Wednesday, December 14, 2005

No.1 on Google.com

Since launching www.aboynejames.co.uk in September I have been after the goal of making it appear as the no.1 search result on Google for the words, James Littlejohn. This week, I realized my goal.

About 10 years ago I opened my first ISP account, 56k modem days with CompuServe. Paying £15.00 a month. This included your own webspace. Using Microsoft Word I built my first ever webpages and posted them up. Altavista was the main search engine or at least my preferred search service in those days and after a while, I realized myCompuServe homepage was no.1 for my name. When cheaper and free ISP's came along I changed my loyalty and closed the increasingly expensive CompuServe and left its propriety usability behind. However, they kept my home page live for at least 4 years. I had moved and updated my website to other hosting locations but my Compsure listing still sat top of the search results until a clear out session must have taken place.

By now my web skills had advanced a great deal and why use someone else's webspace when you can own your own directly at a low price? So, aboynejames.co.uk was purchased and populated with a far greater breadth of content than my first Word html pages. I tell this story to reflect on the vast improvements made on the WWW over the last 10 years, I am sure the next 10 years will produce even more. And I am sure I will see an exponential difference in the look and feel of my home website by then too.

David Cameron it is

As per my posting on the Conservative Party leadership race, the winner as predicted was David Cameron. It is too early to make a prediction on whether he will lead the Conservative Party to win the next general election but I see the bookies make him favorite already.

DQ'd

For the first time in over 22 years I got disqualified in a swimming race. A false start. Not only that they waited 6 mins 05 seconds to tell me, that is I had completed a 400IM. Same time as in a previous gala so I was relatively happy with that.