Tom Doyle :: TALK

An old friend of mine David, from Irish Tarot (IrishTarot.com) contacted me today to tell me his site had just disappeared from the Google SERPs. To Google, his site just doesn’t exist anymore.

Looking through his website, there doesn’t seem to be any issue with spamming or anything of the sort. There was an old issue with his 404 returning a 200, but I’d be amazed if Google dropped him for this.

We’re working together now to try and resurrect his site - will keep you posted on the progress! Any suggestions from SEOer’s welcome!

It’s been nearly 9 months since news broke that all Eircom wireless broadband connections had what I would call a major security flaw.

To penetrate any of these networks - all you need is the SSID  (e.g. eircom4506 3345) and a little tool such as Damo’s Eircom WEP key generation tool. Armed with this you could have FREE internet access and unlimited download capabilities at the expense of someone else.

Yet after all this time, Eircom seem to have done nothing to patch this glaring hole.  Yes, they released a simple press release, recommending that you change the password on your router - but in fairness, how many of Eircoms customers would actually know how to do this?

Eircom should be doing a lot more about this in my opinion, it’s gone on way too long now.

I’m a regular reader and “comments contributor” on numerous blogs. A lot of the blogs I frequent are competitors blogs, expecially those I would have respect for in their area of expertise. For example, I regularly read articles from RedFlyMarketing, RedCardinal and iQContent. I do have one major problem with all of them, they don’t blog enough!!

Seriously though, the articles from all three are generally highly interesting with great insight into how these masters work.

But I was very disappointed recently with one blog. In a nutshell, when the hype died down on one of their articles that had a fair bit of interest, they removed MY comments. Not only did they remove my comments, but they also removed all comments that were in context to my response and opinion.

I have to admit, I’m not the type to comment on a blog unless I have a strong opinion on it. The majority of times it’s when I disagree with something, or possibly if I agree with something and want to add more weight to the point.

In this case, yes I disagreed with their point of view. They seemed to huddle in a corner and throw stones at me in the shape of their “technical staff” to try and dispell my point. Unfortunately for them, their “techie” wasn’t aware of an issue that contradicted the article and all his previous points in response to my intial comment.

Anyway, with my last response to “techie” person, he was left with nothing else to say - he didn’t acknowledge that he was wrong or even say “we’ll beg to differ”, he just didn’t respond.

I guess why I’m writing this article is to get peoples opinions. If a blog opens up it’s articles to a public forum with comments, shouldn’t they at least have the decency to leave someone’s opinion there for everyone to see?

I can understand that it might not have made them look terribly knowledgable, but why allow people to comment - if they only want comments favourable to them? Sure they might as well just remove the comment option altogether.

I agree that there are cases where comments need to be censored. If the comments are rude, defammatory etc. But what about someones opinion, does this not count? Should it count?

Personally, I wouldn’t remove comments from my blog unless they were rude or defammatory. If they disagreed with me, I’d simply use the blog as a forum to get my point across. If I got something wrong, I’d do the honourable thing and hold my hands high and admit it…

Image via Wikipedia

There are a couple of things I don’t understand about the new eFlow Barrier-Free system that is due to come into effect from the 30th of August…

1. How can eFlow and the National Roads Authority get away with their advertising campaign of deceit?
2. Why as a nation, do we put up with this stealth tax?

The eFlow advertising campaign is based around the idea that by registering now, we will somehow avail of a cheaper option for using the toll. From the outset it actually looks like you do save money. If you are registered with eFlow, your passage through the m50 toll bridge will cost just €2, whereas if you are unregistered the fee will actually be €3 a go.

That all sounds great until you read the terms and conditions…

To open an eFlow account, it costs €40!!***
It costs €1 per month for them to administer the account (whatever that means..).
On top of this, there is a minimum account balance of €12. Once your account hits this amount they will automatically top you up (by charging your credit card) at the minimum top up rate of €30.

For your fist year driving through the M50 toll, it will cost you a minimum of €40. If you go through more than 14 times in the year, your minimum cost will be €70. So in the time it takes you to spend €70 at the moment you will get through the toll 35 times compared to just 14 in the first year with the eFlow system.

Now, lets say you are someone like me who rarely uses the M50 toll bridge, at most I use it about 10 times a year. There doesn’t seem to be much point in me registering for eFlow. But I face a 50% increase in price for not being registered.

Add that to the inconvenience of it all. God forbid if I had a chance to go on holidays, I would have to go through the M50 toll to get to the airport. Well unless I get to the airport, check-in, find my departure gate and get to an Internet connection to pay my toll for coming to the airport (which has to be paid within 24 hours) I will return to a lovely bill of €46 from my two week holiday.

Why aren’t eFlow forced to show these terms and conditions in their adverts?

***Note: You can register for a video account for free - works much the same as not registering, but is €0.50 cheaper.

Hillarious take on how a lot of companies handle their web strategy and the politics around it all…

http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/

I received an apology from LuzernTech today. Maybe I’m being a bit picky, but it doesn’t seem very sincere. It sounds like a child has been scolded and forced to apologise “or else”.

It’s hardly a professional response and certainly not an example of great customer service.

Anyway, it’s closure I guess. Here’s what they sent….

Related articles by Zemanta

• LuzernTech - I finally got my full refund
• LuzernTech… another update… oh yes….
• LuzernTech Update

What a pity eh? I was really hoping Fergie would get rid of him after his outbursts over the summer. If the guy wants to go, kick him out and get as much money as you can for him. He had a terrible tournament this year and I would hazard a guess that he’s not going to have as good a season as he did this year, next season.

Fergie announced today that (and I quote) “I can say he will be a Manchester United player next season“. I’ve highlighted “next season”, so we can read a bit deeper into it and create some great gossip and speculation!!

So does this mean after his conversations with Ronaldo, he’s agreed to let him go next season? Surely Fergie isn’t gone that soft… or has he?

I can’t wait to see the reaction of the fans when he returns from his 3 month layoff, will it be too late and we’ll have forgotten all about his summer shennigans, never mind his “slave” opinion?

Another master stroke by Fergie maybe?

Related articles

• Ronaldo set to be out for twelve weeks
• Ronaldo says Blatter right, he’s treated like a ’slave’
• Blatter would back Ronaldo move
• Blatter causes a stir with slavery comments

Now that the LuzernTech saga is all over, I want to draw attention to eBay and how I found them to be completely biased towards protecting sellers on their famous auction site.

If you’ve been keeping up with my LuzernTech saga you will know I had serious issues with them and their illegal activities. But one thing that got to me most was what LuzernTech wrote about me on eBay in response to the negative feedback I gave them.

When I gave feedback on eBay about LuzernTech, I didn’t hold back. I went straight for the jugular. “Absolute scammers - delivered broken, refused repair, no postage refund”, was what I said. Yes maybe I went a bit far, but I really wanted people to be aware of what this crowd were up to and in the 200 characters that you are allowed to write, that’s really hard to do. The only way to get this message across was to be strong and to the point.

eBay give the seller the opportunity to respond to the feedback from a buyer, here’s what LuzernTech said: “Customer given a returns number for a replacement wanted a refund”. This was a complete and blatant lie and in my past posts you’ll see the evidence.

Now here’s where eBay protects the seller… We as the consumer/buyer do not have an opportunity to respond to this feedback within the PayPal site. So in effect, the sellers are being completely protected here. The seller can just put in a comment fobbing off the disgruntled buyer as simply someone who likes to complain. They can fill eBay with lies to make themselves look like reasonable businesses just trying to make a living, but unfortunately have some moany customers from time to time.

So as a consumer, we could read these responses to negative comments and think “hey, they’re not actually bad at all, sure your man is complaining about nothing”. Instantly, an intelligent seller can turn a negative comment into a positive one. This does nothing to protect the consumer, it only protects the seller.

I do however agree that feedback should be limited. You could imagine how my respsonses would have went on and on with LuzernTech!

However, there should at least be a way for a consumer to complain about a response from the seller and if untrue, to have it removed.

“You can” I hear you say, well yes you can complain about it, which I did, but the response from eBay are to say least, pityful. In a nutshell, it does not breach their “Feedback Abuse Policy”, so they won’t do anything about it.

I also should note that eBay have recently put a ban on negative feedback on buyers from sellers. However, what is classed as negative? I certainly feel the feedback I received was negative, yet eBay didn’t see it that way.

So it’s clear from my point of view that eBay care little about the consumer and protect the seller entirely in cases like this. I believe the protection should be on the side of the consumer mainly. I know that sellers need to be protected too, but they should at least investigate allegations like this and do something about it so that the bad guys are rooted out.

Related articles

• eBay Picks Buyers Over Small-Time Sellers
• EBay tweaks feedback, but ‘no negatives’ is here to stay

It’s been a few weeks now, but I’ve finally got my money back from LuzernTech. They seem to have caved in to pressure from the National Consumer Agency (NCA) who wrote to them about their illegal activity with how they handled my order.

Out of principle, I wanted them to see that what they were doing was completely wrong, but also prewarn others of what type of a business they actually are.

Yet again, they proved that their customer service has a lot to be desired. I got no email from them to state that they had refunded my money, never mind an apology. I simply got a message from Paypal notifying me of the refund.

They seem to have changed the reference to the returns policy regarding shipping costs on their website.  Something I’m happy to see removed!

Although LuzernTech have some great prices on some great products, be very careful. It seems that the old adage “if it seems to good to be true, it probably is”; is well and truly the case with LuzernTech. I’m still convinced that if I had of paid a reasonable price for the product, I’d be sitting at home with the DVD player I purchased from them. So be careful with your purchases with them - they certainly don’t make it easy to resolve any issues you may have.

Oh and I better just say - The National Consumer Agency were brilliant. They really did do a good job with LuzernTech, so I’d strongly suggest you contact them in the future if you have any consumer related issues.

Related article

• LuzernTech Update
• LuzernTech just get worse…
• LuzernTech (Luzern Tech) - Steer well clear
• LuzernTech… another update… oh yes….

We’re currently working on a project that will be suggesting Google Docs to its users, to share and collaborate on spreadsheets, presentations and docs. One of the key requirements is to be able to link to a templated file, that users can access and save their own copy from within Google Docs. So my task today has been to try and find out if it’s possilbe and if so, how do we do it.

So far so good - I’ve figured out how we can link to templated spreadsheet documents. Here’s how you do it:

1. Login in to your Google Docs account
2. Create/Open a spreadsheet
3. Within the spreadsheet, click the “Share” tab.
4. This will open a page that will allow you to select collaborators that you can invite to edit etc, but we want Anyone to view this document. So down the page you will see “Anyone can
   edit this document WITHOUT LOGGING IN at” - select the checkbox and leave at “view”.
5. Underneath this, you will see a URL - copy this and add &newcopy to the end.

You now have a link to a template spreadsheet file that people can save and edit within their own Google Docs account.

All I have to do now is find out how to do this with Docs and Presentations (which seem to be different!)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Edit Google Spreadsheet With Everyone
• Google Spreadsheets Become Wikis