After seeing the first 2 google doodles for Christmas 2007 I still don’t know what they are supposed to represent.

Income Shifting - Will income shifting mean UK small businesses have to increase profit margins by up to 10% just to stand still?

It looks like Venue Finder a system devised to help locate UK Conference Venues will be launched in early 2008.

I have been working with a number of experienced conference agents to create Venue Finder, a system  which combines an extensive database of over 11,000 UK venues with the expertise and know how of experienced conference agents.

Where Venue Finder differs from most online venues directories is by the fact it does not rely on a totally automated system, the conference agent imputs the customers required needs and knows within minutes which suitable venues are available on the required dates.

Read an interesting thread in a Legal newsroup on Usenet today.

A poster had brought an item for £325 from an online retailer using their Google checkout facility. The goods arrived 2 weeks later but were not as described and faulty. The poster attempted to contact the retailer only to find the website had gone, emails were unanswered and the postal address was fake.

He initially used the Google checkout mediation service which failed as the vendor could not be traced, he was then told by Google to continue his attempt to contact the vendor or ask his credit card company for a charge back from the vendor.

Now this is where the catch comes in.

The credit card company couldn’t issue a charge back against the vendor because the vendor wasn’t the person who charged the card.
The people who had charged the card were Google so any charge back could only be against them, but as the service google provided was money transfering and this had not been the problem, it meant the poster could not claim the money back of them either.

What in theory this means is that whenever you buy anything online via Google Checkout you automatically lose the security that credit cards provide against bad purchases.

Be aware of this next time you make an online purchase and ensure you read the small print of the Google Checkout terms and conditions.

Had to have a little laugh at this.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7141074.stm

The story itself is not funny, some poor old dear being scammed out of her life savings, but what was amusing was the naevity of the Policemans comment at the end of the story.

“Pc Carpenter urged people not to fall for similar scams and said:
“My advice is if in doubt, leave it out. If you suspect anything,
don’t open it, delete it.

“If it’s suspect, it’s suspect. If there’s any element of doubt,
if it seems too good to be true, it usually is.”

He also advised anyone who receives a scam
e-mail to contact Crimestoppers.”

So there you go, advice from the UK police, next time you receive a scam email let Crimestoppers know.

Bet they will love that ;o)

Looking through the stats on a special page at one of my Directory sites I noticed a visitor from www.soloseo.com 

Out of interest I went and had a look around and soon found their SEO Blog I rarely have time to read many blogs, but made an exception with this one. Well written, nice crisp layout and useful information, gets a big thumbs up from here.

After nearly a month of head scratching, late nights and testing, testing, testing I finaly bit the bullet and switched from using an Access database to using MySQL on my main business directory site. It also involved switching hosting which I have done within the last 30 minutes.

So far, so good, the change of nameservers seemed to happen almost instantly where I am and the site sprang in to life without a hiccup.

I dare say there will be numerous teething problems and it may take longer to propogate for some people, but at the moment I just don’t care. The fact the main site came straight up for me was a big relief and I can now head up the wooden hills and hopefully get a good nights sleep before calls and emails start coming through in the morning.

Doing a search on google today I came accross a site that when following the link from Google was redirecting to a malware site.

The search term used on Google was xxxxxx and the site in question is xxxxxx

The strange thing is, when going direct to the site, or when going via any other search engine there is no problem. The problem only occurs if you search for xxxxxx on google and either click on the result or click on the cached version of the page.

Does this mean google has been hijacked and is redirecting to the malware site, or is the problem more likely to be with xxxxxx?

In an attempt to stop this years X Factor winner from becoming the Christmas  number one the BBC are trying to rig the charts and make The Killers Chrismas single this years Christmas number 1.

Radio 5 Live presenter Victoria Derbyshire is actively encouraging all listeners to go out and download The Killers new single ‘Don’t Shoot Me Santa’ released on December the 1st by download only via iTunes.

We are yet to here Simon Cowell comment about the BBC rigging the charts, but as soon as we here more we will publish here.

If like a lot of people recently you have been on the Fasthosts support page you may have seen this image on the bottom right of the page.

From first look you would think it is a glowing refference from a Mr. James Giffin for Fasthosts.

A closer inspection and in particular after seeing the profile of a James Griffin at linkedin it makes you wonder if Fasthosts have faked this glowing recommendation. Could the James Giffin who so highly rates Fasthosts be  James Griffin who worked at Fasthosts for 4 years?