Attitude towards blogs - Pilot survey

My doctoral research looks at the factors influencing consumer's attitude towards Blogs and I really need your help.

Right now I am carrying out my pilot study and I would be highly obliged if you could please spend a couple of minutes to complete the online survey.

This survey should take you less than 15 minutes to complete and your answers will be treated as strictly confidential. Please be assured that the data obtained will be used for the purpose of this research only.

Please Click Here to take the survey

If you have any concerns about completing this survey or more generally about my study, you may contact me via email: ahoklah@gmail.com

One lucky winner stands the chance of winning a £10/ Amazon.com voucher.

The winner will be announced here on this blog. He or she will also be contacted by email if provided.

Thanks for your help!

UPDATE

The winner of the £10/ Amazon.co.uk voucher is Tom Monks. He will be contacted by email asap. I used Random.org to pick the winner.

Extreme rugged laptops

My wife left her Fujitsu laptop unattended a couple of days ago. I saw my my son playing with it and carried him off before he could do any damage - or so I thought. My wife later discovered that Windows wouldn't load up and there was an error warning on the screen.

I noticed that there was some moisture between the keys - it was either milk or my son's saliva. After shutting off the laptop immediately, I took some tissue and cleaned up as best as I could. Left it to dry for a couple of hours and after a small prayer, put in back on.

Was really happy when the old familiar Windows XP symbol came up (Yes! it's a 3 year old laptop). However, my joy didn't last long. My wife soon discovered that several of the keys didn't work any more. I haven't had time to open it up and see if the damage is permanent and got shocked when I saw the cost of replacing the keyboard. I am just hoping that a nice thorough clean up will do the job and save me a lot of money.

Anyway, this really made me envy those who have laptops with spill proof keyboards and I will make it a requirement next time I buy a laptop. Going through the net I came across some of the reviews about Panasonic's famous Toughbook laptops. The Forbes team has taken testing to the limits by using a CF-30 as a dart board, giving it to a tiger to chew on and later to an elephant who threw it around. They finally use it for target practise by shooting it with a Ruger Mark III .22 pistol.

Panasonic Toughbook CF-30

The most amazing thing is after all the torture that the laptop booted up and they could still access the test file on it. Read the report here "The Tiger-Resistant Laptop".

I want one.

The new iPhone 3G S

The latest verion of the iPhone went on sale yesterday. This is the third version featuring a totally new operating system. It comes with a faster processor, bigger memory and improved camera (3 megapixel ) as well.

In July last year, I had listed the Apple iPhone 3G shortcomings. They have clearly listened to their customers and the new phone now has a cut and paste capability. It also allows users to send MMS and take videos with the phone as well. It's quite funny because I have been doing these with my mobiles for ages.

The iPhone can now be used as a modem as well by connect it to your laptop using a USB cable or bluetooth. Again something that I have been doing for quite sometime. Read my old post 'Using the 3 Skypephone as a modem'.

Anyway, the truly innovative feature is the Compass app which comes inbuilt and I am wondering who's going to use it.

Connection problems using IE

I normally use the Firefox browser to access the net. A couple of minute ago I went to my blog using Internet explorer, just to see if it displays correctly and I was shocked to see the site go off and a warning appear. My blog is hosted with Blogger and I assume that this is a specific problem related to Blogger as I don't have problems with other blogs hosted elsewhere.

The error warning is given below:



On clicking the "More information" button, I get the following:

Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage

This problem can be caused by a variety of issues, including:

•Internet connectivity has been lost.
•The website is temporarily unavailable.
•The Domain Name Server (DNS) is not reachable.
•The Domain Name Server (DNS) does not have a listing for the website's domain.
•There might be a typing error in the address.
•If this is an HTTPS (secure) address, click Tools, click Internet Options, click Advanced, and check to be sure the SSL and TLS protocols are enabled under the security section.

I have no idea what is causing this problem and am not sure whether this is affecting my visitors who use IE as well.

Anybody facing a similar problem?

Update:
Pushing the Followers widget to the bottom the sidebar seem to have solved the problem.

Nokia E72 unveiled

Nokia has unveiled the E72 at the Nokia Connection event in Singapore today. This is a slight improvement from the successful E71. Besides featuring a full QWERTY keypad, the smartphone has a 5 megapixel camera and includes A-GPS and compass with integrated maps. Though I don't have the dimensions, it looks quite slim.

It also has faster internet access at 10.2Mbps connections over HSDPA and comes with a 3.5mm audio jack.

It is expected to ship in the third quarter of this year at an estimated retail price of €350 before taxes and subsidies.

Top Entrecard droppers for May 2009

This is the list of the top Entrecard droppers on my blog for the month of May.

• Beyond Feron
• MARKFE
• Living well
• photodito
• sharing information
• Airfare Now!
• Chaos Tech
• Traders' Hub
• Leomar's Den
• Photojournalist !

Thanks a lot guys.

When egos on the web collide

Just watched Leo Laporte telling off Mike Arrington on YouTube. I learnt about it from Tim Jennion's blog.

I don't necessarily agree with the language used but I think that Leo is right to be pissed off. I mean I wrote about the Palm Pre on my blog as well. If I had received a review copy, I would have done a better job reviewing it.

I have received review copies in the past including the 3 USB Dongle and to say that this would make you biased is totally out of line.

Makes Mike sound like he's having a case of sour grapes.

Anyway, here's the video:

SEO Expert UK

While going through some of the profiles on Twitter, I realised that every 3rd person is either an online marketer or self-proclaimed SEO Expert. I say self-proclaimed because a search on Google for the names for several of these guys (and some companies) doesn't even show up on the first results page.

BTW, for those who didn't know SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and refers to the art and science of improving volume or quality of traffic to your site from search engines.

Anyway, you can't be an SEO expert if your names doesn't even show up on Google - the most popular search engine in the World.

Moving on, according to Google, apparently I am the #1 SEO Expert in Coventry. However, I was curious as to who was on top of the charts for the key words 'SEO Expert UK'.

#1 was http://www.seo-expert-services.co.uk/
#2 was http://www.misterweb.co.uk/ &
#3 was http://www.nikkipilkington.com/

So, these are the top 3 SEO experts in the UK (according to Google).

I noticed that all of them had the keywords in their website title (the one that comes out on the top of your browser) and that all three sites were companies involved in search engine optimisation.

It would be really interesting if a freelancer like me suddenly got on the top of the results for the keywords.

Anybody up for the challenge?

Palm Pre phone available in the US

The Palm Pre phone which was unveiled at the CES in January, is now available in the US on the Sprint network at $199.99. This is Palm's answer to the Apple iPhone.

The 3G phone has a 3.1-inch touch screen with a vibrant 24-bit color 320x480 resolution HVGA display. One of the things I really like is the fact that this phone has a QWERTY keyboard.

Running on the new Palm webOS, features includes a built-in GPS and 3 megapixel camera with LED flash. It also supports several media formats and also comes with wireless connectivity .





The phone is slightly smaller than the Apple iPhone with the following dimensions:
Width: 59.5mm
Height: 100.5mm
Thickness: 16.95mm

It weight 135 grams.

Read more about the phone on the Palm website.

First Commentator:
Daisy

Hooked on Spymaster

While going through Twitter recently, I noticed that one of the top trending keywords was #spymaster. Found out that Spymaster is an online game for Twitter which is now on private invite only beta.

The game works like this:

First of all you choose which spy organisation you would like to join - I choose MI6 naturally. You then carry out tasks and earn money and gain experience. As you gain more experience, more challenging tasks (with higher rewards) are unlocked.



You can buy items such as guns from the Blackmarket and finally carry out assassinations. you can even open a Swiss Bank account.

I am not sure but I think this is the first Twitter based game and if you are on Twitter, you might think twice before signing up. I am warning you - it is really addictive.

First Commentator:
Azwan