I was just answering a post on LinkedIn regarding computer games and thought I would expand the topic a little bit. It talks about learning skills through playing Age Of Mythology. I had played that game quite extensively in the past, including the extension pack, and have been hoping (fingers crossed) and AOM2 to come out.

Whilst I cannot say my managerial skills improved as a result of playing that particular game, I can say that playing other games in the past must have contributed to some personal development, or at least awakened the importance of budgeting and planning in my mind.

One of the earliest games I can remember playing which required some ability to plan, manage and budget would have been SimCity – for every action there would also be a reaction, so you raise taxes to pay the bills and citizens leave, creating a hole in the budget. Another game I played to death, Civilisation, taught me similar ideas about planning, managing and budgeting, not to mention the educational factor built into the game associated with history and politics.

Obviously having played those games in the past, I have not gained Phd level of skills needed to manage a real town or city, but what it does is make you think about things. As a result of playing those games I dare say I try to plan and manage my finances far better than I did before.

Computer games have often been blamed on some of societies problems, both mentally and physically. However I think the gaming industry is now changing as people interact with games differently. Games are taking on a deeper meaning, and are offering new avenues to help teach new skills. The gaming industry could possibly overtake TV as the media outlet of choice, and could easily intergrate totally with the Internet (as is already being seen in some games). I believe that computer games will also open up new strategic partnerships which would help cross promote other products and services. TV advertising is on the decline, and perhaps the level of interaction which can be enabled through playing computer games may actually provide a more cost effective marketing opportunity for brand interaction.

The world is changing, driven by technology, and whilst games and its hardware have changed only now is the style of games beginning to evolve as well – welcome to the world of GAMES 2.0 (you heard it here first).

Filed under: SEO, PPC, Design by Moley
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I love nothing more than great use of background images in websites, especially when they are tiled to perfection (check out my own site lol).

Backgrounds are often considered an unused, waste of webspace. I have read many posts where users would rather see web pages fit to the width of the browser. My personal preference is still a nice background, with a fixed width, centred webpage sitting in the foreground. A good web background can help complement the foreground, whilst making it “step out” of the page, bringing the actual content greater prominance, and controlling the way the user sees and responds to your website.

I am also of the opinion that any webpage which is wider than 1024 pixels is actually too wide to actually read and understand well (please note I have no studies to back this up, just purely my opinion). For instance most books and magazines are of a limited width and these have “successfully been read for some time now, why should we change those dynamics to suit websites just because monitors are increasing in size?

What makes a good background? Well anything which doesn’t take the attention away from the foreground, but actually complements it and brings prominance to it. I personally like neutral or darker backgrounds with lighter foregrounds. I feel this approach helps lift the main contain from the rest of the page, it turns your browser into a frame and allows you to control the way you want people to access your content (I think I already mentioned that).

Most designers will know, trying to tile backgrounds can be diffcult and almost impossible, yet needs to be done to ensure file sizes are reduced to allow for quick web page downloads. Alas I stumbled upon this fantastic tool which allows you to customize your background images until your heart is content! Ok it doesn’t generate every type of background you could ever wish for, but does a pretty good job at generating stripes and is very Wed 2.0ish, you can find the free tool here www.stripegenerator.com - having just checked the URL the site appears to be down, dam! Should be back soon as I was only using it yesterday

So there is now no excuse for people to just lump plain colours in backgrounds, or messy graphics which do not mesh together at the edges!

Filed under: SEO, PPC, Design by Moley
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Search Engines are constantly changing their algorithms, almost on a daily basis it seems. Often these changes reflect many things which take place “off site” for instance links pointing to our website. Just recently Google in particular have changed their policy on paid links, and only want to promote naturally gained links as a good tool for improving your search engine responses, more can be read on Matt Cutts Blog.

Only a few years ago I became obsessed with links, and the effect they had on Page Rank. Back then I would promote purchasing links on respected directories across the web. Most of which had a nominal fee, and being a man on a budget I considered this good value, as, in theory it would generate significant qualified leads to my site from search engines.

Now I will say that I use Google Pagerank as a way of determining how well a site is perceived within Google. I also use a few other methods for testing a site, but I won’t go into them today. The point I am trying to make is that I became obsessed with links and page rank, and yet forgot about the KEY point, Keywords or Keyphrases!

Regardless of the amount of links your site has pointing to it, or how good your Google Page Rank is, if your site doesn’t contain the right keywords/phrases then forget about it. Yes good links will help improve your sites positioning verses the competition, but in a lot of cases, businesses have unique models, which will generally have unique content – resulting in Keywords/Keyphrases which do not have as much, or any, competition.

This is especially true of smaller local businesses. Locally you may not have as much competition, and your business model may not require global domination, Google’s location targeting may be enough for your results to achieve very good results. Your site may not be number 1, but there is a good chance you will appear in the top 10, all providing you have the right keywords/phrases littered throughout your page.

Qualified leads are very important, and locally your site should be able to achieve this. For example my friend Matt owns and runs http://www.mbfitness.net – I redesigned his site sometime last year, and made sure he had the right keywords throughout some of his content. Matt has some links running too and from his site, however by ensuring good use of Keywords, MB Fitness appears fairly well for local searches, especially for qualified keyword phrases like “personal training ipswich”. A large percentage of his traffic is generated from Search Engines, and Matt doesn’t even know what link building or page rank is, well he didn’t at the time – sorry Matt.

Of course, Keywords and Keyphrases alone may not be enough to get your site top of Google. For instance “Search Engine Marketing” generates about 102million results, quite a competitive keyword. But once again, get your keywords in place first, then focus on your link building policy, ensuring good, naturally generated links point to your site.

Keyword Tools:

• Google Keyword Tool
• SEO Book – Keyword Tool

Filed under: SEO, PPC, Design by Moley
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I noticed this article online a few weeks ago http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7482383.stm and it talks about Tesco in particular, and other British supermarkets pulling out of deals with Zimbabwe.

Putting the economic problems of Zimbabwe to one side, it has been well documented that a large part of the population is starving. Is it therefore right, that BIG western companies actually import food from this country? Surely there is a serious ethical issue here? Tesco are taking food from the starving, to feed the full westerners?

I would also question the economic impact of this. Surely with inflation in Zimbabwe at a reported 2,200,000% the actual cost of importing food from Zimbabwe would be tiny, however with food prices across the world increasing, has this saving been passed onto customers in the UK? Probably not!

I may well be totally wrong, and I hope I am, but I would feel that any relationship Food Superstores have with Zimbabwe are financially motivated, rather than trying to help the country. If governments want to impose sanctions on the Zimbabwean Government then surely severe penalties should be brought against companies who are profiting from the exploitation of Zimbabwe, a country that cannot feed itself, exporting cheap goods to the western world.

Filed under: Ramblings by Moley
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I came across this news article on the BBC NEWS site http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7300570.stm it discusses the possibility of controlling elephant populations through culling. I just wanted to expand on this subject a little.

Elephants, in my opinion, are some of the most majestic creatures earth has been blessed with. Animals who have highly developed social and communication within their family groups. I find it sad that rather than further study of these magnificent animals, we are instead discussing the idea of culling many of them, all because they are starting to get in the way!

It is the last point which really gets to me, we have raped and abused our planet, and it seems everything is only here to serve us. Should a forest get in our way, we burn it, should elephants get in our way, we kill them, hell some people are overjoyed about the Arctic Icecap melting as it will provide a clear path for shipping! Forget about the rich biodiversity which could be lost as a result of the destruction of this fragile habitat.

It seems though, Western Governments have no real interest in protecting or helping international biodiversity, and why should they? After all they cannot even protect their own lands properly, we seem to be on a one way mission of destruction. Short term profit is more important in the eyes of governments compared with long term sustainability.

The comments on the article are somewhat heated and suggestions have been made about culling humans. I don’t believe this is the way to go either, but something needs to be done to curb the ever expanding human race. Every new baby born, is one more mouth to feed, one more person to educate, one more person to provide healthcare for, one more job taken, one less house available. If we continue to fail in addressing the sustainable way we live our lives, then our problems will have grown ten fold. We need to start working with nature, instead of continuing to use it as a slave for ourselves!

Filed under: Ramblings by Moley
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