Love Jim’s take on things:

You must get good at one of two things: sowing in the spring or begging in the fall…

One of my good friends always says, “Things don’t just happen; things happen just.”

The soil says, “Don’t bring me your need, bring me your seed.”

What's you call?

Scott Galeski, a truly unique police officer, has made a film.

If you’re involved in community projects, consider contacting uraniumcity@hotmail.com and ask them about TANK DVD.

Well done to Scotty and the team behind the Tank.

So looking forward to getting my copy.

The Tank: One to Watch

Google doesn’t love me any more.

Along with the blogging, I’ve been doing a bit to get my pearls of wisdom noticed by others.

Something…who know’s what, has offended the Google thought police.

As a result, I’ve suddenly disappeared from their rankings.

Feels a bit Kafkaesque (a word I’m glad I don’t often resort to).

To get back on the list you have to:

1. Sign up as a Google Webmaster: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

2. Watch the Brave New World video

3. Write a detailed apology letter citing the things that you have, or may not have done to incur the wrath, and promise not to do any of these things that you may or may not have done in the future.  Here is my effort:

Hi,

I write a blog at http://haigh.tv.

As I’m interested in other people reading it, I’ve been checking Google rankings. It seems I’ve done something that does not meet with your standards, because it has suddenly disappeared from your .co.uk results (it was at page 11). I see that my site may have been blacklisted: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/310942.html

It is not clear to me what I’ve done to warrant this.  I can’t see anything that I’m particularly in breach of in your guidelines: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

I’ve been checking the page position with the very useful http://mynameissteve.com/google-page-rank tool every day or so. Since I’ve been blacklisted, and having done some reading, it seems this may be the cause of my blacklisting but who knows? Instead of beating people like me up for it, why don’t you provide a similar tool that shows where a site is in search results.

I’ve also watched the video. I do have a couple of affiliate links on the site but they fit with the content I’m writing. What’s the deal there? Google provided ads are OK, but put up some affiliate links (no matter how well targeted) and we’ll blacklist you?

Can you suggest anything I may do to get it re-instated…or even why it was removed from your results?

I’ve been a big fan and promoter of Google to this date, however this does not feel like a particularly fair or transparent process. Thankfully my blog is not my main revenue stream, otherwise your seemingly random decision might have had a devastating effect on my income.

In my day job I provide advice to CIO’s of some of Europe’s biggest organizations. This has provided me with graphic evidence as to why Google might just be too big in the search market.

Yours in disappointment,

Seb

Seb Haigh

PS: in the interests of transparency I’ll be posting this and any responses you make on my blacklisted (?) blog

Update 09/Feb/2010:

We received a request from a site owner to reconsider how we index the following site: http://haigh.tv/.

We’ve now reviewed your site. When we review a site, we check to see if it’s in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. If we don’t find any problems, we’ll reconsider our indexing of your site. If your site still doesn’t appear in our search results, check our Help Center for steps you can take.

This is an automated message from Webmaster Tools. Please do not reply to this email. For help, please visit http://www.google.com/support/webmasters.

…So the review has taken place, and the results are…?

Low marks out of ten Google for feedback.

Paul Ovington asked me to do a shortened version of my Moments of Truth presentation to D71, Area 7 Club Officers.

The idea Moment of Truth has two main tracks:

• As a formal, well defined set of constructs for increasing customer engagement with and organization
• In everyday use as a critical or decisive moment on which much depends

The everyday track goes from St Paul’s dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus, to the less ethereal (though still surreal) performance of Lauren Cleri on the Fox Gameshow The Moment of Truth.

Sadly YouTube doesn’t have a contemporary clip of Paul’s big event.  On the other hand if you’d like to see how low car-crash reality TV can plum, Cleri’s performance is required viewing.

The more formal business use of Moments of Truth has its roots in the work of Richard Normann.    You can read a good summary of Normann’s work on the IPAPI website:

Moment of Truth – A Moment of Truth is any contact with the customer whether initiated by the customer or not. Any Interaction with the Customer – any interaction – is a Moment of Truth.

[...]

Moments of Truth first became popularized after being a core part of Jan Carlzon’s turnaround of SAS airlines in the mid ‘80s. The fundamental idea of Moments of Truth is attributed to the often revered management thinker Richard Normann (who died in 2003 at the age of 60). In the late 1970′s Richard Normann introduced the metaphor of “the moment of truth” as part of his extensive development of management theory in service management.

There are two fundamental ideas behind the use of Moments of Truth in management practices.

1) The elimination of ALL unnecessary Moments of Truth – everywhere.

2) The repeatable delivery of Moments of Magic for each Moment of Truth that cannot otherwise be eliminated.

Jan Carlzon also authored the book Moments of Truth published in 1989 and it is still a popular management book today.

Toastmasters International uses the Moments of Truth ideas in Club Officer Training as an easily understood way to drive membership numbers and quality.  TMI have identified six main categories of Moment of Truth, and then six key moments in each of those areas.   The main part of the TMI Moments of Truth presentation is an exercise where attendees split into six groups, each focussing on one category of Moment:

• First impressions
• Membership orientation
• Fellowship, variety and communication
• Program planning and meeting organization
• Membership strength
• Achievement recognition

My presentation to the Area  Club Officers is here:

[HMTL1]

Well spotted @techcrunch, and well done to the team behind WooRank.com.

WooRank presents a clean interface to all sorts of SEO metrics.

Like it.

haigh.tv | WooRank.

Woo Rank

Suggestion for the guys at WooRank: tap in to the mom and pop SEO market – allow them to offer premium features to their customers…could be huge.

On the same day that I read of Vodafone UK’s relaunch of its femtocell offering (PocketLint), my Virgin Media broadband again slowed to a crawl.

I found myself getting faster response from YouTube on my mobile than on my laptop:

BroadBandSpeedChecker.co.uk

09:30: 96Kbps download, 340 Kbps upload

09:36: 136Kbps download, 268 Kbps upload

09:39: 156 Kbps download, 297 Kbps upload

MyBroadBandSpeed.co.uk

09:39: 122 Kbps download, 207 Kbps upload

10:21: 143 Kbps download, 36 Kbps upload

10:21: 233 Kbps download, 88 Kbps upload

10:21: 78 Kbps download, 311 Kbps upload

…Not quite sure why Virgin is slow so often.

Three cheers however for Vodafone for pushing out Femto technology at such a competitive price.

How long is it before our broadband use goes the same way as my land-line voice calls?

Self-help books can be a bit like dogs.  Often they seem to age much faster than we do.

Not so with this one from Susan Jeffers.

Susan makes no claim for the book as a heavyweight classic, however it is full of folksy wisdom.

There are some great quotes in the book from many of the usual suspects.

My favourite is this, however, from George Bernard Shaw:

This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live.

I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

GBS, Of Man and SuperMan (Alvin Cobern)

Stumbled upon the work of Dave Haigh.  Dave’s work is restrained yet stylish.

David Haigh – visual communication.

I wondered whether Dave and Alex Haigh @ HypeForType http://www.hypefortype.com/ know each other’s work?

At a meeting a couple of weeks ago we named our favourite books in the round-robin.

Amazon.co.uk: Bardwell’s Books.

There are some great books on the list.

Tried to get it to work in an Amazon Widget but beyond me…

Congratulations to Dominic Myers, new head of  Waterstone’s.

The demise of Borders in the UK (credit crunch, Amazon+Kindle) shows high street book-selling has some challenges.  On the positive side no Borders may drive a few more customers to Waterstone’s stores.

It is quite a mountain to climb.  Dominic seems like a great man for the job.

Dominic Myers ‘Mr Fixit’ takes the helm at Waterstone’s | theBookseller.com.

Queues outside Waterstone's

Image copyright Stephanie Jenkins.