Adam Arnold's work - life blog

VANS ‘Off the Wall’ iPhone 4/4s case

Adam Arnold — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:41:45 +0000

My iPhone 4 is almost 2 years old and has been wrapped in a £3 silicone case since the day I got my hands on it. Before that, my iPhone 3G-S was housed in a similarly priced case that I found on Amazon. It should therefore come as no surprise that my iPhone 3G spent it’s life inside a cheap bit of rubber.

Sadly, my current protection is looking a little worse for wear and I don’t think it’ll last until Autumn when the iPhone 5 is supposed to hit the shelves. A bit of Googling later and I came across a silicone case from shoe manufacturer, VANS:

VANS Off the Wall / Waffle iPhone 4/4S case

I can’t work out if it’s called the VANS ‘Off The Wall’ or the VANS ‘Waffle’ case. Either way, it looks like I can’t get my hands on it in the UK, which is a shame because it looks pretty cool. If you found this thread looking for a review, I suggest you check out this video by YouTube reviewer, Larry Greenberg:

Video review of the VANS iPhone 4/4s silicone case:

If you’re US based or have more patience than me, you can order the case on Amazon.com. I thought about ordering one but in the end, I’ve been my typical self and gone for another £3 case. That said, I think this one looks quite quirky and is in the style of an old cassette tape:

Retro iPhone 4/4S cassette tape case

For anyone who is interested, you can get the retro cassette tape iPhone 4/4S case on Amazon.

Project Glass: Google’s Augmented Reality Glasses

Adam Arnold — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:28:18 +0000

Project Glass is the future. And it’s happening today!

This kind of thing is already possible in a variety of smart phone applications but Google have taken it one step further and bundled everything into a pair of augmented reality glasses.

If you’re unfamiliar with Project Glass, this video should give you a better idea of what to expect:

Project Glass: a preview

Ok, I jest. Here’s the real Google Glass preview…..

Project Glass: One Day

Google’s founders have been spotted wearing prototypes and it seems as though the finished product may be available to buy before too long. If you want to keep up to date with official announcements on Project Glass, be sure to check out their Google Plus page.

In the latest update you can see a photo taken by Sebastian Thrun during an interview with Charlie Rose. To view the entire interview, click here, however for now I’ll leave you with this photograph taken with Project Glass’ integrated camera:

A photograph taken with Project Glass's integrated camera

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (?) killstreaks

Adam Arnold — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:28:09 +0000

On 1st May, Activision are due to announce details of the next Call of Duty title, due for release towards the latter end of this year. Due to the way in which the series rotates, it’s likely to be a follow up to Treyarch’s COD: Black Ops and in all honesty, it doesn’t excite me that much. After filming my COD: MW3 – Road to Commander series, I’m pretty burned out on the game for the time being.

That said, I will inevitably buy the game and when I do, I’ll be keen to try out the AR.Drone’s bigger brother:

This isn’t the first time that the Parrot AR.Drone has featured in a video game – it has previously made appearances in Homefront and Battlefield 3 – but it is the first time it has been treated to a dose of steroids!

Theo Paphitis on Small Business Sunday

Adam Arnold — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:03:05 +0000

In the video that follows, Hannah Power interviews Theo Paphitis on behalf of the Digital Youth Acadamy.

Hannah, a current student at the University of Warwick, asks Theo to recall the first time he used Twitter, why he started Small Business Sunday (#sbs) and what value he places on the use of social media.

I was amused to learn that Theo can’t remember his first Tweet as he was a little tipsy at a charity event but can recall waking up to more than 20,000 followers. For the rest of the answers, check out the interview:

Small Business Sunday: The Man Behind The Hashtag

Adam Arnold — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:58:58 +0000

No sooner than I had received the invitation to the Inaugural #sbs winners’ event, I was trying to clear my diary for Friday 30th March. All looked good until 9 am on the day, when a couple of clients threw some urgent work my way.

At first, it looked as though I wouldn’t be able to make the event but with some careful route planning I figured I could drop in for 30 – 45 minutes. With several hundred people at the event, I knew I wouldn’t have time for any decent networking, so I set about locating the man behind Small Business Sunday – Theo Paphitis.

I dumped my car outside Edgbaston CCC and made haste towards the entrance, stopping briefly to check my hair….

Theo Paphitis' Chrome Wrapped Maybach

The Chrome wrap, which was applied for Children In Need a few years ago, is ridiculously shiny and gives the Maybach some serious road presence. Anyway, with my hair looking as good as I could possibly hope for given the fact it’s receding at an ever increasing rate, I stepped inside the conference area.

Upon entering the room I thought any hopes of meeting Theo had vanished. The place was absolutely packed with winners of Small Business Sunday and their plus ones. However, I could see some TV cameras at the far end of the room and figured I may be in luck.

Unsurprisingly, Theo was surrounded by people and, after a prompt from one of his assistants, was making his best efforts to get into another room to prepare for his first #sbs presentation.

I took a bit of a gamble and placed myself in Theo’s exit route. Thankfully that paid off and Theo came within earshot, at which point I loudly apologised for dinging his Maybach. The Dragon was not amused, making reference to the size of his chauffeur!

Amused or not, my comment certainly captured Theo’s attention and my guest, James Kimbley of Kimbley Computer Services, was on hand to capture a cheesy photograph worthy of a Facebook status update:

Adam Arnold meets Theo Papthis at the Inaugural #sbs event

I’m very much looking forward to next year’s event and hope I can stick around for a little longer, so that I can put faces to names (especially to those people who have taken up my #sbs SEO freebies) and make the most of the networking opportunities that the Small Business Sunday network provides.

#sbs SEO freebie for Dietitian UK

Adam Arnold — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 16:43:27 +0000

Priya Tew is an experienced dietitian and nutrition professional, with a degree in Nutritional Sciences and a Masters in Dietetics. Her company, Dietitian UK, was chosen as a Small Business Sunday winner by Theo Paphitis on 8th January, 2012. This is her #sbs SEO freebie!

Looking for more information on Small Business Sunday (#sbs)? Click here for details of how to enter and the benefits of being chosen by Theo Paphitis. Read this post for an explanation of why I provide free SEO for #sbs winners.

Hi Priya,

Firstly, a very belated congratulations for your Small Business Sunday win in January!

I’ve had a good look at your website and I am very pleased to report it is built using WordPress, an open source platform which is very powerful from an seo (search engine optimisation) perspective. Before I get into the proposed changes for your website, please allow me to provide an introduction to SEO:

Search Engine Optimisation: a simple overview

Industry professionals would like you to believe that SEO is magical skill-set possessed only by a select few. Far from it: everything you need to know about search engine optimisation can be found, free of charge, on the internet. If you’re struggling for bed-time reading, you can’t go wrong with Google’s own SEO starter kit.

In short, SEO concerns the way in which you manage three aspects of your on-line presence:

1) On-site SEO

- this covers all of your content, such as meta data (page titles & page descriptions), the use of text, internal/external links, photos, videos and maps.

2) Website Code

- typically, website code will either help or hinder your on-site SEO. As you will see in a moment, WordPress is pretty much set-up as standard and allows you to make alterations to your core code without any programming knowledge.

3) Off-site SEO

- essentially, this covers links back to your website from elsewhere on the internet, including social media profiles, directories, forums and blogs. Interaction on blogs is often overlooked and can be a very powerful form of off-site SEO.

#sbs SEO review for Dietitian UK

Below, I have listed three areas of your website which need attention with an explanation of what needs to be done. All three would be considered “on-site SEO” but thanks to WordPress, you don’t need to do any coding.

I have chosen these three areas as I feel they will have the biggest impact on your search engine performance.

1. Generate a sitemap.xml file

A sitemap is critical file for search engines. At a glance, they can see the structure of your website along with details of when your content was updated, which helps to determine whether or not anything needs to be indexed. Without one, you are less likely to be indexed on a regular basis although it is still possible.

Generating a sitemap file in WordPress is simple. Log-in to your admin area and you will see a tab called “Plugins” about half way down the left hand side of the screen. Click on “Plugins” and then “Add new”. You will then be presented with a search box.

Enter the term “Google XML sitemap” and then click to install. Please note that in the image below, the text reads “update now” as I already have the plug-in running on my blog.

Adding Google Sitemap Generator to WordPress

Once you have installed the Google XML Sitemap generator, you will be prompted to activate the plug-in. You can either click on “activate” or navigate to Settings > XML – Sitemap on the left hand menu bar. Either way, you will then be asked to run the sitemap generator for the first time.

In terms of settings, the generator is pretty much good to go, however I suggest you scroll down to the option relating to update frequencies and ensure these are set correctly. Don’t be tempted into setting values that over-estimate how often you update your content!

You only need to do this once. From now on, your sitemap file will be updated whenever you add/remove/edit content on your website.

Whilst it isn’t essential, I always advise people sign up for a free Google Webmaster Tools account and follow the on-screen prompts to register their sitemap. It’s worth checking your account every now and again to ensure there are no problems with your sitemap files.

2. Populate your meta data

Meta Data gives search engines a better understanding of the content on any of your website’s posts or pages. However, meta data is not purely for the benefit of search engines:

The role of Meta Descriptions in SERPs

In the image above, I have circled a section of text which can be customised by filling out your meta data (namely the meta description). A well written summary can encourage a search engine user (i.e. a human!) to click on your link as opposed to any of those that surround it.

Customising meta data in WordPress is nice and easy. First of all, you need to install the All in One SEO pack by naviagating to plugins>add new. As with the sitemap generator, search for “All In One SEO pack”, click install and then activate.

Once done, you should see the following boxes appear on your posts/pages, when logged into wp-admin:

Wordpress: Using All in One SEO pack to configure meta title, meta description & meta keywords

In the event you can’t see these options, click on “screen options” which can be found in the top right hand corner.

Wordpress: Edit screen options to display All in One SEO pack (step 1)

Once the menu has expanded, tick “All In One SEO pack” and your title, description and keyword boxes will appear.

Wordpress: Edit screen options to display All In One SEO pack (step 2)

Meta Title

99.9% of the time, you can leave the “Title” box blank.

Your page title should be between 50 and 70 characters and WordPress will generate this automatically by combining the name of the post/page you are working on with the name of your website. If you want to change this, navigate to settings>All In One SEO and look at the options for “post title format” and “page title format”. Feel free to play around as if you break anything (very unlikely), you can click a button to restore all the defaults.

Meta Description

This is the most important box and you need to fill this in for all of your existing pages as well as any you create in future. The key is to write a concise summary of the content on any given page, using no more than 160 characters of text. You need to consider the fact you are writing for two audiences: a computer, that will want to see a good distribution of keywords; and a human, who may choose to click on your link as opposed to others if you write something appealing.

It is important to take time when writing your meta description as it can have a huge impact when done correctly.

Meta Keywords

Keywords aren’t as important as they were a couple of years ago but there’s no need to stop using them just yet. Aim for 10 to 30 keywords, separated by commas, with your most used terms towards the beginning. For example you could start everything with “Dietitian, Priya Tew” and then the broad keywords for your website. Follow these with specific keywords which relate to the page or post you are editing.

In passing….

I notice you already have Yoast SEO installed on your website but couldn’t find anything to suggest it has been used. With this in mind, I would suggest clicking “plugins” on the left hand side menu, scrolling down to “Yoast” and clicking on “deactivate”.

3. Add more images/improve existing images

Images are a great way to improve your search engine performance: they can improve the ranking of any page/post for a particular keyword, as well as provide an alternate form of search engine traffic (Image Search). To extract full value from your images, be sure to name them correctly.

As it stands, you don’t really have any images in the main areas of your website, so I suggest you try and get hold of some. For example, your Individual Consultations page could benefit from a photo of you giving a 1 to 1 session.

Ideally, images should be given names between 50 and 70 characters in length. I prefer to name all of my site images with the same prefix, to ensure consistency across the site, for example:

[Company Name] – [Short Description] – [Something about the image].jpeg

Should you choose to add an image to your Individual Consultations page the file could be named as follows:

Dietitian UK – Priya Tew – Individual Consultation.jpeg

You could go on to add additional artwork for eating disorders, weight loss and so on. Obviously, you don’t want to flood your pages with images but you will benefit from uploading at least one per page.

Once you have addressed your main pages, I’d suggest working through older blog posts.

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When it comes to SEO you can never guarantee results (as your competitors could start doing the above), however I would expect to see the above changes result in more search engine traffic, more enquiries and more sales.

Should you get stuck with any of the above, please feel free to get in touch!

Kind regards,

Adam

Sony PS3: Original, YLOD & Cheap 160GB slim

Adam Arnold — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:56:59 +0000

It’s no secret that I play the occasional game on my PS3 – mostly Call of Duty, Gran Turismo 5 and Fifa - and I have been working on a number of projects which will help me to monetise that hobby. For now, I need to capture as much content as possible and, in recent weeks, I have been recording a COD MW3: Road To Commander series, which is being uploaded to my (gaming only) YouTube channel, iKingOfHouse.

I’m about 30 games in and the AVerMedia Game Capture HD hasn’t skipped a beat. Sadly, the same can’t be said for my PS3 which gave up the ghost last Wednesday. I can’t complain too much as it is an original 40GB model (although I upgraded the PS3′s HD a while ago) and has served me well for the past 5 years!

A quick look on YouTube suggests YLOD is easy enough to fix if you have the required tools and plenty of patience. As I have neither, I decided to go out and buy a new one. Thankfully, Sainsbury’s have the 160GB PS3 slim on offer over Easter, so this only set me back £164.99. If you’re reading this post after Easter, your best bet is probably going to be Tesco, who are knocking them out at £189.99.

For those of you wanting to fix your PS3 or in need of help ejecting stuck discs, read on…

Sainsbury’s Easter Offer
160 GB PS3 slim only £164.99 with free home delivery

Ejecting stuck discs from a PS3 with YLOD

Whilst searching for videos on how to repair YLOD, I came across one tutorial which suggested blasting your PS3 with a hair dryer for some 45 minutes. The video stated that this isn’t going to fix your PS3, but will allow you to switch it on for long enough to eject any discs which are stuck inside. Thankfully, I found a much easier solution in the depths of the Google SERPs!

All you need to do is switch off the PS3 completely – in my case, using the switch at the back of the machine. Then, hold down the eject button and switch the PS3 back on. I’m not exactly sure why, but the PS3 will then kick into life with the fans on full tilt, before ejecting the disc and turning off again. I should point out that this only works on the original ‘fat’ PS3. If you’re trying to eject a disc from inside a PS3 slim, I suggest you follow these instructions.

Fixing PS3 YLOD – tutorial video(s)

Fixing a PS3 is no more complicated the taking it apart, applying some thermal paste to the broken parts, blasting the motherboard with a heat gun and putting it all back together. At a later date I will attempt to fix mine and I will update accordingly. In the meantime, these videos show every step of the process:

Step 1: Take the PS3 apart

Step 2: Apply thermal paste & attack with a heat gun

Step 3: Put your PS3 back together again!

PS3 light sequences – is it YLOD?

PS3 light sequences - identifying YLOD

If you turn on your PS3 and the lights flash green, yellow and red, followed by a double beep, then you have an issue with an internal component. Whilst I can’t say for sure, it is most likely going to be the dreaded YLOD (it could be a dodgy power pack). For a full list of light sequences and what they mean, check out this handy guide – “What do the different light sequences on the PS3 mean?“

COD MW3: Road To Commander

Adam Arnold — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:36:39 +0000

Road to Commander (RTC) is a type of video series, specific to Call of Duty, in which every game of the ranking up process is recorded. In Modern Warfare 3, this is level 1 through level 80.

For reasons I will get to in a later post, I have recorded an RTC and will be uploading one video per day to my channel youtube.com/iKingOfHouse, which hosts my gaming related content.

I have embedded the first game, below. Please be warned, this might not be work safe as I’m playing with a group of guys who are known to swear from time to time . Visually, there is nothing that will cause offence.

It’s pretty standard for a Road to Commander series, but it’s worth me pointing out all of these games feature live team communication or live commentary. Personally, I prefer the former as it means I don’t need to give live narrative throughout the game and can concentrate on playing!

Usually, people will create a separate account before they start an RTC but I didn’t have time, so I’ve recorded every game between Level 1 and Level 80, 10th Prestige.

Inaugural #SBS Winners Event

Adam Arnold — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:47:47 +0000

Small Business Sunday is a weekly Twitter competition hosted by Theo Paphitis. It’s free to enter and the winner gets exposure to Theo’s 250,000 (and counting) followers. Should you require more information, check out this post.

The competition has been running since 2010 however the first official event takes place this month. If you’re a member of the #sbs club, all you need to do is DM “I’m in” to @RymanStationary and you will receive further instructions. From there, you should receive the following invite along with a response slip:

March 5, 2012.

Inaugural #SBS Winners Event

Congratulations on being an #SBS winner and thank you for making contact!

In response to numerous requests, at last, the very first Small Business Sunday event for winners takes place on Friday March 30! It’s at the Edgbaston Stadium, The Warwickshire County Ground, Edgbaston, Birmingham B5 7QU.

The event starts at 12 noon. There will be light refreshments plus sarnies and even the odd tipple that will be served from 12.30 PM. I will give a short talk at 1.30 PM but what’s most important is that I hear what you have to say because this is a great opportunity for you to shape the future of #SBS. There will be plenty of time for you to mingle and the event will finish at about 4.00 PM.

As there will be several hundred guests, a Q&A session provides the perfect opportunity to share common learnings and knowledge.

As demand is strong, the tickets are strictly limited to two for each winning business. (I understand that some people find it difficult walking into a room of people you don’t know… although come to think of it, having met some of you, I somehow doubt it !)

I would like to say a big Thank You to the team at Ryman Stationery who have agreed not only to help me organise the gathering but also to sponsor it! This means that the event is free of charge. (Tickets are not transferable and cannot be sold !)

I very much look forward to meeting you on Friday March 30.

With best wishes

Yours sincerely

THEO
@TheoPaphitis

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I hope to see you there!

#sbs SEO freebie for Dottie Designs

Adam Arnold — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 21:48:09 +0000

In October last year I completed an #sbs SEO freebie for Susan Bonnar of Dottie Designs and in this post I am simply repeating what I said at the time with a few small tweaks. I am doing so as I noticed Susan asking the twittersphere for help on meta tags. They’re easy when you know how :0)

Wondering what #sbs SEO freebies are all about? Check out this post. Never heard of Small Business Sunday? Read all about it here.

Hi Susan,

Firstly, congratulations on your #sbs win last Sunday. As promised, I have gone through your website and provided some suggestions below.

Before you read on, it may help if you look at this post (http://ceo.smartergroup.biz/seo-is-easy-when-you-get-the-hang-of-it/) on my blog which splits SEO into three areas of importance – on-site content, on-site signposting and off-site back links. I follow this framework whenever I review a website.

On Site Content

For the most part, you’re doing quite well here. To improve things further, it would be worth considering:

- image names
- URL structures
- page titles
- page descriptions + keywords (sometimes called meta tags)
- your blog

Image Names

In respect of image names, take this page as an example:

http://dottiedesigns.co.uk/ourshop/

The image names are as follows:

http://dottiedesigns.co.uk/siteimages/21/9/1/219192/2210505/c_313545.jpg

http://dottiedesigns.co.uk/siteimages/21/9/1/219192/2210505/c_313711.jpg

http://dottiedesigns.co.uk/siteimages/21/9/1/219192/2210505/c_314915.jpg

With images, you have 70 characters at your disposal and you should try to use at least 50. Image names should take a standard structure which includes your company name as well as any product information. For the images above, I would suggest filenames along the following lines:

Dottie Designs – Keepsake Boxes – Jonah Pirate Treasures.jpg;
Dottie Designs – Guestbooks – Butterfly Patterns.jpg; and
Dottie Designs – Photo Albums – Blue Butterfly Cover.jpg.

You may be able to come up with better descriptive terms than I have done, which illustrates why I believe SEO should be done in-house. You know your business better than any SEO company and as such can do a much better job of the optmisation

This applies to all of your product images. While you won’t be penalised for using your current numbering system, it won’t be doing anything positive for your site.

URL structure

Moving on to URL structure, consider the following:

http://dottiedesigns.co.uk/ourshop/cat_313545-Keepsake-Boxes.html and

http://dottiedesigns.co.uk/ourshop/cat_313548-Boys-and-Girls-Keepsake-Boxes.html

Again, you won’t be penalised for the numbering system but at the same time it could be better. As the two categories above follow on from one another, consider the following alteration:

……./dottie-designs-keepsake-boxes.html and
……./dottie-designs-keepsake-boxes-for-boys-and-girls.html

Additional sub categories should follow the same pattern.

Moving onto page titles, again this an issue of consistency. For example, your “About Us” page title is “About Dottie Designs”. However your “Blog” page title is simply “Blog” – it would make more sense to have this as “The Dottie Designs Blog”. Inconsistent page titles won’t harm your blog, but it would benefit SEO if they all have the same prefix (DottieDesigns).

I’ll be honest, I’m not familiar with the software you have used to build your website so I can’t just point you to the appropriate settings menu at this point. However, that’s not a major issue as you can manually edit page titles without any knowledge of code. Taking your homepage as an example, the first few lines of code are as follows:

Welcome To Dottie Designs

Essentially you have a (short) page title but no meta description or meta keywords.

To see this for yourself, locate the folder on your computer where you save your web pages and right click, then select “open with notepad”. Editing the page titles is as easy as changing the text between the and tags.

Page descriptions & keywords

From the code I have pasted above, you should be able to see that you haven’t defined any keywords or a page description. Google doesn’t pay much attention to keywords these days but I tend to use them anyway – whilst they don’t get much traffic, there are other search engines out there and you never know, one day Google might meet its match!

With keywords, I tend to use 10-20 on every page on my website: the first few will apply to the whole website and the rest will be specific to that particular page.

Taking your Christening Albums page as an example, you could use the following keywords:

To appreciate the importance of the page description, check out this Google site:search of your domain. You will no doubt notice the section of text under each of your links isn’t particularly helpful to someone who is trying to quickly determine what is on any of your pages (as and when they show up in a Google search). Turning up in a Google search is one thing; attracting someone’s click is another!

You can rectify this problem by populating your page descriptions. Use no more than 160 characters and use good English – this is not a place for keyword spam! Taking your homepage as an example:

Utilising your blog

Finally, and perhaps the most significant issue, is the fact your blog is currently hosted elsewhere. Blogs are a fantastic way to ensure your website always has fresh content, however they are far more beneficial when integrated to your site. To their credit, Google provide fairly decent guidance on integrating a blogspot blog with an existing website:

http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/static.py?page=ts.cs&ts=1233381

On-Site Signposting

I’m really pleased to note you have a sitemap (http://dottiedesigns.co.uk/sitemap.xml).

To make sure you are getting the full benefit from your sitemap, sign up for a free Google Webmaster Tools account at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en. From there, click on “register sitemap” and follow the on screen instructions.

Off-site back links

At the moment it looks as though you have only generated back links from Yell.com and the occasional Tweet. It would be beneficial if you could supplement this with profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ (all free to join). Whenever you add a new product or upload a new blog post, post a link on these sites and over time you will build up a decent amount of quality back links.

You can further supplement the above with active participation on relevant blogs or forums. So long as you aren’t spamming your products or services, the majority of blogs/forums will allow you to place a link to your website in your signature.

Final Thoughts

You’re off to a good start, but with some time you could vastly improve the SEO score for your website. However, it may be that some of the changes simply aren’t possible with the tools you are using at the moment (create.net). If not, I would strongly suggest you consider WordPress (wordpress.org). Not only is WordPress free and highly customisable, it provides the easiest way to run a company website with an integrated blog.

In passing, I note you are using an @aol.com e-mail address. Depending on your hosting company it should be relatively easy to set up [username]@dottiedesigns.co.uk. While this isn’t really an issue from an SEO perspective, there is plenty of research out there which suggests free e-mail accounts can impact the credibility of your website.

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