December 29th, 2009
A couple of years after my post about mobile Internet in Spain, a few things changed for those interested in connecting to the Net on the move:
- 3€/day on pay-as-you-go buys you 100 MB a day. You can get that from Yoigo, the Scandinavian MVNO that challenges the three incumbent (Movistar-Telefonica, Vodafone and Orange). Yoigo profusely advertises 29€ for a USB dongle with 5€ credit of data. Their offer cleverly hides two catches in their small print: 1. a minimum charge of 6€ per month, whatever the use and 2. cancellation of the SIM card past 6 months of inactivity.
- Nowadays the number of Wi-Fi access points have multiplied several fold. Cities and towns are densely populated streets in Spain, so your scanning lists dozens of access points.
- The preferred method of WiFI encryption is WEP. Sniffing passwords from hotels, etc. is no longer something anyone can boast about these days.
December 12th, 2009
Why are some shit things so popular – Madame Tussauds and Dan Brown books, for example? The sentence is not mine, it’s David Mitchell’s.
Popularity fortunately does not result in persistence in time. On the contrary, declining popularity seems to grant longevity. For instance, bullfighting, still a cruel, pompous and ridiculous yet legal ‘entertainment’ in nine countries in the world, is definitely not popular in Spain. I am mystified as to why bullfighting still survives at all. Only a few hard-dies do like the tradition. Arguably, their interest in it remains, at least in Internet, unchanged in the last few years. I feel too lazy to research just how many people like ‘los toros‘ in Spain. Or maybe is just that I do not want to know, really.
But I know that the reason why the minority interested in ‘los toros’ it cannot be that they like it. It must something else, maybe it is about status or ideology. Or why not, because it is a subsidized entertainment, by local, national and European authorities. Some British media titles with recognised prestige (that is, among their followers), like the Daily Mail or The Economist, claim that every family in Britain finance this ritual slaughter.
Anything connecting Europe and money is a viral meme with a good start in life among the British. Adding bullfighting in the mix has all the chances of becoming a successful stereotype about the Spanish.
Ironically, the reason for the decline and eventual extinction of this tradition will not be a cultural one: it will be financial: 550 million euros of taxpayer money is allocated to the bullfighting industry per year.
November 28th, 2009
Hampstead Theatre is, in spite of its name, in Swiss Cottage. It is, along with the also very active Tricycle in Kilburn, the most important theatre in North West London.
The auditorium holds 174 seats.
Tickets & information: 020 7722 9301 or website: Hampstead Theatre. The venue appointed tickets.com to manage their bookings and ticketing.
Eton Avenue
Swiss Cottage
London NW3 3EU
Nearest underground – Swiss Cottage (Exit 2)
November 15th, 2009
Dirty Martini is made with pressed olives in a choice of Belvedere Vodka or Bombay Sapphire Gin served chilled with fresh thyme & a few drops of Noilly Prat. Noilly Prat is a herbal Marseillan vermouth.
We got there on a Friday afternoon. It is round the corner from the Belushi’s, facing the old market in Covent Garden. The bouncer at the entrance inspected the bag that I carried straight from the office.
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October 23rd, 2009
Graphic Bar is the place you take someone to rescue him/her from the from the shoppers of Regents’ Street and the tourists of Picadilly Circus. Just make up something to celebrate and splash out on a nice evening out at the Graphic.
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October 10th, 2009
The train trip between London and Paris lasts an impressive 2 hours and 15 minutes nowdays. Eurostar service is the most convenient way of travelling to Paris. The train itsef is silent and comfortable. It even offers power sockets next to each seat for business travellers. During the booking process they even let choose you seat depending on whether your connection is the UK or the European one.
The big but is that Eurostar do not not offer WiFi on-board. It does does offer free access at the St. Pancras International station. You can connect in the waiting area and also on the train until you leave the station behind.
The network SSID is ‘StPancras WiFi’. It is an Open network so make sure that the encryption WEP or else is disabled. The network is provided by ‘Access point only (infrastructure).
I did not detect any network at the Gare du Nord in Paris, so there might be none there.
October 9th, 2009
Booking an appointment to your GP is made difficult in the UK. My local medical centre has posters everywhere prompting patients to register to its online booking service, called Emis.
Two additional problems with the so called EMIS Access service:
1. the “Internet Appointment Booking Facility” will not let you book an appointment at 8:30 am, just when you need it most if you are working
2. it failed to register two of three accounts in one session
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October 4th, 2009
There is a very good swimming pool in Swiss Cottage. It is in the Swiss Cottage Leisure Centre, Adelaide Road, NW3 3NF. The premises are managed by GLL in behalf of the Camden council.
The teaching pool is perfect for toddlers. It has been closed for the most of September and all October so far. The website of the company managing the premises does not offer updates about the closure of the teaching swimming pools. To inquiry about updates, you may phone 020 7974 2012, option 9 to speak with an operator.
September 14th, 2009
Rupert Murdoch claimed that Mountain View redirects users from Google to the BBC web site: “The BBC has been paying US internet search engine Google for the right to use key words and phrases that put it on top of results lists. [...] The BBC paid Google so that people looking up details of the Mercury Prize, for instance, would be directed to a BBC website“. Is this SEO or SEM?
To put the claim in context, News Corp is embarked in a number of skirmishes against BBC for a share of the publicity market on TV in the UK and against Google to monetize the content of news site.
The news could be read as an entirely legitimate purchase of Adwords by the BBC. It is unclear whether paying to put the BBC on top of results for certain keywords is referring to any sort of SEO self-inflicting practice against Google’s own Terms of Service.
I carried out a quick research and the results suggest that SEM is not part of the BBC tactics:
1. The BBC is not buying the kws mentioned in the article, eg. Speech Debelle and Mercury Prize
2. The BBC is a notorious pinch-penny in Adwords spending.
The most plausible explanation is however that the piece of news was written by a journalist that either does not have a clue about the permanent tension between SEO and SEM, or that he/she knew all too well.
September 2nd, 2009
The quality and interest of a web site has no correlation to whether it is optimised for search engines or not. Some of the best sites I visited recently have a very poor SEO (Search Engine Optimization). One of them is Lucy Moose’s stuffyourdoodles.com. Is is an e-commerce site of handmade stuffed figures made to look exactly like children’s drawings.
The site has testimonials with feedback that most of businesses can only dream about. Clients write about how impressed they are with their stuffed textiles.
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