Iran Protests

I am doing as asked by the Iranian protestors: spreading the word, doing my tiny bit. I have to do my bit and help the brave Iranians who are fighting against a dictatorship. It takes massive guts and some desperation to risk one’s life. I was amazed at some of the statements by the protestors. There was a women who said that she would put on her makeup and go out to the street to possibly die. I love that woman!

These are pretty tough videos to watch though, I warn you.

Here are some videos that I have selected. They are all recent either on or close to the date of this post.

These are seriously scary movies. You are just waiting for something horrible to happen.

It has virtually been proved that the elections were fraudulently manipulated (there were some doubts, amazing as that seems). Even the Iranian government has admitted that in a large number of regions the votes cast outnumbered the number of people in the region (the total electorate). They say it didn’t change anything but fail to mention that an example of major electoral fraud must lend huge doubts to the whole election. There were other examples of proven fraud. In one region a popular candidate who historically received a majority of votes received about 5% of the votes on this occasion. All the signs are that the election was rigged.

in fact, it is obvious the election was rigged. Why else would they kill and beat protestors? If it was a good election they would simply be transparent and demonstrate how well it was run. If it was a true democracy the government would let the protestors protest. That said in the UK the police act undemocratically. I hate the police everywhere!

Iran is not a democracy it is like Zimbabwe, a pretend democracy, a dictatorship dressed up as a democracy, the worst kind of government really. And the Iranians are smart people. They are highly educated and demand and deserve so much better.

Bengal Cat at a Cat Show

 

What is it like for a Bengal cat at a cat show. Do they like it? We (that is people) do it to win prizes. Who gets the prizes? The cat. The breeder or both. Well the cat gets the prize but doesn’t care so its for the breeder. This is for breeders to promote their business and have some fun too. Is it fun for the Bengal cat? Well I don’t think it is great because:

• There is lots of travel to the shows. This can be hundreds of miles in a car or in a plane. Not many cats like that.
• Then there is the waiting in the cages before they are called to the show ring to be judged. Not that great for a cat. But the cages are very fancy, mind you!
• Bengal cats are pretty active and to be in a cage for relatively long time seems tough to me.

Well here are two short videos. Each features a Bengal cat at a cat show:

Young Bengal cat makes fascinating meow/trill and is pleased to see me.

And this guy just wanted to something other than be simply looked at and prodded:

Bengal cat gets bored and goes climbing

Cat shows are usually held in large industrial unit type places. They echo and are noisy, the acoustics are generally poor and the lighting is also poor being very flat. I think it is the noise that is probably the difficult for a show cat to adjust to. Some cat breeds are better than others.

One major problem for the people is when a cat escapes from its cage and goes walkabout. Well not literally escape but when out they scamper off. I have seen that happen and usually all the breeders nearby assist in corralling the wayward cat and return him or her to the “owner”.

Bengal cat at a cat show to Home Page

Best Image Search Site

The best image search site in my opinion is Flickr. The point is this. When we do an image search we are not only looking for images to simply look at, a lot of the time we are looking for images to use for our own website. Faced with that objective the images that we are searching for must be useable in terms of copyright. We have no right to use any image on the internet unless we have the author’s permission or the image is in the public domain. We don’t know if an image is in the public domain very often and it can be difficult to contact people. It is not obvious a lot of the time whether a picture is copyright free or licensed. I talk about how copyright elapses with the passage of time on this page by the way:  Expired Copyright and made an attempt at a Definition of Copyright and more as well.

The good thing about Flickr (new window) is:

• there are millions of images
• Flickr members decide whether to share their photos under one of the 5 different creative commons licenses or reserve their rights (i.e. retain copyright). This information is tagged to each photo and..
• you can search under any one of the creative commons licenses.
• even if a license to use is not given by the photographer you can contact them and ask to  use the photograph and most times they will say, yes.
• when you have found the image you can select the size that you like and download it by right clicking on the image. When you do that always rename the download with a proper and useful name for the image file.
• Flickr is the best ranked image database. It has an Alexa ranking of 32. Other major players such as Photobucket (a close 39) and Webshots (in the 400s) are behind Flickr indicating that it is indeed the best image search site and image depository site.

Note: an important note. Always read and comply with the creative commons license and if the image is used on your site provide a link to the photographer. His or her name and a link to their Flickr home page is near the image so it is easy to copy. To recap. The beauty of Flickr is that you know:

• you will probably find a suitable image and;
• you know that it will be useable

You cannot beat that!

The other image search sites such as Webshots (new window) and Photobucket (new window) also have millions of images. I find the image quality less good on these sites and for Webshots you don’t get a straight download but code for an image that links back to Webshots. You can circumvent this by copying the entire page with the Prt Sc button on your computer and then editing in photo manipulation software but that is against the rules and it will almost certainly lead to problems and in any case it is wrong. As for Photobucket that is not the same as Webshots as images are shared with code provided by the site that links back to the site (see below) and there are many other ways to use the images, including straight downloads as for Flickr.

Photobucket image

Webshots image

The image directly above was coded in by me using the image URL provided by Photobucket.

I could also mention Google image search (new window) as the best image search site for plain raw power of search and effectiveness but it will search from all the images on the internet and we must start from the premise that all are copyright protected unless otherwise stated or discovered. When we are looking for useable images this uncertainty and obstacle is not attractive. That brings back to Flickr.

One other site that could be regarded as a best image search site could be Wikimedia Commons (new window). Wikimedia is the image/media arm of Wikipedia and all the images in their database are available for use under their own brand of creative commons license. Always comply with licenses. It pays to spend time reading the rules. See Wikimedia license.

I use Flickr first, Wikimedia Commons as a reserve and then requested usage of copyrighted images that I have seen on any site but usually from a Flickr photographer as contacting the photographer is easy.

A word then about getting the most out of the images that you use. How do we maximise the prospects of getting an image found by Google image search or any of the other search engines?

For Bloggers sites I see far to many images without “alt” tags (you can find the alt tag by right clicking on the image and selecting “Properties”). All images should have a decent alt tag. This is needs to be entered manually at the moment as the Blogger upload facility does not automatically include an alt tag. That means going into the Edit Html window/page and finding the blank alt tag (it looks like this: alt=””) and then a short description of the image in between the inverted commas. I think both the file name and the alt tag should be the same. The alt tag is meant to be a written substitute for the image if it fails to load so it should be descriptive but not stuffed with keywords in an attempt to supercharge search engine optimization as Google will spot this. Play it straight.

The image file name should be descriptive too without being overly long. For example: “British Shorthair Cat Nox” sitting. As opposed to: “Brit SH1”.

One piece of software that is designed for Blogger writers is Windows Live Writer (I am writing this with the programme). I recommend this software. It will automatically add an alt tag, which you can amend and add to if you wish. See Write Blog with Windows Live Writer.

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No Government Compensation for Cats Protection

There will be no compensation for Cats Protection. I am very sad for the hundreds of thousands of cats who would have been helped indeed saved by Cats Protection but for the reckless investment of 11.2 million pounds (GBP) by the charity in rubbish Icelandic banks that have gone bust. It seems that this vast sum of money in terms of cat welfare is now lost as today we hear that the “Treasury rules out any help for charities that lost £120m in failed Icelandic banks” (Times Saturday June 20 2009). Cats Protection had hoped that the government would bail them out. Charities in the UK invested about £120 million in Icelandic banks and have almost certainly lost it (or most of it) when they went bust.

The Treasury said that it would set an unrealistic precedent to compensate the charities. Their stance rejects the recommendations of the Treasury Select Committee. That seems to be it. Although charities with a turnover of £6.5 million can seek help under the Government’s Financial Services Compensation Scheme larger charities are barred. I will presume that this bars Cats Protection. If I am correct that leaves them in the unenviable position of waiting years to receive perhaps pennies in the pound of monies invested when the bank’s assets are sold off.

Peter Hepburn, Cats Protection chief executive, is angry. I would have thought he would be scared to. He says, “ I feel incredibly angry…”. He wants to be bailed out. He shouldn’t be in a position where he needs to be bailed out. Responsibility rests with him ultimately for the loss of £11.2 million and he should go. It is a disgrace. He should have spread the investment far more widely. This was other people’s money. The charity held it on trust for the donors. Perhaps he was advised? Ill advised, if he was. The trouble is that the money men always give advice that benefits them. They are driven by self interest and forget about serving the client. Cats Protection found that out the hard way.

I must say I am shocked at the size of the sum of money that was held (and not spent) by Cats Protection. I feel very angry about that. There was and always is a massive obligation to spend money given by people to cat charities for the purposes for which they gave it, the welfare of cats. Of course, there has to be some money invested as it must be impossible to spend all monies received as it is received.

But how much money do you invest? The amount must be at a minimum. And the overall strategy, I say, should always have this in mind. In short the overall business plan of Cats Protection should be built around the premise that all monies received are spent on cat welfare (less the minimum cost of overheads and expenses of running the charity). I don’t believe that they think that way. I think they have gone soft. What I mean is the money was easy. There is no need to make money in a large charity. It just rolls in and this can generate a less than efficient attitude and I am convinced that this is the case with Cats Protection. I have evidence of it.

Their accounts for 2007 say that they aim to have one year’s operational expenditure. This is to protect against unexpected falls in income. This seems excessive. When in the history of Cats Protection did income completely dry up for one year? I would bet, never. I would be almost certain that income has been fairly regular for many years. And in any case any reserve funds must (yes that important) be invested in absolutely safe investments, namely bank accounts tha provide safe levels of interest.

Cats Protection run what I would describe as a rather old fashioned method of placing cats with people. Potential adopters are invited on their website to visit certain centres and select a cat. In the United States they have Petfinder.com where people can search online for individual cats and then go and meet the cat. Many small cat rescue centres are affiliated with Petfinder, using their website to direct searchers to their rescue centre. This is far more efficient. I was surprised that Cats Protection did not use the same system. So I asked them why not?

First I phoned them and the person I spoke to, Zahir White, recommended that I email my query. When that sort of thing happens it looks bad to me. I sense defensiveness and uncertainty. It does not fill me with confidence that this charity is well organised. Anyway, I complied and emailed them. I received no answer. I re-emailed them as follows:

Hello Zahir

I emailed you at your request about 11 days ago. Here is a copy of the email:

Re: Enquiry why Cats Protection don't adopt the Petfinder.com model of matching people with rescue cats
I write further to our telephone conversation today 20th March 2009, in which I asked why Cats Protection, the most established cat rescue operation in the UK, do not adopt the Petfinder.com model, which might be considered a more efficient method of placing rescued cat with prospective adopter.
Petfinder.com works with rescue centers to mutual benefit and to the cat's benefit by allowing people to search for cats (including specific cat breeds) by town and region in the USA. Individual cats are presented and the location provided plus contact details. I would ask you, please, to use the Petfinder site whereupon I would look forward to hearing from you as to why you do not adopt such a method.
Thanks in advance
Michael
Admin Pictures-of-cats.org
As I am yet to hear from Cats Protection, I should be pleased to receive a response.
Regards
Michael

That wasn’t great to be honest. Having complied with their request to email them I didn’t receive a response. I had to chase. Looks sloppy to me. I then received a response as follows:

Hi Michael

Many thanks for your email which was passed on to me by my colleague Zahir White. We are currently working on live rehoming pages for our main site which will be a fully searchable database of cats in our care ready for rehoming. The functionality of the site will allow users to search for cats by age, breed, colour etc and will offer a postcode search facility.

The new pages will draw in cats from our branch and Adoption Centre network.

Thank you again for your enquiry and suggestion, and all best wishes with PetFinder into the future.

Kind regards

James

James Blake

Communications Manager

So great news from James Blake. I wonder if the massive loss of funds will impact this?

I made a earlier post about this some time ago. At that time there was talk about a possible compensation scheme for charities generally as many had invested in these banks that in hindsight were very risky. It never worked out………

I feel for the cats that are being euthanized as a result of this huge loss of funding and the fact that there will be no compensation for Cats Protection. Do the people at Cats Protection feel this loss?

From No compensation for Cats Protection to Home Page

Quality Content is King on the Internet

Staying at number one in Google search can be fraught with anxiety. We know how hard it can be to get to the number one position on a search engine results page (SERP). It can take a hell of a long time and the best SEO that you can apply or you just might get lucky but, frankly, there is no luck on the internet as it is all controlled by those algorithms. What is particularly interesting is how, do you stay at the top once you are there and if you got to the number one position quite quickly but then disappeared, what happened and why?

In my experience the key is this. Google can track what we do off the page. Here is a possible example. Say your web page is at the top of page one of SERP. You built it a few days before it hit page one number one. Then after two weeks it has gone to page 5. What is happening, in my opinion, is that Google is measuring the amount of time people stay on the new page. Google measures what happens before, during and after the visit to the page in question and in so doing is able to tell how valuable the page is to visitors.

If visitors consistently arrive, stay a short time and then search again, the page is not, on the face of it, providing the information that it says it should. Google of course knows the search keywords or phrase so can measure that against the title and content of the article. If visitors stay on the page for longer than average and then perhaps go to another page from the same website and then off the internet that would indicate that the page has satisfied the market and that the website has as well. Google is measuring the quality of the content through visitor behavior.

This then, once again, tells us the obvious really. Everything that we do on the internet as website creators is very secondary to the quality of the content. Google can measure the quality of your content through its algorithm. Above all else the business that is Google needs us to build meaningful and excellent content to satisfy its customers. It knows where it is. However, and this is a big however, although good old Google is very good it is not perfect and it gets it wrong sometimes. One weakness, I think, is that a good page that is short but nonetheless provides the answer to a question may fail just because visitors can read, digest and get off quickly. Algorithms will have weaknesses.

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