Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition now in the UK

I lot of my regular readers have been complaining that I have been doing too many posts on Twitter and want posts on gadgets. Well I have to follow what my readers want.

Forget about the iPhone, just check out the specifications of the Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition.

• Touch display: It features a 2.8”QVGA AMOLED full touch display with a slide-out keypad as well.
• Camera: Has an autofocus 8MP rear-mounted camera with x4 Digital Zoom and dual LED flash, which supports face detection and geo-tagging.
• Video: If you like taking videos with your phone, well the Tacco Ultra takes 30f/s VGA and even has it’s on-board editing software. You can even add subtitles.
• Connectivity: Supports HSDPA connections of up to 7.2Mb/s, Edge and quad-band GSM.
• GPS: As well.

Check out the review by Mobile Choice:



I have no idea about the Talk time and Standby times though. They are not given in their website either.

Update: Found out that on the 3 website that it has a Talktime of 240 mins, Standby time of 350 hours. You can get it from them for free for £30 per month on a 18 month contract.

First Commentator
Ruben

Twitter and I

I can hear some people groaning "not another twitter post again!".

Anyway, just found out that Twitter - the fast growing micro blogging site, celebrates it's 3rd birthday today (you didn't know that, did you). Surprisingly, there was nothing about it on their blog. I guess all of them are busy twittering.

I also found out that I am the 3rd top twitterer in Coventry. At least that's what Twitter grader says.



The fact that I have 592 followers as of today is really amazing. It was only 300 just 2 weeks ago.

Follow me on Twitter @admutum

First Commentator
Azwan

Google Street View now live in the UK

Just found out yesterday morning that Google Street View is now available for most major cities in the UK on Google maps. This means that we would be able to view 360º street level images.



To get Street view all you have to do is pull the Yellow man on the left hand side of Google maps to your desired location on the map.


This is how our street looks like on it.

Spent nearly an hour exploring Coventry and other cities here in the UK. I find it quite exciting but I am sure there will be people who see this as an invasion of their privacy.

First Commentator
East Coast Life

Does Google PR matter?

Blogger Kai Lo left me a comment on my last post "New advertising policy". According to him I am impatient and he pointed out that my blog has a Google PR 0. It's quite funny because his own blog has a PR0 as well and he actually wrote a post about it saying "not to put too much emphasis on pageranks".

Anyway, I decided to write a blog post as a reply to his comments.

Well Kai, I have been blogging since September 2003 and started this blog in 2006. Since then, the Google PR of this blog has seen it's fair bit of highs and lows and the highest it ever went was a PR3. Read "Google PR updates and my blogs".

I got Google slapped in early 2008 when my PR dropped to 0 and has remained there ever since.

As to the question whether Google PR matters, I have to say "Yes!".

Traffic from Google is now lower and I have had to find other ways to increase traffic to my blog. A few potential advertisers pulled out when they realised that the PR of my blog is 0. Just shows how much importance that people pay to it. I haven't carried a sponsored post for ages but I still do carry affiliate links as well as Google adsense.

It might come as a surprise to many people that among all my blogs, this has the highest traffic per month. It also has the lowest Alexa rank (248,431 as of today - the lower the better) .

All of my posts are indexed almost immediately (advantage of hosting with Blogger) and my blog also ranks high for a number of key words. For example, try 'seo expert coventry' in Google search.

So Kai, as you can see, I am actually quite patient but you are right about one thing though - many advertisers do look at the PR of a blog.

First Commentator
Kai Lo

New advertising policy

I offer different types of advertising on my blog, namely:

1. Text link ad on the side bar - A key word with link to a desired url
2. Button ad (125 X125) on the side bar linked to a desired url
3. Paid reviews (minimum 100 words or more).

The first two types of ads are usually for a duration of one year while the paid review will remain on my blog as long as the advertiser want them to and as a result will cost more.

A number of advertisers have showed an interest in advertising on my blog and I have had good business relationships with a few.

However, some advertisers have left a bad taste in my mouth. As a show of good faith, I used to put up links even before I received payment. Now I have to change that policy because of a couple of guys. Some guys didn't pay after I had put up the ads and the worst part is that they didn't even respond to my email queries.

All you have to say is that you have changed your mind and I will just remove the ads. But to keep quiet after the agreements and the ads have been put up is completely wrong, unprofessional and unethical. Many of these are so called "SEO companies" representing big clients. I am drawing up a list of these black sheep and might post them up here in the future.

From now on, I will be following a policy of payment first, ads later.

First Commentator
Kai Lo

Tweets on your Facebook updates

A couple of guys noticed that my latest tweets also show up as my latest updates on my Facebook profile and was wondering about that.

Well, it's simpler than you think. All you have to do is add the Twitter application on Facebook. Once you have done that, all your tweets (apart from @ replies) will show up on your profile updates.

Does Twitter actually give you traffic?

This is in response to a question left by a visitor to my blog.

I have a link back to this blog from my Twitter profile but apparently not many followers click on that (according to my statistics). However, there is some traffic when ever I link a blog post to a Tweet.

I am also using Twitterfeed.com to tweet posts on my ah ok lah blog automatically. I did notice some traffic to the blog from the tweets but nothing spectacular.

So, my answer the question whether twitter actually increases traffic to your blog has to a "probably!" However, you would need to be really famous with thousands of followers to see a noticeable increase in traffic.

First Commentator
Azlynne

My Twitter Followers

Here is a collage of my followers on Twitter - 300 as of today and growing.

Get your twitter mosaic here.

Got to know about Twitter Mosaic via DedeAndro.