February 2010

Me and My Half dog

Cyberbullying : A Guide for Parents and Children

The UK Government are taking a stand against Cyberbullying, by giving guidance to parents, young people and children. The problems with Cyberbullying are that it happens in the child’s home, and most parents have no idea it is going on.

Cyberbullying – or bullying via digital technologies like mobile phones and computers – is a different threat to children. It can be harder to spot and more difficult to stop than ‘traditional playground’ bullying, but understanding the dangers will help you keep your child safe.

The government gives advice to parents on what Cyberbullying is, how to spot it and how to protect their children. More information and help is available for ‘Parents’ Here..

The UK  Government is attacking  this particular kind of nasty bullying on several Fronts. Bullying on Mobile Phones is for young people, and explains that receiving a rude text message or a threatening call on your mobile phone from a bully isn't just upsetting. It can be a criminal offence. If you are being bullied on your mobile phone, don't reply and let someone know as soon as possible.

The article continues to explain what is classed as bullying, how to stop it, and also carries a warning to the bullies that their actions could result in a large fine and/or a prison sentence.

Bullying on Social networks is on the increase, follow the link for advice.

There are many links to sites and pages for parents, young people and children on the Direct Gov pages, the starting point is, Cyberbullying: keep your child safe on computers and mobile phones Get more information here

Readers Digest UK

Readers Digest announced that they had gone into administration yesterday. This move has been expected after rumours that Readers Digest had a shortfall in its UK Pension Fund of £125million. The American owners of Readers Digest, the Readers Digest Association agreed to pay a small percentage of the deficit, but was over-ruled by the regulator.

The administrator went on television, confirming that Readers Digest would carry on as usual until a buyer was found. It is understood that Readers Digest [UK] is a profitable company, with a strong brand and should have no difficulties attracting bids. The American readers digest was formed in 1922 and the UK version in 1938, and now has a circulation of over half a million. The 1000th edition was published in 2005.

B.T. announced on the 11th February that they would pay off its £9 billion pension deficit. Previously BT had agreed to pay an extra £525m into the scheme in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Now it has agreed to continue the process for a further 14 years, starting with £583m in 2012 and rising by 3% a year thereafter.

Vic Farron   RFT Express

Google’s New Universal Search

Google announce the first steps toward a universal search model, offering users a more integrated and comprehensive way to search online.

Google's vision for universal search is to ultimately search across all its content sources, compare and rank all the information in real time.   Beginning today, Google will incorporate information from a variety of previously separate sources – including videos, images, news, maps, books, and websites – into a single set of results.

Google is also in the process of deploying a new technical infrastructure that will enable the search engine to handle the computationally intensive tasks required to produce universal search results. The company is also releasing the first stage of an upgraded ranking mechanism that automatically and objectively compares different types of information. As always, Google™ search results are ranked automatically by algorithms to deliver the best results to users anywhere in the world. You can read the more on this press release here .

WEB CEO  is a one of the most important free  Search Engine Optimisation programmes, the link to this free programme is available on our web site One of the segments of the WEB CEO programme is a tracking tool, [this is a paid for addition]. They track over 300,000 websites and have produced graphs from January 2009 to January 2010, showing where visitors have come from to these websites. As expected Google are still the main source of visitors, what is interesting is where the other visitors come from....read the full article

UK Scam List

UK Scam list.

According to the Office Of Fair Trading [OFT] 10% of Britons have fallen for scams, either email scams, telephone scams using high pressure sales techniques, selling non existent products, and postal scams. Email scams are the biggest culprit, with 73% of adults receiving one last year, with 2 million people losing more than £50 to scammers. The scammers circulate lists, between each other, of the names of people who have fallen for these scams.

The latest scam is an email supposedly from the Inland Revenue, claiming you are due a tax rebate, and asking you to supply your bank details. Most of these scams originate from abroad. Be vigilant, if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably isn’t.