Philip Nicosia

Even though Lotty our cat and Bugs our rabbit were very wary of each other over time they did get used to one another and we were hopeful that one day they would become friends. Since Bugs’ arrival Lotty tended not to stay in the garden too long and would generally be found wandering around the lake. On the afternoon of Bugs’ passing away I think she knew that something was wrong. She spent a few hours in the garden looking all around for Bugs and couldn’t understand why she couldn’t see her.

Watching Lotty I noticed that she kept staring at where we laid Bugs to rest. After a while I think she realised where she was as she walked over and just laid there staring at the flowers we had put out for her.

We’ve never seen Lotty lay in this piece of garden before and over the last few days she has been there several times.

I guess Lotty misses Bugs as much as we do. She was a very special rabbit with a lovely personality and temperament and will be sorely missed.

Another one of my sites I have is Podcastblaster.com.

Podcasting is a new way of distributing audio broadcasts using the Internet. Using this method, people can subscribe to a variety of content in a certain file format (usually as MP3s). These files are then downloaded to a PC or a portable media player and can then be listened to at any convenient time. Podcasting is a new word that combines “broadcasting” and “iPod”.

A definite distinction of podcasting from other media delivery methods online is its subscription component – which basically defines the whole podcasting experience. Podcasters usually use a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) or Atom feed to push their content to subscribers. It also allows independent producers and “broadcasters” to create and self-publish their own syndicated “radio shows” – whether it be talk radio, poetry readings or even comedy shows. Podcasting also gives traditional radio programs another distribution method for their shows – one that is not confined to the airwaves and available on demand. All that a listener needs to get the podcasts is “podcatching” software that is designed to check for and download new content at a given time. Other podcatching software are even designed to synchronize the downloaded files to the listener’s portable digital player.

PodcastBlaster.com was setup to sell a unique podcasting package for beginners who wanted to enter the world of Podcasting. Everything needed to get started is included with step by step instructions, professional quality recording software for creating your podcasts together with ready to use professionally produced voice-overs, loops, background effects, stingers and Podcast-safe music.

The whole package costs only $39.95 and come with a no risk 30 day money back guarantee. In the year or so that I have been selling this software I have only had 1 refund request. That must say something for how useful people have found it.

A friend asked me about my my webcam and what I was using and how I got it onto the website. I bought a NCS-330W SOHO 802.11g Wireless Network Camera complete with external enclosure from Network-Camera.co.uk.

The camera is situated underneath the jetty by the lake outside of my house. Being wireless all I had to worry about was getting power to it which wasn’t a problem as I had some lights nearby where I could pick up a feed from.

Then all I had to do was turn it on, get a connection to the wireless router in the house and then make some configuration changes to the router to allow port forwarding to the camera and I was set. This was a pretty simple exercise and took about 10 minutes to complete following the instructions supplied with the camera.

The only other thing I had to do was to setup an account at DynDns which was free so that when my broadband provider changed my ip address the camera could still be found automatically.

The camera has a built in webserver which means I don’t need to have a pc on for it to work and it serves the video itself. Putting it on the website was simply a matter of adding a small piece of JavaScript code to the page and the camera took care of the rest.

There are a lot of other nifty things you can do with this camera and I’m using it in its most basic form but if you are interested in seeing what you can do then visit Network-Camera.co.uk and take a look.

I did a search on Google today for funny ringtones. Out of the top 10 results 1 was a page not found and the cached version was a page of keyword spam, 5 redirected to what looked like pay per click pages, and 1 had no content. which leaves just 3 results for genuine pages. The next 10 results there were 7 redirects to what looked like pay per click pages.

That means for this search term out of the Top 20 results 70% is spam.

Now I’m not knocking Google as I think generally they do a pretty good job. I just wish they could detect redirects better so we can have better search results.

With ever increasing energy prices in the UK we are encouraged now to switch suppliers in order to get a better rate. One of the most popular ways of doing this is by visiting uSwitch.com. They offer a service where you enter in your existing supplier and how much you spend and they will compare all the prices of the different suppliers and tell you if you can get a better deal.

Now I did this a couple of months ago when I was with British Gas and the savings I made were quite considerable and I switched to Atlantic Electric and Gas. It all went through pretty smoothly and I was happy to save the money.

Being an affiliate marketer myself I know how these things work. Each time a customer switches suppliers uSwitch are paid a commission by your new supplier. They don’t hide this fact on their website and do tell you this and after all they are not a charity and need to cover their expenses somehow. I don’t have a problem with this.

My concern is though today I visited their site and input my existing supplier as Atlantic Electric and Gas, how much I spent, size of house and how many people live there and it told me that npower was cheaper. But, when I entered all my details again but this time told them that npower was my existing supplier and gave details of the plan they had told me was cheaper it tells me that Atlantic Electric and Gas was cheaper.

So once again I enter my details with the plan from Atlantic Electric and Gas that they tell me was cheaper and guess what? They tell me that npower is cheaper.

Confused about this I telephoned their customer services department to ask why this would be. The lady on the end of the phone tried to skirt the question and asked me things like are you happy with your existing supplier etc, to which I said yes but my concern was why their system kept telling me that another supplier was cheaper all the time. To this she said bear with me and the phone went dead. I guess I’ll never know.