So everyone on the planet must know that the new iPhone 3G is coming out next month and I for one will be getting one. So slender and sleek, refined and 3G. It’s also cheap as chips – so why wouldn’t you get one?

I was wanting to see some more images of the phone (I do this with everything I buy – so that by the time I actually own it, it’s like I’ve had it for 10 years) just to familiarize myself with it. So off I trumbled to Google, entered ‘iphone’ and hit the ’search’ button.

207 million articles returned. Yeah – I don’t think I’ll move past the first page (who ever does?). Loads of places to go see the phone but which one to choose?

I then let my eyes move away from the usual hotspots to the left, and in order to try being the exception on one of those ‘webpage heat map’ thing’im’a'jigs – I took a look at the sponsored links to the right. Shocked – I found that the first link for the keyword ‘iPhone’ is held by one of the phones biggest rivals. LG.

LG are currently marketing their ‘Secret’ phone. No its not actually a secret – that is just the name of the device.

I don’t know what they paid for the ‘iPhone’ keyword but this is a little underhanded in my opinion.

Not to be outdone by the iPhone craze, Blackberry also jumped in on the keyword. They obviously don’t value their device as high as LG does because they only spent enough to be position 3 – but still, high enough.

You could pass this off as ‘ya gotta do what ya gotta do’, but why don’t these companies just make better phones? All blackberry’s are ugly bricks. The LG Secret, although nice, just doesn’t come close.

These types of companies, Nokia included, need to start making their software more plugable to different technologies so that they cannot be stepped on by a newcomer, like Apple with the iPhone. Nothing Apple has done is innovative. The technology has been there for years. It’s just laziness that has allowed a competitor into the market and they only have themselves to blame.

Tags: apple, blackberry, google adwords, iphone, lg secret, nokia

Categories: Ads, Google

Over at the forums on Entrecard, there is a movement growing, prospering and above all striving for the free speech of adults everywhere.

Recently the owner of Entrecard banned some members who verbally attacked one of the moderators of the forum. Those who where banned, were wronged as the forum that they were venting their frustrations on had been specifically setup for just such things : to vent – and the moderator was giving just as good as he was getting.

The new forum, named Firestorm, was created by the programmer of the site as a direct response to some members becoming irritated by the attitude and written language used by others – believing it to be rude and offensive.

Now the banned users have had their accounts reinstated and issued with apologies as the whole sorry mess was a big misunderstanding.

Ofcourse this hasn’t helped right the wrong and some of the banned users are now trying to make their last stand: To protect free speech.

The internet is a volitile place and some areas can be quite disturbing. It’s like walking through a city – some areas are pleasant, some disgusting and the rest is just dingey. Forums can also be viewed in the same way. Anyone that doesn’t like something contained in them should just not look at it.

This post is a little rant-ish, sorry for that. Just needed to let that out

Move along. Nothing to see here…

Categories: Uncategorized

A lot has been reported lately about the explosion at The Planets H1 datacenter. The issue has now been resolved but some of the press around the incident is farcical.

The Tech Herald (thetechheard.com) mentioned that The Planets correspondence with its customers was “incredible”. I find this absolutely hilarious reporting.

The Planet began communicating the issue 45 minutes after it occurred. The next update came 1hr 45mins later. I work in the financial sector at the moment and if I responded to an issue 45 minutes after it occurred I’d lose my job. Now – I understand that The Planets response to the issue probably happened as soon as they heard something explode, but their communication to their customers took 45mins. They also indicated that communication lines would be difficult to man (as in : Don’t hold your breath for someone picking up if you call us). This is not acceptable.

The Planet is one of the biggest webhosts in the business and have many customers who are resellers of their services. Those customers in turn have customers of their own. As a result I am left baffled as to how so many websites were down as a result of this issue. This datacenter is not their only datacenter and replication is a default backup solution these days.

One customer reported that he’d probably lose out on a $10million advertising deal as a result of the outage as it made him look unprofessional.

How does a company of this size get away with over 28 hours of non production of services?

Either people are restraining their legal abilities or they do not know that they have the right.

Tags: h1 datacenter, the planet, webhost

Categories: WebHosts