JasonD's blog

Or at least according to the typo within his new site at Easy Mobile

Putting that aside though Stelios has entered the mobile phone biz in the UK and is offering a VERY competitive tarrif structure, charging an opening gambit of 9p per min to any network and 3p per SMS.

This short term offer expires at the end of June and prices rise but are still extremely competitive at 15p per min and 5p per SMS.

Stelios has partnered with Danish telecoms outfit, TDC and uses T Mobiles' network to offer the service.

TDC changed the way Danish networks operate almost overnight when they 1st launched but I'll let others (Nick or Mikkel ?) who know a lot more about that than I do comment on it.

Autolink and what average users really think!

I started a thread AutoLink and the User with the aim of seeing, if we as a community could see any beneficial use of the AutoLink functionality in Google's new toolbar for the end user?

As the thread grew it became apparent that it is very hard to stop thinking as website operators and to think purely as ordinary web users. UKgimp made an excellent post that summed things up saying.

Because I knew I had the perfect opportunity coming up I proposed I ask some people I consider average web users what they thought.

Here is what happened along with the results and my interpretation of them.

Follow the title link for the full post.

Google are now acepting PDF files for their Print programme .

Previously you had to have a physical book with ISBN number then mail it so it could be scanned by the Google team. One of the restrictions have now been lifted and PDF files are now able to be uploaded although it still has to have an ISBN (and consequently) be available as a printed tome through a registered publisher. Follow the title link for the full post.

We've spoken at quite some length about how the new Google Toolbar doesn't add any value and physically detracts from a webmaster's business but we haven't spoken in any length about whether it detracts or adds value to the end Google userbase. The searchers.

I believe that the toolbar detracts from the user experience of a searcher visiting a website with the toolbar installed but I am biased. Placing your site owner hat down on the table for a moment and putting on your Mr & Mrs Average searcher hat on how do you think the Autolink feature of the toolbar increases or decreases value?

To start things off here is Google's POV from their toolbar page

Spring is almost here, but winter is still with us and I feel like death warmed up with a stinking cold (but I am a guy, so that probably means I've sneezed twice and that's it) so it must be St David's Day the Welsh national's patron saint and day of remembrance.

As the dafs pop their head through the frozen ground I simply wanted to share my snotty hanky with the world in wishing the Taffs a great day.

There seems to be a routing problem for the whole of the UK at the moment. I guess this cuold also include the rest of Europe as Telehouse is the main hub for cross transatlantic communications.

Some traffic to certain parts of the US is not making it but the same requests sent from within the US are.

The Register are reporting on Jugology

The Scientist in question believes:

I am not sure if I agree with these findings and am currently looking for female research assistants to test these claims. All applications via email please :)

P.S. I think this should go under "Top Bollocks" :D

A few days early but here are the February Patents from the search engines as well as other search related patents I could find.

It's a few days early but if any more come in I'll edit this post to include them.

I am a regular Rodney at times but earlier today I took the biscuit!

My laptop started playing up and the W key was constantly stuck. "Blast and damnation!" I thought to myself as everything I tried to do couldn't be done.

www was easy but trying to type .com was never going to happen!

I took my laptop to bits (invalidating the guarantee) to get the keyboard out and take a look at its inards. I saw nothing wrong with it so did the same on my colleagues laptop of the same model and swapped the keyboards over (I'm the guvnor, so my needs take priority!) but the damn W key was still stuck.

I started to think horrible thoughts about the Laptop being completely foobarred and having to go back to Tosh for a (now invalidated) warranty claim.

I paced up and down my office, swore lots and smoked a ciggy or 3 whilst I thought about all that work that has to be done and I can't get to the damn stuff, while my PFY put both laptops back together.

Once he was done, I noticed that I still had a USB keyboard plugged into the machine and there was a calculator leaning on it. It just so happened it was leaning on the W key!!!

So, this is rightly put in Bollocks and that is exactly what I stopped scratching when the answer was found.

Am I a plonker? You better believe it :)

or MS teach leet speak.

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/children/kidtalk.mspx

Hilarious !

I've just received an email from Google about Gmail. Now I already have a GMail account so I guess this is a standard mailing to everyone who has ever expressed an interest and infers that GMail has come out of Beta. Follow the title link for the full post

I'll let Barry explain in his own words but from me a simple congratulations and well done to the SMA team.

I'm looking at some internal code for those tools we all know, use and can't live without and wondered if there is a definitive list of search engines?

The kind I mean is one that incorporates all the different country level domains for all the major (and minor) functioning engines out there.

E.G. Google has these sites

I host a few servers with EV1Servers.net, the original budget dedicated server people, but one in particular is foo barred as I use it almost exclusively for email. It's a huge business issue for me as I can't send or receive any of them!

Are you with EV1 and are you affected by DNS problems at the moment and if so how do you take care of outages like this?

Is it time for low TTL and change your MX records on the slightest sniff of a problem or...... ?

or is the latest update with Google proof of genetic relationships in full force?

I've been quite open in my thoughts about knoll peaks and how use of deoxyribonucleic acid is being used to identify web sites and relationships between them. I've also shown how that same thoughts process when used with social demographics and neck colour can be used to help tailor results for a search engine user. Follow the title link for more...

The Register, the definitive news breaking, tongue in cheek, IT website is being sponsored by MSN search.

The Register used to have a humourous tariff structure for bribes. (Hey, journos can be bought too!) I wonder how much it cost for the total rebranding El Reg has undergone?

This months most interesting Search related patents compiled by JasonD for Threadwatch - Google, Yahoo, MSN, IBM and Apple all make an appearance and it makes for interesting reading for sure - Thanks Jason... Follow the title link for the full post.

When you search on the new MSN the cached pages are served from the domain cc.msncache.com

I get a 404.

You heard it here 1st and I hope all the other media outlets pick up on this story and give Nick credit for the amazing resource TW is :)

A few years ago I wrote a P2P based anonymising application.

In principle it was very similar to what became known asFree Net, but no where near as elegant.

I had a reason to reinvestigate the principles, this evening and came across the TOR site. I thought to myself, "What is the point of dusting off my old code, when something like this exists?"

It seems a well rounded and elegant manner to deliver pseudo anon communications for whatever it is you want to do.

Now I've started to read more about TOR, I can honestly say my pallete is well and truly whetted.

N.B. Link spamming isn't something I would do with the net as total anon isn't needed nor even sensible as there is always a paper trail back to the spammer, and the greater the anon the slower the throughput, but certain research that assists with SEO would definately be sensible done this way.

I know what I would do with the TOR or other anonymising network but what ideas have you got to help you in your business?

Is it when you hear an advert during the breakfast show on a commercial London radio station for a PPC management company?

I don't know if this is worthy of TW news per se, but I do have some thoughts on it so decided to "blog it" rather than submit a thread.

I listen to the radio pretty much all day long. My station of choice isn't music based but a news and talk show based format. Whilst this is common in North America it is rare in the UK. There was a try at starting up the talk radio genre in Blighty by Talk Radio a few years ago, but even they changed their format and became sports focussed, now calling themselves Talk Sport.

Anyway, I listen to LBC and during the breakfast show, with the wannabe shock jock Nick Ferrari over the last few days I have heard an advert for Top Position a PPC management company that his this to say about itself.

Now my thoughts aren't whether Top Position are a great or not PPC company but has SEM hit the mainstream. I have never heard an advert on the radio nor seen an advert on the TV before promoting SEM.

I would be VERY curious to hear from someone at Top Position about the effectiveness of their radio advertising campaign and why they, rather than their competitors had the big balls it took to make the decision to utilise this route to the business execs stuck in the London traffic jams.