This is a worrying time for the British travel industry as the recession recovery stalls and other travel companies go bust. On the 11th August 2010 Sun 4 U Limited left many sun searchers stranded as they too went out of business.  The highest profile travel company to recently go under is Goldtrail Travel Limited. Goldrail specialised in cheap trips to Greece and Turkey, and had gone into administration, leaving an estimated 16,000 people overseas. Some of those trapped in Turkey have even been extorted for more money by Hotel Mangers –who have been advised by Goldrail to recoup their losses from those who have nowhere else to go as Goldrail can’t pay the hotels.

A quote from a distraught holiday maker in the Guardian describes the situation:

“They told us we would have to pay £25 per room per night. Why should we, when we’ve already paid? We only booked our holiday two weeks ago and paid £1,000 for it then. You’re not telling me they didn’t have an inkling Goldtrail was in trouble two weeks ago.”

Goldrail were previously the source of many complaints on the BBC show Watchdog and it comes to no surprise that they went out of business.

This is a bad time for the travel industry as people are choosing to stay in Britain for their holidays due to having less income to spend and the exchange rate of other currencies being generally bad against the Great British Pound. We will all be keeping out for the next expected travel business to go under. Where will it all end?

We believe that the best and the worse in this area has already been done already and now we just carefully watch where this is going. We are web people who are aware what this type of deal may mean for us vs huge corporations. For now it looks like another Googlenet story which may or may not be a huge problem… stay tuned for more news from the Verizon-Google-Obama Administration front.

Net Neutrality The Worst up to date:
The confusion in the US after FCC vs Comcast over Net Neutrality case (2008-2010) which ended in early April 2010. Federal Communication Commission fined Comcast for blocking BitTorrent usage. Comcast won only because they proved in the U.S Court of Appeals that the FCC has no authority to give such a fine. Imagine: broadband service isn’t currently defined as Telecommunication! – Shocked? - me too!
Of course this confusion allows companies to talk about possible deals.

The best on Net Neutrality front up to date:
The Paccific Telegraph Act from 1860 says “Massages received from any individual, company, corporation… shall be impartially transmitted in order of their reception”. This says it all and if current congress will be able to pass an update to this act and extend it to broadband services we are all good. Of course before this happens we have months of lobbying and pressures on Congressman.

The biggest unknown on Net Neutrality up-to-date:
Obama’s Administration - which is trying to patch law and ensure Net Neutrality for the future. Is the president strong enough to gain support from US Congress? Is he interested enough to make an effort? We don’t know.

So we have the typical pressure, lobbying and race between Government/Regulators and Industry itself, which is going to make sure trade standards are faster than regulator’s law.

Google-Verizon Deals and Net Neutrality Guards

Facebook Fan Sticker on the side of the coach - well done!

OK, so what if they didn’t update their stickers and they still have “Fans” instead of “Likers“? But who cares?

“The Golden MIM” Award for July goes to Olympian Coaches. Well done!

Please let us know when you find some other samples of holistic approach to marketing!

Using Ad Extensions

Sometimes providing additional information in your Ads is necessary in order to get the best response, and Google Ad Extensions does exactly that. For example, when you’re trying to describe a product, including a picture could make the message more relevant and valuable. Or when trying to describe a location, an Ad that only contains text can be confusing. In this case, having a map can help someone find your location more easily.

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Available Ad Extensions

There are only a handful of Ad Extensions available to everyone at the moment, like Locations (as mentioned above), Click-to-Call (for mobile devices) & Sitelinks. But in future all of the following Ad Extensions will be available:

• Seller Rating Extensions
• Product Extensions
• Video Extensions
• Multiple Addresses for Location Extensions

Currently these Ad Extensions are available in limited release & limited beta only so it’s unlikely that you’d see these in your account yet but we’ve spotted some already so they are definitely out there! Take a look at this example of Adwords Product Extensions:

If you were lucky enough to be part of the beta testing, or currently using the limited release, we would really like to hear from you!

So which one is it?

It was not the first time the Daily Telegraph have cocked-up their headlines. But let us not bring up the large hadron collider again, shall we?

And we thought D-Day was all about remembrance? Silly us!!

At least they gave everyone a reasonable and in-depth explanation…

Why did “Become a Fan” change to “Like”?
“To improve your experience and promote consistency across the site, we’ve changed the language for Pages from “Fan” to “Like.” We believe this change offers you a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which you are interested. “ - Perhaps they just got bored…

Let Facebook know how you feel about the change from Become a Fan to Like - Vote in our Become a Fan vs Like Poll…

On March 8 2010 the US State Department announced that it would ease sanctions against Cuba, Iran and Sudan to increase citizens’ access to online communication tools and open people up to free speech and information to the greatest extent possible. But Cuban President Raul Castro’s government said the objective of the decision was to use these services as tools of subversion and destabilization, according to statement from the Cuban Foreign Ministry.

The statement added; “This shows once again that the US government is not interested in softening its policy nor in developing normal relations with Cuba, but only in developing a network that facilitates its subversive actions in our nation.”

The US Treasury Department modified sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Sudan to allow exports by US companies of services related to Web browsing, blogging, email, instant messaging, chat, social networking and photo/movie sharing like Flickr and YouTube.

Cuban authorities exercise strict control over the Internet, blocking communication sites like Skype and blogs that are critical of the government.

Few Cubans have access to the Internet, which cannot be installed in private residences without express permission from authorities.

Where access is available in places like hotels, the cost often eight dollars an hour in a country where a monthly salary runs around 20 dollars, is prohibitively high.

You can read this post by Susan and all other comments in the discussion here

In mid 2009 we saw a lot of websites having their PageRank changed especially after May upgrade to Google Algorithm. PageRank which you see on toolbars and other online PageRank checkers have become irrelevant, giving inconsistent results ever since Google introduced updates to their algorithm. This change resulted in pages giving more power to people regarding relevancy. During the last 18 months Google have introduced the following tools/features which had a direct impact on the PageRank concept.

The new tools include:

• Introduction of SearchWiki - a tool that makes search even more useful in users daily lives.
• Introduction of Real-time Search - a tool that displays Twitter posts in real-time for certain Google searches.
• Introduction of a More Show Options tab for different types of searches, included advanced Personalised Searchfor all users.

Although people believe that Google is using some sort of modified PageRank to rank websites this is not the one which you can see on the Google Toolbar and other online readers.

PageRank is a trademarked and patented technology which is now 12 years old, of course in the visible form seen in the Google Toolbar.

So, does PageRank matter anymore?

We’ like you to share your opinions on this…

It’s unlikely we’ll see the same kind of resistance from Facebook users this time as the changes seem only very minor, yet still annoying if you’re a firm believer of the saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. However, the changes we’ve seen were pretty good, from a technical point of view at least, because it’s now faster to do some things such as view your message inbox, notifications and requests (the icons of which now sit sandwiched between the Facebook logo and the now rather elongated search bar), which has also been repositioned to the centre.

The changes are in testing and only visible at this moment on certain accounts, which suggests the update may not even happen but it’s likely that we’ll at least hear more about this soon.

Share your thoughts of the first new 2010 Facebook layout - a good or bad start to the new year?