David Leigh

Being an Englishman abroad is never more difficult than when it comes to a curry, as although it is possible to find Indian and Pakistani restaurants in Barcelona they don’t really cater too well for my tastes - usually not enough heat.

Last night we went to Cardomon with a couple of friends, somewhere we’d been for lunch one day when helping a friend move.

Opting pretty much for a bit of everything I’m glad to report that the food was as good as we’d remembered it - high quality ingredients, good flavour and nicely spiced food. Often you don’t find poppadoms in curry restaurants in Barcelona, but I’m Cardamon is an exception and once again they are nicely spiced.

The restaurant itself is in a converted wine bodega and it looks like no expense has been spared - it looks like a much more expensive restaurant.

So, if you’re visiting Barcelona and missing a curry head to Cardamon. You can find it at Carrer Carders, 31, just off Via Laietana. Call +34 93 295 5059 for reservations.

As you may already know, I was one of the people who signed up to the Stompernet SIMPLE $1 trial in May. We had limited access for a month, while being taken step by step through their new program designed to get newbies up and running with an info product in record time.

So was it any good?

Overall I would have to say YES. Although I didn’t sign up for full access at nearly $800/month, it could be worth it simply for access to some of the SEO gurus they have on the faculty. I did sign up to continue the SIMPLE process though. Although I’m far from a newbie I am currently looking to diversify my revenue streams and one of the ways to do that on autopilot is to sell info products.

So what’s good and bad:

• Some of the TOP internet marketing experts guide you through the process
• Each step is explained in a short video as well as in writing
• The whole process is through an online workbook
• The forums allow you to swap ideas and ask the experts

But…

• Under delivery -  The program promised an internet business by the end of 30 days, but in fact all we had was an incomplete website with no traffic.
• Unorganised - the program was a bit too fluid and it was clear that things changed as we went along. In the week before it started Ed Dale had a set of videos in which he told us to set up an iTunes account and Twitter. We didn’t use either of these in the program.
• Concepts were not always explained well. Landing pages were talked about and pre-sell pages talked about, but not the content required and whether these terms referred to the same page content or not.
• No clear overview.

I’ll see how it goes paying $97/month as I am interested in learning how to use some of the web 2.0 marketing techniques to generate traffic, but think that much of the 30 day period allocated for Stompernet SIMPLE was wasted.

Just back from Travis at the Movistar “tent” at the Forum. The concert was great, good band and the singer seems a good bloke. 

The venue is terrible though, so lucky that it’s the last concert before they remove the tentpole and pull it all down. Apart from the layout - no good at ground level, but ok upstairs - you had to queue to buy beer tickets to present at the bar.

I really hate that attitude - they just don’t trust their bar staff.

The other thing - no food allowed inside, but no food available inside. When I get hungry don’t mess with me - I could easily turn to canibalism in the right circumstance. Like tonight.

PS Hi Marc!

Did you see the Canadian F1 Grand Prix yesterday?

Great result (Hamilton won, Alonso proved again what a miserable human being he is) and some great excitement - I’ve never seen the safety car used so much. In qualification it was obvious that there would be a good number of smashes, but we didn’t expect anything like Kubica’s car shredding impact (below).

The amazing thing - slight concusion and a sprained ankle!!!! The technology used to ensure driver survival is rremarkable, I can’t believe he would have survived this impact even 10 years ago.

Question; what happens if you take a bunch of half-wits and surround them with senseless bureaucracy?

The answer appears to be that they create the Spanish postal service which I try to have as little contact as possible as lost post and delays of a month or more are so common it’s just not true.

Once I asked how long a certified delivery to the UK would take - “depends on the destination post office” was the asnwer, which is taking the piss; I only send overseas mail by certified post these days and so track it online. It is often a couple of days before it even leaves the post office; well over a week until it leaves Spain; and then a day or so in the UK, typically 2-3 weeks in total!

So my problem with the Spanish postal service today is this; my Puerto Rican friends landed in Madrid from San Juan this morning and while queuing for tickets for the train at Atocha station they had a bag with credit cards and money stolen. Great start.

They phoned me and so I went to the post office to send money via Western Union. I completed the form, told the guy at the post office to send it Western Union and…

He sent my money by Giro.

My friends were just outside the Western Union office in Madrid, they didn’t want a bloody post office giro. Having never used Western Union before I didn’t know what my receipt should look like, but after the code number didn’t work and I took a look at the postal service website I realised what the problem was.

Well thanks a lot.

I’ve recently come across Dan Thies via StomperNet and somehow found his SEO Fast Start Portal. Dan has recently updated his SEO book which you can download for FREE and is a great read covering the basics of keyword research, structuring your navigation and dynamic linking and a whole host of other stuff I haven’t got to yet.

Don’t miss it, Dan absolutely knows what he’s talking about.

http://www.seofaststart.com/