08.22.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:00 am by altersage
Let me tell you about my awesome weekend away. Lol @ my title. I bet you were hoping that I would be name dropping in this post didn’t you – especially with last week’s merger and all 
Joey and I decided to take a long weekend trip to Durban last weekend. It tied in very well as Monday was my Birthday. (Belated wishes are welcome )
Our accommodation was stunning we could not have wished for more. We stayed at the Royal Sibaya Hotel which is just 10 min north of Umhlanga Rocks, and about 20 min outside of Durban city centre. We stayed in a beautiful suite and were treated like royalty.
We spent the weekend outdoors cruising around in an X-trail. The weather was gorgeous and we visited Ushaka Marine World, Natal sharks board, the Japanese gardens, Umhlanga Nature Reserve and discovered Durban’s “Kloof street†equivalent which is Cape Town’s trendy street of sidewalk cafes and cocktail lounges which is called “Florida roadâ€.
My highlight (apart from our accommodation and Aqua Restaurant) was Ushaka Marine World. We spent an entire day there and watched a dolphin, a seal and a penguin show and went snorkelling with the sharks. Well, almost.
The snorkel pool is filled with about 20 different varieties of fish and 2 sharks. Among the fish that are in the tank are barred flagtail, convict surgeon lesser guitarfish, bigeye stumpnose, bonefish, convict surgeon, various ray, dusky damsel, elongate surgeon, epaulette surgeon, flathead mullet, goldbar, yellowfin surgeon and two of these. Although not dangerous to humans these nurse sharks are still quite intimidating as they skim past right below you. The most exciting part was to swim through the cave and as you hit the back of the cave wall there is a window that separates you from the big boys. We stood watching as Hammerheads and Raggies were within arms reach, separated from us by a piece of acrylic glass.
Check out Joey’s post to view some of our other photos from our weekend at Sibaya.
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08.16.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:20 pm by altersage
Been playing around with Yahoo! Site Explorer today. Nothing groundbreaking and very similar to Google Sitemaps in fact.
The one difference is that you don’t have to sign-in to view or access this information, however should you sign-in you will have access to more information. The standard information is almost like having a dashboard with the various “operators” information readily available for any given site. For example: In this dashboard the “site” and the “link” operator information is immediately displayed. Should you sign-in you also have access to tracking feeds and additional information about the site.
In their words:
Site Explorer allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search. View the most popular pages from any site, dive into a comprehensive site map, and find pages that link to that site or any page.
A comprehensive Site Explorer help section is available here.
I am really looking forward to taking a good proper bash at this, as in terms of SEO, Yahoo! has been slack to follow-up and “recognise” on site SEO of late…
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08.08.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:53 pm by altersage
Things have been a little crazy on this side since I returned from attending the Online Marketing Conference in Jozi last week. I’ve had to catch up on my Inbox, client work, new proposals, and various other proposals that have now come through as well. Needless to say I am very content in my state of “busi-ness†– which is a clever little play on words “busy†and “business†; )
It was a two day conference starting on the Wednesday. I managed to get the earliest flight out on the Wednesday morning, rushed from Joburg International Airport to the Rosebank hotel where the conference was held and made it just in time to only have missed the first speaker.
I was pleasantly surprised with the delegates that attended the conference. Mostly all from top notch companies pertaining to either health care, banking, wireless network providers, tourism and even a couple of SME’s that could afford the conference rates
I was however utterly shocked at what it costs for transfers between hotels and even to the airport! To put it mildly, it would have been cheaper to rent a car for the two days than it totalled for all of 4 transfers!!
All in all attending the conference was definitely worth every penny, as it was mostly a great networking opportunity for me. My other objective was to gauge the Joburg market in terms of receptiveness to SEO and online promotion in general. I am quite satisfied with my findings and may even be spending some more time in Jozi over the next few months. I am also looking forward to presenting a similar conference for Cape Town delegates perhaps in a couple of month’s time. After all I have the hands-on, proven experience and (just as a cherry on the cake), headed the SEO teams for two of the key-speakers at this conference.
The sessions were quite broad:
- The next big thing in online and what that means to your business – Acceleration
- Affiliate Marketing – ForgeBusiness
- Email Marketing Programs – Acceleration
- Organic Searching – ClickThinking
- Made to Measure – ThirtyFour
- Reaching the Teen Market – Sweet16
- The Rise of the Blogosphere – Mail & Guardian
- Online Marketing in SA – incuBeta
- SA’s Online Users – Media24 Digital
- Broadband and Advertising – MyBroadBand
- Maximising Online Revenue – BidOrBuy
- webPR – Quirk
- Media in Context – Thirty Four
- Spreading your Online Business - MediaSpace
The two sessions that were of most interest to me were:
- Email Marketing - Acceleration
- Affiliate Marketing - ForgeBusiness
It was a rather bizarre feeling walking in on the Wednesday morning, and giving a few people quite a surprise with my presence.
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