I always find it intriguing to watch twitter when things that effect everyone happens. For example, when Harry Potter Deathly Hallows part 2 was released the trending topics were, of course, to do with the movie.

This “black out” has brought about an amusing hashtag and some fantastic creativity coming from lots of people in the “twitter-sphere”. The hashtag (if you haven’t seen already) is called #FactsWithoutWikipedia. There are new tweets appearing on this hashtag every few seconds! I’ve listed below just a few favourites I have seen so far.

#FactsWithoutWikipedia Kittens sit exams when one year old. Those with the best marks become lions, those with the lowest marks become dogs. – A.F. Harrold

Real chess was in fact, modeled after Wizard’s Chess. #FactsWithoutWikipedia – Camilo

Top pop hit “Where’s Your Head At” was nearly not recorded, when an observant engineer pointed out “It’s there”. #factswithoutwikipedia - John_The_Monkey

#Pluto is no longer a planet due to copyright claims from the Disney corporation!! #FactsWithoutWikipedia – Raghavendra Swamy

And the title of this blog post is credited to Doug Gross.

I’m sure you’ve seen some great #FactsWithoutWikipedia on twitter too, so comment below and let me know!

PS: as an aside, I think some internet genius’s have hit the nail on the head as to why SOPA is happening now – its because it is 2012, and therefore Henry Van Statton owns the internet. (Doctor Who)

Why am I concerned about men’s health?

• 1 in 9 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime
• This year 37,000 new cases of the disease will be diagnosed
• 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime

If you would like to support me and help my mo grow by making a donation please vist my Mo Space page – http://mobro.co/GregCurtis

Funds raised will help make a tangible difference to the lives of others. Through the Movember Foundation and their men’s health partners, The Prostate Cancer Charity and The Institute of Cancer Research, Movember is funding world class awareness, research, educational and support programs which would otherwise not be possible.

To find out more about Movember please visit – http://uk.movember.com/about/

I was thrilled, and when I told my colleagues I was overwhelmed with the responses of ”who?”, “eh?”.

Never mind. It means a lot to me.

Yesterday I received a package from the USA, with a letter signed from Joel Spolsky thanking me for going “out of my way to help my peers” and “being an influential community member” for my contributions to Ask Ubuntu. I was one of 90 people to have been sent Ask Ubuntu swag.

Ask Ubuntu is a community driven question and answer site for the Ubuntu Operating System which turned 7 years old today. It is fast becoming the de facto community support channel and is highlighted as one of the features of Ubuntu in the installer.
Being part of the Ask Ubuntu community and in turn the Ubuntu community is something I care about and enjoy doing.

So I got a t-shirt and some pens and stickers and whilst the cynic in me can see this is just a marketing tactic I don’t care.

These are people that I admire and have followed on their blogs for years. They are celebrities in the software development world. Getting recognition from people like Joel and Jeff is incredible and I feel proud.

(See my Ask Ubuntu user profile here)

After investigating, although I haven’t found a way to disconnect your Facebook & Spotify from each other, if you go to Facebook’s application settings page – click edit on Spotify, press x on all the things it can do and set visibility to “only me” this should stop Spotify posting to your Facebook, however keeping your Spotify account active. Nonetheless, the view that has been expressed by almost every paying customer of Spotify is that making Facebook an integral part of being able to use Spotify is a very bad move. Find out more about people’s opinions and see what Spotify has to say on the matter at the Get Satistfaction website here.

Update, 29/09/11: Spotify announced on their twitter feed today that you can now “temporarily hide your guilty pleasures” by going to file and clicking “Private Listening” in your Spotify application. The fact that it has been referred to as “temporary” is something to keep an eye on I think, but other than that it is a step in the right direction for Spotify, who appear to actually be listening to their customers!

How do I choose my key phrases?
Choosing the right key phrases is one of the most important part of SEO.
First you need to decide what your website is for. Is it to get new customers, keep old ones informed or just an information site about what’s going on in your business. It could be all of the above. Whatever your website’s purpose, this is going to be instrumental in choosing your key phrases.
Next sit down and write out as many things you can think of to do with your business that other people might be searching for to find you, if they don’t know about your company already. This DOES NOT include your company name, unless it is a description of the work you do.

For example, some of Web of Knowledge’s key phrases are:

Why do I need a website?
Search Engine Optimisation
Improve Search Engine Ranking
Web Design in Hampshire
Search Engine friendly shopping cart
Email Marketing Hampshire
Hosting

As you can see, each of these key phrases have a page which relates to them. Now, you can only fully optimise one key phrase for each page. Your first list of key phrases should be between 12 – 50 phrases long – some of them will be similar – with and without locations possibly depending on your business type.

What happens now I’ve got my key phrases?
Once you have this list we analyse the key phrases to see which phrases are the most searched for. We’re looking for something with lots of traffic and little competition to optimise for. It’s not impossible to optimise for a key phrase with lots of competition, it’ll just take a bit more time!

After we have got your list down to a smaller number based on the most searched for key phrases, we then need to look at which pages you are going to have on your site (that’s right – we’re doing SEO before creating the site, not as an add on afterwards when it won’t be as effective!)

For each primary key phrase you need to have a separate page, meaning the amount of pages you have is down to how many different services you offer.

The most important thing to remember when choosing your key phrases:
Get into the mind of a potential customer who doesn’t know about your company yet. Using technical terms that only people in your industry use probably isn’t going to be what is searched for by your potential customers. A couple of examples of this :

SEO = Get my site higher in search engines
E-commerce websites = online shop

This isn’t always going to be true, for example, cupcakes are always going to be cupcakes, but just keep in mind to not use technical terms if they’re not going to be commonly used by your potential customers!

If you’d like to talk to us about your website – whether you have one already or not – please email us.