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By Les Scammell, April 19, 2008 8:05 am

The Olympic torch has started its world journey and will soon land on our shores where it will spend what I am sure will be an interesting visit. The torch has so far drawn more publicity for all the protests than it has for the Olympic Games themselves.

I have no real problems with the protests. I am a firm believer in free speech and I deplore the human rights abuses that are occurring in  various parts of the world. I do however take issue with some of the protests to date. Human rights are human rights. The Olympic torch and the Olympic Games are international events.

At present the focus is on China, understandable since they are hosting the games this year. However human rights are being abused in many parts of the world with some far worse than what we have witnessed in China or Tibet. We don’t see protests calling on action in these countries.

What is really upsetting my sense of reasoning are the attempts to sabotage the torch and if possible, sabotage the games themselves. As the torch parades along the streets of the various countries, attempts have been made to extinguish the flame or even destroy the torch. The IOC are now discussing the option of no longer having an international leg for the torch.

The reason I take issue with these protests is fairly simple. They are protesting against human rights abuse. I fully agree with them and support them and their right to protest. However, attempting to take the torch away from a child or an elderly person is infringing on their human rights. They have a right to celebrate the Olympic Games as a sport and not as a political event.

The ordinary every day people of China want the Olympics – and why not. Commercial interests aside, their is a lot pride in China surrounding these games. If the games were taken away from China as many have suggested – are we not infringing on their human rights.

Human rights is a huge issue. Human rights covers many different aspects of people’s lives.  The violent protest that we have seen are a form of human rights abuse (on a smaller scale) in the name of preventing human rights abuse. I am sorry – but two wrongs do not make a right.

By all means – protest – let your feelings be known but do so in a way that does not deny others their human rights – in this case, the right to separate sports and politics and the right to celebrate the Olympics as an international sporting event – heaven only knows there is too much politics in the games already.

Comments (1)

By Les Scammell, April 19, 2008 7:30 am

Free Download is an interesting site. It has a neat header image and with a comfortable blog layout.  On this site you can download software, download games, free download anything. Each download has a straightforward review.

The links are easy to navigate and well signposted.  The usual range of categories exist including virus, audio, video, photo software and a growing list of games.  The reviews are easy to follow and provide information such as file size and system requirements.

This is a friendly easy to use site with plenty of good downloads available that will surely keep your busy for many hours. I like the color scheme and the straightforward layout. Whilst it is all very busy, it is easy to follow and navigate.

Comments (4)

By Les Scammell, April 17, 2008 11:29 pm

This week seems to have been an interesting week around the blogosphere. Entre Card is in difficulties, Alexa has gone through a mind warp, I have put this blog on the market (will be interesting to see if I get any offers), SocialSpark seems to be receiving heaps of negative vibes meanwhile Smorty have gone into beta with an interesting link exchange with a difference program.

Starting with Smorty. They are now beta testing a novel link exchange program that I have been trying to get off the ground for months. It is a very easy concept. You advertise your site with preferred URL, keyphrase and short description. Like many pay for posts, it gets advertised and bloggers accept the job of writing a review of your site with the correct links and keywords. In return, you have to accept a job to write a review of another site.

I like this concept. First, it spreads the word about your site. Second, the jobs are from within your own niche. Third, this is not a ‘link exchange’ as the site you write about is not necessarily the site that writes about you. In fact, search engine spiders will not find any real patterns to these links. End result, more traffic and higher page ranks. I hope this does become successful.

SocialSpark on the other hand seems to be getting up everyone’s nose. Nearly all pay to post sites have issued warning about placing the SocialSpark banner on your site. They are basically saying, use their banner then do their work, don’t expect any pay for posts from us. I have not yet a positive review of the SocialSpark banner. Perhaps a rethink is due there.

Meanwhile over at Entre Card reputation management has gone out the window with many users now complaining (I did a week ago I think) about lost credits whilst transferring. Others are complaining of dropping cards and not receiving their credits. Some may have noticed a strange phenomenon  in the section that shows who has dropped  cards. For some accounts, this section is showing one person making six to ten consecutive drops.

These are all glitches which I am sure will be worked out. However, it has taken over a week for the site managers to acknowledge the problem. Good reputation management suggests you  try to put out any fires as they happen, not wait for a massive scrub fire before acting. Some bloggers have been reporting issues for about a week with no response from Entre Card. I think they will have a lot of work to do to restore consumer confidence. If they fail in that area, Entre Card will die a slow horrible death. A little more in the way of interaction guys and we may just stand behind you.

As if that isn’t enough, Alexa have changed the way they now calculate your rank. Gone are the days when your rank was determined by the number of visitors who had the Alexa toolbar installed.  Your rank is now calculated using a number of factors (not declared by Alexa?). This is a change that many have been asking for. The rank may now show a more realistic view of a web sites presence on the web. I know my rank here has blown out from 91k to 125k – thats life.  Perhaps Alexa can now challenge Google for ranking importance.

Finally, after much thought, I have decided to place myradicalblogs on the market. It pains me to do so but I am finding I cannot now dedicate the time to maintaining it. I have several blogs that I want to concentrate on so this one has to go. I would like to see it move on and grow. Hopefully someone will have an interest and take over from me.

Thats my view of the blogging world this week. Have a good one next week.

Comments (3)

By Les Scammell, April 14, 2008 12:06 am

Getting traffic onto your site can be difficult and there are many different avenues available. Entre Card is delivering a reasonable supply of traffic. BlogRush is also starting to bring in traffic. You may have noticed the ad banner at the top of the sidebars for Better Traffic. They have brought some good traffic to my other site, Just 4 Families, and that traffic has been well targeted to the family niche. At $15 for 2000 visitors (that 75 cents per 100), it is one of the cheaper and better quality traffic sites.

Looking at more traditional traffic generation and search engines, I have noticed one little quirk that is really worth exploiting if you can.

Any of my posts that have been dugg (through Digg) or stumbled (with review) by a half dozen or more people have a higher search engine position than those posts that don’t. I noticed this today, again using my Just 4 Families site as a guinea pig. This site has fairly similar type posts such as potty training and temper tantrums etc. The posts that had been stumbled or dugg appeared on page one of Google while those that hadn’t been where way down on pages four or five (some not at all).

I also noticed that if the article has been submitted to a directory, in this case a parenting type directory, it appeared close to the top. In most cases the directory listing was one or two and I was just below it (so much for the duplicate penalty problems – obviously Google can see that it is a directory).

The lesson, get all of your posts dugg or stumbled. If you receive several more diggs or stumbles then your post may well move up the rankings. It should be noted that this page one gift is only short lived and as higher ranking sites get indexed, your post will move down the results pages. The first day or top on page one sure does add to your traffic though – and they are visitors who have visited because your site met their search query.

Traffic – buy it cheap (so long as it is targeted), or stumble your way to the top – either way, good traffic is good traffic. If you use a traffic generating site, let us know how well it performs.