Archive for the ‘General’ Category

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….

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.

On a lighter note than usual – surely this has to be the ultimate console game! This is reportedly a drone being flown in Afghanistan from a bunker in Nevada…

Sometimes I long for the old days before everyone had access to the Internet.

Blogs for instance sound like a fantastic idea – as does social networking. Culturally they offer a great opportunity – in reality they have created a huge opening for many individuals to deceive.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to sell stuff over the Internet but it seems millions of fools appear to think that if they put up masses on nonsense content – filled with affiliate links to tell you (when they haven’t) how to make a million through some scheme or blog. I just can’t stand the dishonesty of it all!

Cheap domains and affordable web space have a lot to answer for, as does social networking. Putting a QUALITY website up takes real time, effort and commitment in both design and contents. Though clearly many neither realize or accept it looking at their sites.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction – the quality of the Internet appears to me to be the direct opposite of its growth. Quality content is getting harder and harder to find year on year.

Content is not king – quality is? But unfortunately quality is dying a death all over the net…

Every now and then you stumble across a real gem of a website – today’s was Kiva. A site distributing micro-finance to small business around the world, mostly the third world.

If you don’t know what micro-finance is – put very simply, it’s a small loan – usually from a number of investors to small business owners. Its a way to help people grow a sustainable business, and get most of your money back…

You can loan as little as ~ US$25 and make a real and lasting difference to someone who needs your help!

Lanzarote is a little rock and a very closed community in many ways – sometimes we forget there’s a big world out there, and that we can actually help make a difference.

Visit the Kiva website and see how easy it is.

Today we got spammed – nothing new about that in Lanzarote, or anywhere else with the address lanzarotesociety-dot-com… We also had some complaints, and questions from clients – relating mostly to the fact that they had used the address elle@ as their Playa Blanca contact. Our clients were questioning whether we were involved in any way. We decided to do some digging.

Before I go any further with the results of that digging, let me state categorically we have not, will not, and will not ever have any dealings with the site or those behind it.

Apart from being a really shabbily designed website, it;

• gives no indication of its owners
• is selling membership to unwitting tourists who might want to ‘feel part of the island’
• it claims to be non-profit making (sic!)
• offers people the opportunity to work for them for the investment of £2000
• the whole thing stinks…

The whole site and its related domains are written in a style of language many reading this will be familiar with… It includes the phrase “Simon says” throughout…

Yes, you guessed it. It’s an old favourite – it’s the inimitable Simon Harris again. Simon and Jenny Harris and Quills Wills may be down and unable to trade here (his words on the Gazette forum as I recall), but it seems they are not out.

The evidence?

The name of the domain owner – Melanie Ross (click on her name for the Google search which demonstrates clear link)

Companies House information…

LANZAROTE SOCIETY MANAGEMENT LIMITED
HARBRO HOUSE
CROWN LANE
DENBIGH
LL16 3SY
Company No. 06661107

and…..

THE QUILL GROUP (1986) LLP
HARBRO HOUSE
CROWN LANE
DENBIGH
DENBIGHSHIRE
LL16 3SY
Company No. OC328567

The same address is also the Registered Office of… THE QUILL GROUP COMPANY SECRETARY LLP
and THE QUILL GROUP TREASURER LLP

There’s plenty more where that came from – but I think you’ll agree it’s pretty clear as to who is pulling the strings on this baby! Of course, I have emailed and asked that any links they have included on there to our sites be removed – we have absolutely NO association with this venture.

The really worrying thing is that on the site it says that one of their aims is to represent the island and it businesses… Think about that one!

A note to tourists who may be reading this at this point – there are many good sites in addition to our own Lanzarote Nightlife if you are looking for information on the island – just Google, you’ll find plenty. And you certainly don’t have to pay to feel a part of the community – you are always welcome on sites like our own forum at Canary Nightlife, the forums on Discover Lanzarote and at the Gazette.

Now, of course, I’m not saying Simon Harris is a conman – I do however have an opinion based on all I’ve seen and read about him. What I would strongly urge anyone who is reading this – if you are thinking about doing business with him, or any of his companies, make sure you do thorough research – hopefully there’s enough in this post to get you started. That research may end up saving you thousands…

Caveat Emptor….

A few days ago we stumbled on a number one position on Google for one of our sites. More by good luck than planning in this case, the number one position was for a phrase very relevant to the site in question – but it was a typo – and a VERY common misspelling…

Should you find this at any time – don’t fix it – this is a good thing. Your site will no doubt have your search terms duplicated elsewhere, so no need to worry.

Don’t be afraid also to include common misspellings within you keywords and descriptions. Find a really common one and it can work very well for you…

Having previously owned a PR company and being in the marketing business for many years, I still get a joy out of seeing stuff in print! In this digital age some might see it as a little ‘old fashioned’ – but there’s still nothing like holding a paper magazine sometimes…

This recent article about us was in the April edition of ‘Spain’ magazine back in the UK.

There are of course business benefits to us from press articles…

• they add credibility
• they have the potential to bring in business (this one brought us an SEO client)
• they may create additional website traffic – the Canary Nightlife and Gandy-Draper sites saw additional traffic throughout the circulation period
• our clients see that actively marketing ourselves and our sites s in turn driving traffic to their advertising with us and their own websites

We were approached to do this article after an article about Elle in the expat section of ‘The Sun’ website.

Watch this space – we may have another on coming up soon…

On a lighter note than usual – it brought a smile to my face recently when I was working on a domain of ours which includes the word EARTH…

In adding some AdSense to the site and whilst testing without any content up on the right hand side pops something like… “Visiting Earth – For all you need to know visit Trip Advisor for everything you need to know about Earth”.

Perhaps they see the advantage of targetting any aliens about to visit and looking for reviews of hotels they can rest up in before the invasion?