Backup Anytime

Backupanytime content being stolen.

I have “Backupanytime” set up as a Google alert term so I receive notifications about mention of Backupanytime on the web. Being a small business, many of these relate to content on our own site and I am familiar with them before Google alerts me. Some of them relate to our blog being added to someones blogroll (and this is appreciated) while others are as a consequence of a blog post somewhere by us or about us.

I received one today of a totally different type. I recognised the content. Indeed I wrote it. The location was not known to me. The location was http://onlinebackupsolutions.blogspot.com
I had a look at it. Realising that there were other incidents of our content on the site and that they in the main linked back to a competing online backup company I had a very close look indeed.
Here are some examples of what I found.
http://onlinebackupsolutions.blogspot.com/2008/12/features-and-limitations-of-backup.html
Supposedly Posted by Rachel Joseph at 3:24 PM

The above is not just like original content from our site but even has “Backupanytime” in the content! It comes from http://www.backupanytime.com/blog/2008/07/16/50-things-you-should-know-about-online-backup/

Here is another example.

http://onlinebackupsolutions.blogspot.com/2008/11/compression.html
Posted by Rachel Joseph on 21 November
This originally comes from http://www.backupanytime.com/blog/2008/07/16/50-things-you-should-know-about-online-backup/
They must like that post.
And here is another one
http://onlinebackupsolutions.blogspot.com/2008/11/encryption-and-its-importance_17.html
is also taken from our original content on
http://www.backupanytime.com/blog/2008/07/16/50-things-you-should-know-about-online-backup/
and again Posted by Rachel Joseph, this time November 17th.  She must know this original Backupanytime blog post off by heart. It is indeed a long but apt and interesting post which took considerable time to complete. Rachel has a much more efficient approach. She just steals my content and splits it up to make multiple posts. Content theft is despicable. It is so mean.
They all in the main lead back to http://sosonlinebackup.com/

I called that company and got an answering machine. I left a detailed message.
I will follow this up no matter what it takes.

I am also reporting this to blogger and I am reporting the adsense account. These reports involve snail mail. I assume this is to avoid misreporting. I expect therefore that these reports (especially since mine is detailed and undeniable) will be taken very seriously. Data protection is difficult to apply to data you want to make public througha website but which you want to be attributable to the correct  source. They are real costs in producing content. Why should someone else have reduced I.T. costs through plagiarism? There are no acceptable circumstances I am aware of. If someone wants to enlighten me, feel free.

I would appreciate any assistance on this.

In addition I want to track Rachel Joseph. Firstly to see if she actually exists and secondly to see if she has posted our content anywhere else.

Any comments, advice or opinions welcome.

John

3 Ireland win national broadband contract.

Three.ie or simply “3″ have won the government contract to provide broadband which will connect the unconnected in Ireland. This is one part of the national broadband scheme. The department of communications reckon that circa 10% of Ireland is outside of any broadband coverage. This does not address however much of the remaining 90% which can avail of broadband of low speed, high contention and very high cost.

The system to be used by “3″ is their own HSDPA 3G solution. There are critics (as with all systems) but my experience of this system (I have limited experience of using it on the move) suggests that while it is obviously inferior to cable it is at worst very usable, not expensive for general browsing and simple to configure to the point of being almost self configuring.

One of the benefits of using the service in isolated areas (where it worked) was the lack of contention due to low user numbers in said areas. This must be a concern as any success in increasing uptake numbers will increase contention.

The communications minister, Eamon Ryan has been quoted as saying broadband availability is ‘central to our economic recovery.’ It is a clear case of fattening the pig the day before the market (maybe even during the bidding) but any progress is welcome. The lack of urgency with which broadband availability, speed and contention has been addressed has been a great cause of confusion amongst business people for some time. Broadband has the power to assist with decentralisation, reducing the rush to under serviced cities and allowing green, sustainable enterprise to flourish in rural areas.

I have looked for information on subsidies, scope and time-lines for this contract but have failed to find anything clear-cut regarding any of these questions. I will add or track-back when further information becomes available.

All in all, this is good news. A plan is in place. A suitable service and provider have been identified and selected. The deciding factors regarding the success of this contract will be the level of service, the strength of support, the extent of the subsidy and the passing on of this subsidy in full to the consumer.

We hope this gets more coverage for all the right reasons.

If Microsoft was a bank its’ products wouldn’t crash!

Two things everyone knows.
1. Microsoft is a huge (understatement) worldwide software company.
2. World banking is in a horrifying state of flux (understatement no.2) at present.

Two things you may or may not know.
1. Microsoft has a finance division aptly if unimaginatively called Microsoft Financing.
2. They are at present in limited circumstances providing 0% financing!

Whats the catch? Here it is.
You must be a new purchaser of specific Microsoft Customer Relationship Management and Dynamics solutions. The financing period will be three years. You must take the offer some time between today (19th November 2008) and 20th March 2009. You must be credit approved. Your purchase must be a minimum of  $30,000 and a max of $1,000,000.

Katrina Braund, (Microsoft Finance dev. manager) will be better placed to give the green light to finance applicants than many major financial institutions. Indeed the financing division of Microsoft which doubled business in the past year is likely to do more so in the next twelve months despite the common near closing of books at traditional finance sources.

The Microsoft finance division (and finance divisions at other major software and software as a service providers) originally came about as a consequence of a reluctance of mainstream finance houses to finance these offerings.

Microsoft are obviously well positioned to offer finance for their own products given the considerable markup which reduces risk. This will remain welcome in the software market. Could it tempt Microsoft to expand it’s finance offerings beyond it’s own products? Not likely but always possible.

Geansai gorm. What did I learn?
I wouldn’t consider myself a fan of Damien Mulley. If you are in Ireland and blog you will know all about him. He is ubiquitous in Irish blogs. Anyway, where was I. I am not a fan. Indeed I have found Mulley strangely unavailable (even to answer a repeatedly asked question) to amateur bloggers like myself but quick to pull the verbal trigger should someone dare to venture an opinion which differs from what he has freely spoken. I consider much of his commentary (such as the Hardwood Restaurant review) to be abrasive and damaging even when people genuinely try to engage and communicate in a positive manner. So much so that I expect many of his apologetic respondents wish they didn’t reply at all. People however are complicated and dismissing them entirely on the basis of specific events or differences of opinion can serve only to exclude yourself from some positives. He can actually be generous of spirit and use his blog to point to social wrongs. God forbid however that the same woman in this story should on the day she received the H.S.E. letter happen to serve up a meal to Mulley with an attitude, in a manner or above a timescale which wasn’t acceptable. An example of something I like about Mulley is his fresh thinking. I much prefer this to his belief in free speech applying to aggressiveness of speech. This fresh thinking coupled with his blog following can (on occasion) be conducive to producing web marvels. An example of this is the Geansai Gorm competition.

This competition interested me as I had never come across an SEO race with a level playing field. The key was the requirement of a new domain and in addition the need to use keywords which up to then would be uncompetitive.

Granted, some entrants will have contacts for links and even control over powerful domains but these tools combined with the knowledge of when and where to use or not use them are surely part of an entrants skill set from a potential client view point.

The results so far are interesting. I considered joining for a while for fun and chickened out. Not because I feared I would not come first. I knew that I wouldn’t win. But because I didn’t like the idea of coming in below midstream. Somewhat akin to lining up against the wall as a kid to be picked for football, not expecting to be picked first but praying you would be ahead of centre. I now regret not entering as any knowledge I gain from the competition is third hand and I can’t engage in any trial and error.

I did however join in to a limited extent by supporting one of the entrants. I showed my hand early on with regard to my support for Paul Savage. My reason for supporting Pauls Geansai Gorm website was his work in resolving a problem I had with Google some time back.

Anyway, less about Paul and Mulley. This post is not to thank Paul. I have already done that and it was a commercial transaction. This post is not about exacerbating or resolving my own issues with Mulley. I want to be neither “Mulleycoddled” nor “Mulleyfied”.

This post is about what I have learned from the competition and a call to SEO experts, participating or otherwise to assist with putting the list of tasks in an order of importance or weighing the relationships between specific tasks or indeed removing them from the list and adding others.

Here (in no particular order as of yet) are the SEO factors I believe to be important.
The individual list entries may be short and brief. This however is no reflection on the amount of work they require.

1. Good content (original)
2. Prevalence of keywords in domain
3. Number of words in domain.
4. Domain extension.
5. Number of links in.
6. Quality of links in.
7. Location of hosting.
8. Use of Google maps.
9. Proper implementation of site maps.
10. General use of Google Webmaster tools.
11. registration with major search engines.
12. Age of domain.
13. Frequently updated content.
14. Correct meta and alt descriptions.
15. Well managed keyword usage.
16. Blog implementation.
17. Use of social media.

I am beginning to wonder if near complete overall SEO is a financially viable option for small business. Realistically, even with strong management it is very hard to put time weights on these factors as they relate to each other regarding any order of importance.
Even after a generous once off investment one could spent near unlimited time on any of a number of these factors. It would appear to me that strong SEO management from a cost management viewpoint has to be about outcomes and not activities.
In other words, an ambition to achieve a specific page rank for specific keywords may be provided at a reasonable cost but a requirement to keep a site in perfect condition is an ongoing time consuming process rather than an event.

Also (and I am meandering now) is there an example of a “near perfect website” from an SEO viewpoint which most web developers can agree on? Is the measure of SEO simply achieving that number one spot at all costs or are there examples of tacky number one achievers which a worthy web marketer would not be proud of?

I would really appreciate some expert feedback on this. Apologies also for the general usage of the term SEO as I am sure many will see this as one factor and not relevant to many list entries as they may relate to SEM etc. I know I put much of this incorrectly but you know what I mean.

In short. Can you add to the list? Would you remove from the list? Would you dare attempt to list all or some of this list in order of importance?

Go ahead, that’s what I am hoping you will do.

Thanks
John

Vembu StoreGrid announce Cloud AMI (Amazon Machine Instance)

Hot on the heels of the RBS announcement of Amazon cloud compatibility, Vembu have announced  their integration. These announcements are not a reaction to each other but more evidence of a general shift to Amazon cloud compatibility.

The Vembu Technologies press release states “StoreGrid Cloud AMI would be instantiated in Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2)” and goes on to explain that “an Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) would be mounted as the back end storage for StoreGrid.”

These changes add another option regarding a way of doing things for service providers. Many, possibly most providers will retain their own private data centre space. Amazon comes with some advantages and possible disadvantages which in brief are as follows.

Possible advantages for service providers of using Amazon cloud computing integration.
1. Recognised international player storing data.
2. Very competitive pricing despite increases by most non Amazon data centres.
3. Amazon is a storage giant and partnership with them should bring efficiencies.
4. Guaranteed up-time.

Possible disadvantages for service providers using Amazon integration.
1. Significant dependence on one entity.
2. Entire business model based on Amazon system and pricing stability.
3. Somewhat complicated up and down transfer costs which are difficult to control.
4. Possible reduction in redundancy for providers going to the nth degree with own servers.
5. Geographic barriers regarding physical access to server instances. (virtual or real)
 
The upshot of all of this will be a new breed of online backup company. This will be the embodiment of a marketing company which focuses purely on selling while trusting Amazon to take care of everything else. The difficulty here will be service as such an entity may not be equipped to deal with emergency disaster recovery requests. In addition, with all the advantages of cloud computing and VMware, there is still the difficulty of the real level of support a company can provide if a mission critical system based thousands of miles away is down.

You can read more about VEMBU Technologies specific Amazon implementation plans on the Storegrid site.