Just having a look into easy slideshows for WordPress. The mother would be the NextGen Gallery, at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/, however there’s a simple cut-down version that does the job at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-gallery-slideshow/.

This only took a few minutes to find and install. Getting the images the same size, formatted nicely, might take a little longer, but it’s all that most people would need.

These pictures of Spike are about 2-3 years apart.

Interesting though – a few minutes after installing and using the plugin, it self-deactivated.  The slideshow.php file was suddenly empty. Even after having seen it work once. Reuploaded it, upgraded WordPress, and all seems fine, but….  see how it looks tomorrow.

gotta say bing is nice is some ways.

it’s shorter to type than google.
and it really loves my old-fashioned hyphenated domain names.

i was playing with my online shopping site – www.myonlineshops.com.au tonight, cos a couple of shops asked if they could be added.
then thought i’d see how it was ranking.

not for the title – myonlineshops. there’s not much competition for a single word like that, so it easily appears at number 1 on google, yahoo and bing.

but i had originally targetted “online shopping australia” – it’s the second half of the title on the home page.

so i went to bing.com to see how it ranks.

oops. i forgot that i had bought online-shopping-australia.com.au a while back, planning to experiment with a shopping comparison engine.
didn’t end up building it – just did an empty drupal install, and left it there, while i went ahead and built myonlineshops – with lots of drupal bells and whistles.

so purely based on the domain name, with one sentence added, it ranks number 4 at bing for a competitive keyword. the page title is still drupal, for goodness sakes.

mind you, even yahoo gives me a page three result for the empty site, so yahoo still has a little domain name slant.

it’s nowhere on google of course – there are no incoming links. Although why not add one: Online Shopping Australia

Also checked my old web design site from years ago. Yep, Bing likes web-design in the name – a nice position 5. I don’t use it anymore – just leave it there for the residual page rank.

And my healthy home business is number one for work from home in australia.

bing, i think i really like you.
even if you remind me of the irish terrier dog down the road, also named bing, with the horribly dribbly chin.

these shameless plugs will really have to stop soon.

lol. or as my kids say: L.

Driving home from Woolworths (not game to use home delivery), I saw the corner hairdresser was open, and grabbed a haircut. And said I’d give him a plug for doing such a good job:
David and Sasha, 52 Avenue Rd Mosman. He doesn’t have a website yet, or else I’d plug it. Anyway.

Before (Note the cousin IT glasses)

And this is after:

All neat!

Didn’t he do a good job?

Friday nights are a time to relax. We always have pizza and wine and chocolate.

Usually I pick up bits of shopping during the week, from Woolworths. I buy stuff at lunchtime, then take it home on the bus, along with my heavy laptop and other bags. So I thought I’d experiment with home delivery from Woolworths.

Friday two weeks ago was my first time. I went to the Customer Service desk and asked how to do home delivery. They said to just tell the guy at the checkout.
So I shopped, bought all the bulky, heavy stuff that I usually can’t carry on the bus, and went to the checkout.
It took about 20 minutes, with annoyed customers behind me in the queue, while the checkout guy fumbled with the computer, stickers, and bags. Entering the data on the screen took the longest. Plus the pathetic plastic card that is almost impossible to write on. I shopped at 1pm, and had hoped for the shopping to be delivered by the time the kids got home from school. It didn’t happen until after 5pm, so they didn’t have the snack treats I had planned, but I thought that was just unlucky.

Last Friday I tried again. Again, shopped at 1pm, buying heavy drinks, bulky cereal, and chocolate for dinner. A little slow at the checkout. The checkout guy asked for my name and address again, which was surprising given that they had my customer number and details online, but I gave it to him. Still pretty slow at checkout, but I did warn the people behind me in the queue.
Really hoped it would arrived before 5pm, so the kids could enjoy a snack.

I got home at 530pm. No shopping. Gave them a bit more time.
Rang Woolworths at 6pm. They said it was on the way. I gave them my name and address again.

8:45pm. No shopping. Where’s our chocolate and drinks for the pizza? Pretty pathetic.
Rang Woolworths – they said they were waiting for me to ring, as the only details they had were “Christine”.
Had no idea that I’d rung at 6pm – the customer service girl had proved inept.
They tracked down the delivery guy, who had ended up taking my groceries home. They said he would deliver by 9am Saturday.
At least we will have cereal for breakfast.

Saturday, 9:45am. No shoppping.
Rang Woolworths. Hm, can’t contact delivery guy. Even his wife can’t reach him. Has he run off with my shopping? It must be desperation.

Saturday 10:15. The shopping finally arrives. Shall we trust shopping that has been at someone else’s place overnight?

Woolworths failure points:
1. Customer service should setup the account, rather than take 20 minutes at checkout.
2. Cheap plastic cards with customer number written in pen on plastic surface.
3. Hopelessly slow computer system to setup account.
4. A week later, even with a customer number, it still takes 10 minutes to checkout. Do the staff need training guys?
5. Despite giving my name and address at checkout, they still can’t enter it into the system. Even after having delivered it the week before.
6. They load it onto a delivery truck without having a delivery address.
7. Customer service doesn’t write down my address and phone, even when a problem is known to exist.
8. Allowing a delivery person to take personal shopping home.

Do I give them another chance, or just go straight to Coles from now on.

If only my brother-in-law wasn’t senior management, and his three kids all working at Woolies……

It’s faster to search for “keyword tool”, than to type in the address. Especially when I know Google will always display the result that I want in the first position. But the above result shows two similar results. Look closely.

Yes, there are slight differences – one url has .au, for Australia, so when the resulting page displays, the country is preselected. But everything else is the same – surely that would have been enough to trigger the duplicate filter, and only display one result.

Unless you’re Google, of course.