Visited northern Italy a few weeks back, here’s a few pictures i snapped with my phone 
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- Campanile, Piazza San Marco
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- The Arena, Verona
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- Venice from San Giorgo
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- Spires of Bergamo
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Oct 12
Italy September 2012
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May 12
The Hydro Arena Glasgow – Taking Shape
I took a wander this lunchtime across to the site of the under-construction arena ‘The Hydro‘ (sponsored by Scottish Hydro) in Glasgow (5 minutes from the office where i work) and took a few pictures.
Although there is obviously a long way to go, the arena is already beginning to take shape – and the scale of it is very impressive. At the moment they are putting the roofcap in place.
Roofcap section going on The Hydro arena in Glasgow
Spaceship-esque roofcap going on The Hydro
The 12,000 seat arena is set to open in 2013 and is expected to become one of the busiest entertainment venues in the world. Great for Glasgow as there has been a gap for this size of venue in the city – and many bands will tell you Glasgow is one of the best cities to play a gig.
6
Mar 12
Luss, Loch Lomond – January 2012
Tourists flock to Luss by the tens every year to see the home of legendary Scottish soap opera ‘Take the High Road’. However, i tend to get away from the crowds and hit the marina, where you get great views of Loch Lomond.
Loch Lomond from Luss
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Oct 11
Dumfriesshire – September 2011
Southerness, Dumfriesshire – September 2011
Essentially had miles of the Solway Firth to ourselves, peace.
Southerness Lighthouse
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Jul 11
Google: New Social Network, SERPS, Gmail and more – quiet week
The effects of ‘the ‘Larry revolution’ have rumbled through Google and emerged into the public domain in full force this week. Incase you missed it, amongst the torrent of developments were (deep breath):
The Google Plus Social Network launches
I only recently received an invite (and hardly anyone else on on it) so i haven’t really formulated any detailed thoughts yet. My initial impressions are that the interface is very clean and intuitive (the Android App is nice as well), and it seems to tie together nicely your Google Profile and +1′d sites – however, im not so sure what adoption will be like outside the ‘tech’ community. I keep asking myself ‘would my mother want to sign up for this?’ – and the answer is no, as she already has ‘one of those Facebooks’
I quite like it – not so sure about that red heading colour though. Pushing the URL above the Meta Description also seems logical – my eye is now much more drawn to the description text than the previous layout, making writing effective 165 or less speils even more important to CTR.
The new Google SERP layout
Google+1 button launches globally
This one has been coming and is tied to the launch of the Google Plus social network. All your +1 sites appear within your Google Profile.
Big icons!
Google Mobile layout - Image from Malcolm Coles
Really like it – very much in line with the new SERPS layout.
The new Gmail layout - choose 'Preview' from the themes menu
‘Social tracking‘ and ’Search Engine Optimisation‘ in Google Analytics
Should be interesting to see what results are pulled in from these!
Social Menu in Google Analytics
SEO in Google Analytics
There’s probably been more but its near impossible to keep up.
I need a lie down.
7
Jun 11
Good old Matt Cutts
You have to hand it to Matt Cutts – his life must be a bit of a mad whirl of high level mathematical thinking, coupled with dealing with queries from a broad range of SEO types – some of whom looking to find out whether Meta Keywords matter anymore to their rankings. Outwardly, he seems to handle it all pretty well.
Well, recently Matt has been on the brunt of some good natured banter from the SEO community – partially to mark the fact that the Google Webmaster Central YouTube channel recently surpassed 5 million views.
First, we have the Matt Cutts debunking flowchart from Search Engine Land:
Matt Cutts debunking flowchart via Search Engine Land
This was then followed by the Matt Cutts Q&A Infographic, which includes vital details such as what colour of shirt he wears the most!
Matt Cutts Q&A Inforgraphic from http://www.click2rank.com
All in good fun – and to be fair to Matt, he seems to be taking it all in good humour.
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Apr 11
Google Panda update hits the UK
Hold onto your hats folks – the Google Panda has chewed through the last of its Bamboo reserves and reached UK shores (SERPS).
Interesting times ahead……….
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/04/high-quality-sites-algorithm-goes.html
The Google Panda, earlier today
14
Feb 11
JC Penny Link-busted
This is a good one – and has opened up some debate in the world of SEO:
http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/new-york-times-outs-major-us-retailer-for-link-spam/
I like John Battelles take:
http://battellemedia.com/archives/2011/02/this_is_news_jc_penney_and_link_farms
“……..more than a few folks are feeling the wrath of Larry Page today”.
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Oct 10
High Falutin’ SEO team
Just a quick nudge in the direction of a nice post from one of the newest members of the team here at Equator SEO – the SEOdolphin. Here, he explains what the first three months of working in SEO has been like – including references to some high-falutin’ authors and a picture of a Citroen 2CV. Somehow it all makes sense though.
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Aug 10
Google tweaks search results: Vol. 3,454,908
The ever excellent Malcolm Coles discovered that Google is essentially treating some brand searches as site: command queries – allowing these brands to dominate natural search space, although how these brand queries are decided isnt quite clear as yet. Malcolm outlines a number of pertinent examples inclduing Apple, The Guardian and Sky Sports.
There is also a post over at Search Engine Land with some more insight, and patent guru Bill Slawski has the inside on this patent which was approved back in May 2009 .
……..and the Big G itself has confirmed that this is a ranking change, telling Search Engine Land:
“We periodically reassess our ranking and UI choices, and today we made a change to allow a larger number of pages from the same site to appear for a given query. This happens for searches that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain.”
