing in the screen. Only when you have a good knowledge of coding and plenty of experience in tracking down that one incorrect character can you easily solve the problem.

So I hope that maybe more BBC Micros will be being resurrected and more students given the chance to really learn what goes on inside a computer.

                          

This is believed to be the highest fine ever levied on a single firm for failing to protect the security of its data.

The policy holder data, which can include sensitive details such as bank accounts and credit card information, went missing 2 years ago, in August 2008. However, Zurich itself did not realise the loss for another year, which is when it made the customers aware of the loss.

The data was being transported to a data storage centre in South Africa when it went missing.

                          

However, I mentioned a couple of days ago that I had been approached with regards selling one of my sites and that is going ahead, along with possibly the sale of up to 3 other existing websites to the same person!

This is great news for me. Not only a huge smile on my face as the bank balance increases, but it would allow me to refocus my attentions on my main sites and to bring up to scratch some other domain names that I have not touched for years. Some of them I only remember when it is time to pay for the domain renewal!

It does show that focusing on a few websites is essential. Get too many with varied topics and producing sufficient writing is impossible, especially with holidays (which is why I was quiet last week).

None of my main blogs are up for sale, just those middling ones that have done reasonably well that I no longer have the inspiration to fully maintain. Although I bet at least 2 of them are quickly replaced with similar sites to concentrate on.

In fact, I am sure they will be replaced – I have owned the domain names for years!

                          

By this statement I am not implying that those people who’s aim it is to fill hyperspace with as many splogs as they can to promote their own business are right.

No, there is a technical reason for having more than 1 blog and if you are in any way a serious blogger, then listen up and create a new blog now.

Having a primary blog is all well and good and the perfect way to go. If you use a free host, such as wordpress.com of blogger, then you probably do not really need to read on. Actually, best you don’t – you can’t achieve the safety of having multiple blogs with them.

If your blog is important to you then you might be adding plugins, trying out new themes and importantly, protecting its safety through regular updates.

But, when there is a major update, for example WordPress has just gone to 3.0 (and now 3.0.1 – not so major), do you just install it to your new blog? I did not and certainly would not. Is everything compatible with your hosts? Does it cause any problems? Is it safe?

Too many questions and why you need another blog. Set up your second blog and install updates to that before you install them to your live blog. If it works, your main blog will probably be safe. If you have problems (files not downloaded properly etc) then you can find out in a test environment.

It is easy to set up a new blog – just create a folder within your current blog of /testblog and use that, or create a test subdomain of your current site.

There is no reason for not having a second blog to test updates out on and you will run updates knowing that you have previously tested them and feel much happier about them.

                          

I’ve been seeing an intermittent server fault more frequently for a while and got absolutely fed up with it today, so ended up upgrading the server!

It now appears to be back up and running and this type of server holds other WordPress blogs successfully. So with look, no more problems.

Fingers crossed!

                          

I was contacted yesterday by a local customer who wanted to rank well for a local search term. Now, this is something that I highly recommend. His question was simple “How much would you charge to optimise my website?”.

Do the terms send traffic?
But, I had been running research last week on loads of local terms and I guessed from that that his marketing consultant terms would yield little results. So, off to Google I went and yes, 0 monthly searches.

My next step was to look and see if he was close to the top anyway and I’d just have done a few free articles for him. I typed in the search terms and actually the main part of this website was 2nd on Google. His was nowhere to be found and a couple of other customers of mine were on page 2.

An expensive pink elephant
Conclusion – it would take a bit of effort to get him to the top of a useless search term. I explained all of this and even checked my own traffic logs. I was 2nd on Google and no hits from that term in the 13 / 14 months I looked back.

The relief!
His response – well obviously he had thought it was his chance to push his brand new business, so I expect he was a bit upset. But he thanked me and told me the full story. He had been approached by some self confessed SEO experts who had offered to do the job for him using that search term, for £1,500.

Don’t blindly trust those you don’t know
He didn’t mention which bandits made this offer, so I can’t name them. But, for a brand new business, that would have been a lot of money straight down the drain that he probably couldn’t afford.

Shame on them!

                          

This is, at first, a frightening figure – something around 0.5% of the UK’s households could contain an infected machine. But, experts expect that the situation might not be as bad as it seems.

The software specifically targets UK computers and attempts to track logons to UK banks. It resides on Windows machines and is a variant of the Zeus malware.

It has probably been installed on the infected machines after the users clicked on email links or visited infected websites. Simple safety precautions, such as not opening unexpected email attachments, being careful with popups on websites (even trusted websites) and installing browsers with protection can all prevent problems as can running anti virus and anti spyware software.

It is not yet known if anyone has been a victim of this software.

                          

Let’s look at how websites can get to the top of search engine results. In short, links and lots of them. The more relevant links you have the higher up the results you go. But this is a system that is easy to manipulate.

For those buying and selling links, if the PageRank toolbar suddenly showed grey bar for everyone it would spell a minor disaster. How would lots of these companies know how much to pay or charge?

Well, there are other indicators such as Yahoo Back Links, so no doubt that would quickly take over.

Why is this information available?
But that is not all that stops Google from pulling this indicator. There is more than meets the eye to that little widget that shows us a green bar. And we have to ask, if Google is so against people using links to increase PageRank, why it makes this information so readily available? It would make it a lot harder for people buying and selling links if this information was removed. Given that appears to be a Google aim, why distribute this information?

The next step in rankings?
Another theory about Search Engine Optimisation is that sites with plenty of traffic and low bounce rates should do well in the searches. And this makes sense. If a visitor arrives on a site looking for information and immediately leaves, then it shows the search engine that was the wrong site. An excellent way of humans correcting search results.

But, how would a search engine collect such data? Well Google Analytics, Feedburner, the Alexa Widget and even Google’s Adsense statistics all spring to mind. But these rely on the website owner signing up to the system and if it was known that these were being used against you, would you sign up?

Gathering the data
So Google needs an alternative way of getting data and that is by watching visitor habits, rather than visitors on certain sites. The Alexa toolbar can track this, but it is not owned by Google (although there are reports that Google is buying the data).

The easiest way of monitoring lots of peoples’ browsing habits is to encourage them to have a button on the toolbar that feeds back information to Google about every page they are visiting. And in return, Google must give some information back to make it worth their while.

What does the PageRank button do?
And that is what brings us back to the PageRank button on your toolbar. Even if Google move over to judging sites by human behaviour, they still need us to leave that widget installed on our machines and that means giving us a good reason for leaving it there.

So I think for now, the answer is that if Google pulled the PageRank toolbar, they would lose their best way of moving forward with search engine results. They might not like what some people do with the results, but it is the price they pay to get the data they need.