The Official Weblog of Nathaniel Bailey

I want to build a gaming laptop as it will cost me around £700 to buy on, so does anyone know where I can buy a “barebone laptop” in the UK?

The Official Weblog of Nathaniel Bailey – http://t.co/t0TIi2O

Ok so another question asked over at BlogEngage was about the google toolbar pagerank being gone due to not seeing any updates in the past months, so here’s my thoughts on the subject.

“It seems that Google hasn’t done any updates for their page rank system in months!
In fact rumor has it they may not be updating anymore. What’s your opinion on this? Is this the sign of a new more advanced social media powered search engine platform?”

Google had warned ages ago that they would be stopping the toolbar pagerank updates, I’m quite sure it was stopped at the beginning of the year as we have seen no change in toolbar PR on sites which (in theory) should have gone up in PR, not that I follow toolbar PR as its in no way the best way to work out which sites are worth getting a link on.

As some of you may know, I work for an SEO company and have been doing SEO for around 3-4 years now, so take my word for it when I say stop using the toolbar PR to work out what links you think are good and start using mozRank which can be easily seen in firefox by using the “SEOmoz” toolbar plugin and another good one I use is “Quirk SearchStatus” which gives you PR, Alexa, Compete and mozRank (I only go by the last two on that one).

Also you need to use your brain when building links, IE dont get links that are on low quality sites with poor content and next to no updates. You need to be building relevant links on high quality sites, remember the simple rule of “Quality content is king” and “Quality links! are its queen! stick to that and you will do just fine in seo as long as you keep up with making your site fresh and up to date for your visitors.

Ok so a member at BlogEngage posted the following about Google +1 and I just had to let my thoughts on the subject fly in to action

“With Google +1 powering the search results it’s hard to believe backlinks and great content hold all the power now but are just a small fraction of authority.

I’m excited to see where Google +1 takes this “word of mouth” type of search results in the future. Will it last?”

Just to clear this up, Google +1 is not powering the search results! Google are playing with it to see if it “could” be used as a ranking factor like FB links and Tweets are, but I think it will simply be spammed by poor so called SEO’s and lose any authority google may consider giving it

By all means use the Google +1 (I am on some of my sites for testing) but I wouldn’t drop FB or Twitter as those are used as ranking factors and are proven to help! And I honestly dont see +1 lasting long, its just another button like FB offers but you have to be signed in to a google account and for those that didn’t know its only live on google.com atm as google are still in the testing stages for it being used in personalised search.

But again I personally think it will fail, google yet again aint thought it out properly meaning people will lose interest just as they did with googles poor attempt of copying FB with google buzz!

So to sum it up, IMHO I dont think Google +1 will last very long as google dont seem to have thought it out very well due to:

1. Making you have to login to an google account (which I try my best not to do as it piss around with the real search results due to personalised search not being able to be fully removed!)
2. Once you have +1′ed a page, its of little use or value, I mean how many people do you know that use google like facebook? No one! Thats what I thought, and thats the main reason why I think it will fail!
3. It simply seems uterly pointless to me due to the fact that people know and like to use FaceBook and Twitter, both of which have damn good reasons for people to hit the like/tweet buttons (they are social sites not just adding a link to your own google profile page! POINTLESS OR WHAT!)

Last of all I dont think it will be used as a ranking factor in any way as newbie, spam SEO’s will simply spam the +1 button to boost there sites meaning google will then have to try and work out which +1′s are for really and which are simply spam from some poor (so called) SEO company!

I have been working on a smart 404 script / custom 404 script the past week and its finally finished! Its took me quite some time to complete as I have had to get some help with some code due to still not know all I want to know for php but hay it all worked out and now I have a cracking little custom 404 script to share with you all

Nath’s custom smart 404 script will give different error messages depending on how the 404 page was reached as you can test by going to http://www.devpages.co.cc/smart404/smart404.php which will give you a standard message, try http://www.dediboxworld.com/dedicated-servers to see related pages (no pages on devpages.co.cc yet so have to give dediboxworld.com as an example for related pages section) and then enter a random url and see what you get! You will also get a different message if you hit a 404 page which is linked to from another site.

To download and install my awesome smart 404 script please click here to download from sourceforge.net (please click the “Recommend” link to help vote for my helpful little 404 script).

I have also coded the script to include a custom google search box as standard which can also be changed to work with any custom onsite search engine you may have, as well as wordpress! All you have to do to change these is follow the readme and/or the comments in the coding its self.

With all the parts above I coded in to this custom smart 404 script your visitors that get an 404 error page will be happy to see something nice and different as well as have different options to find the current page they where after, go to your home page, do a google search, view related pages and send an error report via email to you!

Nath’s Smart 404 Functions:

• Lovely layout with some funny images
• Easy to edit css and html for your own look and custom 404 error text
• Custom error messages depending on how you land on an 404 error page
• List of related pages picked from the original url
• Custom onsite google search box
• Fully integrates with wordpress
• Fully customizable for any custom onsite search engine (tested with…)
• Error report email link
• Link to home page
• All links auto update to your server and site!
• No coding needed as the script is fully ready for any site
• Full readme and instructions on how to change everything to suite your needs!

See my Custom Smart 404 Script is truly awesome and ready for anyone to install and enjoy within 5 minuets!

To download and install my awesome smart 404 script please click here to download from sourceforge.net where you can download the script in a .zip format with all files ready to be uploaded to your server Again please click the “Recommend” link to help vote for my helpful little 404 script!

Also if you like the script and use it please feel free to send me a small donation towards my server costs for producing these type of scripts for the community!

The first multiplayer footage from Battlefield 3 is here! Played in Rush mode on the E3 map “Operation Métro”, this trailer shows actual gameplay between the U.S. Marine Corps and Russian Spetsnaz forces in and around the centre of Paris.

Please see Battlefield 3 Operation Metro Multiplayer Gameplay Trailer for the full article

The first multiplayer footage from Battlefield 3 is here! Played in Rush mode on the E3 map “Operation Métro”, this trailer shows actual gameplay between the U.S. Marine Corps and Russian Spetsnaz forces in and around the centre of Paris.

This is just a short trailer from EA for the new (soon to be out:)) “Battlefield 3
Operation Metro Multiplayer Gameplay Trailer”. Battlefield 3 truly is leaps ahead of its time compared to other games currently out with the awesome power of the new Frostbite™ 2 engine, which of course is the next instalment of DICE’s cutting-edge game engine which we can currently see in action on Bad Company 2.

You can find more information and pre-order from the new EA site at Origin where you will find all EA’s hottest games, exclusive content on EA games, early access to new games from EA and much more according to the sites slogan!

The pre-order of EA’s Battlefield 3 on Origin is a PC Limited Edition Download Pre-order Exclusive which includes the Battlefield 3 Back to Karkand expansion pack and some exclusive content of Play4Free Items: 870 Combat Shotgun
and Beret starting from just £39.99 which isn’t the cheapest limited edition of Battlefield 3 you can get but it is an exclusive offer only available at the new Origin store!

As the new Origin sites prices for Battlefield 3 on PC start from £39.99 I thought I would share some of store offers such as Game.co.uk, Play.com and CoolShop.co.uk

Game.com Battlefield 3 PC:
Game are offering a “Battlefield 3 Limited Edition: Physical Warfare Pack (PC Games and Downloads)” for just £29.99 which is one of the best UK price for a limited edition copy of Battlefield 3 and includes not only double game reward points but also some exclusive in-game items for the game; Type 88 light machine gun, an SKS sniper rifle flash suppressor and armour-piercing flechette ammo for the DAO-12 semi-automatic shotgun, which itself will be accessible right from the beginning of the game in this edition.

In addition, the Physical Warfare Pack includes the Back to Karkand digital expansion content, which adds four multiplayer maps that fans will recognise as revamped versions of classic arenas from Battlefield 2.

Play.com Battlefield 3 PC:
Play also offer one of the lowest prices for Battlefield 3 Limited Edition also at just £29.99! This is what play.com have to say about their version of the Battlefield 3 limited edition; Customers who pre-order Battlefield 3 will receive Battlefield 3: Limited Edition at no extra charge! Battlefield 3: Limited Edition includes the digital expansion pack “Battlefield 3: Back To Karkand”.
This themed multiplayer expansion pack includes the four legendary maps Strike at Karkand, Gulf of Oman, Sharqi Peninsula and Wake Island from Battlefield 2 – boldly re-imagined with Frostbite 2 physics, destruction and visuals. Completing the package are classic Battlefield 2 weapons and vehicles which can be brought back to your Battlefield 3 game, unique unlocks, new achievements/trophies, and more. The Battlefield 3: Limited Edition is available as a pre-order incentive and may not be available after launch.

CoolShop.co.uk Battlefield 3:
Although CoolShop aren’t offering a limited edition copy of the game they are the cheapest I can find at a cracking £28.00 which includes free delivery UK wide!

So if you miss the limited editions or simply want to save money and get the game as cheap as you can I would highly recommend you check the link to the coolshop.co.uk as they are great guys and manage to offer the best prices in the UK for most (if not all) new games due to this rather cool note which you can find at the bottom of their pages Notice: Coolshop is a Danish owned UK based webshop. All orders are dispatched from our UK hub.
All games will be UK/EU PAL stock – guaranteeing all games to work for the UK market.

I have used all three of the shops for only shopping for my PC games and I would recommend all of them to anyone so please take my advice and use your fav out of those three depending on what you want as the EA store and new EA Origin store do charge an extra £10, or rather they haven’t knocked of £10 like the rest lol.

Prepare for European game testing!

Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ will soon begin a new round of game testing in Europe.
Want to be a part of BioWare’s most anticipated game ever? Sign up at swtor.com/tester.*

Sign up for an opportunity to become a Star Wars: The Old Republic game tester. We will be selecting community members who have completed the Game Testing registration process and meet the specific requirements of the test. Those that are selected will gain access to the game and be able to provide valuable feedback for the Star Wars: The Old Republic Development Team.

More info on the link above!

Star Wars: The Old Republic Game Info:

Thats right Dixons are giving away 4 free Saga PC Games to its first 10,000 customers to register with their new Digital Download Centre to celebrate the launch of their new game download center /service!

You will be able to choose 4 free games from Sega!
The Adult Pack is Sold Out

SEGA Pack 1 SOLD OUT!
Contains the following games:
Medieval II: Total War Gold Edition – Condemned: Criminal Origins – Alpha Protocol – The Club

But you can still get your hands on the second free saga PC games pack which comes packed with the following Saga games which would normally cost you over £40!

SEGA Pack 2
Contains the following games:
Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing – Sonic the Hedgehog 2 – SEGA MegaDrive Collection 1 UK – Sonic the Hedgehog

*Hurry, I just got my copy so hurry and get yours while virtual stocks last!