Yesterday I went home to the parents house as I was house sitting while they are out of the country. I could not find my cat and went round to the neighbours who then found him passed away in their garden. It was was quite sad. I did not realise I would get so upset, it was actually my sister’s cat. Mine had passed two and a half years ago. What I was sad about was the end of a childhood era. Both cats we had since I was 11 years old and the passing of them signified an end of a chapter in my life.
snowball the cat
When one chapter closes, another one opens and my mind began to wonder what 2011 would bring. I hope lots of health and happiness. People are always looking for that , the pursuit of happiness. In terms of actual new adventures and experiences for 2011, I have a few:
First is the search club I am organising in January. I hope this will bring more people together to talk about seo, ppc and social. I really think there are very fine lines that separate the three. All can be seen as an integral part of a business’ digital strategy.
The second is my trip to South America in March. I have done a lot of travelling, but never yet ventured to South America. I will be going to Brazil, Igauzu falls and then onto Buenos Aires where I hope to study Spanish for a week.
The third is another trip – as some of my family will be in Australia by next Christmas, I will definitely be sunning myself down under. I just hope I won’t get snowed in like so many people did this year.
Well 2011 doesn’t look that bad. As long as I have my health, I have everything, so I wish you all lots of health and happiness for the next 12 months. And hopefully some milder weather as well.
Trick or Treat
It is that time of year again, autumn has come, the shops are full of Halloween decorations and sweets and chocolates. England has seen a growth in the popularity of Halloween over the past decade, but it has been a well celebrated event in the United States from as early as the 1930s. It has a very long history and originates from the Celts. Halloween derives its name from All-Hallows Eve which was they day before All Saints Day (All-Hallows) a Christian festival.
Halloween comes from the pagan festival Samhain, which the Celts celebrated on what was their New Year Eve, October 31st. Samhain marked the end of summer and the beginning of winter which brought the evil spirits. The Celts believed that on this night, the barrier between our world and the spirit world was at its weakest and the spirits would return to the earth. They built bonfires and in England carved out faces in the turnips to warn off the evil spirits. The festival was celebrated by lighting bonfires and sacrificing crops and animals. The bonfire was also believed to protect them during the winter months.
Samhaim was officially recognised as All Hallows Eve by Pope John 14th in 1006. November 1st was known as All Saints Day or All-Hollows and the following day, November 2nd was celebrated as All Souls Day to honour the dead. The three festivals together were called Hallowmans.
The Celts believed the spirits of the dead would possess people’s bodies. They dressed up in scary costumes to ward off evil spirits from taking their body. When the Irish moved to America in the 1840s they brought this custom with them. And now children dress up in all sorts of costumes, from cute little fairies to blood thirsty vampires and knock on neighbours doors going “trick or treating”.
Now, the history of trick or treating, actually comes from a mixture of different origins. One was the Celts, who believed the devil would play tricks on the living so they gave them food when they visited their homes. The ninth-century Europeans had a custom called souling. On All Saints Day, Christians would walk from village to village begging for “soul cakes” – pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes a beggar received, the more prayers they promised to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. People strongly believed at that time that the dead remained in limb and that prayers could send the soul’s passage to heaven. Lastly, the Irish peasant practice was to go door to door to get money, cheese, eggs, butter apples in preparation the festival St Columb Kill.
With commercialism, Halloween has thrived in the United States with thousands of children trick or treating, parading about in a variety of costumes. It is now the second most popular holiday after Christmas for decorating and sales of sweets.
Who will you vote for?
Today is set to be the election of our generation. Labour is going down, not that we are surprised especially after Gordon Brown’s embarrassing incident the last week. But what future do we have with the Conservatives?
Labor has been in power since 1997 and before that Conservatives from 1979 till then. So both parties have dominated politics for all of my lifetime and indeed everyone under 30 years old.
By 1997, people were tired of the Tories and Labour was seen as a fresh start. But what has Labour brought us? They took us into the Iraq war, drove us into debt and have underachieved in education which was Tony Blair’s motto. Top up fees came in 1999 and is set to increase so education will be left for the rich.
Who will you vote for? I have sent off my postal vote.
Google doodle Election
YouTube announced earlier this week that it will start giving all videos on the site access to its auto-captioning technology. There are two benefits to this:
1. Deaf viewers will now be view and understand YouTube videos
2. Better search and advertising opportunities on the site.
YouTube has allowed video creators to add captions to YouTube since 2006 but transcribing was expensive and time consuming. Creators of videos and users can now request video transcription
So what does this mean?
Having searchable text has huge potential for search capabilities in YouTube.
This is a beta launch and will continue to develop over the next few months, but it means that it will be easier to search for auto-caption videos. As you may be aware, YouTube is owned by Google and this is a step in the direction of improving its search technology.
This new feature will also mean it is more accessible to speakers of different languages. English subtitles can be added into any of the 50 languages supported by Google’s translation service.
This is great news for those hearing impaired who were previously unable to take advantage of YouTube. Now they can watch all the YouTube videos without having to download any additonal software.
The other benefit of having auto-captioning is for advertisers. it will help brands serve ads relevant to specific parts of YouTube videos.
How will it work?
When you upload a video to YouTube, you will be able to create an automatic caption of the clip’s soundtrack. You will then be able to download the subtitles file to the personal computer in a SUB or SRT file format. If you have already uploaded a video, then you will be prompted to add captions for existing content.
Interesting to see how this feature develops. Read more information about YouTube on Mashable
We have all heard of google analytics – tracking the number of visitors coming to your webiste, but now Google have launched a the new feature – mobile tracking to their analytics pacakages. This means you can track the visitors to your site who are viewing it through a mobile browser, whether that is low end handsets or the smartphones,
How does it work I hear you cry…. Well you need to add a server side code snippet to your mobile website. Google says this will be available over the next few weeks and they will support PHP, Perl, JSP and ASPX sites.
Google are always one step ahead of the game and they have added iPhone / Android app-specific features so that they can track how users engage with apps. And for those who access the apps on Android devices, Google can also see if usage of the app was a result from an ad campaign.
Read more about this post on mobile crunch
To hit the Orange shops next month, Motorola is entering the Android arena with its CLIQ phone. So will this be the comeback of all phones? Will Motorola now be able to claim back some market share? It only has 2.19% according to getjar so has a long way to go.
Motorola have been out of the game for so long and now there are so many other competitors in the market.
Apparently the mobile phone is supposed to be for the young teen market instead of business users. So what is so special about this smartphone? Well to start with, it uses Google’s Android, packing 3G, there is a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, GPS, 5mp camera, but what is really amazing is “Motoblur” which is a new social networking-oriented user interface/service.
Motoblur as the name suggests blurs everything into one. It allows you to access all your different networks and account from the front page of the mobile phone. So your email, twitter, facebook can be accessed in one fell swoop. What is exciting about this phone is the “happenings” widget, which is a live feed of all your friends’ activities from whichever social networking sites you belong to. You can also update your status across these sites in one go. You can choose which widgets you want on the default screen, allowing instant access. You can also litter apps including YouTube and Google Maps around the widgets for a more personalised experience.
What is most surprising is that it doesnt have Wi-Fi connectivty and it only has 2GB MicroSD card. It can be expanded to 32GB but that is a bit of a pain. But I suppose the new features for the phone as below make up for it:
• Customisable home screen with Happenings, Status and Messaging widgets deliver status
• Customizable RSS news widgets keeps you up to date
• Messaging with Facebook, MySpace and Twitter Direct Messaging
• Address book synchs personal and work contacts, and connected social networks
• Caller ID shows caller’s name, number, status and profile pic
• Photosharing in MySpace, Photobucket, Picasa, Facebook
Plus if you lose your phone or it is stolen you can also restore everything automatically in the new phone and wipe all the info from your old phone. (remotely wipe it). So no need to have any of those back up and restore software solutions that seem to be saturating the market place – eg zyb, mobileme….. So what are you waiting for? Get down to the Orange shop and put your name on the waiting list. Orange have exclusitivity on this phone in the UK, France and Spain.
Uncategorized | Jo Turnbull | 
December 30, 2010 1:45 pm | 
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