Saturday, 9 August 2008

The Tales of Beedle The Bard - Harry Potter Prequel?

The Tales of Beadle the Bard are due to be released to the Public just in time for christmas. With a limited collectors edition and every harry potter fan wanting one for christmas, this is a guaranteed best seller!This review is a spoiler free page for fans to find out more about the different editions, with photo's and facts.

read more | digg story

Sunday, 18 May 2008

Banksy or Not? - New Billboard Subvertisement In Bristol

IS THIS BANKSY MAKING A TRIBUTE TO THE STUDENT RIOTS IN PARIS 40 YEARS AGO?

I saw this first on Wednesday morning, I didn't get a chance to photo it until Saturday Morning, and is likely to be still there until Monday! 7 Billboards on the Bath Road, over the railway, just before the Wells Road, on the south side of the river from Temple Meads station. Handy for those trainspotting Banksy spotters!


You can find it here on google maps.



Is this the work of world famous Bristol Graffiti Artist Banksy?
The text reads
IMAGINE A
WORLD WITHOUT
BILLBOARDS
BEAUTY IS IN THE STREET
PARIS MAY 1968
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVIZED
BORDERS = REPRESSION

IMAGINE A

WORLD WITHOUT

BILLBOARDS


BEAUTY IS IN THE STREET


PARIS MAY 1968


THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVIZED

BORDERS = REPRESSION


So What Do You Think? Banksy Or Not?
Now whether it's Banksy, or not I can't be sure as it's not tagged or credited. Though judging By the scale of it and over 7 full size billboards it's certainly an audacious piece that would have taken some balls, some organisation and would be quite typical of Banksy. After all, he's probably back home in Bristol now after putting together the much publicised 'exhibition' in London entitled 'The Cans Festival'




On the other hand is it far too political and abstract for Banksy and not arty enough?

Also, when did it first appear?
Will the billboard company get it removed/replaced before the art collectors come along with a chainsaw and auction it on ebay?

Saturday, 12 April 2008

Boxers play chess in the ultimate sport

There's already quite a few chess variants, this version must be the most physical though!



read more | digg story

Sunday, 6 April 2008

Glastonbury Tickets!

Yes! Yes! Yes!

We got our tickets!

After a tense 45minutes of reloading the seetickets page on 2 computers and costantly redialing the phone number we succeeded! Not only did we get our tickets, we got our campervan ticket as well!

There was a slight false alarm at one point, having entered the regestration details on the seetickets site, the page for payments refused to load, so after 15minutes of refreshing this page the correct page appeared for filling in payment details! Woooooooo Hoooooooooooooo!

We're going to Pilton!

Not sure about seeing Jay-Z, but am definitely looking forward to the Kings Of Leon!!

And for those of you who were also lucky enough to get tickets, No Peeing In the Hedges!!

Saturday, 29 March 2008

What PC? explains why the PC Giants Won't Go Green!

Real energy savings are available when buying a new pc, yet the Giants in computing are still fobbing people off by only making token gestures to energy saving. This is leaving the field open to niche companies to fulfill a very real demand!

read more | digg story

VeryPC are an award winning maker of high specification for business and home users, they typically use up to 20%, or less, of the electricity than a same spec PC would use built by any of the computer giants. The home user is as well catered for as the business user, and full networking and server systems can be designed and built to order.

Monday, 17 March 2008

Ebay Launches Own Affiliate Program - The Ebay Partner Network

Ebay has announced it is ditching current affiliate providers Commission Junction, Mediaplex and Link Share, to set up their own affiliate program.Most programs will close, by april 30th, and as the program is not launched until 1st April, this leaves little time for webmasters to familiarise themselves with the new system and implement the changes.

read more | digg story

Thursday, 6 March 2008

Ebay RSS Affiliate Feed Tutorial

A simple seven step tutorial on how to create an RSS feed from ebay with your affiliate code embedded in it. This also explains how to get the feed to display some pretty highly refined search results too!Now I designed this tool for using on squidoo, but it can be a way of adding profitable RSS feeds to websites, blogs and other social networking sites that permit you to display an RSS feed.Any feedback leave either here, or on squidoo!

read more | digg story

Friday, 29 February 2008

No impact from Energy Saving Day - Surprising?

I only heard about this about 2 hours into it so am not surprised that the impact of it wasn't noticeable, though even with plenty of media coverage for the next I imagine that it will have very little impact on energy consumption and CO2 emissions. One suggestion I would make is to legislate to stop shops having lights on at night say 11pm, maybe have a licensing law for those businesses that feel it's necessary and have a license fee based on usage of lighting. Another big area that would benefit is in offices and businesses that leave things powered like lights, pc's etc whilst no one is using them. I worked in an office regularly and unless I turned the 20+pc's and half dozen printers, water heaters and other stuff off they would remain on, even over the weekend! Some fellow employees would moan the next day as they had to boot up their workstation, wait 5minutes for the hot water, or a few minutes for the printer to fire up!

read more | digg story

Wednesday, 6 February 2008

Bounty Bay Online Pirate Roleplaying Game!


Bounty Bay Online, is a new MMORPG which has taken to the longboats and washed up on Europe's sandy shores courtesy of Yusho Gmbh and Frogster Interactive. Further details available - http://www.squidoo.com/Pirate-MMOG

Thursday, 8 November 2007

Squidoo Payday! My September Earnings are here!

Slowly building up my earnings from squidoo!
This month I had 2 lenses in the top tier and these paid out at $4.67 each, these had spent some time in September in the top 500. The next tier paid 79cents and I think this was paid out to all mine that had spent most of the month in the top 10,000, I had quite a few in this so they added up! the third tier was where a lot of my partially finished lenses were and they earned 6cents each, The 4th tier is new to squidoo this month and I had very few in the 4th tier which was probably for all those that had never ranked very high, though have no idea where the cut off was on these and they each earned a cent.

I earned an extra couple of dollars here and there using the provided affiliate links through squidoo, but I'm switching over to mainly providing my own links so I don't have to give squidoo a cut of my referrals and this is bringing more money in than I'm actually earning from Squidoo!

It's like a win-win situation, squidoo provide an easy to use page template with lots of modules to choose from, a good google crawl rate and a cut of the adsense revenue! Add this to the affiliate sales this gains and if you get the right topic or subject, one good lens will pay you regularly!

Currently 2 of my lenses are Google PR4,
Perry Mason page
UK Cash Back Shopping

a number are PR3
Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds
Monty Python's Castle Anthrax


and I'm working on getting a PR5 by the next google ranking, squidoo is certainly helping me get traffic and turning it into money!

If you haven't signed up, here's my referral link -HERE - I earn $5 when you earn your first $15 and you also will get a $5 bonus too!

Wednesday, 31 October 2007

BBC Blunder hands out 800+ subscribers personal email details

I have been a subscriber to the World Services - World Have Your Say (WHYS) programme newsletter for a number of months now. On weekdays they send out an email asking for responses on a number of topics they will be discussing in the days show. I like to keep up with world events and found this was a good way of doing so, occasionally contributing to their blog when the mood and topic suited.

There have been a few minor blunders with the daily email in the past asdifferentmember of the team send the emails out, it's fairly regular to get 2 emails both differing somewhat, whichisn't too much of a problem usually. I often don'thave the time or inclination to even read them as was the case with todays email (30th). Then I got a further email entitled 'Apology' .....

The earlier email 'mistakenly' contained the full list of subscribers email addresses - a list totaling 847 personal email addresses! A spammers dream! Although the apology was quite weak I was more incensed by it not going into detail of the risks posed to others from spam by not deleting it, all it would take for the full list to become the property of spam networks is one person to have their email compromised by a virus and everyone will then be getting spam, quite frankly I get enough without help from the BBC!

Monday, 15 October 2007

Squidoo payout! #2

Well, this is my second month of receiving a squidoo payout and I thought it would be good to do a little update. The earnings were not as strong as in my first month when I had a lens in the top pay out tier for the adsense share-out. Also, as I hadn't fully realised what a goldmine squidoo has the potential of being I didn't really do much work on it in August which is what this weeks payout was for. I did get quite a few click-thru's to my amazon account and a few purchases there though. All in all the payout's I did receive were mainly for mid-ranking lenses (pages) , and a very small amount of commission from ebay/amazon/cafepress modules on those lenses.

I have put a lot more work into squidoo lately, creating at least 2-3 lenses a week since the payout at the start of September. Also, I have utilised more of my own affiliate links within lenses rather than use the ones they provide, except where it is easier to do so. If these lenses start to see good traffic, I will then often include my own affiliate links, this has been quite a winner in a big jump in my affiliate earnings through affiliate sales. My strategy is now to create a lens on a subject I am interested in,or think others will be, filling out a few basic modules, including some unique content then see how it is doing a week or 2 later. If it seems to be popular I will develop it further and include relevant affiliate links, if it's being a bit of a lame duck I will pop back and try make it more likely to succeed by doing some editing, though this does not always seem to work.

I'll list here a small selection of my successful and not so successful lenses to give some examples of what works -

Perry Mason - A very extensive list of the Perry Mason novels, this gets a good amount of regular traffic and click-thru's to amazon. Though the majority of visitors are looking for free downloads or ebooks.

Discworld Store - a moderately successful page with a large variety of unofficial discworld merchandise and links to official merchandise on ebay.

Shimshi - A lens reviewing this magicians tutorial DVD. Mainly to promote the surplus of these I have for sale. Get's lots of visits and click-thru's to youtube magic tutorials, as well as sales of magic tutorial dvd's on amazon.

UK Cash Back Sites - A lens highlighting the sites in the UK that you can join to receive cashback from purchasing online. Provides a voting system and invites visitors to review and share their experience. All links on this page are affiliate links and all though traffic could be better, I'm pleased with the click-thru rate and the percentage that convert to commission earned.

Jon Richardson - A fan page created using squidwho, which autofilled a lot of the lens for me, and I just added some bits and pieces. Jon is comedian who co-hosts a show on 6music. Quite popular with people to find his youtube videos, also as he does not have his own website it gets a reasonable amount of traffic for a relatively unknown celeb.

The Spacemen 3 - A lens about 80's Drone Rock band, supposedly with quite a cult following but traffic has been quite scarce despite having a lot of info on the band and it's spin-offs.

Psychometric Testing - A lens explaining what psychometric testing is and detailing books on how to prepare and to improve your score. Did well in it's first month or so, but now barely getting any traffic - possibly in need of a revamp!

So, hopefully having checked some of these out you'll be inspired to start writing articles about stuff on squidoo to earn some money! If so you may wish to use my referral link here as you will get a $5 bonus when you have earned your first $15, and I'll also get $5 then for introducing you. You will have to create a lens when you sign up for your registration to be successful, so pick a topic, or save the first one you create in draft. Also, fill out your profile and provide either a link to your blog or webpage, and consider making yourself available to be contacted through squidoo, as I may offer you assistance and advice if you sign up via my link!

Review of a new Coupon Site

NcNatural Coupon site is very easy to navigate and provides coupon info giving discounts at hundreds of online merchants, giving thousands of up-to-date coupon codes to give you discounts and free offers. Merchants included in this coupon site include amazon.com, Disney & The Vitamin Shoppe. So you can see just from this small sample that they cover a wide variety of online merchants.
So, what's the site like? Fast, simple & vast in choice, the main site link, takes you to an alphabetical list of merchants that loads quickly. When you click on a merchant name the page that then loads is populated with all current coupons with info on what discount is achieved with each and the expiry date of that offer. When clicked on you will get a small pop-up with the coupon code you will need to enter during the checkout process, you will need to write this down, as clicking OK will then take you to the relevant page on the merchants site to select items applicable to that offer.
The Verdict - A great coupon site giving up-to-date codes in a well laid out and easy to follow site.
Coupon Savings at their best!

Wednesday, 3 October 2007

UK Paid Survey Sites

There are literally dozens of UK paid survey sites, some good, some bad. The newest I have come across is a site which will pay you regularly for doing nothing! Well apart from downloading a small piece of software to you smartphone which will anonymously study and report your browsing habits. They pay £15 to install the software, then £5 a month after, as well as entering you into a competition to win a 40" LCD TV.

This is what they say on their website -

The Smart M:Panel is a targeted research panel comprised of Windows, Palm, and Symbian smartphone users who voluntarily install a software client on their mobile device that measures their real-world data usage. The software client, or M:Meter, captures activity around messaging, browsing, application usage and media consumption. Once installed the M:Meter operates with no user interaction. M:Metrics is focused on accurately capturing data usage and consumption while protecting our panellists privacy and ensuring our software does not adversely effect device performance.

For more UK Paid Survey Sites

Friday, 28 September 2007

£10 off at Amazon on Personal Care Products

Spend £50 at Amazon on personal care products and get £10 Off!£10 off orders of over

Get those Christmas presents in early and save some money! This offer is running until the 7th October so Hurry! This Link will take you to the Amazon page where you getthe code for adding at checkout to get the money off your order. So get upto 20% off that electric shaver, straightening irons, manicure set etc.

Just have a look at some of the available items -

Wednesday, 26 September 2007

Buying Cars!

Buying a car should be straight forward, well you'd think it was. Unfortunately my partner isn't very tall and her legs are pretty short, though they do reach the ground!

The problem was that very few cars have enough seat adjustment to enable her comfortably to reach the pedals. Having previously put her back out for 8months whilst driving a metro, which taught her that the driving position had to be perfect, not just almost comfortable. Previously she'd been driving a Fiat Cincequento (sp?), though wanted something a bit bigger and a bit more substantial.

Well we went around about a dozen garages locally on Saturday, we check the South Bristol Directory, to find the local ones, most didn't actually have websites but luckily the directory still listed them and gave a routemap to them. The first garage we went to was just down he road and they had a couple of cars in the price range that looked hopeful. After trying the Fiesta, 206, Seat and clio it was found only the 206 was actually comfortable. It was also a pretty tidy car for the money although being a 1.9deisel it was going to be a bit of a jump insurance wise. After driving round a few more garages trying similair cars, none others 'fitted' as well as the 206, not even a 106. Perhaps car makers should do a bit more to make their seats more adjustable! One car we were shown didn't even have a lever to slide the seat back, so we left that one quickly. Another had to have someone in the back to do the seat adjustment, so another sharp exit!

After umming and ahhhing we went back to the first garage and I took the 206 for a spin. I was pretty impressed with it driving wise, power steering, pretty nice acceleration for a diesel and good handling. We managed to negotiate the price down a bit and we're not sure wether we got a trade in for the Fiat or he was just being kind taking it off us!

Thursday, 20 September 2007

Disclosure of interests

This policy is valid from 20 September 2007


This blog is a sponsored blog created or supported by a company, organization or group of organizations. This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.

The compensation received will never influence the content, topics or posts made in this blog. All advertising is in the form of advertisements generated by a third party ad network. Those advertisements will be identified as paid advertisements.

The owner(s) of this blog may be compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers' own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.

This blog may contain content which might present a conflict of interest. This content will always be identified by having a tag marked PPP.


To get your own policy, go to http://www.disclosurepolicy.org

Monday, 17 September 2007

Amazon Widgets

Well Amazon do it again! With a whole host of widgets released today they sure keep us associates on a learning curve!
How's this for a Cloud Widget?

Social Reveiw Site

Anyone looking for independent reviews of places to eat, drink or visit might well want to check out Trustedplaces.com where they can read many independent reviews of places in London, or anywhere in the world. Also, if you have really enjoyed somewhere and want to tell the world about it you can submit your own review.

So whether you're looking for hot tips on London bars or just London in general, trustedplaces.com may well be a great place to start!

Drop me a line and let me know how you get on!

My New Blog!

After spending a few months getting used to blogging and aimlessly blogging about anything that came along and inspired me, I've decided to create a specialist blog reviewing various gadgets and blogging about gadgets in general! I'm going to try and blog on it at least once a week, if not twice a week ideally! Feel free to check it out Here!