Entries Tagged 'Uncategorized' ↓

A post on this blog about Camidoc ranks somewhere on Google for queries about the doctors service in North London. A query on Google will redirect to a results page with the URL:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=camidoc&channel=linkdoctor%2Clde1000032

I find channel=linkdoctor an intriguing section of the URL. There is no indication on the page that Universal Search, or hyperlocal features are applied on the page on Google.

This might be an indication of future plans of Google to introduce Universal Search for the category “Local health services” or similar.

Google ranks its ‘UK Cinema and Film Listings’ results on top of their results page for queries of cinema name and location, eg. Odeon Swiss Cottage. This is called in the jargon of SEO as a hyperlocal query. The website of the cinema, Odeon.co.uk, comes only in second position after Google’s result.

An interesting feature of this page is that there is no Google ads. In SEO terms, Google are redirecting 40% or more of the clicks on results back to itself by occupying the whole of the first result with an icon and extra height of content. Continue reading →

The two largest oceans on the planet, the Atlantic and the Pacific, seem mostly isolated; the continents strangle the open waters in Tierra de Fuego and South Africa near the South Pole. Scientists are increasingly confident that both oceans are more connected than it looks. They intrigued by the mutual influence of two powerful stream jets in the oceans: the Gulf Stream and the Agulhas Current.

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Surprisingly, Spaniards did not know much about the Hispanic Music (aka Latin Music in the Anglo countries) until a few decades ago.

Antonio Machin in the 40’s and 50’s and, several decades later, Celia Cruz and Ruben Blades did not prepare Spain for La Lambada of the Bolivian Los Kjarkas in the 80’s and the Dominican Juan Luis Guerra in the 90’s. They took the dancing floors of the nation by storm. Yes, the lyrics were in Spanish and they were easy and colourful but Spaniards just did not know how to dance to the sensuality and physicality of the new syncopated rhythms. For those having lived in the Americas, dancers in parties and concerts were embarrasing to watch for the most part.

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Cyclists are road bullies, that’s what they all are. I can say that now that I gave up cycling in London for good. It is a shame because I loved it and I did try hard.

I cycled to the office in Holborn, I crossed almost all North London to drop stuff to recycle, I got over getting a wheel stolen in Finchley Road and I pedalled bravely in the rain, frost and wind. All until I broke my finger and got seriously bruised by a pothole in West Hampstead.

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Google usually does a very good job at finding relevant search results for most queries of an average user. What follows is an example of a very wrong set of results that I just found.

Google ranks the post of this blog “Camidoc, a couple of good experiences” on the 11th position for a search of only “Camidoc”, an out of hours cooperative of GPs in North London. Just that shows how the search engines is biased to blogs for not competitive terms. This blog is not about health services or similar and the post is a few years old, so Query Deserves Freshness cannot be operating here.

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There is a tool to visualize elements of web sites at aharef.info. I tried it with this blog by plotting on a graph the html elements. Watching the graph unfold whilst it finds html code on the site and plots it is fascinating. This was the graph in July 2009:

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Source: Indian Book Depot - Map House http://ibdmaphouse.com/Thumb/ITEM_3.jpg

I still cannot grasp why webmasters of sites would try to spam this blog. It just doesn’t work; I get rid of whatever Akismet fails to filter out. A recent one was from DesignsOnline (.) co (.) uk. Not only their homepage boasts an instantaneously off-putting design, it also starts playing a video with sound when loaded. Their bounce rate must be phenomenal, past the 70% threshold.

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Think about an organization with deep pockets, with proselitism as its raison d‘être and with a target audience as wide as the Mankind. No, it’s not X-Factor or the UEFA,  it is the Catholic Church and its management, the Holy See. I will be on it soon.

I am reading Les Liaisons Dangereuses, by Laclos, these days, partly because I was looking for any novel in French at home. There are a few Internet users in the US that read books. That is newsworthy surely but the killer statistic is that 20% have at least read an e-book already. Never mind, I will be a late adopter. I am looking forward to the coming war between the Sony, Apple and Amazon. It will push forward the technology, its features and its costs.

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A pothole in West End Lane, West Hampstead, London, made me lose control of my bike a few months ago. Fortunately, a motorist in a Golf a few meters behind me managed to hit the breaks in time. After my visit to A&E, my only injuries were a broken finger of one hand and multiple bruises.

But then this week I got a SMS from some ambulance chasers inviting me to claim compensation for the accident.

FREEMSG: Our records indicate you may be entitled to 3750 pounds for the Accident you had. To claim for free reply with CLAIM to this msg. To opt out text STOP.

Sender: 07517576150

I hope that those two events, visiting the A&E and receiving the SMS, are not connected. If they were, selling my private data would constitute a criminal offence by someone connected to the NHS.