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Think Visibility 3 Review (March 2010)
March 17, 2010
This past weekend I packed my bags and headed down to Leeds for the Think Visibility 3 conference, as the name indicates, this is the third such event and the first of two in 2010. The whole idea behind these one-day conferences (organised by Dom Hodgson and his team) is that they cover “the things that usually get left behind in the web design process” and therefore typically covers topics such as SEO, social media, affiliate marketing and branding.
The venue itself remained the same as that used for the Think Visibility 2 conference in Sept 2009; the Alea Casino (near the Royal Armouries museum) in a very smart and clean Clarence Dock area of Leeds. Upon arrival to the event we received our ID badges and just from that you know that you’re in for an event with a bit of character – the organisers had only gone and created our very own “Twitter Top Trumps” from the statistics of our Twitter accounts! These made for a great talking point during the whole event as you met up with different people that you already knew and even more importantly with people you didn’t – this was a great way to break the ice I thought, so well done to the Think Visibility team for coming up with that idea!
Continue reading »Hodge On The Run…For Charity! – Jan 2010 (Video)
February 25, 2010
No we’re not talking about a Prison Break-style fugitive being on the run, no this is Dom “The Hodge” Hodgson who has set himself a challenge for the year 2010, other than working on his various projects such as organising Think Visibility 2010 and much like he set himself one for 2009 (which was to blog everyday on The Hodge blog). However, this year it’s more of a physical challenge, specifically he’ll be doing a series of runs during the course of the year and raising money for charity along the way.
Think Visibility 3 Preview – Final Speaker Announced! (March 2010)
January 26, 2010
That’s right, Think Visibility is coming back bigger and better in 2010 with the Leeds-based Think Visibility 3 conference that covers “the things that usually get left behind in the web design process”. Therefore, if you’re interested in blogging, SEO, affiliate marketing, PPC when it comes to your websites, then this is definitely an event for you.
You may get the opportunity to attend quite a few of these kind of events if you’re based in the south, especially around London, but obviously there’s less of these available here in the north, so if you’re based up here, then here’s your chance to attend a conference without having to travel so far as you might normally have to, plus it’s also takes place on a Saturday, so you don’t even have to take a day off work! Think Visibility 3 is taking place on the 13th March 2010 at the Alea Casino Conference Centre in Leeds, West Yorkshire and tickets are priced at £119 (cheaper than some other similar conferences).
Continue reading »Merry Christmas Everyone!
December 24, 2009
Just wanted to publish a quick post wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas from us all here at Zath, which is actually our third Christmas since I personally started blogging here at Zath.co.uk!
This year has really flown by, things have been really busy here in the last few months and moving in the right direction! We’ve got lots of exciting developments and plans for 2010, so we hope that you keep on coming back to the site, be sure that you’ve subscribed to our RSS feed, become a fan on Facebook and/or follow Zath on Twitter.
Continue reading »Growing Importance Of Geographical Location On The Internet
November 22, 2009
Wordpress is one of the biggest blogging platforms on the planet with over 7.5 million bloggers using their hosted service. Recently, they rolled out geo-tagging, which allows you to label your blog and blog posts by location, with the promise of new features coming soon.
The ability to search by area as well as “showing the location of your commenters, the location of poll votes, a live map view of blog updates on WordPress.com, or an annual report showing you where your posts were written and where your comments came from” will gradually be implemented and highlight the growing importance of location in the digital age.
Continue reading »Windows Live Essentials Review: Writer (Blogging Client)
November 20, 2009
If you run a blog of your own, you may will be interested to know that Windows Live Essentials ships with a very capable blog editor called Windows Live Writer. When you start Writer for the first time, you’ll need to set Writer up to publish to your blog, and that’s virtually any blog service you may use, not just Microsoft’s ‘Live Spaces’.
You can set it up to publish to Live Spaces, SharePoint and ‘Other blog service’ which includes Blogger and WordPress. Once you’ve selected whichever applies to you, just input the requested information and hit next. For a service like WordPress, you need your URL and username / password, whereas for a Windows service like spaces, you just need your Windows Live ID and Password.
Continue reading »Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards 2009 Nomination for Zath
October 27, 2009
That’s right! I’ve been nominated for an award in Computer Weekly’s annual blog awards, specifically in the category of “Individual IT Professional Male“.
It’s now over 2.5 years since I started up this blog here on Zath covering various aspects of technology, gadgets and gaming and in that time there’s certainly been highs and lows in writing and running this blog, but it’s certainly nice to get this kind of recognition by being nominated for a blog award from what is one of the top technology publications out there!
Continue reading »London Nude Tech Calendar (LDNnudetech) – “Shut Up And Take Off All Your Clothes!”
October 23, 2009
The more this LDNnudetech calendar debate goes on, the more I’m just laughing inside. Laughing because people can get really uptight about the silliest of things and generally laughing because people assume they know more than others and feel the need to pontificate and/or judge because of it. The Evening Standard is behind it and so is the Telegraph. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s simple; 24 successful, hardworking men and women in the London tech scene have posed nude (naughty bits covered) for a calendar, of which there will only be 5000 copies made. All of the proceeds will then be going towards Take Heart India; a youth-run charity that has IT-based projects in India for blind and disabled students.
The main point of argument some seem to keep having is that people, especially women, don’t need to be taking off their clothes in order to make a point or raise money for charity. They need to use their brains, obviously. However, on the same vein, it appears it’s completely acceptable for men to do whatever they like. This argument has never and will never ring true for me for the simple fact that if you look around you, sex, in some form or other, is everywhere. Why are people still so outraged about this? I would’ve thought that, by now, it was quite clear to see that we actually quite like nudity and naked flesh – and that we’re not living in the 1950s! Both men and women can, and like to, look good naked. And, we like looking at them.
Continue reading »a4u Expo London 2009 Conference Review
October 20, 2009
You may have recently read my a4u Expo preview which I wrote after I managed to secure a ticket (rather luckily) in a competition over at Kieron Donoghue’s blog called here.org.uk – well I’m now back home after attending the event at ExCel conference centre in London’s docklands and I can now report back on what was my first multi-day web-related conference.
The only other conferences that I’ve attended for the online marketing industry have been the Think Visibility conferences that have been run in the relatively local location of Leeds, so I was expecting a4u Expo to be somewhat different not only given its size but also the fact that it’s more focussed around online affiliate marketing. However, as I was to find, these days that also involves a lot of work in terms of analytics, social media, generating useful and unique content for visitors and ensuring that your website is optimally set up for search engine optimisation – all interesting stuff!
Continue reading »a4u Expo London 2009 Preview
October 11, 2009
The a4u Expo will be taking this week on the 13th and 14th October and I’ll be there in attendance thanks to winning a competition that Kieron Donoghue was running over at his blog called here.org.uk to win a free a4u Expo ticket worth £349.
The a4u Expo is a big 2 day affiliate marketing conference and exhibition being held at the ExCel Centre in London that features over 40 conference sessions and no doubt some tough decisions will need to be made as to which ones you attend as there are some great speakers and sessions being held across both days.
Continue reading »
