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I don’t know how many readers are familiar with the notion of content aggregator based websites? Put simply these are sites that pull content from others.

Some are useful sites, say, drawing news content on a particular subject, and others are sites which abuse the hard work of others. One such site is one that has appeared in the last couple of days is “all-things-lanzarote.com” (no link for obvious reasons)… I should point out this imposter is nothing at all to do with the established site allthingslanzarote.com.

This site has been aggregating content from our Lanzarote Relocation site, and have also got the backs up of at least two other well known sites on the the island, one of which it would appear the domain name is emulating. I’ve not mentioned the other sites as I haven’t asked them for permission at this stage to include their names. However, they will be made aware of this post and a more than welcome to comment here with anything they wish to say on this matter.

It is possible to leave a comment on the site that has copied our content, but I’m guessing the comment I made will not last very long … Here it is…

Paul – put very simply. Your lifting of our content breaches all of the unambiguous copyright notices at the bottom of all of our sites, and those of our clients. I ask, very simply, and very clearly, that you remove ALL duplicate content and ensure ours and our clients sites are not ‘farmed’ in future. Is this clear enough?

I reiterate Paul (if that is your real name of course). All of our own – and our clients sites, carry clear and unambiguous copyright notices. You have not been granted any permission to reproduce our content in any way shape or form.

Your activities, now I and the other involved have brought our disapproval to your notice, are, on this basis illegal under the terms of the Berne Convention.

I would normally have mailed the site owner. But as might be expected by someone who is unscrupulous enough to steal the hard work of others. The site owner has not included an email address, and has chosen to hide his true identity behind the privacy options on the who is information.

Domain Name: all-things-lanzarote.com

Registrar: WILD WEST DOMAINS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.wildwestdomains.com
Referral URL: http://www.wildwestdomains.com
Status: clientDeleteProhibited, clientRenewProhibited, clientTransferProhibited, clientUpdateProhibited

Expiration Date: 2011-01-28
Creation Date: 2010-01-28
Last Update Date: 2010-01-28 Read the rest of this entry »

What a great website!

I’ve got no work done this morning laughing my way through this – it’s a must see website for anyone in the UK. The reviews of various towns around the country are fantastic, highly amusing – and judging from the places I read that I know, filled with more than a smattering of accuracy.

And it’s not only the articles that are funny – perhaps even more amusing are the comments from people defending their little corner of the green and promised land!

I rarely put comments on sites but couldn’t resist having another dig at Thorpe Park Security, where the page described Chertsey as being “One third pikey scum another is full of chavs and chavettes and the remaining minority are pretty decent folk. I guess if that’s the pool Thorpe Park recruitment people have to choose from – it explains a lot!

Hat’s off to whoever did it – fantastic idea and a great read!

If you’ve got half an hour or more to kill Chavtowns is a must read!

Well, it’s the time of year again that we are expecting a run of traffic on our Lanzarote Relocation site – a site that offers information for people thinking of moving to Lanzarote. With all the New Year resolutions and the new year – fresh start attitude that goes with the beginning of the year we always see a spike of traffic in January.

As ever we’d give anyone the same advice as usual;

• Take off the rose tinted glasses – becoming an ex-pat in Lanzarote, as anywhere else, is not as easy as it first seems, especially if you need to make a living.
• Don’t buy immediately, make sure the move is really for you. Rent for at least the first six months, get to know the areas, get to know the property market, and spend time to find out which are the reputable estate agents before considering buying property.
• Follow personal recommendations – but also be aware that not everyone are as genuine as they seem. Earnings are not what they are in the UK, so a ‘kick back’ culture is exploited by many to generate business/supplement poor earnings.
• Try to learn at least a little of the language – it’s a basic courtesy to our Spanish speaking hosts…

We’ve been here some years now and have seen all sorts of people come through the Lanzarote Relocation site. Dreamers who will never make the move, people who try but are not fully committed, some who really want to but it’s not the right time just yet, people who try with the best of intentions yet don’t succeed – and of course some real success stories!

For us the site has been a real success for its visitors – and we think the main reasons are that we are honest and open about who and what we are, and the advice and information we offer is free. We make very little money from the site – and we have no wish to. It  pays for its costs with affiliate advertising – and certainly doesn’t even come close to paying for the large amount of time spent on it. But money was never a part of our thinking behind this site. We simply wanted to pass on what we have learned from moving to and living on the island to others.  The site has gone from strength to strength, and continues to grow. We’re very proud to be able to say we are not part of the ‘kick back’ culture that so many are as we take no financial incentive for recommending any of the companies on it.

Yes – Lanzarote has suffered from the recession – despite what some will tell you, the property market is still pretty stagnant from what we see – which on the upside means there are bargains to be had. Many ex-pats are heading back to the UK as it has become increasingly harder to make a living or find jobs in Lanzarote. Bars have closed, as have many other businesses, tourism numbers have been down – though the island has seemed relatively busy over the Christmas period… It’s probably not the best time to move out here right now unless you have money or real confidence in your ‘plan’. If you’re going to be dependant upon finding a job – it may be best to shelve your ideas until the global market changes.

We’ve been very lucky with our business – we’ve continued to grow and are still growing with website builds for clients on the island and in the UK. We’re fairly confident in saying that with over 150 active clients in Lanzarote, Gandy-Draper is most likely the largest English speaking web design business on the island – with our client base being made up of English, Spanish and German clients.

Our Canary Nightlife site continues to grow with new clients signing up in Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria and Tenerife over the course of 2009 and shows great potential for further growth.

Thankfully, it’s been a fairly good year all round for us – life is what you make it! Make no mistake though, we work hard for what we have – life on a holiday island isn’t necessarily a holiday…

Happy New Year to everyone on and off the island!

One thing not that many people in Lanzarote know about me was that I originally did a degree in photography – but never chose to follow it as a career. I’ve taken on the occasional project over the years (usually under duress), and have spent some time teaching the subject (far more appealing to me than the pressures of professional photography) in higher education both in the UK and US… But, I still keep my hand in for my own pleasure and amusement and sell the occasional image through photo libraries.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every now and then in life you meet someone who really makes an impression on you. This afternoon I had the pleasure of meeting Geoff Holt and his lovely assistant Susana…

Geoff was the fist quadriplegic to sail single handed around Great Britain – and is currently preparing to become the fist quadriplegic to cross the Atlantic unassisted with the sailing and navigation of the boat. Susana is accompanying Geoff to help with his personal needs

His boat, Impossible Dream, is currently moored at the Rubicon Marina in Playa Blanca – you can’t miss it! It’s a seriously impressive catamaran with his name all over it! The 60 foot boat has been purpose built built by a fellow disabled sailor – and is worth, we were told, in the region of £2,000,000!

We wish Geoff and Susana a safe and enjoyable crossing when they set off on the 10th of December and are looking forward to following their adventures on Geoff’s website – www.geoffholt.com.

Geoff needs all the support he can get – so if you do have a Lanzarote related website, do please give his website a link and wherever possible your support.

Earlier today I was asked by a friend to check out whether a particular website was a scam – a common request!

Whilst researching the site in question I  came across a link to peoplestring.com – a social networking site.  Nothing  new there I hear you say! Thousands have sprung up on the back of the success of MySpace, Facebook and the god awful phenomenon that is Twitter…

But this one is different – it’s free to join and they claim that they pay you to attract people to, and use the site. The only immediately apparent catch is that you have to accept a certain amount of junk mail. Not really a problem, getting it sent to a Hotmail account or similar will minimize that inconvenience.

The principle is that you get paid for recruiting new members and there’s also an ‘upgrade’ (you get a percentage of if people buy that from your links) – which entitles people who pay $200 to a larger stake in the profit share they describe, which is based on their advertising revenue (this I wonder about when Facebook and Twitter are reportedly losing money on a daily basis!). It’s all very MLM, and seems very ’spammy’ with your ‘make money on the Internet’ sharks…

But – the key thing here is it’s free! I like free! So, I’ve signed up to see if what they say is true… I’ll be back later to report on if it works or not….

If you fancy helping with my ‘experiment’ click here and join….

In recent months we’ve become big fans of Fotolia stock library…

One of the biggest problems as a web designer can be finding suitable photographs to fit with our clients websites. Having waded through many an on-line stock library in the past I always seem to end up back at Fotolia which must have one of the biggest collections of them all – approaching 7 million photographs.

Prices for images suitable sizes for use on the web start from 2 or 3 Euro.

What is surprising is that a quick search on Lanzarote will throw up over 1.100 images – which makes it particularly useful for businesses on the island. And most are of very good quality due to a human based acceptance system – you won’t find many holiday snaps on this site!

So – no need to steal any of my photographs from our sites, or from other popular sites on the island as happens all to often.

It only costs a couple of Euro to avoid breaching copyright laws!

Don’t always believe the stats web publishers quote when trying to persuade you to advertise on the sites – there are some dishonest publishers out there…

Firstly let me point out categorically that we NEVER employ this (or any other underhand) technique. We deal honestly and openly with all our clients. The stats quoted here come from a project we have under development (not a Lanzarote site) and I did this just to illustrate this article.

If I was trying to sell you advertising, it would look pretty impressive wouldn’t it? Really, it’s not. It’s a very simple deception technique used by unscrupulous web site owners.

Now – how did we take a site from 16 page views to over 9,000 in less than 48 hours? Read the rest of this entry »

Sounds like a great idea to place ads in context with the text of a page. It is, but not always – take a look at this howler from The Guardian.

All to often we rely on the ‘judgement’ of these systems – this is what can happen when it all goes horribly wrong.

Click on the image to see it full size and take a look at the headline on the left, and then the ad that shows up on the right.

Yes – I do – I hate it with a passion… But today I’ve linked some of our Lanzarote sites to it through an automated process. I guess if it’s there it may as well be exploited – as long as it takes little or no effort.

But really, what is Twitter in terms of web promotion? It’s all but pointless to any serious small business . Yes, I can see it as a bit of fun for kids sharing their daily lives – but it strikes me as much like the days of CB radio – a bunch of sad individuals screaming into the ether hoping to make contact with new ‘friends’.

Everywhere I see ‘reports’ with ‘advice’ or ’secrets’ (sic) about how to use Twitter, all for sale of course. They are not telling you anything you can’t find out for yourself with a bit of common sense and a few Google searches.  The get rich quick whilst selling you freely available information types really annoy me…

You see so many people boasting about how many Twitter followers they have – and that it brings them so many new hits. They put many hours into building this up – but in reality, there are so many ‘friend collectors’ out there, their efforts, and the resulting (low quality) hits are all but worthless. Their value doesn’t even come close to rivalling organic search visitors.

In conclusion I don’t mind automating this – but don’t expect to see me on there a great deal – I’ll leave it to the kids, the amateurs, and the get rich quick merchants. I prefer to spend my time on things that add real value to our business

If you are sad enough to take Twitter seriously and would like to add us – the user name is Lanzarote1971.