Broadband Speed Checker

Having just upgraded my broadband package I wanted to check the download/upload speeds. I stumbled upon speedtest.net and it seems to be a jolly useful, free to use site. No annoying pop-ups, just a few adsense ads and a smart, dashboard style user interface. It tells me my new 8 meg package is currently giving me an actual 6.2 meg.

New Email Address For Google Alerts

Well that’s a pain!

According to the FAQs in order to receive google alerts at a new email address you have to delete and re-add your alerts, specifying your new email address.

And talk about positive spin:

Can I change my email address and still get Google Alerts?

Sure…….

But you’ll need to delete your current alerts and re-enter them using your new email address.

I think they meant to say No.

Host Swap

We’ve swapped domain hosts so at time of writing upthejunction.com is just showing a namesco holding page. Hopefully when all the DNS name server stuff sorts itself out (my technical expertise just shines bright!) everything will be okay again and our site will be back as it was. And then we might trash it and move over to wordpress instead.

If some forethought had been applied, we’d have used wordpress from day one and not then published a standalone blog over at anotherjunction. Haven’t quite decided what to do yet.

Webmaster Central Site Verification

I mentioned a couple of days ago that the site verification with webmaster central was down.

Having logged in this morning I saw the same warning. As a test I simply re-verified a couple of my listed sites and that seemed to work fine. Then I noticed that there was an erroneous first entry of:

Manage http:///

I selected it, deleted it and wham! all of my listed sites are now successfully verified.

A bug in the system or is google monitoring who actually uses their webmaster central account? Most probably the former!

Rachel Elnaugh Is On The Ball

Following on from my earlier post about the websites belonging to Dragons Den panellists I’ve received an email from one of the shows ex-panellists.

Rachel Elnaugh has been in touch to remind me that I’d not included her in the initial list. Apologies go to Rachel for my silly omission (you’re there now!). Some of you affiliates will no doubt be aware of one of Rachels old companies, Red Letter Days now owned by a certain Peter and Theo I believe.

But how did Rachel spot my mistake so quickly I hear you ask. Is she an avid reader of my blog? Are we friends, old colleagues, about to launch a cracking new business?

No. None of the above.

Rachel has setup a google alert relating to Dragons Den. The alert has picked up my post, Rachel has received the alert, read my post and noticed I’d missed her off my list. So full marks to her for making the most of a free service from Google that I use all the time for various things.

If Rachel has an alert setup for her blog (note the additional ‘e’ in the domain) along the lines of

link:http://racheleelnaugh.blogspot.com/

she’ll pick this post up too!

Webmaster Central Site Verify Down

I encountered a problem a week or so ago with the Google webmaster central offering when attempting to verify an existing site of mine. A week or so passes and I log back in with the intention of re-verifying the site. Only now I receive an error alert stating that the system is experiencing problems with the verification of some of my sites. Is it just me I wonder? Well a quick search indicates that Andrew Girdwood was experiencing the same problem 10 days ago. But there is no mention of this problem on the webmaster central blog.

As Andrew mentions, Google do seem to struggle with technical issues on some of their offerings every now and again. Blogger was where I always encountered issues though it does seem to be more robust nowadays.

I’m sure that there is a bug in gmail …sometimes it alerts me with a message stating that my (brand new, not deleted at all) email is in my deleted folder and will not appear in my sent folder until it is undeleted (or something like that). That aside, I’m still a big fan of gmail.

Dragons Den Websites

As I get a few searches related to Dragons Den, I thought it might be of interest to publish the websites of the Dragons past and present.

• Deborah Meaden
• Peter Jones
• Duncan Bannatyne
• Theo Paphitis
• James Caan
• Rachel Elnaugh
• Richard Farleigh
• Simon Woodroffe
• Doug Richard
• Evan Davies

Please comment and let me know of any corrections or additions needed.

This Blogs Keyword Searches #3

Here’s my third batch of sample keyword phrases searched by my blogs visitors.

• easyjet affiliate (a regular search)
• adjug
• jennifers naughty blog (no idea what that is)
• is vic there
• deborah meaden legs (really!)
• ikea uk affiliates
• cj keyword link
• cj.com script
• suffering from chicken pox
• stella artois package design

and not surprisingly, quite a few searches for Betty Boo since this earlier post that gave Alison Clarkson a bit of a mention.

Post Holiday Post

Thought I’d better post something (anything) to keep this blog ticking along.

Have been on holiday for about a week, getting back mid last week. Sort of getting back into things again this week. Nothing much appears to have changed with our income streams taking care of themselves. Did receive one unusual transaction over at amazon …someone bought no less than 22 memory sticks one day.

Well, it’s August now and traditionally our poorest revenue month. Still, at least it’s not (currently) raining.