From the monthly archives:

November 2008

kernel[0]: disk0s2: I/O error.

by JC on November 30, 2008 · 4 comments

in Settings

Sunday, 13:30

Looks like my Laptop hard disk is failing. Funnily enough, I first noticed the problem when my backup failed. So, in trying to fix the backup volume I deleted my old backups, now that I my disk is falling apart and I have no backup. Arrrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhh!

Sunday, 14:09

Frantically copying documents and, more importantly, mp3s to an external.

Sunday, 14:14

Damn, The Clash got corrupted.

Sunday, 15:17

Copying stuff to an external drive in the Finder sucks! As every corrupt file causes the whole copy process to fail. Having more luck using mv in the terminal, as it will continue to copy despite finding corrupt files.

Sunday, 19:03

Erased disk and re-installed OS X, hoping that has fixed the bad disk sectors. Ho-hum. This post seems to sum-up what happened to me: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080129063748614

Monday, 09:06

Disk erased, OS re-installed, data migrated (manually) and it looks like I still have problems:

Dec 1 08:59:26 MacBook-Pro Skype[143]: SkypeApplication::init called
Dec 1 08:59:38 MacBook-Pro kernel[0]: disk0s2: 0xe0030005 (UNDEFINED).
Dec 1 08:59:38 MacBook-Pro kernel[0]:

Is this the end of the road for my disk?

Monday, 09:14

Amazing how useless Disk Utility is! Throughout this whole thing it has consistently argued that th disk is OK.

Tagged as: OS X

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Google’s advice for bloggers

by JC on November 25, 2008 · 0 comments

in Media,Rocket Fuel

More good advice from Google, this time on blogging and the importance of.

Google owes a lot to blogs, one could argue that the prevalence of blogs has enriched all search engine search results for the better. Blogs are more search-engine friendly than traditional websites and because the blogosphere is so massive (77 million uniques in the US last year) they cover almost every subject under the sun. If Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful then blogs have a gone a long way to helping them achieve that goal!

Tagged as: blogging

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Google’s SEO guide

by JC on November 25, 2008 · 0 comments

in Online Marketing,Settings

Could this document kill the expensive, hocus-pocus SEO industry? Probably not, but it’s nice to see Google finally offering some concrete advice to websites. This should be required reading for any web designer or developer:

Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

I particularly like this graphic, as it neatly describes the screen real estate used by organic and paid search listings. What’s really compelling is how much prominence PPC has on this page.

Tagged as: seo

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Starting to understand Twitter

by JC on November 25, 2008 · 0 comments

in Media

I’m only now starting to understand the usefulness of Twitter. Initially, I just thought it was about updating status, and whilst I think some kind of centralised online journal that plugs-in to every other communication tool (email, IM, Facebook, etc) would be useful, there is a lot more to Twitter than just status updates. Used properly, it is probably the most social of all the social networks and allows individuals and businesses to connect with people in more meaningful ways.

Beth Harte outlines a few ideas in: Twitter for Business: 10 Things to Consider Before You Get Started.

Tagged as: social networks, twitter

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I ♥ Basecamp

by JC on November 19, 2008 · 4 comments

in Rocket Fuel

I’ve been using Basecamp for years now.

I was first introduced to it at Spring Digital in 04 and opened my first personal account in 05. I’ve always intended to post about it and try explain why it’s such an essential piece of software. However, Basecamp‘s genius is hard to define in a single blog post as it does so much! And the effect of Basecamp is subtle — sure, it does to-dos, messages, chat & milestones, but so do a lot of other pieces of software. Basecamp just happens to do these things better than the competition and in a way that can transform your own thinking, effectiveness and profession.

And if that isn’t enough to convince you to try it, it has only cost me a little over a thousand bucks for these years of happy project management.

Tagged as: 37signals, basecamp

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Minimal OS X Dock

by JC on November 7, 2008 · 0 comments

in Settings

I like to run a pretty minimal OS X Dock, here’s how it looks when I start-up my MacBook:

OS X Dock

Nice, huh? No applications, no distractions.

I do this because I like to use keyboard shortcuts as much as possible, so I find all my applications by doing Spotlight searches, which can be activated by pressing Apple Key + SPACE.

I find this approach is faster and less distracting. I use Spotlight to find apps, email, files, folders, ical events, contacts, whatever. It’s faster than clicking around with a mouse.

Spotlight also has a few handy modifiers for performing more complex searches, you can use NOT, OR & AND along with your keywords. For example: name NOT .doc will search for things called name that are not Word docs.

Tagged as: OS X

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Repair cracked iPhone screen

by Billy on November 7, 2008 · 10 comments

in Settings

I’ve had my iPhone 3G for about 2 months now and apart from the battery lasting a few hours between charges, I’m very happy with it. Well, I was until I installed a golfing game on it.

In swinging the phone to simulate a golf stroke, the phone slipped out of my grasp and went flying, landing on the hard, slate kitchen tiles. Why did I not purchase a protective jacket when I had the chance!

I went to the Apple store in Regent’s St, London to explain my predicament, but was told the whole phone had to be replaced (over £300) there were no spare parts that could be bought. :(

iPhone screen repair DIY

Searching the web, I found numerous fix ideas for broken screens, but they were all quite costly. The expensive part is the glass panel, which is cemented onto the digitizer touch pad.

With a new glass panel from eBay, some intricate tool work and adhesive you can carry out this procedure yourself. All for under 60 quid, which is a pretty reasonable price to mend one’s own stupidity.

Tagged as: iphone

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TasteLondon card

by Billy on November 6, 2008 · 0 comments

in Rocket Fuel

I’ve just received my TasteLondon card!

TasteLondon is a great website, it lists an array of the capital’s great eateries.

If you present your TasteLondon card when requesting your bill you can receive either 2 meals for the price of 1 or 50% off the food bill.

To get your card, sign-up for a free month trial. TasteLondon are hoping that after a year you’ll subscribe for £50 to carry on eating for half-price.

Tagged as: taste london

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AdWords Tuneup!

by Billy on November 5, 2008 · 0 comments

in Online Marketing

Whether you’re already using Google AdWords or completely new to it, the Sky Rocket Inc. AdWords Tuneup! is a quick, affordable way to get more out of PPC advertising.

AdWords Tuneup! is a 3-step process:

  1. Appraisal of campaign requirements
  2. AdWords Tuneup!
    • Campaign and Ad Group re-structuring
    • Keyword research and expansion
    • Ad copy revision
    • Negative keywords
  3. Reports and proof of success

You retain control

Whether we’re working with existing accounts or creating new ones for clients, we ensure that you have admin access to the account. This means you can choose whether to manage it yourself, pay us, or even use another agency entirely.

Cost

The Sky Rocket Inc. AdWords Tuneup costs about $400 USD (subject to account size).

Drop us a line today for further details.

Ad spend not included.

Tagged as: adwords, ppc

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Uploading campaigns from AdWords to Microsoft adCenter

by Billy on November 3, 2008 · 0 comments

in Online Marketing

Here’s a quick tip to save you the time that I spent learning how to do this.

1 From Adwords Editor export your chosen campaign in .csv file format. With this one file you’ll be able to cut and paste all the relevant data over to adCenter.

2. In adCenter througout the create campaign, adgroup and ad set-up you get the option to import a whole campaign, adgroup or ads. To do this adCenter requires you to use their .csv or Excel templates.

3 You’ll see the option to download these templates every time you select import campaign or import adgroup etc.

Example.

4 Go through the process of creating new campaigns and adgroups in order to get to these templates. Download each template for Campaign, adgroup and ads, name them and save them, you’ll be using them a lot..

5 Next you have to transfer the data from your exported csv files from AdWords editor on to the templates you got from adCenter. The data has to be put into the templates in exactly the right way as shown in the template files.

adCenter template for ads..

6 You can try to do whole campaigns at a time, but I would recommend not to do this if your new to adCenter like myself. There can be a lot of data to transfer and it does get confusing and you’ll probably find that adCenter won’t upload your campaign properly, or at all.

Also note that it won’t upload any negatives you have in a chosen campaign, it will instead upload them as normal keywords. Little bit a annoying! So your negs will have to be entered separately later.

So what I did was to upload separately the Campaign, then the adgroup, and then the ads. Takes a bit of time but if you stick to the format of the templates it goes quite smoothly.

Also note that when filling in the required fields for your ads, adcenter has one less description filed than AdWords. In adCenter they have one description field but with the ability to put in 70 characters.

So be aware of this when you are pasting ad data from AdWords to your adcenter ad template. You have to join the descriptive fields from AdWords and put them into the one field that adCenter gives you.

AdWords.

adCenter.

In uploading campaigns in this manor I found it to all come together in the end, there are a few annoyances with adCenter like the negatives explained earlier and its interface and tools are nothing compared to Adwords. However I’m gving it a try to see how much traffic I can draw from it and at what cost, compared to the same campaigns I have running in Adwords. We shall see…

Tagged as: adcenter

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