After a trial period in one neighbourhood within Kingston upon Thames, the local council has decided to roll out the scheme to the whole borough.
It’s been a long time coming, but finally the general recycling service has been expanded so that it’s possible to dispose of more types of plastic, glass, cans, paper, cardboard, household batteries, clothing and food waste from the doorstop.
Materials to be recycled are now collected every week, while general landfill waste is collected fortnightly  a reversal of the previous system.
Overall, this is a great improvement and, if residents choose to participate fully, it should reduce the amount of material going to landfill sites. However, on a personal level, it has meant a bit of disruption. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Environment | 1 Comment »
I’m opening up a real can of worms as I surf around the little network I discovered after my disagreement with Hannah.
As well as uncovering several dubious Internet marketing schemes (which is ironic given how much at least two people in this “network” accuse Darren of doing exactly the same thing) I found one web site that has ripped off Tim Ferriss’s “Four Hour Work Week” book and is giving away the audio recording and PDF to anyone that links to the web site.
The guy doing this (and he’s not getting a link from me) says that he’s doing it “because I don’t like watching people get ripped off by scammers like Ferriss”.
The problem is, in law, you don’t have the right to rip people off regardless of what you think of them. Copyright is copyright.
The guy ripping content says it’s OK because “Ferriss is a liar” and “he won’t risk a confrontation for fear of being exposed for a fraud”.
Still against the law. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Blogging, Legal, Scams | 4 Comments »
One thing that’s become apparent from the recent attack on Darren is that contextual ads, and others close to content, can be interpreted as being endorsed by the web site owner.
One of Hannah’s criticisms of ProBlogger is that it contains ads with titles like “Easiest Money Ever”. In fact, that is true  that particular ad is for TextLinkAds.com, a link-selling service.
When Hannah visited this blog, she noted that there were “adult links” in the header. Since I don’t explicitly accept or link to “adult” themed web sites, I can only assume that this is something that slipped through the net with Google AdSense, should the accusation in fact be true.
The fact is, choosing to carry nearly any type of advertising on a web site is a risky business. If you use contextual links, there’s a chance it’ll throw up something undesirable to you or your readers. If you accept paid advertising for banner or other graphical ads, but do so through a third-party agency, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get exactly the sort of content you or your readers find acceptable. Even large media organisations have been caught out on this one, when they’ve pushed out the placement of adverts to external agencies. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Advertising, Blogging, Media, Money | 2 Comments »
I don’t usually launch personal attacks on people (any more) but when I read someone assassinating the good name and work of someone I respect, I still take action.
The fact that Hannah Solo, an 18-year-old girl “just four months out of school” decided to bait ProBlogger Darren Rowse with her article The truth about Darren Rowse and the great Pro Blogger swindle shows that she’s either arrogant, or deluded, or both.
Now, I’m not suggesting that everyone should agree with everything that Darren writes, or his approach to blogging, but her article not only comes close to libelling Darren, but also insults those who follow him.
As my comment possibly won’t go down well on her article, and could be deleted, here’s the response I left: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Blogging | 7 Comments »
