Sky appear to be rubbing in the fact that Virgin no longer carries all of their channels anymore, by way of a TV advert on Sky One confirming to customers that they will still get all of the Sky channels even though Virgin customers won't. So what on earth is that all about? Of course we will get all of our Sky channels as Sky customers because that's what we pay for isn't it? This obviously can't be for the benefit of Virgin customers because they don't get Sky one anymore!

I think Sky must be getting a bit worried. Its been a long time since Sky has had any major competition the last was ITV Digital. There is nothing wrong with some healthy competition it helps us the customer have a wider selection of offers.

When cooking chicken on a BBQ there is always the risk that it is never cooked through correctly. The amount of times I have been to a BBQ and been served chicken that has not been done correctly (still pink inside) has happened to many times to mention. In some cases people don't even BBQ chicken because of the risk.

So here are my tips on getting your chicken right.

I prefer to BBQ chicken breasts, a good way of BBQing chicken breasts is actually to place them between cling film sheets and flatten them with a mallet. The benefit of this is now that they are flat they will cook a lot faster and are easier to turn.

Always have a knife and fork present so you can cut into the chicken. If you are cooking chicken legs ensure you cut through to the bone to make sure the chicken is done. Never rely on how the chicken looks on the outside. Remember just because its burnt on the outside does not means it done. If the chicken is burning raise the grill a level up and allow the chicken to cook slower.

Remember its better to cook the chicken slower so it doesn't get burnt but is cooked thoroughly.

Get yourself a BBQ thermometer, these usually come in the form of a BBQ fork you can use to test if the chicken is done.

Happy BBQing!

I have often said what a great games console the WII  is, never before has a games console appealed to so many different age groups. My father in law was over the other day and I showed him some of the WII Sports games, he was a bit apprehensive at first when I asked him if he wanted a go, but after he understood how the WII remote worked he was addicted to all the WII sports games. I have a  feeling he will probably be purchasing one soon and not for my brother in law but for himself!

Just been looking at an interesting post on my friend Owens blog about the risks of tape backup. Now a days hard disks have become so cheap most people do their backups to these hard disks which you can start off at 250gigs for 78 pounds and now even 1 terabyte for 600 pounds from Amazon. The problem with having so much hard disk storage is you are probably tempted to use it as extra hard disk space instead of backup space!

Also the problem with having a terabyte hard disk is you need another one to back it up! And off site backups start to get costly on bandwidth...Oh the dilemma of too much hard disk space! :)

According to this BBC article coffee doesn't give you a boost in the morning!

Well to be more accurate it has more of an effect on people who don't drink it regularly and more of a suppressing withdrawal symptoms for those that drink it regularly.

So coffee was a placebo to me all along? Mmm well if I choose not to believe the article then I should still get the benefits of my placebo?

Coffee leads to doughnuts, doughnuts leads to sugar withdrawal, sugar withdrawal leads to the dark side! Mmmm dark side...

Have just been playing with ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 previously known as ATLAS. The last time I worked with AJAX was in .NET 1.1 where you had to literally code all the calls by hand yourself in JavaScript. Now Microsoft have made it the easiest thing in the world to code .... almost too easy. All you do now is drag your server side controls into an Ajax Update Panel and hey presto! Your application is now "AJAX'd", I was amazed by how fast I could convert my old applications.

Take look here to get the recipe!

If you've been duped into clothes shopping with your wife or girlfriend (yes we love them to bits) all men can sympathize with each other over the bored waiting around inside a women's department store, waiting for your wife or girlfriend to try on the 10 outfits she took into the changing room with her. I think the main thing is there is nothing to do but wait and probably chat to the other poor souls obediently waiting about the football, although my wife has another solution to the problem in this blog entry from my wife

In my previous blog entry I blogged about The black art of SEO and bridge that is Google on how so many web sites were at the mercy of SEO and search engines such as Google rating them high for their keywords. However sites are increasingly rising to popularity not through being found first in Google, but by web 2.0 community type sites such as Spicy Page, de.icio.us and digg where sites are judged by a vast community of people to be cool or not. instead of being brutally forced into the public domain by a mass marketing campaign or spam campaign this newly formed SEO blog has an interesting article on the subject which I found quite interesting on how sites should focus more on their content and user communities than focusing on trying to be number one in the search engines. If you're site is any good it will eventually get to number one because communities will start voting for it and linking to it.

I have found it fascinating how blogging has evolved during recent years, how not only has it become a platform for the technical elite but also the platform for the masses to have their say. I can't think of any time has technology empowered a person to convey a message to so many people as blogging has. It has allowed the sharing of ideas and for people to bring their own points of view with no middle organization involved to everyday people.

I think one of the most important things blogging has done is give us facts, it lets us know what genuine real people think about things if they are on the Internet or in the real world and allow us to make up our own minds instead of having to rely on a commercial or government source. Of course many oppressive governments around the world have realized this fact and have kept a very close eye on their blogging community. Thing we take for granted in a more liberal first world about saying if we don't like what the prime minister or president is doing on something could quite possibly get you locked away or shot in one of these more oppressive regimes. 

I wonder when these oppressive regimes will start realize that:

• Its impossible to stop people thinking about something or express it with someone else. You can scare them or torture them if you find them out but they will still talk about it among themselves.
• You cannot force someone to believe what you believe if they don't believe you then you have failed as a politician or a speaker. Even if you force them to say they believe you, these are only words and you have fooled yourself in thinking they believe you.

I wish there would be some Internet advertising guidelines about flashing advertising banners some of them are incredibly distracting however the thing that worries me the most. Are people who suffer from photo sensitive epilepsy being exposed to these adverts. I feel websites and advertisers who place these adverts on pages should take the responsible action of making sure these adverts (if they have animation in them) will not affect people with this condition.

I understand that adverts are very important to these organizations to try and make the most of the adverts they get but they should be more responsible. They could also use a tag line in their adverts saying "our adverts are photo epilepsy friendly" which would make people more likely to take a look at their advert. If an advertiser cares that much about their customers they must be willing to offer a good product or service surely?

Search Engine Optimization has become such an important subject of late, it has now become the thing that can make or break a business who's primary source of income is from the Internet. However the problem with this model is that too many times Google appears to be sitting right in the middle of it. Don't get me wrong I have nothing against Google I think it a great search engine, however the problem is that Google has a bit of a monopoly on search.

Your potential customer needs to find a product, you sell this product and you would like that customer to purchase that product from you and not your competitor (that's how you make money). The problem is your customer has an obstacle course to get to you unless they have been to you before and you have provided them with a good service and price to make them come back. The obstacle course in most cases is the one thing the user knows best for finding things on the Internet its in grained in most of us and for some of us its even set our home page on our browser. You guessed it, its Google!

Google is that bridge in most cases between you and that potential customer, it doesn't happen all the time sometimes your customer uses another directory or search provider such as Yahoo or they see an advert or are directed by a social networking site. But other than that if you are an online business Google is your most important gateway it is something you have to respect it is that one important thing that if you get it wrong could ruin your online business. Google and search engines in general present a constant race that never ends, to stay on its front page for that gold search term that a customer is going to use to find you.

As you can understand if you get your SEO wrong, your whole deck of cards falls flat, its such a critical thing key to your success. The problem that adds to this problem is that Google doesn't always get it right, I often see sites at the top of Google for a key term that should never be there in the first place. Google like email also suffers from spam, this is caused by people who have found ways of cheating the search engine ranking system, the real truth is that not everyone can be on the first page of Google. So of course this gave birth to the SEO industry because if there is a way to making money people will find a way to use it to the best of it ability. SEO in many instances can be thought of as a black and secretive art, some parts of it is quite legitimate while other parts of it are rather shadier. There are companies and individuals out there that will offer you you Search Engine Optimization services, they all have there own little secrets to getting your site higher up in the Google rankings. However those who do not have the money to spend on these organizations try to pickup tutorials from the various sites on the Internet. Of course they will tell you all the basics about getting sites like yours to link to yours, to create easy to read web content with some of your keywords carefully included etc etc. However there are many many more methods out there that are not mentioned and any SEO guru worth their salt will keep these secrets that earn them their bread butter if everyone knew them then everyone would be trying them and the Search engines would cancel them out or everyone would be on the same level playing field again.

As you can see it all gets pretty interesting, I just hope that social networking sites will help to provide a healthy balance to Google. While Google is a great search service it needs a good competitor to keep balance in this industry, its never good to have any one company with a monopoly over an industry and competition is only healthy.

Interesting article on my friend owens blog about social networking

The other day I was in a computer store and heard two old ladies as they were busy looking at computers.

"Oh look at this Margay, this one looks nice"
"Oh yes that is a rather large screen Ingrid my screen is a lot smaller," said Margery.
"So will I be able to write my letters on this one?" asked Ingrid.
"Oh yes, look," said Margery who is quite a whiz with the mouse and selects MS Word "Yes this one will do"
"What happens to my letters when I turn it off?" asks Ingrid.
"Oh you have to save them first I buy disks they are very cheap," says Margery.
Ingrid nods very impressed with Margery's wealth of knowledge.

I walk over to the machine after they have left with a bemused look on my face seeing its the most powerful machine in the store with a 200 gig hard disk. What makes me smile is these old ladies were going to buy a top of the range PC as a glorified word processor. I wonder how many times this exact conversation takes place, how many grannies out there are sitting at home with some of the most powerful PC's with all the latest software all for writing letters. I wonder how many of them are saved from buying these really expensive PC's by their knowledgeable grandsons?

Its a pretty dark day for Virgin Media Customers who suddenly stopped receiving Sky TV Channels last night. I have heard all kinds of complaints from annoyed work colleagues who have had cable TV for some time now before it even became Virgin Media.

The above brings back memories when I used to be an ITV Digital subscriber, I had bought an ITV Digital package because I was unable to get Sky and I also couldn't get cable at the time. ITV Digital was perfect no dish just a normal aerial. Then all of a sudden they started to go bust and Sky pulled all of their TV channels, now one thing I couldn't understand and maybe I don't understand how these sharing of channels work. But don't these commercial TV channels make their money via adverts placed on these channels? So surely the more platforms you can get your channels broadcasted on the more viewers you get and the more advertising revenue, or am I missing something?

In my opinion Sky has a very competitive advantage, they have bought all the rights to the top shows such as Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Bones, Battlestar Galactica, Lost and 24.  Virgin will probably be hard pressed to fill the gap left by this lack of programming and do not show a single Sky channel in their lineup while Freeview the free digital service, offer Sky Three and Sky News and Sky Sports News.

The whole contaminated fuel fiasco has reached a whole new level since I blogged about it yesterday according to the news there may be traces of silicon in the fuel that may have caused the cars to break down.

The strange thing is, is that I have heard some odd things about how fuel companies work. Apparently many of them share fuel from the same depot and add their own supplements to it when it is placed into their tankers.

My major question as both the super markets who appear to be the source of this issue and are denying it is their fuel. Is who is going to end up with this massive bill for all these broken cars? I really wouldn't want to be one of those two supermarkets right now.