What’s in a passport? The cost of Biometrics

Although I don’t normally make a big deal about it, I am in fact a Kraut.

Sorry about your chippies and all that.

If it vill help I kan type wizh a German akcent, but zhat vill only make it hard to read.

Anyway, as all you Brits out there will be well aware, we Europeans (See? We’re all friends now.) are now living in the age of Biometric Passports.
Whilst I could say plenty about biometric identification being just another way for Big Brother to keep track of us all that little bit better, my point approaches this topic from another angle.

If we’re all one big, happy family with one government, one set of laws and one red European Passport (one each obviously, not one between all of us), why are the British charging such outrageous prices for this document compared to us Krauts?

• British European Biometric Passport – Cost £66.00 (€97.66 approx.)
  If the passport is issued by an embassy, such as the one in Cyprus, this fee rises to about £96.0o.
• German European Biometric Passport – Cost €59.00 (£40.00 approx.)
  The German embassy in Nicosia will quite happily issue the same passport for approximately £49.00

It’s the same type of passport, except for the fact that the German one is so much more stylish you understand, the same type of biometric identification, the same everything.
There is no place your British passport can get you into which our German one can’t (although you’ll probably be a bit more popular than us lot when you get there).

Do I detect the subtle aroma of ‘Rip-Off Britain’?

If anyone actually bothers to read this and manages to look past the fact that it was written by a ‘Hun’, I would love to hear your opinions on this matter, since it is just another example of the British government taking advantage of the country’s citizenry.
Small wonder that so many of you are emigrating away from the place.

Also… what are the passport fees for other European countries?
It could be quite entertaining to find out, since most of us will rarely look beyond our own borders to see what other countries are up to.

Food for thought?
I jolly well hope so.

Domain Name Comedy – The Joy of Sex?

I was talking to an old friend/colleague in the UK the other night when the topic of comedy domain names reared its head.

The fact is that by design or error, there are more than a few domains out there, jam-packed with the juicy goodness of innuendo or outright misunderstanding.
In most cases, the sites belonging to these domains are ’serious’ enterprises, as is the case with Cumbria Storage Systems Ltd in the United Kingdom; a company which represents itself online with the name cumstore.co.uk.

Ok, I admit that this is hardly an original topic, but it makes for a cheap laugh nonetheless.

Most of us have heard of the Sex Change domains (oddsexchange.com, veteransexchange.com, kidsexchange.com, etc.) or the rapist finder (sorry, I meant to say therapistfinder.com of course), but alas, the rot runs much deeper than that.

After having a bit of a look around, I’ve put together an initial top 3 of comedy domain names.
If anyone finds other, even more unfortunate domains, I’d love to hear about it.
Nothing gets a cheap laugh quicker than an innuendo or a reference to sex organs (powergenitalia.com; see?).

• Mole Station, a 2000+ hectare sheep and cattle property in Tenterfield, New South Wales is also home to a nursery specialising in the cultivation and sale of native Australian plants.
  So far so good.
  It’s at Mole Station and it’s a Nursery, so what better name to call it than molestationnursery.com?
  Maybe in light of the recent global paedophile exposures (no pun intended), they could have thought about it before buying that particular domain.
• Unsurprisingly, site number two is an American offering, although on reflection, I am not entirely certain they didn’t do it on purpose to take advantage of the publicity the name generates.
  In any case, this company which manufactures customised pens for businesses around the United States, trades under the name Pen Island (You can see what’s coming a mile off, can’t you? [once again no pun intended]), so when they needed a web site, the obvious name was chosen; penisland.net.
• And finally…
  You want MP3s?
  You want Hits?
  mp3shits.com
  There’s not really a busting lot which can be said about that.

Whilst nothing feels quite the same as having a cheap laugh at someone else’s expense, I cannot help but wonder if the sites I’ve listed haven’t benefited from their kooky names.
As they say: “All publicity is good publicity.”

Then again, although the molestation domain name is still active, the official URL has now been changed to molerivernursery.com, so maybe someone finally noticed.

Food for thought?
I rather doubt it.

The IceGiant has landed; with a bellyflop as usual

So here it is; just another blog launched by a web developer in the vain hope it will increase his web site’s search engine performance and bring in a multitude of new clients?

Not really…

While it’s true that everybody and his brother have been
flocking to blogging (whoever came up with that one?) in order to boost their web site’s performance, this will be more of a tongue in cheek look at human nature and the continuing tendency for the commercial moo cows on the web to jump on the latest bandwagon without any real understanding of what the hell is actually going on.

And trust me, there are an awful lot of moo cows out there, happily following the nearest Judas Goat into the slaughter house, figuratively speaking of course.

Then again; by and large, some web designers, developers and especially SEO professionals (these have a special place in my heart) are not exactly blameless where the present situation is concerned.
With what is best described as a ‘Secret Squirrel’ attitude, a certain proportion of operators in the web promotion industry seem to positively revel in the secure knowledge that they know something their clients don’t.

Strangely enough though, this quasi-magical SEO knowledge is rarely grounded in anything more than educated guesses or the instructions of promotional software which tells ‘the professionals’ what they should be doing.

But what the hell… as long as the customer doesn’t know; who cares, right?

Damn!
Did I say this thing was going to be tongue in cheek?
Sorry about that; I shall endeavor to be a bit more humorous in future.

The fact is that although most operators in the web design and promotion industries are competent professionals, there is a small percentage of cowboys which has given the rest a bad name.

Then again, these days it’s usually easy to spot black hat operators in this game.
They’re the ones who give over-the-top guarantees and refuse to discuss any aspect of their methods.

If confronted with such an individual, my advice would be to avoid eye contact and make good your escape before they get their hands on your cheque book.
In extreme cases, resort to the nearest heavy object.

Seriously though; there really is no need for operators in the industry to take the ‘Secret Squirrel’ stance.
Ultimately, the overwhelming majority of clients have no interest in discovering industry secrets or indeed any desire to learn about the more technical aspects of things.
They are merely looking for competent professionals to carry out the required task and deserve to be treated as valuable clients rather than idiots.

Food for thought?
Damned if I know.