Grant Forrest's Blog

are you thirsty?

Grant Forrest — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:57:37 +0000

I’m sure you have all seen the advert for the 14 day volvic challenge, where you are to attempt to drink 1.5 litres of water a day. Now I’m not advertising volvic but it got me thinking about a few things…

Firstly, at Church it was spoken about, asking are you thirsty for Jesus? For Christians it is important to thrive for a deeper understanding of what Christianity means to us on a personal level. Personally this has inspired me to develop my relationship with Jesus. Non-believers may think that this is a load of rubbish, but I believe that with the power of Jesus I can achieve much more. Through this deeper relationship I am developing as a person and thus my satisfaction in life and the work that I am involved in is increasing.

Secondly, you need to ask yourself, are you thirsty for learning? My lectures at uni have started to cover Professional issues. This has prompted questions of, “if a client asks you to so something that you can not do, what do you say?” The BCS (The British Computer Society) suggest that you very quickly develop these skills. As a Computer Scientist I am well aware that I will have to do this on a regular basis as the technology is constantly developing. One of the reasons I love working in this field is due to this.

Finally, you need to ask yourself, is Google thirsty for your data? Well yes they are. Google thrives on data, this is how it has grown, its principle to life is to organise the worlds data. It is so thirsty for data that it is running very close to having legal issues. With the development of Street View, questions are being asked about how much intrusion into our personal lives are we prepared for?

Overall all three areas need to be considered, is this the right time for you to find a Church? Or maybe you should consider some form of education? Finally to consider how much data you are prepared to release into the cloud?

are you public?

Grant Forrest — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:53:48 +0000

Computer Privacy and Security is an interesting topic. Are you aware of how much data about you is in the public domain? Advertising organisations want to know as much data about you as they can so they target the right product in the right way to the right person. This can cause problems with data about you being in the public that someone can potentially become you…

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of facebook, believes in elegant organisation. He has created a platform for social networking. Organising our social life’s and connecting people together is it’s main priority. It has elegantly organised the majority of the world. But how much does it have about you?

Could I go onto your account and find enough information so that I can get credit cards in your name? Is it really possible to empty your personal bank account from the comfort of a remote island out in the pacific ocean? If you think the answer is no then think again! It’s a scary thought that this could happen. As much as the Internet has it’s advantages, until we realise what risks we are taking, I think the disadvantages cause to many problems.

So why am I saying to get yourself found on google?

It’s simple, you need to be search-able to be found. If you can’t be found, then you won’t get all the customers to make you the profit you need to successfully run your company. However, choosing the information that you put on-line will allow you to be search-able but maintain an element of privacy.

So remember, the next time a website asks you for all the personal details, ask yourself, why does it want this from me?

is Google Ethical?

Grant Forrest — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:49:11 +0000

Some would say yes they are, but have you considered how much data Google has about you! You may not realise it but Google keeps track of everything you do whilst within it’s domain. The reason for this is to allow adverts that appeal to you. You search for a town called Leeds, it will return paid adverts on the right side. Some people will be happy about this, but for those with a Gmail email account, it could be a different story. Gmail is Googles email system. I personally think that it is the best email client for free web mail. However, I have to understand the small print. Google gives you suggested adverts based on the content of your inbox. This means that something somewhere is reading my emails. Some of which could quite easily be of a confidential nature. Spam filters work by reading the content of the emails and matching words against a database. You may think so what, but what happens if this system was abused? Who’s stopping you from hacking into it and reading someone else’s emails? Who will take responsibility for these actions? At the moment I feel it is something that we just accept as life in world 2.0, however I do think that we need to start looking ahead to what could be a tricky position to be in. Maybe we should start to consider if what we do as individuals is ethical? Who do we effect in our day to day lives?

It is a philosophical area of computing but we cannot keep brushing it to one side. There needs to be more measures in place to opt out of these different things.

What Would Google Do?

Google is well aware of what it is doing as far as ethically using people data to give them adverts based around them. That’s why they have an ethical council. Ensuring that they do not breach any legislation that is in place is very important. We put our trust in Google and they want us to keep trusting them. That’s what makes them good at their job.

Just remember that whatever you put into the Internet is monitored in some way by someone and will most likely making money out of that data.

What Business are you in?

Grant Forrest — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:23:36 +0000

One of the important things in e-commerce is knowing what niche your in. Who are you targeting? What service do you offer? Try and make this as narrow as possible, and link to the rest.

Why do you link to the rest?

Remember the post before about how Google needs to be introduced to you? It applies here too. By linking up with a company that does a particular thing better than yourself, allows you to share clients, you pass each other work. Customers want the best price but with high quality, but to find you, there needs to be links between you and other sites.

Therefore if you specialise in an area and use other resources, your clients will come back. Clients are your adverts, you give them a bad experience because you can’t provide high quality in all areas then they will tell their friends not to use you. But if you give them what they want, they will send you more clients. This then replaces the money that you might have earned if you had done everything.

Have a think, what can I do best and target your skills in that area, then find another person/company that follows similar ethics and quality to what you offer. Get them involved, who knows you may even form a partnership growing your business to a new level.

Twitter – news reports for generation Google

Grant Forrest — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:55:05 +0000

Today I was one of the lucky ones who survived the Cumbrian Earthquake! But I was amazed at the response from the twitteres in the area. It was actually this mad surge of people asking ‘was that an earthquake?’ that sparked news reports and facebook groups! This is just another reminder for the news companies that in this generation of people, we are in control of what the news should include. No longer do the journalists have full control of what we should find out about. Some will say this is a good way forward others would argue against it. I personally feel that either way, as long as news companies consider what the readers want to know, like the full details of the earthquake, they will continue to survive within the dreaded recession.

This in mind, if you are wanting to boost your web presence, you need to consider the benefits of Twitter. It may seem an odd way to get yourself out there, but considering the amount of people that follow other users updates and the way it can be integrated into other sites, allows users to increase their chances of being found on Google. Plus you can add links to your own site, thus increasing the chances of your main site getting top of the list!

P.S.

If you want a Twitter account, click on my twitter links on the right hand side

Enjoy

Are your friends with Mr Google?

Grant Forrest — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:04:44 +0000

In the first of many posts about Search Engine Optimisation, I’m going to look at how you get onto Google. Using a familiar scenario of making a friend.

You may never had thought about Google in this way, but it occurred to me on the train over to Lancaster this morning that if we consider Google as a person then making friends with him is easy! Think of it this way, you want to make a new friend, you could use facebook, look at your friends and see if they have any friends suitable. This link is a way of introducing you to this person. In the same way Mr Google needs to be introduced to you. So to be introduced to Mr Google, you need to be linked from somewhere else to you. This link tells Mr Google that you exist. Mr Google can then say hello and introduce himself by adding you to his friends list i.e. adding you to the search results.

What I have just covered there is what I would consider the main principle of SEO. To be found you need other sites to link to you, thus being found on Google. Google counts how many links there are to your site, giving you more respect and putting you higher into the search results. Obviously this by itself will not change much, but over a period of time as more links appear and you optimise other things about your web site you should start to see a difference.

Good luck!

The Google World…

Grant Forrest — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 14:55:22 +0000

Here’s something I tried out after setting up my blog last night. I thought I would see how many ‘Grant’s’ there are out there in cyber world. Not expecting to see any of my pages on the google search I was intrigued to find that actually my Bebo account from yonks back has made it onto the first page! Google really does surprise me sometimes! Anyway, you might be wondering where this leading, (so am I to be honest!) but I thought I would do a series of blogs entitled, ‘if Google was a person…’ We all use it, probably came here via it, and it is turning into one of the biggest platforms to ‘elegantly organise data’. So why not try and develop a friendship with Mr Google.

Welcome…

Grant Forrest — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 22:34:21 +0000

Well here I am, jumping onto the blogging bandwagon! Through this blog I hope to open discussions about emerging topics in the web world that we are living in, answer reader’s questions about web potential and other related topics.

I am taking inspiration from the likes of Jeff Jarvis, author of ‘What Would Google Do?’ Creatively thinking of new ways to network people together, creating platforms for people to exchange ideas, converse and develop new ideas of their own.

Who knows where this will go!