Widget Linkbaiting

An interesting topic was posted yesterday by the self proclaimed World's Greatest SEO aka Darren Slatten on Widgets as linkbait. Matt Cutts said some interesting stuff in the interview with Eric Enge, but as usual the answers were, when analyzed, rather bland and really what he was saying was go back and read Google's webmaster guidelines. Save yourself even more time by simply following the only really important Google suggestion on this topic:

"Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

I love the elegance, simplicity and yet huge capacity for failing in this. Google is saying we should really KNOW whether what we are doing is ethical, and perhaps most of us do. It's not possible, however, to accurately measure your own standards of ethics next to Google's of course!

Plastic bags - environmental problem...solved!

Fed up of hearing about having to pay 5p for a plastic bag? Worried plastic bags will be banned and you'll actually have to bring a bag to Tesco's? Unlike Global Warming, the plastic bag problem has always been an environmental issue I actually believed was happening. Well now it's solved, and seemingly completely and forever! Perhaps (I'm not holding my breath here) some other important environmental issues might get some attention now this one is sorted.

XP Service Pack 3

Microsoft have released it, so I duly scampered over to the update site out curiosity as to what this service pack would do before it automatically got installed on all the machines at work and everything fell to bits.

Pleasantly surprised. It didn't take all that long, required a rebbot (fair enough really) and presto the machine is running just fine. The only change I notice is that CD/DVD autorun, which had stopped running on my Laptop ages ago is working again. Funnily enough, I hadn't missed it though.

More man made Global Warming nonesense

The Register ran an interesting story today. Basically (surprise surprise) there seems to some confusion as to whether or not the planet is actually getting any warmer, much to the chagrin of the anti carbon crowd who are being made to look less and less credible on a near hourly basis.

The problem seems to be that the UK Meteorological Office's Hadley Center for Climate Studies are saying temperatures have been dropping since 1998. NASA say they have risen.

The best part of the Register's article is the suggestion that, if the world is cooling, we might halt the coming Ice Age by burning MORE fossil fuel, thereby releasing the needed CO2 to raise the planet's temperature.

The basic point being of course, that there isn't so far any actual proof, of any kind, that Carbon Dioxide actually has a measurable impact on the greenhouse at all, and in all likelihood isn't really doing anything much at all. Apart from making life possible on the planet, but let's not worry about that eh?

It's about time this was put to bed. This planet is facing some huge man made environmental issues which are on the back burner (if they are even treated with any importance at all) such as over population, food shortages, deforestation etc. Did you know for instance, in the last 200 years humans have removed HALF of the world's trees? Now THAT I can believe will have a dramatic effect on the planets' entire ecosystem. Forget buying a Golf Bluemotion (and in the process allowing your old car to go into landfill and poison the planet some more). Plant some trees.

Last week my uncle suggested I read what Bjorn Lomborg has to say about how best to preserve this planet as a habitable place for humans. In a nutshell, the amount we plan to spend pointlessly controlling carbon emissions is more than enough to solve some real problems - like the shortage of fresh water supplies, Malaria and HIV. Popping out for the book now. After planting a tree.