I recently got into a fairly lengthy discussion with our programmers on the subject of “Friendly URLs”. These are URLs that look like www.mysite.com/category/my-post-title-here rather than ones that look like www.mysite.com/cms/content.asp?id=uieyyyu9038963hk. Sometimes these are called “static & dynamic” or “clean & dirty” URLs instead.

When you were seventeen and you bought your first car (a brown Mini in my case) it probably cost a few hundred quid and was basically all you could afford. All the really classic cars were way out of of your league, trouble is that 5, 10, 20 years down the line all those classics cost even more now than they did then! Thankfully, the same is NOT true of computers.

Next Wednesday sees the Microsoft Imagine ’09 conference on London’s south bank, where the brightest and the best will gather to thrash out our digital future!

For those of you that have tried or who are planning to install windows 7 (way better than Vista btw), you may run into a small problem with getting messenger working. We found that on all the Windows 7 boxes we have set up that MS messenger resolutely refuses to connect.

First thing to realise is that “page rank” (i.e. your page’s ranking in the SERPS) is NOT PageRank!

Google Analytics IQ (or Individual Qualification) is awarded in recognition of graduating from the Google Analytics course. Which is an online course in web analytics techniques and Google Analytics implementation, administration, and analysis tools.

In early August we were approached by the family Corporal Lee Scott who died on the 10th July in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Lee, a tank commander in the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, was killed in action on the same day as seven other British service personnel – the largest loss of life in Afghanistan in any 24hrs. They asked us to put together proposals for a site for a new charity they were setting up – Afghan Heroes.

It comes round every two years and we all look forward to it! Well, kind of. In order to maintain Ziontech’s Google Advertising Professional (GAP) Company status we must keep up together with our GAP exams. This year it was Rachel Clegg’s turn to resit the exam and we are very happy to say that she, once again, passed with flying colours.

For some time now I have wondered why so many clients are baffled by search engine marketing. I always try and spell things out in matter-of-fact way but so often I get blank faces looking back. I don’t discount the possibility that I am just an utter bore but (hopefully) it is down to the fact that clients just see Search Engine Marketing (SEM) as a foreign language.

The year was 1981, I was eleven and we had just moved from London to a sleepy village in Somerset. Compared to growing up in west London with its adventure playgrounds and video arcades, the pace of life was somewhat calmer.