CoolBlue

Transfers from Lycos to Strato

2011-12-07T04:22:00.000-08:00

Lycos have announced "easy transfer" arrangements to enable Strato to take over their customer base. However, many customers will find it cheaper to transfer elsewhere, particularly if they require domain registration without hosting

Real Ale

2010-09-13T00:43:00.000-07:00

The Guardian reports that sales of Real Ale are growing as Britons turn their backs on lagers

Retreat centre and wedding venue for sale

2010-09-13T00:41:00.000-07:00

Chantmarle the Dorset weddings venue and christain retreat centre is up for sale

Parking at Wimbledon

2010-06-10T14:11:00.000-07:00

Lookimng for car parking at Wimbledon tennis - carparknear.co.uk has all the info

Choosing a domain name - 5 things

2010-06-03T15:10:00.000-07:00

Choosing a domain name - 5 things

1. Choose something memorable
2. One or two word domains are usually best
3. Only use dashes if you have to
4. .co.uk and .com are best followed by .org.uk
5. choose something easy to read

Derren Brown - what a geezer!

2009-09-17T08:29:00.000-07:00

Derren Brown (or Darren as he was born) has got us all talking about his lottery stunt. Did he predict the lottery results or was it a clever stunt? Theories as to how he did it include the use of split screen and the possibility that he used some kind of laser printer. Of course with DB you never know! What's bluff and what's double bluff?

A lot of people are saying that his explanation involving "deep maths" is severely suspect.

Here are some things that don't add up or at least look suspicious:

1. Why was the camera shaking throughout? In the hands of a professional camera operative, a hand held wouldn't shake that much.
2. The deep maths theory is dubious. Comparing a large group guessing the weight of a finite item such as the weight of a bull, with guessing a random number doesn't quite make sense.
3. He could have revealed the numbers immediately the last ball had been drawn, but there was a delay - why?
4. He described the "theory of crowds" coming to his thoughts when he was drinking ox tail soup. Hmm! Is this a clue oxtail =? ox tale (ie it's all a story)
5. The snowflake - a clue or trying to put us all off the scent? The Sun has published a story that he in fact got these numbers before xmas from a group of schoolchildren
6. Why did he not allow his group to see the numbers? There is nothing to say that the balls he chose were the numbers they came up with.

Train tickets

2009-05-26T01:17:00.000-07:00

Looking for cheap train tickets? You can try UK Ticketline

Life coaching

2009-04-16T08:09:00.000-07:00

Life coaching can be very beneficial in helping you to assess your priorities

Penalty Charges

2009-02-27T00:32:00.000-08:00

In the latest ruling on unfair penalty charges, the Appeal Court has ruled against the banks and has said that the OFT can investigate claims of unfair penalty charges

Penalty Charges Forum

2008-10-28T04:16:00.000-07:00

The popular website www.penaltycharges.co.uk has been closed down following a solicitors email alleging that the forum encourages people to take loans with the intention of not paying. The owner of the forum strongly denies the claims but has closed the forum www.penaltycharges.co.uk/forum in order to avoid a lengthy and costly legal battle.

This does not however have any bearing of the validity or otherwise of individuals claimimg back bank charges. The allegations appear to relate to areas of other financial "advice".

Original Mountain Marathon - Cumbria

2008-10-26T04:49:00.001-07:00

Now I'm not a mountaineer or a marathon runner, but I do live in Cumbria. It just amazes me that the organizers felt it reasonable to have so many people out on the fells in such atrocious conditions. Anyone glancing at the weather forecast could see what the weather would be like, and already earlier in the week some roads had been flooded.
So the irresponsibility of the organizers inconveniences the (paid) emergency services, the unpaid volunteers and many more local people. Buildings used to accommodate competitors were booked out to local groups who had to cancel their events as a result.
Outdoor Cumbria

Bradford & Bingley

2008-09-29T06:13:00.000-07:00

Bradford and Bingley nationalisation - latest share info

Blogging Zoom

2008-02-22T05:00:00.000-08:00

Blogging zoom is the latest in a long line of social networking type sites. The aim seems to be to help bloggers get traffic to their sites, both through search engines and organic traffic through the blogging zoom site. To help avoid spam, you have to write 350 unique words (no copy + paste allowed). Will it work? Seems to early to say as yet, but go try it out. It's clean and easy to use (unlike say squidoo). Further views on BloggingZoom from Grizzly

Why has my site dropped out of Live Search index? Microsoft's answer!

2008-02-20T14:20:00.000-08:00

Why has my site dropped out of Live Search index? - Here's the answer.
Many webmasters are finding that their sites have dropped out of the Microsoft Live search index. This was particularly a problem in September 2007 when a big change seemed to happen. It happened to one of my sites which thankfully at last has half its pages back in the index. After protracted correspondence I have just got a reply from Microsoft that said...

We're sorry about the problem and the implications for you site traffic
We're modifying the algorithms
At the end of sept we launched newer algo's that were stricter than we anticipated
We are now changing the algos to bring back many sites
We apologize its taken so long
Our plan is to have it resolved by end of spring

So at last we have some definite information from Microsoft as to why pages have dropped out of the index and an understanding that pages that were dropped should not have been and a promise to put things right soon. If your site dropped out of the index in September or lost significant page rank from microsoft - here is the answer why. Here's hoping that my traffic levels will now start to climb back to their previous levels.

If you find this article helpful, please link to it
More info about search engine submission

Dropped from Microsoft live search Index?

2008-02-16T00:51:00.000-08:00

One of my sites suddenly dropped out of the Microsoft index in September. Seems like lots of people had this problem at the same time. I have done everything they ask me to do - good site, no spam content, no dodgy stuff, meta tags etc correctly used and site map in place. Now several months later i have just one page indexed out of over 100!

At last some good news - an admission by Microsoft live that there is a problem and a hoped for solution by "the end of spring". Here's what they say:

Thank you for writing to Live Search technical support. I understand that you are writing to us because yoursite isn't in the index. We understand that it is very important to you to have this issue resolved; we apologize for the inconvenience and any ramifications that this issue has caused to your site traffic. Thank you for contacting us so we can have a chance to explain the situation and try to remedy it...

We do not have an exact date for fixing this issue, but our plan is to have it resolved near the end of spring. This is our number one priority and we have put all our resources into solving it and bringing a better balance to our indexing so it won't happen again. We appreciate your patience while we resolve this issue, and hope you understand that at this time there is nothing we can do to modify or improve your site's index or ranking.

So we await the end of spring!

Recover unfair bank and credit card charges

2007-10-08T01:55:00.000-07:00

I try to keep a tight rein on my finances and usually incur bank charges only occasionally when I've miscalculated the amount in my account or missed a credit card payment by a few days. I recently got £30 back from Nationwide. We accidentally went overdrawn and got a £30 "fine". A totally unjustifiable amount for the minimal extra work caused to the bank. So I wrote saying ... loyal customers... excessive charges ... blah blah blah. Lo and behold they re-credited the £30 "on this occassion".

Buy or Sell Northern Rock Shares?

2007-09-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

Well the latest verdict is to sell. Closing price today for Northern Rock shares is 257p a loss of 49p on the day, after the situation seemed to have stabilized earlier this week. Today's drop amid a general improvement in the financial sector is because the City are expecting low offers for Northern Rock with rumours that LLoyds TSB have offered as low as 200p per share. A number of other potential suitors to buy Northern Rock are in the wings, but all are expected to make offers below the current Northern Rock share price. More

Northern Rock going bust?

2007-09-15T01:03:00.000-07:00

Northern Rock, the UK's 5th largest mortgage provider has had to receive emergency assistance from the Bank of England. This has led to thousands of customers rushing out to withdraw their money. Is this herd mentality sensible?
Probably not! Certainly investors with less than £2000 in their accounts should have nothing to worry about as their money is 100% guaranteed. The next £30,000 odd is guaranteed that you will get 90% of your money. So the only ones to really worry are those with over £30,000 invested. Even so, Northern Rock is a big institution and the other banks and the government will not allow it to fail and even as a last resort the Bank of England is likely to pay out to everyone 100%. Most likely scenario at the moment is that one of the other banks will mount a take over, possibly an overseas institution such as ING.
If you have a NorthernRock mortgage - just sit tight - there's nothing much you can do and not much risk anyway.

Bank charges - court case

2007-07-27T09:29:00.000-07:00

The OFT have taken a number of banks and building socieites to court over unfair bank charges.This might appear good news for customers bu The Financial Services Authority has granted waiver to the banks, so that in the meantime they are don't need handle complaints about unlawful bank charges.

The banks being involved are: Abbey National, Barclays, Clydesdale, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds, Nationwide, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Scotland

Effectively the banks now don't have to deal with these claims at all. The FSA says also that the Financial Ombudsman will probably stop dealing with the claims and so will the county courts.

Unfair Bank Charges

Squidoo

2007-06-25T01:36:00.000-07:00

Squidoo is the name of the latest social bookmarking phenomenum. Squidoo arer trying to find a niche based on content and information. A webpage one squidoo is called a lens (the idea behind the name is that it's a focus for information). I've created a squidoo about cheaper car insurance here: http://www.squidoo.com/cheapercarinsurance/
Why not check out squidoo for yourself?

Mortgage exit fee refund

2007-02-16T13:06:00.002-08:00

Having written to Northern Rock for a refund of my mortgage exit / redemption fee, they have offered me £110. This is the difference between the figure at the begiining of the mortgage and the figure applied at the end. Good result! See www.coolblue.org.uk/UnfairbankCharges.htm

Unfair Mortgage Exit Fees

2007-01-28T04:38:00.000-08:00

The FSA have indicated that it is not acceptable for banks and building societies to increase their exit fees (redemption fee, redemtion charge, sealing fee, deeds fee) during the course of the mortgage. It is now possible to reclaim the exit fees you have been charged if they increased during the lifetime of the mortgage.

All major lenders - Woolwich, NatWest, Nationwide, Northern Rock, Abbey, Halifax etc are involved. If you think you've been overcharged, you can write to your mortgage provider to make a claim. Further details

Thousands claim back bank charges!

2006-12-15T03:32:00.000-08:00

Reclaim Bank Charges! Most people pay bank or credit card penalty charges every year and just accept it. But now, some customers are fighting back and a whole host of websites have sprung up aiming to help people reclaim unfair charges from their bank. One of these is www.penaltycharges.co.uk, set up by Stephen Hone after he succesfully reclaimed significant charges over several years from his bank. The website claims to have helped people recover a total of over £600,000 already. The case was recently highlighted by the BBC. They set up a special panel to assess what they consider to be reasonable bank charges. The penalty for a bounced cheque can be £30 from some banks, but the panel felt that £4.50 was a more reasonable charge. http://www.coolblue.org.uk/UnfairBankCharges.htm

Building society mergers

2006-09-17T03:02:00.000-07:00

Nationwide and Portman Building Societies have announced that they plan to merge in September 2007. Members of Portman will get a windfall, estimated on average at £400. People with less than £100 in their account are expected to get nothing as are second named investors. More recent Portman investors who have signed away bonuses in the event of demutualisation are still expected to get a windfall as this is a merger not a demutualisation.

Free Legal downloads

2006-08-31T02:58:00.000-07:00

At last - truly free legal downloads of topbands.

vnunet reports...
A new music download service is promising free legal tracks to users who agree to watch adverts.

SpiralFrog has teamed up with Universal Music Group, which publishes artists such as Elton John and Eminem, to offer ad-supported music to surfers in the US and Canada.

Under the agreement, SpiralFrog will have access to Universal's back catalogue. In exchange for viewing adverts, customers will be permitted to download tracks free of charge.

Downloaded tracks will still be protected by digital rights management technology, however, to prevent unauthorised copying.

Robin Kent, chief executive at SpiralFrog, claimed that the service will offer consumers a better experience than that of pirate music sites, with no risk of viruses or spyware.

"Piracy continues to be one of the biggest issues facing the music industry where illegal file sharing and unauthorised CD burning are the prime means of music piracy," he said.

Check out the Zune mp3 player

Damp Rot etc ...more

2006-08-29T11:27:00.000-07:00

Facing up to the conundrum of how to deal with our walls. They are very damp (penetrating damp) and we're worried about just sealing the damp in by re-rendering or re-plastering. Also looking at the questiom of whether to use original materials. Found a very useful forum at

Junk Mail advice

2006-08-29T11:22:00.000-07:00

Fed up with junk mail? Read on.
We all know what its like being deluged with marketing material and thanks to some fundamental changes at the Post Office, it's only going to get worse.
Postmen are now going to carry heavier sacks in exchange for a pay rise, and most of the extra mail will be junk.
Especially guilty of deluging innocent consumers with meaningless mail and telephone calls are the banks, building societies and financial institutions
There are ways you can get rid of the junk marketing.
Get in touch with the Mailing Preference Service (MPS) - registration is free and you can sign up online.
The MPS claoms it will remove your name from up to 95% of mailing lists. However it cannot stop mail that has been sent from overseas, un-addressed material or mail which is simply addressed to The Occupier.

You can also expect to continue to receive mailings from companies with which you have done business in the past.

It can take up to four months for the MPS service to have full effect, although you should notice a reduction of the mail within a few weeks.

2006-08-26T16:21:00.000-07:00

zune - latest pix of what the zune may look like are here http://www.coolblue.org.uk/Zune.htm

Zune

2006-08-26T16:09:00.001-07:00

More pix of what the href="http://technorati.com/tag/Zune" rel="tag">zune may look like are here

Licence plates for cyclists

2006-08-08T11:56:00.000-07:00

Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone is backing the suggestion that cyclists should need to display a licence plate. This would mean that nuisance cyclists who ride on London's busy pavements and jump red lights, often endangering other road uses, could be identified.

What is ping?

2006-07-26T14:55:00.000-07:00

Ping is the latest buzzword or rather buzz technique in the world of blogs. By pinging (sending your info) to search engines, particularly blogengines, you are alerting them to the fact you have new information on your page. A free Ping website is ping-o-matic - www.pingomatic.com. which will ping about 20 blog indexes and blogengines for you.

2006-07-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

Following on from the recent Standard LifeDemutualisation, many people are eagerly awaiting payouts from Lambeth Building Societywhen they merge with Portman at the end of September. Mimimum payout is expected to be £400, but those with bigger sums invested will expect a bigger windfall

Canada 2005

2006-06-10T03:09:00.000-07:00

I took this picture last year at Griffin Lake Lodge near Revelstoke.

More World Cup Tickets

2006-06-09T15:54:00.000-07:00

Fifa World Cup Tickets Tickets France v Togo on sale now (9th June)

New

2006-06-09T15:33:00.000-07:00

First post on this new blog. Just checking stuff out here.