It’s a grey and dreary Monday morning, and your brain needs to wake up. You have to start doing some work, but you just need a few minutes to get those cogwheels turning again. Here’s something for you to feast your eyes on, and perhaps motivate you to make this one of those weeks where you can treat yourself to something extra nice when Friday comes.

Mobile phones (or cell phones, for those picky American readers who like to write in and complain about our “odd” use of the English language) are useful, but they’re no longer particularly exciting. They can’t really get much smaller, or shinier, or with a better display, and at the end of the day very few people are going to notice your new Nokia/Motorola/Ericsson. If you want your phone to make a statement, you need something altogether different – and now it has arrived.

For a long time, there have been rumours about an Apple phone, an iPhone, that would be sleek and stylish and satisfy people’s cravings for something Better. Well, the iPhone still isn’t here. But Serene by Bang & Olufsen is, and it’s exactly what you need if you want your phone to make a statement.

Why is it so different? Well, the engineering is supposed to be remarkable – it’s a flip phone, but a tiny motor opens the shell for you so you don’t need to strain your fingers (!). The number buttons are arranged in a circle, and the sound quality is “astonishing” (as you would expect from B & O). For more, read the full review, or admire the photos here.

Is there a downside? Well, yes: it costs $1,275.

Better get back to work now.

This cell phone costs $1,275 – in love yet?

It’s something we’re all aware of, but few people actually devote any time to. Accessibility is one of those words that usually come very far down on the list when we’re designing a website. Yet all you have to do to see why accessibility can be a problem online is close your eyes and try to order a book on Amazon. See what I mean?

Yes, I know, visually impaired website visitors don’t just sit there with their eyes closed, they use all kinds of different tools and software. But all the tools in the world don’t help if the website isn’t set up properly – and very few are. According to the BBC:

“In 2004, the UK’s Disability Rights Commission investigated 1,000 websites. It found that 800 of those sites failed to meet minimum accessibility standards set by the web’s regulatory body, the World Wide Web Consortium.”

I doubt that things have improved since then. In the future, however, they might have to.

Read the article – this could be a good time to move accessibility higher up on your list of priorities.

Designing a more accessible web

Finally, it looks like Yahoo are about to let people choose how they want their websites to be listed in the Yahoo search results.

Many of you have experienced the frustration of seeing your Yahoo directory listing show up time and time again, even though you wrote it seven years ago, haven’t been able to change it since, and actually stopped paying for it more than a year ago. You want searchers to see your optimised, appealing and targeted titles and descriptions, and instead you’re stuck with “CompanyName, Ltd.” Writing to Yahoo doesn’t help, phoning them doesn’t help, and while sending them truckloads of chocolate might make a difference, you don’t really want to do that.

Now, SEO Roundtable are reporting that Tim Mayer from Yahoo has said that they’re working on a No Yahoo Directory Tag, much like the NOODP tag that we already know and love.

It can’t come soon enough, as far as I’m concerned!

Yahoo! To Add No Yahoo Directory Tag

Something that has become increasingly annoying is the fact that Google seems to be growing in a fairly random and haphazard manner. It’s one product here, one there, twenty-five different projects in beta, and all based on what appears to be a fairly informal corporate structure.

This might be about to change. Over at ThoughtShapers, there are reports of some very credible leaks hinting at plans for a serious re-organization of Google. It also appears that Google are about to move on the whole AdSense for Audio front – to monetize podcasts and other streaming audio programs.

Interesting times could lie ahead. And remember: if this happens, you read it here first!

Leak: Google to Re-Org IBM Style

Synopsis:

I’ve been using AdWords Editor for quite some time now. While working with it two weeks ago, I set up a new campaign for one of our clients, with two ad groups, 180 keywords and 16 ads. When I tried to upload my work, it gave me a fairly meaningless error.

After several attempts to resolve the matter, I picked up the phone and called Google. It turns out that the error was remarkably easy to resolve, yet it took Google two weeks to do so. During this time I was unable to use AdWords editor for that account, nor was I able to upload my work.

I was not happy.

If you’re the sort of person who likes gory details, read on.

Gory Details:

The whole thing was odd. The Check Changes feature said that there were no problems, yet no matter what I did, the changes would not be uploaded.

This was the error message – with the name removed:

Overall summary: Errors discovered in new campaigns: 1
Errors discovered in new Ad Groups: 2
Errors discovered in new keywords: 180
Errors discovered in new text ads: 16

By campaign:

Details for campaign ********
Errors discovered in new Ad Groups: 2
Errors discovered in new keywords: 180
Errors discovered in new text ads: 16

When I called Google, they explained that this would have to be passed on to the technical team, and that they’d send me a form to fill out by email, which I duly completed.

The next day I got confirmation that they’d received my information, and that I would be contacted as soon as the problem was solved.

A day later I was asked for more information, some of which I’d already sent. But I jumped through their hoops anyway.

Oh yes. When I called Google after hearing nothing for a few days, I was initially told that I could probably resolve the matter with a workaround. This made me happy. Here’s more or less how the conversation went:

[Google]: All you need to do is uninstall the software, redownload the latest version and reinstall it. That should fix it.

[Me]: Great. And my data will survive right? I won’t lose my work?

[Google]: (pause) Work? Have you saved changes in AdWords editor?

[Me]: (big pause) Er… yes. That’s why I’ve been calling all this time?

[Google]: Oh right. Yes, you would lose all your work.

[Me]: (gently banging head on wall and monitors) Not much of a workaround really is it?

Five days later I was told that the team was ready to upload the changes on my behalf. But I had to confirm some information that I’d already sent them. In fact I’d exported the data from AdWords editor, so they had all the information they needed. But who cares? It was being resolved. I was happy.

The following day, I received another email from the same support person saying that they’d diagnosed the issue that was causing my problem. Odd. I thought they couldn’t do so, and were going to simply upload my changes.

This is what I was told:

“The ‘********’ Campaign was not loading because you had set an end date of 31/12/2025. At this time, we cannot support end dates later than 31/12/2010. This was preventing the system from accepting the upload.”

I was a little surprised by this, as I have never, ever used this feature. So I most certainly had not set an end date for some 20 years from now! Why would I? I also didn’t understand why the software didn’t just tell me that this was the problem. Do Google have a shortage of capable developers?

I emailed Google, and raised three points:

(1) I never set the campaign date. I have never used this feature, and would never have done so here. This setting was without a doubt somehow generated from within the software.

(2) Why has it taken over two weeks to resolve what should have been a very straightforward issue?

(3) Why does the software not catch this so called error? That strikes me as extremely sloppy programming.

Their reply? They apologised for the inconvenience and told me that they understood my frustration.

Nice. Empathy always works, right?

They also said they understood that the issue took two weeks to resolve, but this was because the technical team were working to resolve the issue.

Eh? How’s that for a sentence that says precisely nothing?

They also told me that they were happy that the issue has been resolved.

It hasn’t. Not even remotely.

I did tell Google that I would be sharing my experiences, and I gave them time to reply. But this just isn’t good enough.

My advice? If you’re using the AdWords Editor, be very, very careful. I spent around an hour and a half entering my data, and then had to wait two weeks. The advice from Google was that I could of course re-enter the information manually through the web interface, but they thought the matter would be resolved in a few days at the most.

So I wouldn’t recommend spending hours entering new data into AdWords Editor. You may find yourself caught up in an issue that should take minutes or hours to resolve, yet leaves you unable to upload your work for weeks. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

From an email just received:

Hello softwarepromotions.com,

I am Sailendu Routray, currently managing a web site about “Website Promotion Services” at: http://www.redamo.com/

I recently find your site http://www.softwarepromotions.com by searching Google for “Website Promotion Services” .  I think our websites have a similar theme, so I am a bit interested in exchanging links.

Followings is the site you have to link:

========================================================================================

URL:  http://www.redamo.com

Desc:  Redamo Studio offers web site promotion services and search engine optimization at affordable prices.

I will be previleged to answer your questions or to receive your comments.

Where to begin?

Stop it. Just stop it.

Bullet points can be a powerful way of conveying a lot of information without having to resort to long, dense paragraphs of text. You often see them on web pages and presentations, but to be honest, they’re usually quite bad. Many people seem to think that you can take any paragraph of text and simply split it into bullet points, and leave it at that. Obviously, that’s not a great idea, but what should you do instead?

Over at Copyblogger, they’ve put together a great post that shows you how to write fascinating bullet points – including some very useful cardinal rules.

My own personal favourite? “Practice parallelism”, which tells you to maintain the same grammatical form throughout the list, but that’s just because it’s a pet peeve of mine. The more useful parts of the post show you how to captivate your readers, and drive them to take action.

Well worth a read!

Little known ways to write fascinating bullet points

So, everyone’s going nuts about the fact that you can now build your very own search engine. It seems like every blog in the universe is reporting on it, but this is how Google  describes it:

“Wouldn’t it be cool if you could easily build a search engine on your blog or website tailored to the topics and areas you know and love the most? You’re not alone if you’d like that — we’ve heard from partners large and small, and users across the web who want access to the Google search platform, and want to customize and make it their own.”

Wouldn’t it be cool? Well, quite frankly, no. Maybe I’m a complete idiot, but I’ve never felt a burning desire to pick out ten or fifteen websites and limit all my searches to them. If I already know what sites I want to search, why not just go there in the first place?

Okay, so I get that the idea is that you “share your expertise” with others by letting them use your very own search engine. And I’m prepared to admit that there might be areas where limiting your results to a select, “expert-picked” number of sites might be useful. But do I want to build my own? No, I really don’t.

I also think it’s worth pointing out that this is really just a new way of dressing up Google Co-op, which they launched back in May and which failed to become the hit they had hoped for.

To be fair, it is supposed to be remarkably easy to build your own engine. If you’re interested in seeing some examples, have a look at RealClimate and TechStuff. But the original problem is still there – anyone can claim that they’re an “expert” and better equipped than me to decide which sites I should trust. But how do I know they’re not just some delusional teenager on the other side of the world?

In other words: don’t expect to see SharewarePromoogle anytime soon. Or ever.

Google offers personal searches

Many of the people who read this blog run their own businesses – and that means that there are probably a million big and small things that only they are aware of. What domains are registered to the business? Where are your important websites hosted? What passwords and usernames are they under? Do you have any assets or funds that other people aren’t aware of?

If something were to happen to you – I’ll let you imagine the details yourself – what would happen to your business? Whether you were simply out of action for a few weeks, or months, is there someone who knows what needs to be done just to keep things running? Or, if you never return, would someone be able to figure out how to either take over or sell everything? Would they know how much it was worth? Where it was insured? Who handles your accounts?

These are serious questions, but they do need an answer. Over at SEOmoz, EGOL has written a very thorough and informative post about all the things you need to consider for a business contingency plan. No, it’s not the most cheerful topic, but like EGOL says, you’ll be glad when you’ve put together your own list and can rest assured that everything is in order.

A Contingency Plan for your Web-Based Business

Aaron Wall of SEO Book has put together an excellent search engine marketing glossary, covering a vast multitude of terms. The range is so wide that it’s worth a look whether you’re a complete novice or a seasoned veteran of search – everything from Google and PDF to Mechanical Turk and Singular Value Decomposition is explained in clear, concise terms.

Head on over and have a look. It’s not only educational, it could also provide you with some great ideas for your own website and marketing efforts.

Search Engine Marketing Glossary