what is a chav

I have just learnt this new word, and wanted to share the definition.

Picture this a young lad about 12 years of age and 4 ½ feet high baseball cap at ninety degrees in a imitation addidas tracksuit, with trouser legs tucked into his socks (of course, is definitely the height of fashion).

This lad is strutting around, fag in one hand jewellery al over the over, outside McDonalds acting as if he is 8 foot tall and built like a rugby player, when some poor unsuspecting adult (about 17/18) walks round the corner wanting to go to mcdonalds for his dinner glances at the young lad, the young lad jumps up in complete disgust and says “Whats your problem? Wanna make sommin of it? Bling Bling” when the adult starts to walk towards the young lad, the young lad pisses himself and runs off to either his pregnant 14-year-old girlfriend or his brother in the army crying his eyes out.

My mate has become a chav what can i do? answer is shoot him before it is too late

And a few jokes on chavs too, to help define what a Chav is:
Q. Two chavs are in a car. No music is playing. Who is the driver?
A. The policeman

Q. How do you get four chavs into a phone box?
A. Paint three strips down the side

Q. What do you call a chav in a box?
A. Innit

Q. What do you call a chav in a suit?
A The defendant

Q. What do you call a chav in a filing cabinet?
A Sorted!

not sure I understand all of them though ...

google hires QAs

Google has just posted new jobs description:
QA job

I wonder ... why not applying for it - pffu, you must be american citizen. A shame, otherwise I would have applied for the program, and given Jazar a 10/10 Mark!

optimising for Yahoo

Jazar looks like it is now ok in google (we rank #1 in yahoo, google & msn for "jazar") - we have obviously not started a linking campaign (the site is not ready yet!), but I have optimized the site more or less, and added a few inbound links making sure to use "jazar" in the anchor text -

the PR is 0, which doesn't matter at all: 1)PR makes sure that all your pages are indexed and they are 2) PR gives you the power to vote for other sites - don't care, I am not going to add outbound links from our site anyway.

Amazing how people are still focusing so much on PageRank - just met a guy again last week who thought he was "in the know" because he knew a few tricks to apply in google and to find out what the PR is, how many inbound links you have got to the site, etc ... I must admit that when I started, I thought it waas a good idea to educate people, and to make them understant that SEO is not that difficult, and that quality of content is most important than anything else.

Thanks to thousend of newsletters, blogs, etc ... everybody has now access to info about how to optimize for search engines. But what amazes me is that they get the first part of the message : "SEO is not that difficult", but not the second part: "It's all about content". And at the end of the day, they don't know better, and we just take the risk now to turn all these "apprentis sorciers" into spammers, who think that building 100 subdomain names, exchanging thousend of links, spamming the blogs, etc... will get them higher on the profit ladder.

As I said, everybody is focusing a lot on PageRank. PageRank is a parameter used in the google algorithm - so ... what about yahoo, msn, etc ... If you have got a financial website for instance, you are more interested in optimising your site for yahoo (and for its SLURP) than for google. Having said that, this is pretty much the same - but you may have a site ranking #1 on google, but not even on the first page in yahoo & msn - there are differences too. Below is a checklist to optimise for Yahoo. As you can see, not much differences. So what? Well, SEO is not just about Page ranks, inbound links, it is alse about TESTING! you need to test different stuff, and draw the conclusions yourself about how to gain a better ranking for the keywords you have selected for your site. without getting your hands dirty, you'll not stand a chance to become a confirmed SEO master :-). Ok, for the list of fundamentalist to optimise for Yahoo:

- Have a descriptive URL.
- Use keyword enriched titles on each page of the site.
- Place keyword enriched description and keywords meta tags on each page of the site.
- Use robot.txt files to keep Slurp out of your shopping cart or log in pages.
- Place keyword enriched text in the first paragraphs of your site-copy.
- Use HREF links to direct Slurp through each page of the site.
- Add a sitemap page and be certain there is a link from the index page to the sitemap.
- Be certain that geographic specific information is mentioned on each page of the site. Always have a contact page that also lists geographic specific information.
- Write a press release and send it to as many blogs, news-wires and press release sites as possible.
- Acquire strong, relevant incoming links from sites with topics similar to yours.
Update your site frequently.
- Enjoy and value your placements.

linking linking

Power is to be able to always do what you must do, and not do what you should not do. Well, Jazar is now powerful, so we can aford to do so. What does that mean? Well It means that we have decided to stop using all the spam technics - yes no more spam. And to prove that, I'll guaranty that when our site is released, it will not take us more than 3months before ranking on the first page of google for the keywords :

affordable content management system

Mmmmh, a bit ambitious, given the fact that there are only big names on the first page .. www.cmswatch.com, postnuke, etc ... let's see in 6 months time!

Now. How do we achieve this. Quite simple! just by using the following check list:

• Choose quality over quantity. Link quality carries more weight than quantity. Spend time getting the highest quality links pointing to your site. One of search engine spammers' biggest sales pitches is, "Get millions of links to your site." Don't fall for that arcane, useless pitch.
  
• Begin with Web directories. Yahoo Directory and Business.com are two reliable places for high-quality links. Both require annual submission fees. If their links don't positively affect your site's link development, don't renew.
  
• Harness online publicity. How-to tips, helpful articles, even useful press releases often garner links from other Web sites. Publicity is usually part of a company's overall marketing plan, so harnessing these resources for link development can be a simple task.
  
• Use blogs and forums wisely. Blogs and forums can call attention to useful information on your own site.
  
• Use search engines to research link development. Look at competitors' sites to determine their link development strategy. It can help you with your own. What newspapers and media outlets do they use for online publicity? What Web directories link to their sites? No link popularity checker ("link:domain.com" in Google, "linkdomain:domain.com" in Yahoo) can substitute for doing the research yourself.
  

That's it - the strategy is there. Now, let's talk about the tactics ... a bit later!

added feed to pubsub

Need now to see if it works :-).

I have set it up for the keyword jazar. Let's see if it works ...

Next step is to see what we can do with it - I guess that they are only "techys" using this service at the moment - but you can expect soon people looking for a specific item and using this tool to find out where they can buy it.

this may become a very profitable channel for SEOs!

Google Community

Just came across this site : The google Community

Quite good stuff, and found a nice script to calculate PR - Here we go:

Just enter the url, and click on submit to find out the PR of a site without having to download the google toolbar.

the blog face

And if you want to see the blog of CTO of pubsub (and co-founder), here we go : Bob wyman blog

http://www.pubsub.com/

PubSub is a real-time alerting service that monitors millions of sources of information in real time, creating customized feeds based on customized keyword-based queries that you create.

You can find it Here

It takes litteraly 2 secs to create a link for your RSS reader ... which means that people we have to start optimising for this new generation of search engines!

take advantage of automatic referrers

Some content management have got a very nice feature: Whenever you land on their page from a referrer, you will get automatically listed on a specific page, such as This one

All you need to do then is to:

• Query your search engine for inurl:/wp/ wordpress Referrers
  
• then add all these links to your site, click on them. If you are a gentleman, you then keep the link on your site ...
  
• You check that your link has been added onto these page :-).
  

They are not great inbound links, but you can get them so easily that it would be a shame not to use this trick!

laws and regulations for internet businesses

There are a raft of laws and regulations that you need to be aware of when using the web or email in business. This checklist highlights the main ones.

E-commerce Regulations

Businesses that advertise or sell online to consumers or other businesses must comply with the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002. This means that you must make certain information available before an order is placed, such as how the customer can identify and correct any errors with their order. You also need to provide certain information on your website, including your business name, geographic address, email, VAT registration number and details of any professional body memberships.

Distance Selling Regulations

If you sell goods or services to consumers online, the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 may apply to your business. Before making a purchase, the consumer must be given certain information, including the supplier’s name, if payment is required in advance and an accurate description of the goods and services. After making the order, the consumer must receive written information of the order details, be informed that they have a ‘cooling off period’ of seven working days (for most goods), how to cancel, and the returns policy.

Enterprise Act

The Enterprise Act enables the Office of Fair Trading to apply to the courts for “stop now enforcement orders” if consumer protection laws are being infringed. Courts can issue enforcement orders which could involve fines or a prison sentence.

Advertising Standards Authority Regulations

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) deals with complaints about online ads covering pre-paid space, content in commercial emails and unsolicited commercial emails (spam). The basic rule is that adverts must be ‘legal, decent, honest and truthful’.

Data Protection

If you collect or handle personal data using email or the internet then you must comply with the Data Protection Act 1998. Unless you are exempt, you will need to register as a data controller with the Information Commissioner. You are required to state what you will do with the data (and stick to it), and you must ensure that the data is secure, up-to-date and not excessive. You must also reveal it and delete it if requested by the individual.

Privacy Directive

There are two key requirements of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive. Firstly, you cannot send marketing emails to consumers, sole traders or unincorporated partnerships without their prior consent – unless their email address was collected in the course of a previous sale or sale negotiation. This means that you must use opt-in consent rules for email marketing. Secondly, you must provide clear and comprehensive information on websites which use devices to collect data, such as cookies, as well as an opportunity to refuse cookies and similar internet tracking devices.

Copyright & Intellectual Property laws

Material on the internet is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. You need to be aware of how to protect your copyright online, as well as ensure that you don’t infringe others’ copyright. You should include a copyright notice on your website, as well as stating what trade marks you are using. You must not use someone else’s trade marks, images or text without their prior permission. Even linking to other websites without permission can be a breach of copyright, especially if their content appears within the frame of your website.

Website accessibility laws

Under the Disability Discrimination Act, it has been a legal requirement for websites to be accessible to disabled people since 1999. This means making “reasonable adjustments” to ensure that disabled people can access your online information and services. If you do not, and can’t justify why you haven’t made these adjustments, a claim can be made against you and you could be liable to pay compensation.

RIP Act

Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, you may read an employee’s email without their consent for specific business purposes. These include recording transactions and other important business communications, making sure employees comply both with the law and your internal policies, and checking emails when employees are on leave. If you wish to monitor communications for other purposes, then you must get permission to do so.

Tools for bloggers ...

competition study

I have been doing some competition study for our J-packages, and I must admit that I have impressed by the blog community!

Just uploaded Wordpress, and was blown out by the number of features - everything is in there! the trouble is that even if it looks a piece of cake to install to me, this is probably because I have had my nose in CMS for months now ... but the admin looks scary to outsiders, and this is probably one of the niche we will focus on : make a php application with a friendly Admin UI.

As long as you only keep programmers to develop a project, you will always have this flaw - this is why these type of applications are without any doubt as good (even better) than the commercial ones in terms of functionalities. But the lack of Marketing specs (after all, marketing should always guide the high level functionality requirementas to make sure that your application meets your market's needs) makes them not as attractive. as the commercial ones.

Found a nice training course yesterday : Learn how to redesign blogger. I should ask the guy what he thinks of galide.

Move to Ensim - the right move?

I have moved some of our sites to unitedhosting.co.uk, which uses the ENSIM platform for the control pannel.

nothing to complain about at first, and the price was quite good for a re-seller account (Note: I would recommend to always go for a reseller account - first price is £200).

After a bit of testing, the came acrosse the first limitations of this control pannel. Here they are:

• You cannot setup alias subdomains yourselves, you have to open a ticket each time
  
• You cannot use HTTP_AUTHENTICATION
  
• You cannot use foreign encoding in files other than html file (don't even think of using url rewriting for this purpose, url rewrting rules are applied before the AddCharset ones.
  
• Even if you get your alias' subdomain setup, it will not read any .htaccess file.
  

But unitedhosting are quite responsive, and we will stick to them. But it is important to know that even with a re-seller account, you come across limitations - that's why you need to move to dedicated servers in some cases, to get custom set-up just for you. Other products like ENSIM are out there, but they have got their limitations too.

Investing in a dedicated server can be expensive. Make sure first that your hosting company supports all the features required by your application, and don't think that going for a re-seller account gives you total freedom.