Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Viva MD steps down


Rumour confirmed!

Chris McCarthy, the managing director of Viva Estates has reportedly resigned. The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that Chris' blog dissapeared from their website a day or so ago.

The reason for his departure is not apparent, but I'm guessing it is related to their recent and dramatic change in listing policy and closure of the IN.

Questions, questions...

So will it be business as usual or all change? Will Viva maintain their 2/3% policy? Or will they revert to the usual 5% model, which allows for agent co-operation? Is it a cash flow issue, in which case will we see cutbacks and office closures?

It will be particularly interesting to see who they get to fill Chris' very large espadrilles - it will certainly have to be someone looking for a challenge.

Send your CVs (with covering letter) to hr@vivaestates.com.

Rumours abound...

Whispers on the notoriously unreliable Costa del Sol rumour mill suggest a certain high profile MD has resigned...

Not that I'm partial to gossip of course.

True or False?

True or false:

In "The Terminator," the famous line "I'll be back!" was not originally in the script.

Buggered if I know, but find endless more lunch hour timewasters at:


http://www.blufr.com/

Monday, November 27, 2006

Bizarre Statues


These are great: weird statues from around the world. I like the cow in the spacesuit best.

Warning: this site takes ages to complete loading.

Beware of direct debits

In the UK the rules governing who can help themselves to your hard earned cash are fairly stringent. Not so in Spain. Here is my rant that I posted on www.spanishpropertyinsight.com a week or so ago:

The site is run by Mark Stucklin, a journalist who writes on Spanish property issues for the Sunday Times. It has a helpful community attached to it.

I set up a direct debit with Terra to provide a dial up internet connection to my house. This was my arangement for around 2 years.

In the early part of this year, ADSL (broadband) finally became available in the part of Spain where I live.

So I signed a contract with Telefonica who now provide me with broadband. Obviously I did not want to carry on paying for the TErra dialup service as I now no longer needed it.

I searched the Terra website for support/how to/ FAQs any way of contacting them to cancel my dialup service and the 25 EUR per month I was paying. All I could find was an email address: support@terra.es (or was it sopporte@terra.es not sure). I emailed this address twice with no response.

I decided the best course of action was to cancel the payment through my bank (solbank) which I did.

I then find out this week that I have been paying this 25 EUR fee!

Maddened I went the bank who showed me that they HAD in fact cancelled the payment, but that Terra had requested the same amount using a different reference number and slightly different name! So it was paid out of my account - for the last 6 months!!

Unbelievable. The lesson I have learned is check your statement and query anything you are unsure of. You have the right to claim back any money within 20 days that you feel you should not pay.

Really happy.

Back from Vegas, just.

Apologies for my piss poor attendance in class.

Got back from the SEO conference in Las Vegas and have slept oddly and been late for work most days. Good job I have a cool boss!

Lots of useful seminars at the conference, one on on link buying was good, as was a guy who talked about affiliate opportunities. I'll post later this week (I promise) in more detail about these and other useful sessions. Plus there was a killer site review session.

In the meantime read Matt Cutts and Danny Sullivan who write about their experiences in Vegas. These guys are like the equivalent of pop stars to sad SEO geeks like myself. Also webproworld has lots of recap articles.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

How to get rid of a telemarketer

This is great! I think its from the Howard Stern show, but I'm not sure.

Listen to how this guy gets rid of a telemarketer:

http://howtoprankatelemarketer.ytmnd.com/