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50 Fantastic flickr Photographs

ReDeYe
16
Jul 2010

I’ve been particularly slack on the photography front lately, including a missed opportunity to go to Goodwood for the Festival of Speed. My good friend Steve did go, but I am yet to see any photos from his shoot. It’s the same old story, just not enough time in the week to get out there with the camera, though I did try recently with a short trip on to the south downs to attempt some quick shots, but didn’t get anything worthwhile out of it, such is the way with photography.

Despite my slackness however, I have put together a few galleries of my favourite shots on the web from the last 6 months. There are three galleries showing off friends work including my personal favourite sea scapes as well as two further galleries for Portraits and Sunsets.

Check them out and leave the good people a comment if you are already on flickr, these are just about the best images on there and all in one convenient place. It took me hours to find these, so save yourself the trouble by simply popping over to the galleries :) and if that wasnt enough, I also added my own photo’s from flickr on the little gallery in the right sidebar, which will now update when I take some more. The only problem is, now you know when I’ve been slack and not taken any pics…

Seascapes

Landscape Sunsets

Portraits

Seascapes - a gallery on Flickr_1279306791258

Category: Life, Photography  Tags: , , , , ,  Leave a Comment

Twitter Link Branding

ReDeYe
16
Jul 2010

You’ll notice on my tweets that I now have branding on them (bottom right corner) that links to this very site. It isn’t new, but its an area which

Have you had the Twitter Light Bulb moment yet?

Have you had the Twitter Light Bulb moment yet?

Twitter (so far) have not seemed too concerned about, but wait until the big guns realise they can do this and before you know it all of the major companies will be using their own branding and link.

From an SEO point of view, many may sneer at this due to it being nofollow, but let’s not forget the power of traffic to a site directly from Twitter and the live feed now featuring in Google Search pages for popular terms. I messed around with this the other day and managed, very easily it has to be said, to get on the front page of Google with a tweet and the all important link. Think how much you would have to spend to get to position 4 for some of the big terms out there and then love the fact you can do it for free using nothing more than Twitter.

Twitter BrandingThere is an easy tool out there to manage your Twitter (and Facebook now too!) and create a new API which you can use to brand your tweets called MarketMeTweet, costing $79 for the year. If you are serious about growing your Twitter following, managing it effectively and using it as a proper marketing tool, $79 is a real bargain. Obviously, if you are a casual user, there would be no need to get it, but the face of Twitter is changing and more companies are realising the power it can yield, managed correctly.

Don’t underestimate the power of social media in SEO terms.

Category: Social Media  Tags: , ,  2 Comments

Lots to do, too little time

ReDeYe
16
Jul 2010

Where on earth does all the time go? It seems like only yesterday when I said I would make sure I blogged more and yet here we are almost a week since the last post. Perhaps I need to rename this place failblog.

We dont like people who have black hats, not in this industry.

We dont like people who have black hats, not in this industry.

Anyway, it’s been an interesting week on the whole with some new discoveries in the world of SEO (more black hats than saville row) and my constant, but steep learning curve shows no signs of levelling off yet. I always felt I had a capacity to learn things quickly and learn a lot at one time, even if I wouldn’t class myself as an academic, but this job has really opened my eyes to just how little I used my brain in the last couple of years.

I was also reminded by my step mother (no, she isn’t wicked) that I still need to finish off her new site. I wouldn’t call myself a web designer in any shape or form, but Im reasonably good in photoshop and I know a bit of php and sql. That said, for her holiday home project I chose to use wordpress and although it has its restrictions, I am finding it reasonably flexible. The main problem is finding some time to get it finished, especially with work and learning taking up large quantities of my time, never mind the children and the long suffering girlfriend.

Perhaps I am doing this all wrong, especially as I work for a company that do web design. I wonder if they do staff discount or even a freebie now and again. On a more serious note, I have been playing with Social Media a lot this week, in particular spending time learning about the Twitter API and how to utilise my own Twitter apps. Obviously this is all from a marketing point of view, but I will admit to enjoying it for personal benefit too. I’ll put up a couple of posts today with the details in for those of you interested.

Category: Life, SEO, Social Media, Web Design  Tags: , , ,  Leave a Comment

Webber Wins

ReDeYe
11
Jul 2010

Mark Webber won in a pretty convincing style at the British Grand Prix. Sure he was aided by a first lap puncture to team mate Sebastien Vettel, but he still had to drive superbly to keep Hamilton at bay. Jenson Button also had a great result coming from 14th to 4th at the flag in an unspectacular but flawless drive.

I was particularly impressed by Kobayashi again as he flung the Sauber around Silverstone and there were plenty of talking points throughout. One of which was Fernando Alonso’s drive through, which I personally thought was rather harsh considering the person he gained the advantage from had dropped out. What was he supposed to do? Typical that Nigel “Dramatic” Mansell was on the drivers panel this weekend for the stewards, no bets guessing where that decision came from.

Finally, it was great to see Sir Stirling Moss at Silverstone, handing over the 2nd place trophy no less to Lewis Hamilton. There is no bigger legend left of the golden F1 years and I was mighty glad to see him in good health, back fighting fit and if you weren’t aware, you can even see him driving in anger again in two weeks time, nice one Sterling.

Category: Formula 1  Tags: , , , , , , ,  One Comment

Power to the people

ReDeYe
09
Jul 2010

A certain, annoying moustachioed brummie once said the crowd at Silverstone where worth about a second a lap to him. If that’s true, supporting both Jenson and Lewis this weekend might mean they only get half of that each. Still, the way Red Bull have flown on Silverstone-esque tracks of late, that half a second might come in rather handy to the McLaren boys.

It’s odd, I have never supported British drivers simply because they are British, indeed I have often lamented how crap our drivers have been in the past, even when winning world titles in obviously superior cars. I have seemingly always liked the firey, passionate kind of drivers, Gilles Villeneuve, Jean Alesi, Ayrton Senna and Juan Montoya to list but a few of my favourites and you’ll notice none of them are British.

In fact, until JB came along in 2000 I can’t recall a British F1 driver I have truly loved watching. The same happened again in 2005 when I first watched Lewis Hamilton kicking butt in the junior formula and suddenly in 2010, not only do I follow 2 British F1 drivers, but they both drive for the same team (also British) and are the previous 2 years world champions.

So when I say, I hope for a McLaren 1-2 this weekend which would see a pair of British drivers in a British built car winning the British Grand Prix, it isn’t due to national pride, but simply because the pair of them are fantastic drivers and great to watch. Good luck chaps.

Category: Formula 1  Tags: , , , ,  One Comment
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