I thought I had seen it all….

… I was wrong!!!

If you haven’t heard of FriendFeed you must be living in a small space tent on the dark side of the moon. FriendFeed is flavor of the month in the Internet startup world. It launched on February 25th, announcing $5 in funding at the same time.

So what exactly is FriendFeed? It is essentially a place to follow what people are doing on the Internet.FriendFeed aggregates information from many other sites like YouTube, Flickr and more.

The user interface is clean and simple to use. This isn’t surprising given that the company was created by ex-Googlers. Many seasoned web users are saying that FriendFeed is the most amazing thing they’ve seen in years.

Make your own mind up by visiting FriendFeed and trying out the service today.

Ever wanted a simple and fast way to check your IP address?

Whats My IP provides a simple way to get your Internet IP address along with some other useful information like your longitude and latitude, ISP, City & more!

The site will be adding new features in the coming weeks, so it’s well worth bookmarking!

Impossible Is Nothing, originally uploaded by destinetics.

A little inspiration in case you’re stuggling to get motivated out there…

“The defining factor is not resouces it is resourcefulness.” - Tony Robbins

“The only thing worse than doing the wrong thing is being so afraid of doing the wrong thing that you do nothing.” - Anonymous

“Whatever you believe or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“A determined person doesn’t find it hard to succeed. They find it hard to stop trying.” - Allen Steble

and finally…

“if you do nothing else, do something” - Me! LOL

Google Airlines, originally uploaded by destinetics.

I wonder if Matt Cutts can actually land that plane?

You may have heard the saying that “content is king”. Nothing could be truer in the SEO world right now. Every website lives or dies depending on the quality of its content. Effective copywriting is essential to any successful site and it is going to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

SEO copywriting is the art of not only writing compelling content for the reader, but also writing content which the search engines will love too. Gone are the days where you can simply stuff a page full of keywords and ride high in the search engines.

It’s now all about providing high quality content for the user but at the same time giving the web copy a light dusting of the right keywords. SEO copyrighting is all about weaving a thread through the page content that the search engines can pick up on, but that doesn’t leave your user confused.

If you’ve ever visited a really spammy webpage you start to realize that perhaps you were not the target of the writing. How many times have you read an article that goes something like this…

“Blue widgets are available everywhere, but when buying blue widgets you should look for the best blue widgets and the cheapest blue widgets available. I recommend buying blue widgets from Blue Widgets Inc. as their blue widgets are really good.”

Can you guess what the targeted keyword was?

Perhaps the example was a little extreme, but I do see a lot of people still stuffing a particular keyword or just a few keywords into their copy. It doesn’t look natural to the reader and it certainly doesn’t look very natural to the Search Engines.

English is such a complex language. Every word can have different meanings and many related words or synonyms.

Why then is it that people still think they can repeat the same word over and over in a webpage and get a high ranking?

For anyone who feels they are in the dark about writing effective SEO copy, you can download this free 16 page guide. It’s not meant to be an extensive guide but it is an excellent start and hey, did I mention that it’s totally free!

Download Free SEO Article Copywriting Guide

Beer Truck, originally uploaded by destinetics.

An impressive use of Photoshop…. or is it real?

Real or not it’s making me thirsty!

There are a lot of people using shared web hosting. When you use shared hosting you share a web server with many other websites. Each user has their own section which keeps their files private from all the other users.

Shared hosting is often the cheapest option. This is the reason most people choose it. However, there are a number of reasons why a dedicated hosting service is important if you are serious about developing a successful website.

Dedicated web hosting is where the user leases an entire web server. It is not shared with any other users and this gives the user total control of the server. The user can make all the decisions about what hardware or operating system to use.

So how do you know if you need a dedicated web server?

Does your site currently use or plan to use a lot of bandwidth?

Dedicated server bandwidth is often considerably higher than with shared hosting. If you are getting a lot of traffic it can end up costing you a fortune with a shared server if you go over your allocated bandwidth.

Is your current site losing customers and potential sales because of poor server performance?

The problem with shared hosting packages is that every site on the server is competing for resources. If there are a number of sites hosted on the server with large amounts of traffic performance on your site may suffer, especially during peak hours. If your customer is waiting for more than 8 seconds for the page to load, chances are you’ve already lost his business.

Is your current website changing? Does your shared hosting package have everything your new site needs?

Often when users decide to replace their existing site with a new one it becomes clear that the existing hosting package doesn’t meet the necessary requirements to run the new site, software package or script. It can be difficult to get a shared server upgraded to meet these requirements. With a dedicated server such upgrades are generally much easier because the server is completely under your control.

Is your website located in a bad neighourhood?

The problem with a lot of shared hosting is that you rarely know who you are sharing the server with. Do you know any of the other websites on your shared server? Because all the websites on a shared server have the same IP address it is possible for your site to become associated with bad websites that share the server and their bad reputation can affect your business!

Do you have enough storage capacity?

If your site is storing a lot of data a dedicated hosting service can provide more disk space and bandwidth than a shared hosting account. Share servers have to balance resources between many users and websites. With a dedicated server the resources are all yours!

Do you need a managed server?

Many shared hosting services are unmanaged. This can cause problems, especially if there are server problems. Can your business afford website downtime? If it’s not managed then it’s up to you to report a problem. How long before you notice your site isn’t loading? 1 hour? 2 hours? 8 hours? Server downtime = damaged reputation = less sales. A managed, dedicated server is the best option.

How is your shared hosting company customer service?

Customer service is probably one of the most important factors you should consider after server uptime. If you have a question or a problem you want the best advice and friendly, helpful staff to assist you. But guess what? Customer service with shared hosting packages is frequently poor. You get what you pay for and dedicated hosting is no exception. Dedicated server = dedicated customer support.

Do you need more than one domain?

Sometimes shared hosting companies only allow one domain name or charge extra for multiple domains. A dedicated hosting account will allow you to host unlimited domains.

If you’re thinking about switching from shared hosting to a dedicated server there really are a lot of good packages out there. If you need reliability, unlimited resources, excellent customer support and everything else that comes with a shared server, isn’t it time you switched?

I haven’t used the word “brilliant” since the early 90’s but today I found this. Simply Brilliant!!!

I’m off to buy a Mac and a copy of “Again & Again” by The Bird and The Bee.

RANT ALERT… RANT ALERT…

I’m about to have a rather lengthy rant about PayPal. If you’d rather see a picture of a cute puppy instead of hear me complaning please click here.

Still here? Okay I shall rant away…

I’m not usually one to complain but recent events in dealing with PayPal have me concerned. Be prepared for a grim tale of phishing, phantom subscriptions and customer support so bad it nearly made a grown man weep…

I have been dealing with PayPal for quite a long time and most of that time it’s been a pleasant relationship. I’ve experienced the occasional problem here and there but nothing that really made me mad or think twice about using them. I was happy with PayPal…

However, recently there have been a number of warning signs which I simply can’t ignore any longer.

My first issue is an increasing number of fraudulent transactions taking place on PayPal. I’ve been selling a mix of physical and downloadable products for a number of years now. In the past six months I’ve been hit with more fraudulent transactions than I can remember. Most of which appear to have been the result of phished accounts.

If this isn’t bad enough, PayPal seem to be having some prolonged technical problems. I recently started getting a large number of e-mails telling me that my bank account has been added successfully. The problem is that I haven’t added a bank account for well over six months.

Calling PayPal to tell them of the problem was a frustrating experience. I was eventually told that they were aware of the problem and that it was being dealt with. Six days later I’m still getting the same e-mails.

And all this brings me to the latest and final straw…

I occasionally sign up for a free trial with a particular merchant. They regularly offer their products and services on a free trial basis. I like to see what I’m getting before I shell out $97 a month, so the free trial is a good idea.

Most of the time I cancel before the free trial ends and therefore don’t get billed. If I like the product or service I keep the subscription active, if not I cancel. This is usually a simple matter in PayPal of finding the subscription and cancelling it.

However, about a week ago I signed up for a free trial but something went wrong. I got the usual e-mail from PayPal telling me I had successfully subscribed. I happily went off to check out the new product on offer as I normally do. Everything was fine until I checked my PayPal later that evening.

For some reason there was no record of the transaction. For every previous free trial there had always been a transaction of $0.00 and a subscription created. I checked my subscriptions and there was no subscription either. So it looked like there had been no transaction and no subscription created.

The problem is that I had been redirected to the merchant and was able to access the product in question and I also got a confirmation e-mail from PayPal. There was just no record of this in my PayPal account.

After making more than a dozen phone calls to PayPal over the period of a week I’m really still no wiser about exactly what is going on. At first I was told there was no transaction or subscription because it was a free trial with a $0.00 value and that I would have to cancel with the company instead.

I then pointed out that the previous trials had shown up on my account and so that could not be true. I however agreed to contact the company and try to cancel at that end.

I went to the merchant’s website, logged in and clicked on the cancel button. I was immediately taken to PayPal from the cancel link to log in and cancel from within my PayPal account!

Needless to say that didn’t work. So I then submitted a support ticket to the merchant and after a few days was told…

“PayPal is having some temporary technical problem and merchants do not have a cancellation button so we cannot cancel from our side.”

Essentially they were having the same problem as me and recommended I cancel the subscription from my end!!!

So apparently nobody can cancel the subscription. I can’t because I can’t see the transaction or subscription on my PayPal account. The merchant can’t cancel for the same reason. And PayPal say they can’t cancel it either! To quote PayPal…

“The subscriptions are just hanging there”

And this is not an isolated incident. I’ve been told by PayPal that this has affected a whole group of subscriptions. I’ve been assured by PayPal that I won’t be charged and that the subscriptions aren’t active, but if that is true then why did I get an e-mail stating that the subscription was successful and that I would be billed if I didn’t cancel?

I’m about to remove all my credit cards and bank information from PayPal because to be quite honest. I think they’ve lost the plot!

It’s hardly reassuring to know that there are subscriptions floating around in PayPal’s system somewhere that nobody, PayPal included, have any control over.

Just remember if you have to deal with PayPal that the following applies…

“PayPal is not classified as a bank in the United States”

Enough said for now… but watch this space to see if I get charged for a subscription that I can’t cancel.