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Really feel your pain and have been there

Never used to have a good word for BT, after they wired up our ISDN system back to front years ago, but more recently they've been pretty good.

We had similar issues to yourself with intermittent outages which was very frustrating, like you we replaced the router, and when the internet was down, the voice line was fine.

We had an engineer on site, and I'm trying for the life of me trying to remember any jargon which may be useful 

He said to us (in laymans terms) the problem is at the exchange, and there is a setting which can adjust the Signal to noise ratio. By default it is set to X, but for us he tried setting it to Y. That was over 3 years ago and we haven't had a single problem since. I've no idea what X and Y are, but X is whatever the normal setting is for SNR at the exchange.

I had to report the fault a number of times, but the winner for us was when they did some diagnostics (magic wand/pixie dust?) while our broadband was down, which prompted them to come out and make the tweak at the exchange.

I did get lots of technobumble and told they shouldn't have to make the adjustment, and every other business in the same building with their own independent BT line was fine. But make the change they did, and touch wood, we've been problem free ever since.

Intermittent broadband is on a par with an unreliable car for frustration and stress factor!

Must be a London thing.

I've yet to have a plumber, sparky or builder refuse a discount for cash 

That's the hilarious thing, it's nothing to do with the company, it's simply the actions of a mum who has taken it upon herself to create an invoice. In fact, by adding the details of the Ski centre, I would have thought she could potentially get into hot water legal wise? 

Great story doing the rounds that made me smile, a 5 year old given an invoice for a friends party noshow 

The little lad in question was double booked by his folks and went to his grannies, and supposedly the father did look for the friends mother to apologise, but couldn't find her.

According to the news, the childs father has been told he will be taken to the small claims court if he doesn't pay the £15.95 invoice.

What I find amusing is how daft things like this polarise opinion and slide out of control.

Having 2 nippers, I do have sympathy on both sides. It seems every weekend there is a party to go to, sometimes 2 in 1 weekend. We've missed parties we said we'd go to because something else has come up, not deliberately, just the stresses of everyday life. Nine times out of ten there are contact details and you can let someone know and apologise.

With nippers, you can expect 1 or 2 to drop out, being ill, double booked, tantrum etc. I can't imagine ever receiving an invoice, and would wet myself laughing if I did get one.

Some of these kiddie parties are starting to get out of hand and you feel like it's a bit of an arms race for little johnny junior, as well as expensive, when there's no need. 

The party in question was being held at a Ski Slope and Snowboard Centre, and the owners have quickly distanced themselves saying this a parental dispute, as they never issue a no show invoice. Even better they are miffed as their name has been cited on the invoice, so it will never get to court anyway.

But anyone with kids knows the golden rule is to try and make your kid fit in, not make your kid standout and paint a big target on them! I wonder how many will turn up to the poor nippers next birthday bash and risk the wrath of mummy from hell.

Do love all the stereotypical media images across various news sites, sad dad and a sad kidde holding up the invoice. Little lad should get an Oscar for his little sad face

As for the mum who sent the invoice, bet she never expected it to pan out like this! Beware dropping a clanger on a slow news day.

Our next party plan is to hire the local community hall, take a stereo, throw a few jam and ham sarnies together, google how to make balloon animals, then have a few rounds of British Bulldog to wear them all out 

So what do you think, was it fair to send an invoice or a moment of over reaction?

Uber is back in the headlines again or never seems to be too far these days!

According to the BBC news this morning, they are promising to create 50,000 jobs across Europe and trying to build bridges with critics which they seem to have plenty of.

They are reportedly now worth $40 billion  which shows how much Amercian investors love to back a good idea. Question is are they making any money yet 

As peace offering and popularity tactic, offering lots of job creation is certainly going to win them over with Governments. I think it will take the competition a bit longer.

So does this have the potential to be the new Google of the Taxi industry? Worldwide dominance and little competition? Or will the Taxi industry wake up and compete?

So you've had 10 clicks, at a cost of £11.18, and at least one of those clicks/leads has turned into a sale.

Fantastic, good result. 

Had a play but not a huge fan of adwords express, but it easier to get going than the full blown adwords. The key to adwords is data. Keep analyzing your data and track your conversions.

Over time you will know exactly which keywords generate you the most conversions, and have a good idea of the cost per click needed for each keyword, and cost per conversion.

At just over a quid a click is a little high for us, but if you are converting 1 in 10 clicks to a decent paid job, then maybe this is spot on for you. 

All the data you need is in front of you. If you get high views and no clicks, your advert needs work. If you get good clicks and no conversions, your landing page is crap or sales process isn't slick if leads are going to a call. If you get good clicks, good conversions and are happy with the cost, then you've cracked it.

The beauty of adwords, it's no-nonsense marketing and really lets you experiment and try new approaches.

Data highlighter is an easy way to add markup and has been out for quite a long time, but it's also a bit of a bodge imho, as only Google can read it. If you use a standard mark up like schema.org or any of the others, they can be read by all the Search Engines, as well as applications, future proofing your site.

Just my theory, but I suspect data highlighter was brought out to address the slow take up of webmasters marking up their sites, and to generate a lot more structured data very quickly. Now the different schemas are maturing, I suspect or wouldn't be surprised if the data highlighter gets dropped in the next 12 - 18 months.

If you are savvy about structured markup and need to validate a page, or new to it and need to do lots of testing, then there is finally a new tool.

The new structured data testing tool seems to be an improvement over the old one which had a tendency to be buggy and throw up some odd error messages.

Like the old one, it's very straightforward to use.

Add in your URL, and let Google analyze your page and see what structured mark up code is on your page, and if it is correctly configured.

Here's the link and an example output:

https://developers.google.com/webmasters/structured-data/testing-tool/

enjoy!

Jans busy doing real work, so just had a hunt around for something humorous and came across this from www.friday-fun.com

Maybe they need one of Centrics courses?

It is nice to see a near continual fall in fuel prices and with supermarkets trying to out do each other, it's nothing but good news for the consumer.

But what about the supply chain and producers that are having to squeeze margins or even forced into bankruptcy?

BP has already announced job cuts and restructuring plans as it deals with the slump in oil prices.

The BBC is reporting today that more than 100 food producers could go bust as a result of falling prices across the various supermarkets and outlets.

Interesting time for the election, with over 3.5 million working in the food supply chain and half million workers in the UK Oil and Gas Industry. No doubt this will fuel the political debate, maybe take some pressure off the immigration debate?

Just shows what a pendulum our economy is and how hard (or impossible) it is to balance.

Is anyone's business directly negatively affected by the lowered cost of living? Or have you had to factor in any marketing or strategy changes? Maybe targeting  a different audience, looking to explore new sectors etc?