Ok, this is not really my usual blogging subject (and it is for UK folks only, sorry!) but I thought it was worth a mention considering I have spoken to a few people about it over the past few months and lots of people still have not heard of it.

Quidco is an online cashback site, simple as that. If you purchase things from Play.com for example, if you login to quidco first, then click their Play.com link, then purchase your item, Quidco will pay you a percentage of your sale in cash.

Sometimes you only get pennies but sometimes you can get some great deals. I have had £120 cash back off £150 worth of home and contents insurance, and $45 of my car insurance…. all for clicking a link.

The only catch is they charge £5 per year for this, but if you don’t make £5 savings then you don’t get charged, so there really is no risk at all, it comes straight out of your profit.

Check it out for yourself at www.quidco.com

I just received an email trying to sell me a .TEL domain. Just another second rate extension, I thought, but I clicked on it anyway. After reading up on it I find it is tied up with telnic.com.

If you register one of these domains you cannot host it yourself, you cannot control it and you cannot use it for email. Basically all you can do with it is provide an online business card!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7761395.stm

Reading the above article it is not even clear Mr Mahdavi knows how it will work. In a comparison to when this was done in the past Mr Mahdavi says “The flaw, he said, with Enum was that it demanded people be on the web. By contrast, .tel will work with many different devices such as smart phones”. Well if this system does not require the recipient of the information to be on the web, just how will their smart phone get the information?

He goes on to say “It will become their place on the cloud,”. Get a grip Mr Mahdavi, you can’t just spout the latest buzzwords and expect to have credibility. This domain is just sheer nonsense!

The worrying this about all this is ICANN, the overseers of the domain system can allow this sort of thing to go on. Why does one company (telnic) have the right to tie up an entire top level domain name? I am all for new domains coming out, but what next, .wifepics? It is concerning that ICANN have taken it upon themselves to move from simply regulating the distribution of top level domain names to wholeheartedly regulating the content too.

Surely this goes against everything the Internet was designed to be?!

EDIT: Seems others are not happy with this either : http://telscam.org/

With the World Cup coming up in 2010 South Africa has been getting quite a lot of press. Some people see South Africa as being behind the rest of the world in terms of infrastructure, technology, business etc. In some ways this is true, you only need to look at their roads to see there is much room for improvement. However, when it comes to business, in particular online business, my word does the rest of the world need to stand up and take note.

South Africa seems to have embraced the Internet culture and used it to great effect. You only need to follow South Africans on Twitter to see how excited people are about being a part of it all. There are constantly meet-ups (tweet-ups, as they are called) and dinner parties arranged for people who have formed a community from knowing each other online. This happens in other parts of the world too, but I am in the UK and I have not seen half as many over here.

If I look at products I use every day I find a lot are made in South Africa. I send SMS via the internet using BulkSMS… made in South Africa. My SearchStatus Firefox plugin which I have been using for years comes from Quirk eMarketing, a South African firm. There are a growing number of successful Internet sites that you may not know that come from South Africa. South Africa online presence seems to be growing faster than I can ever remember it doing so in the UK.

Almost every week people are tweeting that they are in seminars about media, marketing, the Internet in general. The shear number of these events just shown how positive they are about progress. South Africa has a TEDx function coming up. TEDx is a kind of miniature TED conference where very clever people speak about their specialised subject. These things are great and I really wish I could attend this one!

I have been following the changes online for a while now and all I can say is the enthusiasm is infectious! They have their own social network called Afrigator too. To look at it really is a polished production, but more than that if you look at 95% of all African blogs they have the Afrigator link stating “I am an African Blogger”. This is the crux of it to my mind, these people are PROUD to be a part of it all and they are excited for the future.

I can’t help feeling that certainly in the UK people feel the Internet has come as far as it can and has leveled out a bit. The excitement has died down and people have found other things to be enthusiastic about. If you can relate to that I implore you to start to follow a few South Africans on Twitter and see what they are up to. The enthusiasm displayed is something I just can’t help wanting to be involved with, and something that the UK for one could really learn from!

I have had in mind for a while now that I would like to centralise the media in the house. I would like to digitise all my DVD’s onto a huge hard drive and have them available from both the TV downstairs and the TV in the bedroom.

I have been weighing up the options over the past week or so, ahead of the 50Mb broadband being installed. I have also run CAT6 cable from the attic (where the media server will be) down to the living room.

Looking at the options it seems there are a few issues to consider:

1. The living room TV currently is CRT and doesn’t have HDMI input
2. Do I want a central media centre that outputs to two TV’s, or two media centres?
3. Do I use a PC with a media centre OS or a dedicated solution?

With these issues in mind I have decided to take the somewhat baby step of buying an xtreamer system. This little box will sit near to the bedroom TV and connect via HDMI to the TV and by ethernet cable (down through the ceiling) or by wireless to the media server.

The cost of the unit is £107 delivered so I think it is a relatively cheap way of serving media to the bedroom TV, although the interface does not look as snazzy as the XBMC or Windows 7 MC systems. When it comes to upgrading the TV downstairs I think we may go for a bit more of a “grown-up” solution.

So, hopefully it will be delivered this week and I can get it in place. I don’t have massively high hopes of an all singing all dancing solution in the xtreamer, but as far as this piece of kit goes all it needs to do is stream hi-def video smoothly and consistently and I will be happy.

It also has a cute little iPhone interface for controlling it. I may try converting it into a proper app, as at the moment it is just a web page, but it does look cool.

As much as twitter seems to be the latest fad the kids are playing with, I do find it makes me think. Ok, not to the extent a Rubik cube or a crossword puzzle would, but in its own sort of way it exercises my mind.

I find myself quite often typing something into twitter and going over the 140 character limit. I think have to work out how to re-word what I said, cutting down the length of what I type but still making sense. Ok, quite often I end up with something akin to Newspeak from George Orwells book 1984, but often I find that there is actually a far more effective way of saying something using less words.

Of course some people end up replacing “to be” with “2b”, but that aside it at lease makes you think about what you are typing, even if you do end up butchering it afterward.

Well, after 2 years of being free of the rude, arrogant and generally poorly supported Virgin Media service I have signed on the dotted line for more of the same. Why? Am I mad? Perhaps, but alas if I want a reasonable speed Internet connection it seems there is no option.

When I say reasonable speed I am referring to something in the region of 8Mbps or above, I am not greedy. The problem is the distance I live from the BT exchange (damn me for choosing a house more than a mile away!) means the maximum speed I can get out of my line is 3.5Mbps. In this day and age for anything other than email and a bit of web surfing it is just not fast enough.

The installation is due on the 17th of this month… Whether the engineer will turn up on time we will see, and if he does will he have the correct kit? Maybe I am too cynical in my old age, but my experience of Virgin in the past has made me that way.

As for the package, it looks reasonable. I am replacing my existing ADSL (with O2) connection, my Sky+ box with sports package and my BT line and shipping it all to Virgin. I am saving a few pounds a month off my bill, losing sports (never really used it that much) and getting 50Mbps Internet in replacement to an ambitious 3Mbps.

I will promise to post my experience of the (hopefully improved) Virgin service once it is installed. I do hope I don’t regret it as O2 have given fantastic support since the beginning and if only ADSL wasn’t such utter crap I would dearly love to stay with O2. Alas as Virgin hold the UK cable monopoly I am forced to sell my soul for a Virgin!

Every now and again we hear that changes are afoot at Google that may influence how our sites are indexed, discovered and presented. The rumor mill is a busy place, but in actual fact it is possible to get a bit of a “heads up” on some of the changes without resorting to Chinese whispers or black magic.

Google have a sandbox environment, open for all to see on the Internet. Just point your browser to www2.sandbox.google.com and take a look at their development environment. If they change the way results are presented or how predictive searches are built then it should manifest itself on the sandbox site.

I actually came to use the sandbox site last night as for some reason my connection to Google went astray but I could access the sandbox fine.

I have found a few times that Google make changes to the iGoogle pages on their sandbox site first, so it is worth checking every now and again if you are interested in seeing what’s around the corner.

This is a subject that doesn’t often get discussed, but is an important consideration, especially for web designers who are providing (often reselling) web space for their clients.

Both managed and unmanaged hosting have good and bad points but it is important to differentiate between the two and choose the option that is right for you.

The following list is typically what you should expect from the different types of hosts. Not all hosts are alike though so please be sure to check before signing up.

Managed hosting

The good points

• You have a point of contact on the end of the phone
• If there is a problem with the server they will fix it
• They will take nightly backups
• If you accidentally overwrite your files they will restore from the backups
• If you get stuck configuring your site they will assist you
• If you need products setting up they can advise and assist

The bad points

• They are sometimes a little more expensive than unmanaged hosts
• The level of service is dependent on the particular host

Unmanaged hosting

The good points

• You usually have a control panel so you can configure your site yourself
• Sometimes cheaper than managed hosting
• Setup time is quick

The bad points

• If you need help you usually have to work it out yourself or log a support call and wait
• If things go terribly wrong the fix time can be slow
• You sometimes have to tell your client “I am waiting for them to answer my call”
• Backups are sometimes taken but access to restores is usually not available unless you have total failure

Which is the right hosting for you?

That entirely depends on the individual. If you like to get your hands dirty with configuring sites then unmanaged is the way forward. However, when things go wrong having someone managing things for you can be invaluable.

A case in point is reseller packages. In this case you have all your eggs in one basket. If something goes wrong you need to know you have the technical skill to restore backups (if you have access to them), configure email and web access and get things working again, fast! In this situation having someone at the server end working for you to restore normality can be a life saver (and a client saver!).

Generally my recommendation would be to use an unmanaged solution if it for a personal site, it is a great way to learn, but think twice about it if you are hosting a business site. The few pennies you save by not getting a managed solution could one day lose you a client.