SEO News » Website of the week

A New Way to Shop and Buy Clothes Online

Sam — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:25:35 +0000

The problem with shopping online, is that it’s not really like shopping for real. Your searches are restricted to what the search engines throw up or which stores you can remember to visit direct (which are usually the same as what the search engines throw up).

Shopping online Today

Then when you go to a single store, you have to rely on the quality of their site and their imagery. And if you’re anything like me (unlikely) you’re not totally sure what you’re after, but you will know the look you’re going for, but expecting the right item when you type in “shirt” “shoes” or “bag” is usually disappointing.

Visual Search from Pixsta

Pixsta Visual Search

The Pixsta powered visual search at Empora.com changes all of that. You click on an image which then performs a likeness search and the clever technology returns similar features of new products from the image you selected. Then you can window shop though all your favourite brands and stores whilst searching by the style and colours that catch your eye. All with no description required – just point and click on the images you think are close to your ideal and narrow it down that way. See here when you buy women’s bags online.

The idea is simple: instead of relying on tags that may or may not have been added to the images, we try to understand what the image depicts based on a pixel-wise analysis.

Have a go and see how easy it is to buy women’s clothes online and get the clothes you want, be it designer items or finding a total outfit that suits you – all in one place. You know you want to.

Well Done Empora and Pixsta.

The Daily Show – Funniest show on TV and Online

Sam — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 10:49:39 +0000

We pride ourselves in Britain for having a great sense of humour and producing “The world’s best” TV comedy. Well if there was a Funniest Show award, it would not go to a British show, i’d certianly give it to the Daily Show.

The Americans can make a damn fine sitcom, like Friends, Frasier and er Different Strokes. But recently we have behaved all arrogantly about the fact that they have to re-make and Americanise shows like The Office, Men Behaving Badly and Coupling, with differing success. Where has this opinion come from?

Something the Americans also do pretty well with, and always have, is the topical news satire show. Yes we’ve got Have I Got News for You, which is excellent, but it has been holding the flag on its own for some time. Danny Baker and Chris Evans have always wanted to re-create the David Letterman show for Britain, the nightly comical take on news issues followed by a chat and band-type format. But never succeeded where the Americans have several nightly versions.

Best Website of the Week – The Daily Show

But the best of them all is the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Like in the 80s and 90s in Britain we had a huge flux of left wing comedians that were queueing up to take a swipe at the tories, and if anything Margaret Thatcher gave us a rich pool of funny talent in this country. It is the same with the Daily Show. Jon Stewart was classed as George W Bush’s main oppoistion where Al Gore and John Kerry failed. It is like an hilarious version of Newsnight that picks holes in Government policy, broadcasting and anyone that makes spurious claims in public generally – especially on the other American TV Networks.

I was thinking that we needed an English version of it, but then thought what’s the point? Who could do a better job than this? The Best Website of the Week and the Best TV show currently on our sets. You can watch The Daily Show on More 4 at 8pm Tuesday to Friday.

Make your own album

Jon — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:05:26 +0000

As seen in Facebook and recently in the Guardian Newspaper, you too can make your own Album Cover, Band Name and Album title. All provided for you by useful links to randomly generated pages on big favourite sites – check ours out.

Dan's

Getting a band name
Your band name can be cool, to the point or completely obscure using this Random Wiki tool

(is this how the Kaiser Chief’s got theirs?)

Getting an album title!
Take the last four or five words from the last quote on the page, your album can sound really clever – from this random quote tool

Get some album art!
Use the image thrown up using this Flickr tool, which generates random images without copyright restrictions.
Thanks Guardian

Check out ours:

Sam's

Mel's

Andrew's

One of the best Football Websites

Jon — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:28:33 +0000

The best football websites for me have to have a reasonable amount of intelligent argument, banter, unbiased accounts of games and the best quality football writing and journalism. My favourite football blog isn’t even about my favourite football team.

For the purpose of this blog piece i won’t even bother telling you who i suppport, but let’s say that I have not found a club blog (as yet) that offers a well rounded account of my team’s ups and downs and huge amounts spent by the manager. I am by no means inviting scrutiny here for the calibre or expertise of any player. Infact, the speed that football blogs revert to abuse in the comments section is another reason to despise them generally.

The Stretford End

Maybe for all those reasons that’s why I feel happier reading other team’s blogs. It’s actually quite interesting hearing about Arsenal, Newcastle or Spurs and their inner issues and the concerns each team has. Plus I have tried reading the smaller team blogs, but despite the reality of their daily travails, I can’t get excited or emotional about the fact that the biggest news was a sighting of a local radio DJ.

I’m an avid Guardian reader which has a brilliant sports section (especially the cricket). However I haven’t added to the football blogs for ages, partly because by the time I have read the piece there are 100s of comments, usually abusive with the the usual footbal stereotypes. And if i wanted to read abusive comments i’d spend 5 minutes at You Tube.

So having a well behaved audience is again another important aspect to me when looking for my favourite football blog. Can it really be that hard? You betcha.

The Best Football Website

So here it is, the Best of the football websites (that i have seen) is..drum roll… The Stretford End.

Check it out, it’s just good. Yeah the webmaster reckons he is really unbiased, but obviously lives and breathes Manchester United and given the chance would call all his children (even the girls) Eric, Ryan or Norman. But the journalism and analysis is of the highest quality. Pieces about formations and football strategies are rarely equalled even on the bigger football sites.

So for a small blog about a big team, where the competition (in numbers) is vast, this blog still stands out. So much so that the Times recently mentioned his good work and quality journalism.

So Stretty keep up the good work, even if you still go to sleep with a Red Devils pillow case, I am happy to read your quality articles and give you only our second ever “Best website of the week” award.

Author Sam

Favourite Website of the Week – Blip.fm

Jon — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 13:10:03 +0000

Everyone is talking about Twitter at the moment – The free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time. For those that don’t know it basically lets you update your status, as with Facebook and tell your followers / fans / friends what you are up to.

Some people simply write “just got up. Have a hangover” and leave it at that. Others write more surreal comments. Or if you are Barack Obama you write some quite important stuff like “Just became President of the World’s most powerful country” etc etc. More amusingly a mate of mine told a beautiful story on Feb 14th, Valentines morning where he started…

9.30am “You can call me McLovin, today”

Then went on…

10.42am “The postman hasn’t arrived yet, this is getting stressful”

12.04pm “I’m now in the dog house, my girlfriend isn’t talking to me”

This is a great use of Twitter, but i have not really seen anything else that has urged me to repeatedly visit it and give the world (or my handful of friends and other SEO companies who have become my “friends”) an update of my day’s movements. To me this one sentence simply isn’t enough, and with the fear of sounding like a certain newspaper’s curmudgeon journalism, “what is the point?”.

So this brings me on to the inaugral IP-SEO…

Website of the Week

It’s Blip.FM. I love it. Basically it gives you the freedom to be a DJ of your very own radio station. Play whatever tracks you like, as often as you like – For Free. And when you play a new track known as a Blip, you can leave a comment such as “this goes out to the South London Massive” or whatever.

Blip FM

So it is like Twitter, but with a unique, personalised soundtrack. People follow you becuase they like the tracks that you are playing and want to hear more, not because they want to know how much you drank last night. Plus if you really want, you can link it to Twitter as well (without the music) so there is no need to visit both.

Barack Obama on Blip instead of Twitter

So if Mr Obama was on Blip.FM instead of Twitter he could therefore tell us what he is up to, but give us a track to help us understand what he is feeling, so for example “I have been elected as President of the USA” And he could have “I’ve got the Power” by Snap. or “Everyone’s a winner” by Hot Chocolate. John McCain could have had “Heaven knows I’m miserable now” by The Smiths or “Loser by Beck. I could carry on, but you get the point.

You can also put your radio station on your own website, have a favourite few Blips on a loop. Check it out and spin those disks.

Author Sam