Yesterday I visited Internet world 2009. After going to the SES expo earlier this year in the business design centre in Angel, London, I was expecting the show to be a much smaller affair.

Internet world 2009 was held in Earl’s Court two, and packed out the whole of the hall! The show certainly lived up to the hype and expectation from its pre-event marketing.

I was very impressed by the turnout, but unfortunately for me I was only able to visit the show on the very last day due to work commitments, however, I was able to see everything I needed to cover and managed to scale the whole show hall top to bottom, watch some seminars, get some questions answered, and get chatted up by a rather nice promotion girl ha! – It pays to be the Coolest Geek on the net!

I learned a few new hints and tips from the show, and expanded my friends list on linkedIn (note to self – I MUST bring more business cards!). One of the most impressive things in the show overall was the volume of SEO professionals and new SEO start-ups. During this recession, hitting the number one spot in Google has become an absolute priority for most online businesses and it’s evident that SEO is certainly the industry buzzword and marketing product at the moment, that said it’s what the market is hungry for right now, and it’s all about supply and demand!

It was evident at the show there were many new businesses that where a bit of a “bolt-on” SEO start up. That said every single booth offering SEO was rushed off their feet with clients wanting to know much more about what they had to offer. Now, here in the UK, it would be a great time to start up a new company based on SEO! (roll on my business)

There were many CMS (content management system) companies, and to me it’s fascinating the way these are developing. From the back-end it’s as if you’re using a windows application to simply build your website. Personally I prefer to tinker with the code and know what code is actually implemented, but still it’s showing the direction of the CMS platforms.

Internet World 2009 Seminar

I sat in on a seminar about direct marketing, this is a very interesting market to me as it included many hints and tips on direct marketing via e-mail, behavioral marketing and some other sneaky tips to increase conversion rates, that I’ll cover later on in this blog. I was very impressed with the developments in these technologies, however, one thing that seemed to elude the presentation was the capture of the e-mail addresses. I asked the question during the presentation:

“how is it you collect the emails in the first place to be able to direct such specific, targeted emails?”

I was told that you could buy the data from large data houses, that said, I think if you can capture the data directly yourself then you have a much better chance on converting your customers. Very interesting all the same and it’s thrown me many new ideas for my current projects.

One of the most popular seminars at the show seemed to be the social networking talks with the likes of Twitter and co. It’s certainly a hot property at the moment, with that in mind, I’m not sure anyone can claim themselves to be an authority in such a new field. The guys that are the real authority in the likes of social media marketing are the ones that make serious cash at this moment in time, utilizing these tools and techniques currently within their own marketing strategies, not the ones talking about them at shows and giving all the “good” information away, even so, there were a few interesting hints and tips I picked up on the social networking landscape.

There are a few other things I saw at Internet World 2009 that I just had to point out in this post. One of these things was originally an Adobe product which I saw presented on the TED talks on YouTube a few years ago. Fortunately for me the product was only there on the last day and I got to have a little play with this super cool new device “Microsoft Surface” – Brilliant! (filmed this with my LG KU990).

A cool £10,000 will snag you one of these beauties! New coffee table anyone?

Other highlights of the show to me included:
a magician (I’m always wowed by magic), not SEO related however very good all the same.
A group of three dancing girls one of which was dressed in a huge character costume, finally when I was asked if I am a male model, but of course! Ha

All in all Internet World 2009 was a great show! Roll on Internet World 2010!

Popularity: 42%

I decided it was time to get myself a new iPod as I’ve been hitting the gym everyday recently while applying for graduate jobs. The the battery on my old shuffle has died! It lasts about an hour at the best of times so…

I decided to invest in one of the brand new iPod Shuffle’s. I looked around on eBay and decided on getting a clone of the new iShuffle, why? Well mainly because it was cheaper but also because I wasn’t overly impressed with the official Apple iPod Shuffle I bought about a year ago. Ok it’s lasted a year, but I dont think thats worth the £60+ i paid for it!? It was ok, and did the job but I guess most mark up in price goes into the fancy packaging, and the image of the device. But who uses the packaging after the 1st day?! Another complaint about my older iPod shuffle was that I had to download a special program for it to work without iTunes?! And Apple complain about Microsoft! Pah! I hate the iTunes program trying to eat up my hard disk space and RAM, I am quite capable of managing my own music collection thank you very much!

Anyway after searching eBay I found a nice looking advert to get my iPod shuffle clone from, it was based in Hong Kong, and I ended up winning the bidding for – £4.99 + £9.99 postage! WOW CHEAP! I really wasn’t expecting a lot for my money with that price but it arrived today, just 4 days later and WOW!

It arrived this morning (Saturday) and I had a lazy lie in but fortunately the postman posted it through the door so I didn’t need to get my arse out of bed to sign for it!

Unfortunately the only thing that was a random selection in the auction was the choice in colour of “free sock” you get to store the iPod and… Yep I got pink! Hahaha out of the 6 random colours I got the pink! Oh well, just hope I don’t get any strange looks when packing the iPod away when in the gym.

Either way I got the full works for £14.98! It’s great the thing is TINY even though you see it in pictures on the internet it seems smaller when you actually get it. It doesn’t need iTunes to work, simply plug in your PC via USB and upload your tracks, brilliant! Its a small steel case and solid design comes with headphones and everything I need! Luckily I got to choose the colour of the iPod itself otherwise i’d look a bit odd with a pink one strapped to my shorts! It’s got a large 1GB memory which is more than enough for use in the gym. I use my w810i mobile phone as my walkman in the day! So the shuffle is ideal for gym use only.

Its playback is even better, clearer and louder than the older branded iPod shuffle! When you skip tracks it fades the last tune out quickly its a very smooth effect! It comes with the free Random colour sock as I said before, headphones, and USB to iPod cable. All in all it’s a great buy!

Another great thing with this iPod is I can lose the armband which I used to wear to hold my old iPod shuffle on my arm, instead I just clip this newer one on to my shorts a lot more comfortable when busting out those bicep curls

All in all a great buy! Want to get one for yourself? This is the place I bought mine:

http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/bthworld08

Enjoy

Olly

Popularity: 18%

This is Neg’s Urban Sports collection, if you don’t know already Neg is a “propper wide boy geezer” on the UK TV show “Balls of Steel” on Channel 4 it’s a comedy series hosted by Mark Dolan, more info on that can be found here

I have surfed YouTube and compliled all of Neg’s urban sports for you to watch right here, they are not in any order so make sure to watch ‘em all as they are all very funny!

Lets get a vote on the all time favorite!

To vote it’s only a simple click your favorite in the poll (no login required).

Popularity: 2%

This was a pretty quick world title fight! I think it was an important one all the same, as it just proves to me the point of these reality TV programmes to find the next superstar in “whatever” it WILL NEVER WORK FOR SPORTS.

If you don’t know the background “Manfredo” had come from the US TV show called the contender where Sylvester Stallone, other “stars”, including past boxing champions found the winner of “The Contender” it was a big hit in the US and Manfredo was one of the products (runner up).

In all fairness he must have done well to get where he did and credit to him but to me it proves it’s all a sham. Take a look at the fight on You Tube right here:

Ok I agree with many people that the fight was stopped early as it was a world title fight, but Calzaghe is just awesome! The pride of Wales, he was in another league. To win a “game show” gives you the hype, gives you the confidence, but you’ll NEVER have the natural talent, it’s not something you will ever develop, in fact Stallone is contradicting himself by being part of “The Contender” the Stallone “Rocky” films highlighted this especially in Rocky 4 it’s one of the underlying morals behind the “Rocky” films e.g. Rocky 4 Rocky vs Draco.

I feel the same way about the entertainment industry ok all these wanna be pop stars – lets be honest processed rubbish! Ok some have talent but if they were THAT GOOD they’d make it off their own steam not through a game show format. Ok sometimes its luck and where you are at the right time, but surly this brings life and character to the stars that make it. Not just some pretty boy/girl that has gone to a few studio auditions cried a lot and then won. To me they are the product of ultimate failure and have ALL proved me right.

Back to the boxing, now I’m no encyclopedia of boxing history but as I was lead to believe Calzaghe worked HARD to get where he is today and has defended his WORLD TITLE no less than 20 TIMES! I’m afraid it would need more than a game show winner to even get close to this class act.

Good fight and well done Calzaghe – Legend

A quote I’ll always remember from this fight was from Calzaghe on Manfredo the boxer from the show “The Contender”:

“He’s the contender, I’m the champion” – Calzaghe

Nice

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Popularity: 2%

The Pursuit of Happiness. (will Smith)

I saw this film yesterday, thought that it looked just “ok” from the trailers, and it turned out to be what I thought was a great film.

I think that it was a well made film but it was a classic simple story, “rags to riches” but very inspiring all the same. There were some nice quotes in the film and the acting was good. I’ll rate it 3.5 out of 5 because although it was a good the story it was not totally original and the whole rags to riches is easily done in any type of scenario, it seemed to drag out the ending even though it was obvious what was going to happen.

All in all a good and inspiring film, but you won’t miss anything new by not seeing this.

Popularity: 2%