David Leigh

More bitching about Stompernet SIMPLE I’m afraid. I’m getting nowhere near value for money at the moment and there is no way I would sign up for full Stompernet based on this experience. A few points that immediately spring to mind:

• Where are the faculty members in the forums?
• Why are there so many days allocated to doing basically nothing?
• Why is it that every so often there is so much to do (i.e. writing 5-15 landing pages without clear guidance) that many people feel overwhelmed?
• With such a high quality faculty why isn’t it working?
• What am I getting to justify paying $97/month?

I thought the $1 trial was great, although it didn’t go as far as it should have in terms of generating traffic. Based on that I believed that $97/month would be good value too. Instead, I’m frustrated.

To be fair it’s not really aimed at me, but people who don’t have much internet marketing experience. And if I’d paid $97 for the first month it was easily worth it. But looking forward I don’t see the value.

StomperNet SIMPLE currently doesn’t cut it. BUT… with a few tweaks it would be a fantastic. Let’s hope that StomperNet wakes up to this fact so I can write some overwhelming praise. Believe me, I’d love to.

You can hardly miss this book by Tim Ferriss at the moment, it seems to be everywhere, but the question must be is it just hype or does it live up to its seemingly unbelieveable title?

I read the book straight through when it first arrived and although it seems to set the reader up for a big fall, the author really does live up to his promise; he actually does only work 4 hours a week and checks his email just… once a week. (more…)

Whichever way round it goes I just found a great tool that allows you to twitter from Skype. Saves having to open a browser window for twitter everytime and it updates in real time as far as I can see.

So… how do you do it?

Easy.

1. Add twitter4skype as a Skype contact.
2. Type the following as a single chat message to twitter4skype:
   
   /account (shift+return)
   twittername (shift+return)
   twitterpassword (return)
3. The system should return: twitter4skype Registration complete!
4. The next time you write a chat message to twitter4skype, the entry will appear on your account and you’ll receive your friends’ twitters in Skype.

I found this info here, but the instructions weren’t quite right so I modified them.

OK, I’ve finally got around to sorting out my page titles on the blog using the SEO Title Tag plugin for Wordpress. I use Wordpress for quite a few websites now and am planning on converting some others over as the benefits can be worth it. When I’ve converted in the past I’ve only partially converted, using a combination of static html and and hacked Wordpress installation, which works well and is fast.

Other essential plugins include WordPress Database Backup and WP-Gatekeeper, and while I haven’t used it much yet the YouTube plugin looks nice and easy.

Anything else I should be adding?

Talking about more Web 2.0 stuff that I don’t quite get yet. I’ve got 2 or 3 Squidoo lenses published to date, but none of them seems to drive any traffic, although it never hurts to receive a bit of Google link juice.

My last lens was published on June 17th and as yet is unlisted in Google. It’ll be interesting to see where it does rank after it’s been picked up - it is keyword targetted in a moderately competitive niche and the content is ok-ish. Maybe I should take a look at editing once it is in Google.

The great result would be top rank top 10 and both drive traffic and PR boost my website, which also ranks top 10, although it bounces quite a bit as I try stuff out.

Lets give it a shot using twitter as a driver…

[update]

I should have checked one of my other lenses before posting. With the top 2 positions it beats my site into third place for one keyword phrase and is just behind my site on another. Outstanding! I look at the visitor stats and it took off on June 17/18. Did I do something then? Probably. But I don’t remember.

 [/update]

It seemed like a close call, but in fact it wasn’t at all. However many goals Barcelona scored against Nastic on Sunday night it was really all down to how Mallorca stood up to Real Madrid. Although Mallorca were initially in the lead we only needed to hope for a draw.

That’s where Madrid show why they’re winners; they have the stamina to play hard for 90 minutes while other teams just burn out. So Barcelona didn’t win the league, not through their own fault - at least not in this round of the competition.

Well there’s always next year - if you do want to see them play you can reserve FC Barcelona tickets once the draw has been made in July.

About 4 hours ago I blogged, twittered with a link and it’s now indexed.

 

Thanks Ed, you really opened my eyes

After my comments on Twitter yesterday I’m glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t quite get it. Uber twitterer Ed Dale replied to my comments on his blog with exhibit A; OK, I get that bit but I’m now waiting to see if he reveals exhibit B.

The point Ed was making with exhibit A is simply this (I think!); my original post about Twitter was made Sunday 17th June and Google has indexed my post well within 24 hours and possibly within 12 hours.

PS Ed, I’m not a great fan of cafe con leche unless I need to get something in my stomach before diving.

I signed up with Twitter because Ed Dale told me to, but for the life of me I can’t work out why.

Ed is an extremely enthusiastic Twitterer and even has Twitter update his blog with what he’s Twittered about every day.

The problem is I can’t see any real value in it. So what if Ed’s just had a coffee or eating another bun? That’s the kind of crap that I just don’t need to know about, however interesting it may be to Ed at the time. And what does Ed gain from letting the world know what he’s doing?

I read Brent Hodgson’s post trying to make sense of it, but I’m not sure if he’s right. I’m not sure he thinks he’s right either, as I notice he hardly got going with Twitter and stopped altogether in May.

This seems like a lose-lose situation; no value to either party and more meaningless junk on the internet. I’m sure I’m wrong providing you get the right angle on it but for now I just don’t see it.

What are your views?

Why is Fernando Alsono so unpleasant? Whenever he’s interviewed its always about how well he did, or how it was somebody elses fault that he didn’t drive well.

Now he’s started bitching about his new team, McLaren, amid rumours that he’s going to move to Ferrari. He’s not comfortable, they give preferential treatment to his British team mate, Lewis Hamilton, blah, blah, blah, boo bloody hoo.

Let’s remind ourselves how well Alonso drove in the Canadian GP - I lost count of the times he span off the track, making the same mistake on the same corner time after time. Whose fault was that? Alonso’s? Or deliberate sabotage of his car by the McLaren mechanics?

Ok Fernando, take some advice: move to Ferrari. See how long you last with them. Let’s face it you’re unpleasant, obnoxious, and better off out of F1 completely.