Posts by rayofsunshine

Repairable-by-design Fairphone runs out of spare parts

ethical ratings for phones

Ethical Consumer do a guide to handsets & ethics - http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/buyersguides/phonebroadband/mobilephones.aspx

It's basic on the tech, but the three main areas of concern are worker rights, toxic chemicals and conflict minerals.

Fairphone is unsurprisingly the 'ethical best buy' - and the general advice echoing a poster above is "...buy a second-hand or refurbished phone, wherever possible, to reduce your environmental impact."

Part of the point of Fairphone is trying to create an example of an ethical supply chain for a tech product, and evidencing demand for it. From what I'm told by people who have them, v.1 was a bit crap, and v.2 is very good.

[disclosure - I do a quite a bit of work with EC]

Greenpeace releases 'Cool IT' rankings

Proper Ethical Ratings

Slightly off topic, but there is one set of ratings for IT suppliers that's objective and reliable, covering policies and performance across environmental issues, humna rights, worker rights etc - from Ethical Consumer

For an example see http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/buyersguides/computing/laptopsandnetbooks.aspx and drill down any products to the company scores and info.

Disclosure - I do a bit of work for EC, and sit on their Board, so this is a blatant plug.

Common brain parasite 'can affect host's actions'

Ah, it makes sense now

So does this help to explain why so many people keep cats, a bargain in which these feline parasites exchange warmth, comfort and food for scratched furniture, bodily secretions and occasional vomited offerings of half-chewed nestlings or small mammals?

Now to find the chihuahua parasite that infects continental women..

Eggheads solve England penalty-shootout crapness riddle

but they don't miss by shooting at the middle of the goal

but more famously by shanking the bloody thing over the bar and out of the park

Webmasters fume as Google profiles signed-out searchers

In defence of SEO

So where is all this hate coming from exactly? I'm guessing a position of general ignorance.

OK, I'm with you on the few blackhat techniques that still work for a small number of scammers, and I guess if you spend a lot of time searching for porn, sexually helpful medicines and 'illegal' content then it's their sites you'll be bombarded with.

And yes there are an awful lot of cowboys around, (including a lot of web designers / developers selling 'search' services), but since they basically don't know what they're doing it's not their work you'll find on page 1 of Google. They 'just' fleece unsuspecting clients.

And finally yes, part of an SEOs job is to manipulate SERPS in favour of their clients. Next time you find something useful to buy that's not from Amazon or Tesco have a think about how and why that site appeared in your search results.

Proper SEO work is about providing targeted search results to the user, and that's for the very simple reason that if it's not targeted, the user won't make a purchase on the site and the client is wasting money. Providing a blizzard of crap in the SERPs isn't going to have any better RoI than mass email spamming (see various El Reg articles on who makes money from that).

Long-term SEM (serach engine marketing) work is about content, site architecture, hosting and a lot more besides the kind of knuckle-dragging techniques many of the commenters on here seem to think might work. And personally I'd rather find relevant useful websites than see half a dozen results for Wikipaedia, Amazon's nearest product match and a few blog posts.

SEO's really shouldn't carp too loudly about changes to Google algorithims, it's part of the job to stay ahead of the game, but this mob anger is all a bit witless.

I'll give you that it's an essentially parasitic job, and as such bearing no comparison to such essential services as providing IT support, systems security or network management.

I can live with that and even feel ok that I've doubled the orders for a family welding business in Rochdale, and added £250k of fundraising income to a major charity. And not even gamed your search for 'debbie does dallas'.

Have a lovely Christmas, one and all