Making the Most of the Internet - Blog

 

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Checking UK Charities

 

I'm a coeliac and the leading charity in the field is Coeliac-UK. There has been a lot of talk recently about the charity and whether it does a good job or not.

So I thought about looking at the accounts to see how much money it has to play with. I went to the Charity Commission web site and looked them up.

I won't say what I found here as it isn't appropriate, but if you ever want to look up a charity and check it out, it is very simple.

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Freedom Farm Stud - News

 

This web page is the home page of an integrated blog which masquerades as News.

It is powered by Blogger and the entries are indexed automatically by that web site.

Note how when you navigate around the blog and jump in and out of it to the main web site, the header is always the same. This makes users feel very comfortable.

Comments have been allowed without moderation. This may seem a bit silly in that it enables all sorts of abuse to be published, but you can always add moderation if required.

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The Euro Symbol

 

In the last post I said that everybody knows how to put the Euro symbol (€) into a message. Someone e-mailed me to say they don't.

The symbol is on the 4 key, with the dollar ($) and alongside the 4.

To insert the symbol, just press Control and Alt and then the 4.

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International Donation Association

 

This one would be funny if it wasn't criminal and probably very dangerous to your financial health.

Leap forwarding International Donation Association is looking for new friends and collaborators in Europe.

Become a part of our donating system that includes international donations to HIV positives, war refugees from Middle West and starving children from poorest European countries.

Our program does not charge or ask You to invest anything. We do not try to take Your money. Our regional sponsors and investors from different European Union regions have already accepted our offer and are now the investing affiliates in our multi-European donating program.

Collaborate with our investors during the donation process and earn from 1500 EUR up to 3000 EUR gross salary per month. Together we can make this program work with maximum efficiency and thus have an opportunity to ease the sufferings and minimize the needs of thousands of people.

The vacancy You can apply for is the "Donating assistant" (future promotion to "donating manager" is possible after 3 months of successful cooperation).

Please confirm if You are interested in becoming a part of our program and for immediate and confidential consideration, please reply to Human Resources Manager.

We will then send You more details concerning the vacancy of a "donating assistant".

Thank You very much for You time and for Your desire to help the ones who really need our help and joint support.

Don't you just love that first sentence.

Leap forwarding International Donation Association is looking for new friends and collaborators in Europe.

A forensic linguist could probably tell which is the native language of the crook that thought this up.

What about war refugees from the Middle West? I didn't know that Iowa was at war with Kansas.

I notice that they also say that "We do not try to take Your money." Does that mean that they take it by accident?

Take this paragraph.

Collaborate with our investors during the donation process and earn from 1500 EUR up to 3000 EUR gross salary per month. Together we can make this program work with maximum efficiency and thus have an opportunity to ease the sufferings and minimize the needs of thousands of people.

The crooks say there are looking for suckers from the European Union, but they are obviously not there themselves. Anyone from the EU knows how to put the € symbol into a message and everybody in the EU spells minimise the English or Irish way.

Not too the spelling and grammatical mistakes concerning You and Your. Which language capitalises these two words?

On a more serious side, I've had twenty of these messages today. So it looks like this may be the new scam to take Your money.

So read this message and enjoy it.

But DON'T contact these crooks.

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Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Lost Rankings

 

A lady called Peggy, who runs a company based on the website, www.kitchenartworks.com, is despairing as scraping sites are ruining her position in Google, by taking her content and advertising others.

In Peggy’s case there is one quick thing that she should do.

INTEGRATE THE BLOG FULLY WITH THE WEB SITE.

See my wife’s stud at www.freedomfarm.com, which has been designed this way. (It’s not finished yet, so don’t point this out.)

Having looked at both, what Peggy needs to do is move the blog to a sub-directory of her www.kitchenartworks.com domain and then cross link the two so that Google and the others can get the drift.

It may not be the total solution, but hopefully it will jack it up a bit. Remember now that Google updates the main search with what it finds in blogs, soon after they are posted, so a blog is a good place for special offers.

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Thursday, May 24, 2007

Where's the New Scam?

 

Aegis is still going, but I have not found another on the same scale.

However three new candidates have turned up.

United Trading - I found one of these pointing to a domain that hadn't been registered.

FineCorp - This one was pointed out to me by Catharine. Thanks.

International Donation Association - This one turned up this morning and looks a new slant on the old scam.

Don't reply to any of them.

Unless you have just created a new Hotmail, Yahoo or GMail account that has nothing to connect itself to you and you have time on your hands.

Then have fun and ask them a few questions.

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Monday, May 21, 2007

Outlook Keeps Failing

 

Recently, I've had a lot of problems with Outlook 2003 failing because of a message that said the following.

Microsoft Office Outlook has encountered a problem and needs to close.

It's very helpful isn't it.

I finally found what was causing this annoying problem and the solution was quite simple. This is after I reinstalled software, repaired Outlook files and checked everything against what Microsoft says. Or in this case doesn't.

1. I stopped Outlook from sending or receiving any e-mail automatically. You do this under Options and basically it's just a matter of unchecking several boxes.

2. I then did a Send and Receive on each of my accounts individually.

3. Finally, I found that one always failed.

4. I checked it using WebMail and it looked OK, so I reasoned that the problem must be in the local settings in Outlook.

5. I then removed the e-mail account and got Outlook working on all the other accounts, which proved to me that there was only one rogue account.

6. When I recreated the account everything worked normally.

So it was a simple fix in the end after several days of toil.

The problem could have been in the e-mail account or it could have been in a rule that worked specifically with this account.

Hope all this helps and it is the solution many have been looking for.

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Friday, May 04, 2007

Political Spam

 

Yesterday I had several spam e-mails protesting about human rights abuses in Estonia.

They had pictures of the Prime Minister dressed up to look like Hitler and the s in Estonia was shown using the SS symbol from the Nazis.

Click this link to see what the BBC says about it all.

I don't know the rights or wrongs of what is going on, but the three Baltic states have not got a happy history in the last hundred years or so and it would be hoped that the EU will give them some stability.

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Thursday, May 03, 2007

Total Web Solutions

 

Another series of dubious job vacancies has just started. It had thirty-six yesterday.

International company Total Web Solutions is taking the candidates in the USA for the position of Local Agent.
We are looking for the trustworthy person with excellent organizational and communicative skills.
Good knowledge of computer and business relations practice
will be your advantage. This is a part-time job which can be combined
with any permanent or another part-time job. Average workload is up to 8 hours
a week. No special experience is necessary. Excellent compensation
package, the salary starts from $20,000 a year.
If you got interested in our vacancy and you have any questions, please contact us manager@t-web-s.com
The offer is for USA citizens only.

To start working it?s necessary to send out your resume (if you have it), your full name, the address and phone number to our email: manager@t-web-s.com

Best regards,
Andrews Butkus

I've checked the domain and it points to a Russian domain name registry, who I am pretty sure are just the people who registered the domain.

It does appear that there is a genuine Andrews Butkus, who works for a company with a similar name in Lithuania.

Rules as ever are to avoid this possible fraud.

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Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Google Hell

 

If you know your European history there is something called Danegeld, a term that has come into common usage.

If you are paying someone to push your site, through adverts, links or whatever, eventually the whole thing will go belly up as it's built on sand. Remember there's a lot of snake oil salesmen out there, using these dubious techniques to sell even more dubious products, so you'll get tarred with the same heavy brush. The only way to get high places in Google and the other search engines is to add content. Strangely, I believe that the content doesn't have to be that relevant.

So if anyone offers you SEO services which mean you pay them a regular fee and they don't change your site, tell them politely to talk to your competitors.

This morning, I was in the top ten on Google twice for myself and my company, when you searched for James Miller. So I must be doing something right. I add about two to three posts a week to my blogs.

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