Michael Morgan

What’s the worst thing that could happen to an affiliate site whose revenue comes from selling cases for the iPhone? Well, it’s happened to me. Due to the signal issues with the iPhone 4 Apple have decided that they will now provide free bumper cases to those who have or are about to purchase an iPhone 4. On top of that they are also offering a full refund to all customers who have previously purchased a bumper case from Apple.

I’ve seen the effects of this with one of my affiliate sites right away and have watched sales figures plummet since the announcement was made. Sure, my site may not be affiliated with the official bumper case product but who’s going to buy an iPhone case if Apple are handing them out for free? There may be the occasional iPhone owner who wants something different than what Apple is offering and may go ahead and purchase their own but this has put myself and many other iPhone accessory affiliates at a disadvantage which will likely cost quite a bit in affiliate sales.

I guess it’s time to concentrate my SEO efforts on alternative products.

I’m actually a few days late posting this as it happened mid last week, but, I’ve now graduated from university with a upper second class honours degree in Software Engineering. One thing is for sure is that I’m glad to have it over and done with. It’s not that the work was particularly difficult it was just that I don’t particularly like writing 5,000 word reports

I suppose some sort of celebration is in order

I’ve had my eye on an iPad for quite some time now and I finally gave in. After a little shopping around and a few days of hearing the words “out of stock” I finally found somewhere which had one. I ended up getting a 16gb wifi only iPad from PC World.

And, I absolutely love the thing! I’ve barely put it down since I got my hands on it yesterday.

A little while back when I redesigned this site I, for whatever reason decided not to make use of the comments section meaning not only could no one post comments to any of my posts but also that existing comments made prior to the redesign simply dissapeared. I’ve now decided to bring comments back so now anybody can say what they think. So… get commenting!

I’ve just tried updating my iPhone OS to the latest version but came across a very annoying problem. After downloading the iPhone update and clicked through the steps I received the error “An Unknown error occurred (9)”. After a little searching around the web for a good fifteen minutes or so I wasn’t able to find any fix to this although I did come across plenty of forum threads where people have been having the same problem.

Some of the suggestions I fould included changing the USB cable, using a different USB port, upgrading to the latest iTunes version, etc. – All the standard stuff really. But none of this seemed to work.

After a little thinking I thought I’d disable my firewall (why not aye?). And guess what, it worked perfectly. My iPhone has been updated and is working nicely.

I just thought I’d put this up in case anyone else comes across the same problem and is looking for possible fixes.

When they were came out over in America I wasn’t all that interested in the ‘revolutionary’ iPad. It seemed to just be a bigger iPod – something which I definitely don’t need. The other day however I got my hands on one and I have to say that I love it. It’s just brilliant! I’m already an iPhone owner so this whole touch interface is nothing new to me but I still found the iPad to be a great experience.

I didn’t have much time with it but did get to try a couple of apps and one or two games. I found that gaming on the iPad was great fun – particularly full on racing games. To be honest it’s the gaming element and of course the chance of being able to browse the web lazily from anywhere in the house without a great big laptop that’s making me want one the most.

Sadly though the iPad comes with quite a hefty price tag – £429 for the base model… which sucks! If this had been around the £300 mark I’d already have one by now but parting with that amount of money for something which is essentially a bigger version of my iPhone is a tough decision. For now, I’m not going to get one regardless of how much I want one. But let’s just see how long that lasts

Between the 15th of this month and the 6th of January I’ll be in Spain, woohooo!

Considering I manage quite a few different sites, most of which are highly content based (meaning they need to be updated regularly), leaving the country on holiday for three weeks doesn’t really sound like such a great idea. Thankfully I’m able to put in that extra bit of work now to keep my sites going while I’m away relaxing. By using WordPress’s post scheduling feature I have scheduled posts for many of my WordPress based sites – simple!

Another big thanks to WordPress!

Spam is a major issue for a lot of bloggers and I’m one of them. I currently run quite a few WordPress based blogs on various topics and niches and although I knew about it I never got around to setting up Akismet. For those of you who don’t know, Akismet is a service which let’s you protect yourself against spam. It is available as a plug-in (comes packed with WordPress as standard) and only needs an API key from WordPress.com to work.

Before setting it up I was getting several hundred spam comments each week – I know this isn’t anywhere near as much as some get but still it was very annoying. A few days ago I thought I’d spend a minute on each of my blogs installing Akismet and since then exactly 0 spam comments have come through.

So I have to say, for all of you who aren’t yet using Akismet on your WordPress blogs – I highly recommend it.

Today, the 15th of October is the annual event of the one and only, Blog Action Day. Blog Action Day, or BAD, is primarily a web based community driven event where hundreds of web sites owners write about one particular topic with the aim of raising awareness. With thousands and thousands of web sites pledging to post today, millions of readers from over 140 countries will find out a great deal more about this years topic of climate change.

I just thought I would write this post to try to not only raise awareness of this years topic but mainly to let you know about BAD and perhaps, if you have a web site, encourage you to join in and help the cause.

I’ve just read a post by Daniel over at Daily Blog Tips entitled “Develop an Algorithm for Your Online Passwords and Never Forget One Again“. Now, the basic idea behind what Daniel is saying is to come up with some sort of algorithm which you can then use to securely create the passwords which you would use on any sites you visit.

At first glance I think that this is a fantastic idea. Provided that your password algorithm is unique enough and can be remembered (and applied) easily then it could be a great solution to both generating new passwords and retrieving existing passwords. But I see one problem with the password algorithm approach: logic.

Whilst having a password algorithm is something which would in some cases make it easier for you to create and remember passwords it also introduces a logical way of working them out. Sure, in order to know the password you’d have to firstly know the algorithm but this really just brings us back to the original problem. The whole reason for having a password is so that only people who know it can access the account – so in other words, your primary aim is to keep the password a secret. Using an algorithm approach, all you’re really doing is replacing the password with a method; you still have the same priority of keeping it a secret only this time it’s not just a single password for a specific site but potentially the key to unlocking all of your passwords.

So, to sum it up, what would you prefer? Would you prefer to disclose a single password for a single account or the algorithm to every password you have? For me the choice is clear – the more random, abstract and obscure, the better and more secure the password is.