AlanAllport.Com

Whoops, seem to have failed to post here again in a long time! Have to try to remedy that going into 2012.

Hope you had a great Christmas, if you celebrate that particular festival. Completely passed me by this year. Started to feel pretty poorly starting about half ten to quarter to eleven on Christmas Eve night and then I had an upset stomach all night and didn’t manage to get any sleep – not much fun!

The only thing that passed my lips all day on Christmas day was mineral water – the irony that in most respects this was probably the healthiest Christmas I’ve ever spent has not escaped me! Thanks to my detox Christmas and fast for a few days.

Anyway, I hope that 2012 is a happy and healthy one for me (and for you!)

Have a think about what you want to do next year in the final few days of this one – I always find this time of year is good for getting your head straight about the things you want to change about your life going forward – so I’d recommend you try to find some time to do just that.

As I’m not exactly an avid follower of the news I’ve only just found out that Amy Winehouse was found dead yesterday. What a tragedy. I guess it’s hard to say it’s a shock given the ‘car crash’ reporting that followed her around, but even so, you don’t really expect people to die aged just 27.

I genuinely believe that she was one of the greatest vocalists of all time. She was really a jazz singer at heart who could effortlessly bring that jazz sensibility, timing and phrasing to the soulful pop music that she was famous for. Truly a fantastic natural talent.

We’ve been left a legacy of only two official albums but I guess we can expect a slew of previously unreleased material to hit the market now – I just hope that this output is carefully selected to do justice to her memory as the genius vocalist that she was.

I also hope that those people who are inclined to judge harshly and let all and sundry know that they believe it was all her own fault reflect and respect the fact that a lot of people are hurting right now and that these kinds of comments don’t help matters.

I feel that we should all look at these things with a lot more humility and accept that addiction is a terrible affliction and ‘there but for the grace of God go I’. Sadly some people never manage to break free from their demons.

My thoughts go out to Amy’s family and friends who are no doubt hurting terribly right now and beating themselves up because they feel they failed her. I’m sure that you all did all that you could. Sadly sometimes all that any of us can do is never enough.

RIP Amy – that great band in the sky is way better than anything we can muster on this Earth, and you’re a very worthy addition to it.

I’ve been an avid user of ‘cloud’ computing now for some time. And Google docs has been an integral part of what I do Online.

I do quite a lot of what might best be called ‘mobile’ computing with a portable netbook and a tablet pc as part of the kit I use to carry out my Online work.

It makes sense then to have as many documents available in one location that can be accessed from all of those devices – and indeed from a public computer in an Internet cafe if need be.

If you use outsourcers or project teams in remote locations, the likes of Google docs proves very useful for document sharing because you can set password protection on individual documents such that some of your documents can remain private to you and others can be made available to people that you choose.

So, I was very interested to learn that Google was putting out some lightweight netbooks that basically use the Google Chrome browser in lieu of a traditional operating system.

The idea is that the ‘cloud’ becomes your workspace and storage space. A small amount of solid state storage is provided on the device itself – 16gb I believe.

Samsung and Acer have been chosen to provide the initial hardware – which comes in wifi and 3g flavors.

Here in the UK the Acer machine, which is my preferred model based on smaller screen size – therefore more compact and portable, which would better suit what I want to use it for – is not yet available, so I haven’t fully made up my mind whether I’m going to shell out for one.

On paper, weighing in at £300 to £400 at UK prices, I’m not sure what you actually gain over and above a netbook operating on the Windows platform – but I guess what I’m looking to find out in its purest form is whether this particular cloud business model would still need to be supplemented by a regular computer platform – which I suspect it would.

Anyway, I’m sure it would be a very interesting experiment, so I’ll keep you posted on what I decide.

I’ve been doing some thinking about my use of some of the Web properties I own and I’ve decided to turn this blog into personal only – i.e. non-Internet marketing business related.

So anything that is about me, my thoughts, what I’m doing, books I’ve read, films I’ve watched, music I’m listening to, will appear on this blog.

So, where will my Internet marketing-related stuff now be posted? It will reside here:

http://www.alanallport.org/blog.

Hope you’ll check it out.

Is it just me, or is there anyone else who is fed up with deceptive email subject lines?

What do I mean by deceptive email subject lines?

Subject lines like ‘You’ve made a sale!’, ‘Here are you login details’, ‘Here’s your download’.

And then the body message of the email makes it clear that the sender is just trying to sell you something i.e. you haven’t made a sale etc. at all.

Of course, the aim of these email subject lines is just to get you to open the email in the first place. We all get so much email these days that it is getting harder to get your marketing messages through and opened. So, certain marketers are, shall we say, being a little economical with truth in an attempt to get you to open their email messages.

But, I ask you honestly, if you open such a message and then find that you actually haven’t made a sale, etc. how do you then feel – let down, cheated? I know I do and that then makes me feel negatively towards the marketer who sent me the email message.

And feeling negatively towards the marketer – is that going to prompt me to be the least bit interested in whatever it is that they’re promoting? Do I really have to answer that question?

Surely commonsense tells you that getting people to feel negatively towards you when sending your emails is not the best way to build up the kind of rapport and empathy necessary if they’re going to trust and like you. And if your potential customers don’t get to trust and like you, they’re not very likely to become actual customers.

I know some people will say that all’s fair in love, war and marketing, but I really do think this is a counterproductive practice.

I don’t like it and I hope you won’t do it.

I know, I know – I’ve been very remiss in not updating this case study as often as I was intending. I assure you that I’m still going ahead with it – things have just got in the way a little more than I was hoping.

I’m always inclined to bite off more than I can chew – give myself rather too many claims on my time. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do have rather a magpie mind so I like having lots of different things to pursue – in Internet marketing as well as in life in general.

I just remember that every little thing I do adds to the overall cumulative effect – keeps things moving forward. Of course, this isn’t to be used as an excuse to spread yourself too thin and get nothing of value put together ever – you must always guard against that, as I have to.

Anyway, back to the SBI case study. I have just added another page of content to my first site (I signed up for a two site pack and have just about started on the second one). I haven’t really done anything to promote my first site yet – just relying on the SBI stuff in the background.

I’m definitely adopting the patient approach with these, concentrating right now on continuing to add content. I haven’t even started to add anything to monetize yet. Will probably do that in the next month as I continue to add content.

Ok, some further thoughts on SiteBuildIt! The best part of all is really the documentation. The instructions given on how to build Websites that are useful to site visitors as well as acceptable to search engines is some of the very best you’ll find anywhere on the Internet (and it’s still in tune with the times after the Google Farmer update).

Having lived with the Online SBI sitebuilder for a few months now, I have to say that experienced Website builders will probably find it to be too restrictive (but, remember you can build your SBI sites using your own html, so if you can use Dreamweaver, FrontPage, Expression Web or Kompozer etc. to build Websites, you can use those to give yourself some extra flexibility.

The only problem I can foresee for a beginner using this system to build their first Website would be that the documentation is quite wordy and in depth and will take some reading through (more than once I suggest) to get your head around – but if you read and re-read it, it will definitely give you one of the best educations you’re ever going to get in building information-rich Websites that are fun and interesting to build for you and have a real good chance of earning a respectable income.

I’m going to stick with these two sites of mine for the long haul and will report back with further thoughts and observations in due course.

You can check out SiteBuildIt yourself by clicking here.

Well, I think it needs to be my final tech purchase for a while! When you couple this with my recent purchase of a Macbook, I think I’ve spent quite enough money for the time being.

I guess the Macbook made it clear that my current Windows PC options were a little dated and persuaded me that I needed to update them.

To be fair, I’d been contemplating the purchase of a 17″ widescreen laptop for some time and a Sony was the only manufacturer that made it onto my shortlist this time around. I’m very satisfied with my 8″ Vaio P-Series for portable use when my 5″ Dell Streak tablet just won’t cut it, so a big screen Vaio just felt like the logical way to go.

And having used my new baby for the last two or three days, I definitely feel I’ve made the right choice. THis is definitely going to be my workhorse PC for the foreseeable – I’ve got a dealer’s two year warranty on it – which they threw in for no extra on the price – so, I’m hoping that I’m going to be using this piece of kit for at least that long.

I seem to have spent most of the last couple of days downloading Windows updates or Vaio updates – welcome to the wonderful world of Windows security patches – my Mac has been far less time-consuming!

Anyway, for the foreseeable, I have Windows programs that I’m definitely going to need to run that have no Mac equivalents (and I’ve made the decision that although I have an Intel-based Mac that could run Windows in a hard disk partition, I’m not going to do that, I want to leave it just running Mac OSX to avoid potential Windows virus problems).

Love the screen real estate on this 17″ running at 1600 x 900 resolution – I like the extra that’s displayed vertically on this machine compared to my old Toshiba Satellite 15.4″ widescreen as well as horizontally.

I did think about the overall spec I needed for some time. Did toy with the idea of going for a real state of the art, top of the range job (checked the custom options on Sony’s Website and this would’ve run me about £1000 in the UK), but decided that I didn’t really need that and as long as I got the basic chassis I would be able to upgrade things like the memory myself at a later date if I found that this was needed, and could make do with external options for hard disks and Bluray recorders etc as and when I decided to go this upgrade route.

So I’ve gone the route of a sort of baseline type of spec (and I’m very happy with my choice as I write this). My machine has an AMD Athlon processor rather than Intel, with a clock speed of 2.2ghz, 4gb memory and a 320gb hard disk. I’m absolutely delighted with the price I managed to snag this for – it is showing on Sony’s Website in the UK at the moment for £599 (it’s out of stock and I believe about to be dropped as a model), but I managed to order Online from a famous UK retailer (Marks & Spencer) for the excellent price of £423.20 – and that included a two year warranty and nominated day delivery. Yippee! Think I would’ve really struggled to beat that so I really do think I managed to bag a bargain here. The delivery cost should’ve been £4.95 but I managed to find an Online coupon that gave me this for free – always worth checking if the order form has a box for a coupon code – just do an Online search.

I have absolutely no problem that this computer has an AMD processor rather than an Intel. It’s the second laptop I’ve purchased with an AMD and I had no problems with the way the previous one operated so I don’t envisage any with this one. It runs Windows 7 perfectly ok so I think it’s a case of not really needing to know what it’s got under the hood.

Anyway, as with all new computer purchases, I’ve got a lot of setting up to do to get all of the applications working on it that I need – at least with the files I’ve been using a couple of external hard drives for a while now, so that’s ok, but some of the licenses I have with some of the software that I run won’t allow me to run that software on unlimited machines so I’ve got the hassle of decommissioning from an old machine just so that I can run them on this one.

So I’d better get back to it!

I’m typing this post on my new Apple MacBook – well, I’ve actually been a bit late announcing it because I’ve had it for almost three weeks now actually.

First impressions? I absolutely love it! I’ve been meaning to get a Mac of some sort for a very long time. I appreciate that they’re a real cut above Windows PCs – and boy, do I really accept that now.

It’s actually the first time I’ve ever owned an Apple computer of any description (it’s actually the very first Apple product I’ve ever owned) but their much-vaunted human-centric design definitely comes shining through as I’ve found my MacBook to be very easy and intuitive to use.

I’m certainly old enough to have been aware of the earliest Apple computers – I definitely remember the cult status that the Apple II had. I also remember the earliest machine with a GUI (that’s Graphical User Interface, if you don’t know), the Apple Lisa. I seem to remember it was a monochrome screen machine with a sort of bluish screen color and it was the first time I saw the trash can icon that we all now know and love. Obviously a certain Mr Gates saw the potential and decided to copy it! Oh, and I think I remember it had a ‘massive’ 5 megabyte hard drive!

I guess I’ve somewhat struggled to justify the expense given that I use software in my IM business that is PC-specific, so I’ve always needed a Windows machine to do a lot of the things I do Online. Now, my Mac is one of the new-generation ones with an Intel processor so I could run Windows in a separate partition on the hard drive. I’ve um’d and ah’d about that, but for the moment I’ve decided not to go that route. I think I’d prefer to leave this machine ‘clean’ and untainted by the virus-ridden Windows world.

What are some of the high points of the MacBook for me? Fantastic keyboard, absolutely gorgeous graphics – even the desktop icons are wonders to behold and real things of beauty and the colors on the screen are beautifully vibrant and full (my desktop picture is a snow leopard (because that’s the code name for this particular version of Mac OS) and you can pick out individual hairs in its coat, the screen resolution is that good. I also love the integrated look of every piece of software on this machine. Even third party applications look like they’ve been designed in house.

This particular machine is the cheapest in the MacBook line and, therefore, Apple’s cheapest laptop. But it certainly doesn’t feel in any way the poor relation of other Apple models. It has a 13″ screen, which is smaller than the 15.4″ widescreen I’m used to using as my main laptop, but it’s nicely compact and portable as a result – it’s definitely a tactile thing of beauty and I’ve taken to using it in bed a lot – make of that what you will!

Other aspects the spec like 2gb memory and  250gb hard drive would be sniffed at in the Windows world – especially in a machine that cost me £849 (UK) – and that’s cheaper than current list. But, Apple certainly seem to make those specs go a long way – the Mac OS is certainly not such a sprawling monster as Windows (even given that 7 isn’t as system hungry as the Vista it’s built on).

Other things I like? The built in Webcam looks to be a cut above the rather grainy ones you get in most Windows laptops. You don’t need the kind of excellent lighting to get an acceptable result that you normally need in a Windows machine.

If you’ve really wanted a Mac but aren’t sure whether you can justify it, I would definitely say, if you can afford it, go for it – I really don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Well the day has arrived and I’ve waved goodbye to BT. Wasn’t notified when it was going to happen – just waited for my BT connection to die and assumed that was the right time to break out the new Talk Talk wireless router and connect it up to the phone line.

I’m writing this via the new connection, so I’m pleased to report, despite my trepidation, everything has been fine and dandy – no problems at all to report (well, took a little time to get my Sony Vaio P-Series 8″ netbook set up for the new connection, but after about 10 to 15 minutes of ‘playing’ managed to get that to connect too). So I now have 2 PCS, 1 netbook and a 5″ tablet all set up to use my new broadband connection – yippee!

The best part is that I didn’t have to let a cd-rom anywhere near any of my machines so no chance of any nasty, unwanted applications being installed – it was a simple as switching on the wireless router, letting the wireless receiver in each of my devices pick up the signal and typing in the provided security key. Yes, I know it always should be as simple as this, but it’s easy to expect the worst, isn’t it? Most of us who’ve used technology for any length of time know that sod’s law often rears its ugly head if we’re expecting everything to go smoothly. For this reason I often expect there to be some little glitches just so that it’s a pleasant surprise if everything goes alright!

The connection did drop once, a few minutes after initially connecting, but I’ve been told that whilst everything settles down to find the optimum speed for this connection, I can expect a few up and down speed ratings and the odd dropped connection over the next 10 days or so. Fingers crossed that nothing major goes wrong and I end up with a stable, reasonably fast connection.

I’ve done a quick initial speed check Online and I’m pleasantly surprised by the figure of 6.4meg given. We’re out in the sticks and aren’t blessed with the best phone line in the world – the telephone provider BT, only warrants it for 5.5meg, so that’s not too bad. To be fair, I was getting 6 – 7 meg from BT themselves, but their service at peak times has not been good – dropping to 2 – 3meg on a regular basis. I think they regarded me as a high bandwidth user and throttled the connection at peak times – hope this one’s better. I’m supposed to be being given a 40gig monthly download limit and at a price that is almost a quarter of what I was paying to BT (for the first year at least).

Anyway, it’s always nerve-wracking making a change to something you rely on enormously, particularly when, for all its faults, my old broadband service was pretty reliable. Just hope this one proves to be the same.

Wish me luck!

As a follow up to my last post, I’m pleased to confirm that my new Talk Talk wireless router for my new broadband connection has arrived.

So, I guess panic over. Checked the box and everything seems to be there – the router itself with connection cable to phone line, 2 ADSL filters, a power supply and an ethernet cable in case the wireless connection has a problem. There’s also an instruction booklet and a cd-rom for installing on my computer.

According to the instructions, it shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes maximum to get everything running. I’m neither a technophobe or a technical incompetent, so I’m certainly hoping that it doesn’t prove to be too taxing to get everything working and connected – it’s certainly not something I haven’t done before successfully anyway.

I have a few devices now that I’ll have to set up to use the connection, so it won’t be quite as quick as only getting everything up and running on one computer, but I would certainly hope that it doesn’t take longer than an hour to get the four devices connected and running that I want to use on this connection.

I know that the switchover from my old provider is due to take place tomorrow, but the only fly in the ointment is that I haven’t been given a time when – all I’m being told is that it could be ‘any time up to midnight’. Ok, so I guess I just keep using my existing connection until it stops working.

Wish me luck!