What No Zopa!
Or any other peer-to-peer lending site for that matter, are mentioned in the best fifty web sites to save money in The Times.
After all, both lenders and borrowers get a better deal here.
Or perhaps, I’m reading the figures upside down.
Ticketmaster Gives Captcha The Boot
I don’t like the Captcha technology on web sites, that define, whether I’m human or not. it’s all because I have a gammy left hand and can’t always be relied on to get it right.
So I was pleased to see that Ticketmaster has ditched the dreaded system for something better. It’s all here on the BBC.
Let’s now make all passwords and questions case insensitive, so that I can get them right first time.
Booking To Geneva And Rotterdam On Eurostar
As an experiment, I just wanted to see if I could book direct to Rotterdam on the Eurostar web site.
You can’t, but you can book direct to several Swiss cities in one go on the Eurostar web site.
I was also able to get a ticket to Brussels for just £38 on the day I wanted. To get to Rotterdam using another site, adds another £21. But I want to go to The Hague. That cost £76 or twice the London-Brussels fare.
I suspect tourists, who after spending a few days in London, who perhaps wanted to see Europe by rail, wouldn’t start by going to The Netherlands. But they might go and look at the pleasures of Switzerland.
WordPress Changes Picture Upload Again
Why do they keep fiddling with it? Especially, as I preferred the original one, where I could size my pictures directly to 450 x 337 pixels.
Now I have to edit the HTML
Sendola
I like this little web site application called Sendola. I saw it on Leon‘s site and it enables you to get details of the company to your phone. In Leon’s case it gets the address of the restaurant.
It even worked with my Nokia 6310i. But with a smart phone you get a map as well.
Sendola is even used by St. Paul’s cathedral, so God must get directions on their tablet.
Boris Does It First
I wanted to send a message to Boris Johnson’s campaign for the Mayor of London. I actually sent a similar message to other candidates, so don’t imply any favouritism here.
But Boris had a new type of real-person checker or captcha, I’ve not seen before. Instead of asking to type in two obscured words, which sometimes I find difficult because of my eyesight, it asked me to do a simple sum.
So congratulations to Boris’s web site designer for being the first I’ve seen using it. It may be a lot commoner than I think. But so-what, it was the first I saw. On one web site, where I was trying to buy something the captcha was so difficult, I went elsewhere.
A Web Site Not To Use
In my previous post, I mentioned that some web sites, when you access them, open a new browser with a full page advert.
I find this practice very unacceptable. I know that some of the more sleazy tabloids use this practice, but I just opened the web site for the Daily Express. I got a very unacceptable advertisement in another copy of my browser. Incidentally, when I closed this unwanted browser window, it immediately reopened and only by closing the original page containing the Daily Express web site, was I able to continue without being interrupted by offensive advertising.
So I shall be continuing of my policy of never having bought this rag in my lifetime! And I’ll never look at their web site again, unless there is a story there, that I have to look at. But I haven’t needed to yet!
I shall be reporting them to someone. But who?
Ipswich Town Supporters in London
I’ve just set up a web site for Ipswich Town supporters, who live and/or work in London.
I have used WordPress to set it up and it can be viewed at ipswichtownlondon.wordpress.com.
In some ways it is showing how you can use WordPress to create a Blog-Based Small Business. Although this isn’t a business, we’re trying to attract Ipswich Town supporters and create a source of useful information.
The Blog Based Small Business
This blog is absolutely standard WordPress. all I pay for is a small amount of extra storage and the use of VideoPress to put my videos in the blog. I think I pay about thirty dollars a year.
This blog is in effect a complete web site, with a contact form, searching and all the things you’d expect from a professional website. It also doesn’t have adverts or other things that will annoy my readers.
It differs in one way to a professional website, in that updating it just needs a small amount of form filling in a web browser. The difficulty is about the same as sending an e-mail.
So could you run a small business on a blog such as this?
I’ll use the example of a lady who does small repairs and alterations to clothes and household furnishings. There used to be and probably still is, someone like that in Cambridge market a couple of days a week and C got her to shorten and alter clothes for her. I was taught to do all this by my mother, but don’t think I could manage it now, with my hands.
Such a business could work well off the back of a blog. Say she repaired an expensive evening dress for someone in Dulwich, she might post a picture of the repair, with a brief description in the blog.
As Google knows everything immediately from WordPress, someone searching for evening dress mending, Dulwich, may well find the blog.
Gradually, as the blog expands you’ll get more hits and from the statistics, you can find out how your visitors got there.
So the blog does your market research in addition to getting your customers.
The Anonymous Widower 