Recently and with Honda like reliability, every time I open a should-have-been-dead-a-long-time-ago-newspaper there happens to be a business interview with some nobody ambiguous business-man. These interviews seem to follow the same old repertoire of banal questions and answers. Modern newspaper journalists can’t seem to get enough of interviewing small-time businessmen that haven’t quite ‘made it’ so to speak, these ill trained ‘journalists’ then proceed to subject their readers to the same questions every journalist in the world has used for every single business interview. Ever.

Evidence would suggest that when journalism students were given their “how to interview” text-books at university, they were in fact, just a single small piece of paper with just one question on it, this question read: “Who is your business hero”?

When I read these ‘interviews’ in national broadsheet newspapers, I am, with Metronome regularity, subjected to the very same answers that I’ve happened to read nine thousand times before. The answers are so generic that one could transpose them with biblical cliches and the Proverbs would still not appear out of place. Virtually every interviewee retorts with “Richard Branson”. Eugh.

While I like Richard Branson, he’s a little dull when compared to the Fox-esk business dexterity of the machiavellian Bernie Ecclestone. I don’t have a ‘business hero’, but I have incredible respect for Ecclestone. His genius is stunning.

One of his triumphs was the selling of Formula One several times over without relinquishing ownership.

However, as much as I look upon Ecclestone with adoration, I’ve not ever believed a bloody word of what he says to the press; Ecclestone likes to ‘play’ with the journalists, and almost always for his own gain and amusement. While I find these interviews entertaining, I highly doubt there is a shed of reality in what he says…He’s brilliant. He’s top of my list of people I’d like to meet.

As such, I’ve pulled some of his quotes from a recent interview that was primarily about his daughters. The interview from which these quotes are pulled appeared in the Guardian.

I’ve translated some of Bernie’s answers as he can be ambiguous at times and I’m sure you’d like to know what he really means;)

Interview answers with translations

Bernie - On his daughters million dollar Crystal bath:

“First, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t a crystal bath for a million quid. It’s the hype again. Makes me bloody mad. It cost nothing like that. Not true. Not at all.”

Translation: 

“It was way more, I’m sorry to say. While she won’t get to the bottom of her trust fund any time soon, it’s a bit O.T.T for a bath.

Bernie: When asked about his daughters image in the media:

“I spent the weekend with both of them at Petra’s wedding,” Ecclestone says, “and Tamara was an angel. Nothing like that show in any shape or form. She was Tamara.”

Translation:

“I think that show hit the nail on the head when it comes to describing what my daughters really like”.

Bernie - When asked about why he paid a bribe to an official in Brussels:  

“I asked the trust: ‘What’s going to happen if this guy tells the revenue that I’m managing the trust, which is what he was inferring?’ They said: ‘If he does, the revenue will want to come and check and they’ll assess you and you’ll be in court for three years proving all the things that are wrong, and it’ll cost you a fortune, and the trust as well. You’d be assessed at 40% tax on about £3bn. I said: ‘I can’t afford it. What shall I do?‘”

(I can't imagine Bernie ever asking someone "what to do" when it comes to making a deal - of any sort). 

Translation:

“The bribe went bad when he tried to double cross me. Now I’m going to punish him by stating that I was forced to because of his blackmail skulduggery. If this was 1970, I’d have sent him on an all expenses permanent holiday down the Thames in a concrete Canoe. Alas, street justice has fallen out of fashion with the authorities in recent years.
I said to the trust, ‘I have a Boeing sized deal going down but there is this Eurocrat sleaze-ball that wants nearly 30 million Euros to make the deal happen. What shall I do, what do you think the trust said? Of course they said I should pay the bribe to make us even richer. Doh.”

Bernie: On why he paid the Euro-Schmuck £27,500,000 

What he did, as he told the court, was to pay him £27.5m to keep schtum: “I thought it might keep him quiet and peaceful and friendly and stop him doing silly things.”

Translation:

“I paid him that money and still got fucked, go figure”

Bernie - On his opinion of his biography. Which he hasn’t read:

“I don’t read books. But most people who read it thought it was a good book. Did you read it?”

Translation:

“Of course my book is good, everyone in the world knows it, even illiterate children in Africa are raving about it”.

Bernie: On the author of his biography and why they failed to uncover much ‘dirt’:

“That’s what the problem was. I used to say to Tom – because we’ve become quite good friends – ‘What can I do that’s evil for you?’ He was upfront with me and I gave him complete co-operation. Anyone he wanted to speak to, I called and said: ‘Talk to this guy – tell him the truth.’ Because he had a reputation coming in. Somebody called me and said: ‘There’s a guy doing a book on you, but he’s not a normal guy for doing books, he’s destroyed a few people.’ I said it wouldn’t be a bad idea if he came and had a chat before he started destroying me, because maybe he could find even more to destroy. So Tom arrived and we had lunch and that’s how the name of the book came about. I said: ‘You write what you like, provided it’s more or less the truth, because I’m no angel.’ And when we’d finished the book, he said: ‘Would you mind if I called the book No Angel?’ I said: ‘Bloody good name.’”

Translation:

“Nobody would dare utter a bad word about me, if they want to live.”

Bernie - On the Bahrain protests:

“The people I’ve met there are lovely people,” Ecclestone says, prompting the response that jailing doctors for treating demonstrators doesn’t seem very lovely.

Translation:

“Too right they should lock people up for contributing to the cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix this year, including the meddling Doctors”.

Bernie – On putting on an F1 Grand Prix in countries with questionable human rights policies:

“We pulled out of South Africa years ago (in 1985) because of apartheid. I witnessed things that had happened there which upset me. I thought: ‘That ain’t the way to go on.’ I hope we go to Bahrain and there’s no trouble – the race goes on, the public are happy and there are no dramas. That’s what I hope.”

Translation:

“Apartheid-Shmartheid – If they had paid the money, we’d never have left South Africa and if Bahrain continues to pay enough we’ll stay there too, regardless as to how many civilians are slaughtered. God, I love fooling people with this BS political correctness.”

Bernie: On his morals about running in countries with a dangerous and volatile political system:

“We’d have to give it some serious thought then. But we’ve been to Argentina when there’s been big dramas. There’s been dramas in Brazil. Bad things happen there. I think you can look anywhere now and it’s not all good. You can’t really hold England up as being all good, can you? There have been some terrible atrocities that we committed.”

Translation:

“Where there is money, I’ll follow. If they want to stage a ‘Middle-Eastern version of Monaco’ around the streets of Islamabad I’d agree. As long as they paid my extortionate fees – obviously.”

—

All just for fun of course – not a word of the above is true

Try to spot him. I think he’s wearing the wig.

watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE

If you’re looking for a way to cancel your Match.com dating account or how to cancel your Match.com subscription, the subscription cancellation telephone number is at the end of this blog post.

Match.com have been featured on Watchdog for billing people and leading customers believe that they will not continue to be billed once they have suspended their accounts, they apparently make it very easy to suspend accounts but don’t stop their automatic billing of the subscriptions. The messaging appears to be very ambiguous, downright confusing and very deceptive. I’d go as far as saying it could be fraud, but that’s only my opinion.

If you’re looking for a way to cancel your Match.com account then I believe you have to call them. That appears to be the only channel of cancellation! You hardly have to telephone them to open an account.

Match would have spent millions channelling you into signing up to their dating website once you had clicked on one of their Google adverts  (called conversion rate optimisation), and it appears they have spent money on making sure you can’t leave either. It’s an atrocity and I think that sort of behaviour is disgusting.

Again, it appears you can only cancel by telephone, here is the Match.com dating subscription cancellation telephone number: 0800 368 5856

Outrageous! Shame on you Match.com!

Alexander King (Alex) is the Head of UK Customer Care for Match.com – perhaps try and find out what his email address is and email him personally for a refund.

Please leave comments if you have any further information which may help people get a refund or otherwise.

I created this video last year for a bit of fun, No offence intended Matt Cutts

1. Sebastian Vettel. Incredible.

2. F1. Just wow, I can’t believe how passionate I was when F1 was a continual procession. I almost lost my F1 faith when I read Bernie Ecclestone’s recent biography and discovered just how much of a farce F1 actually is. However, the racing makes it worth it. Especially since Max Mosley has gone and can’t corrupt races because of his megalomania and grudges.

3. Felix Dennis and his recent “book”. 88 The Narrow Road. Here is my review: It’s shit. Don’t bother, the man isn’t well and the people that reviewed his last book so positively have reviewed this excrement in the same light. The fact that he keeps putting this trash out is unbeknown to me, it makes no sense. He doesn’t need the money. At least it’s not long, every page is one sided.

If my analysis and theories about the latest Google algorithmic update are correct then sites like Ezinearticles.com will never recover. Christopher Knight owns Ezinearticles.com and his solution to the update was to “clean up his site” and improve the “quality” of the “articles” being submitted.  Right now, It’s going to make little or no difference and there will be no Google Panda recovery or solution for Ezinearticles should the algorithm remain somewhat akin to what it is today. Ehow.com and Suite101.com have a chance to recover but the size of the task is monstrous and hugely expensive. However, they can recover. Google could and probably will change their algorithm in a couple of years time again and all that expensive work they put in will go up in flames.

More worrying though is that if Google don’t change their Panda algorithm dramatically, then the websites that have been affected (that’s everyone that can’t fix their sites) will continue to bleed traffic slowly. If some websites are down 30% now, it’s likely that the attrition won’t stop there and the affected websites traffic will continue to fall.

My theory has come up 83% correct with each of the sites I’ve looked at, however, I’m looking for more websites to do blind testing on. If you’ve been hit by the recent changes and are looking for a solution to the recent Google Panda update, then please put your URL in the comments and let me know whether I can publish them or not. I’ll then look at the sites that are left as examples and either comment or write back to you with a simple “yes” or “no” as to whether I believe your site was affected. Once we’re all settled and I’m absolutely certain  that my theory and analysis is correct, I’ll try to give you some advice for your site.

It might be that I’ve found a consistent side effect of the Google Panda update and I’m going off on some tangent and am completely wrong, but I doubt it.

If you’re looking for the panacea to your website woes and want a Google Panda fix, then leave me a comment – what have you got to lose?  Even more traffic?

Google panda recovery possibly? I don’t know yet, but I’m sure I’ve found enough of a trend to solve the issue. I’m certainly not going to go shouting about a Google Panda fix publicly, I am loyal to someone and am eternally grateful and would therefore never disclose that information in the public domain.

However, if the Google Panda update has hit your site then there maybe light at the end of the tunnel. I think I’m one of the first people to figure it out, it’s been a long few weeks but I’m pretty sure other smart search people will come to the same conclusion imminently.

What I will state is whether you’re vulerable, if you fit the profile or not, do leave a comment and tell me if I’m wrong or not.

You’re particularly vulnerable if:

1.  You’re an established website with a reasonable about of search engine visibility.

2.  You have a small site that you started years ago, you wrote some very good quality unique content (eg: technical guides) and let it attract links naturally as it was very good content.

3.  You have a huge website, I’m talking tens of thousands of pages or (even millions) here and you’ve been ticking along quite nicely until now, you’ve done some link-building to get good rankings.

4. You’re an affiliate and the stuff you sell or promote can’t really be said in any other way as there are millions of variations and people need to key in the exact phrase to find what they are looking for.

5. You own a very large forum, it probably still even has tens of thousands or millions of visitors a month.

You read it here first. Please comment and tell me if you fit into one of the five categories strongly.

Skype hacking, Skype account Hack, Skype Account Hacked… Personal Emergency.

I run my business and am very dependant on a single VOIP company known as Skype. Alas, many of my friends, clients and employees around the world are also very reliant on Skype. When it becomes unavailable, day turns to night and a strange and an uncomfortable silence is bestowed upon us, it’s rather unpleasant and expensive in terms of lost business and general inconvenience.

Yes, there is email and the good old POTS (I hear you say), but using the Plain-Old-Telephone-Service  is horrifically expensive and the quality of the calls is so bad in the places that I need to call that we don’t bother even trying to use a regular telephone. Skype actually does have the best call quality in the countries that I call regularly. Sad, scary and true. I do think that Skype is an incredible (almost) free service that we take for granted. When they went down late December 2010; I didn’t complain. I reminded the Lynch Mob that it would be a travesty to moan about Skype being down for a few days, especially since they were rock solid and FREE for so many years. I come from South Africa originally, and as a kid, making a telephone call was something you thought about. It wasn’t taken for granted. Telephone calls were expensive and a luxury. International calls were virtually never made due to the prohibitive cost. The fact that I can communicate with my family back home and the rest of the world these days so cheaply and easily still feels slightly magical. I am grateful. More than most.

However, today is a little different, I am less humble. My account has been hacked and I can’t get hold of anyone to resolve the problem. I spend an amount of money with Skype each year and my Skype account is set to auto-recharge when the balance runs low. This means that hackers can make a gargantuan amount of free calls as the account will keep topping itself up automatically if they manage to gain access and start using to your Skype account. Hence my sense of urgency around this issue. Fortunately, I use PayPal to fund my Skype account and could stop it reloading itself once I figured what was going on. If you’ve set Skype to use your bank account as the source of funding, it could cost you an arm and a leg.

I’m pissed off at Skype’s “un-contactable-ness” in these situations. They don’t have a public email address or telephone number, their “support” (official or casual member community) is unobtainable if you don’t have access to your account, I didn’t have access to my Skype account as it was hacked. It also feels somewhat “dodgy”, with “Joe Blogs” offering to help other people with their “security issues” on a public forum. Very strange.  I couldn’t login, change the password, gain access or do a bloody thing with my Skype account because the hacker had changed my account access and the password reset function didn’t work, probably because he was still logged in to my account… #Fail.

I’ve been very proactive in a bid to get my account “fixed” today, but to no avail thus far… I’m trying to keep in mind that they do offer an amazing service and they can’t provide comprehensive support as they probably don’t make much money per user. However, security breaches should be treated differently as it involves peoples money and data. I resent their lack of interest and urgency.

To cut a long story short (er), I started with their “https://support.skype.com/en-gb/support_request?” link. It makes it clear that you should let them know immediately if your account has been compromised. I quote:

“If you suspect that someone else has your Skype name and password, you should tell us about it immediately, so we can investigate further and reset the account back to you. You should also change your password as soon as possible and check your computer’s security.”

Now, following their link here: “you should tell us about it immediately” and then clicking the little boxes brings you back to the same page in one big loop. It’s very counter intuitive. However, if you’re reading this post in desperation, do scroll down and fill in the form, it is what you need to do. The next screen was a “Thank-You message” so I know that my “contact” was received.

My D.I.Y Skype fixing activities thus far today: (without response)

a) I have sent two contact form requests (security breach things), stating that I believe my account has been hacked.
b) I’ve Tweeted @Skype and @PeteratSkype (Skype’s blogger and Twitterer in chief) as well as @adrianasher (Chief Information Security Officer)
c) I’ve also Tweeted a message with the Skype hashtag (Skype#) hoping to get some attention.
d) Emailed support@Skype but there is an auto-response which redirects you to their support.skype domain.
e) I’ve tried to reset my password multiple times, but it didn’t work. I like the Token trick, it’s nifty. Wish it worked.
f) I tried (in vain) to call a number that I found on a random website that happened to list Skype’s (apparent) number in the Netherlands.
g) I’m now writing this blog post about Skype and it’s insecurities, lest not forget it’s underwhelming service.

I don’t care about the money I’ve lost, it’s not that much. All I want it my beloved Skype back, although, I am starting to believe that this marriage may need some serious consideration as the love is quickly slipping from my grasp and I’m contemplating an affair with another VOIP provider. I’ve simply grown too dependant Skype and it’s prudent to consider that this may keep happening or we may get a “big outage” at some stage which would cripple me and my little business.

Skype does have security issues, rather large ones too; I’ll highlight them for Mr. Adrian Asher (Chief Information Security Officer), even though he does have significant experience in Banking and Gambling security.

If you read this Adrian Asher from Skype, perhaps mull over a few points I’ve made here:

1. Your security algo’s may need a tweak or two, if they even exist. How a password change, combined with highly unnatural usage of the account and then with telephone calls to random countries which have NEVER been called before COMBINED WITH constant automatic reloading and exhausting of the account hasn’t thrown a red flag is beyond me.

2. Skype as a company doesn’t seem to take it’s security very seriously, maybe that should have been point number one… (Appearances are everything and this is like Roadkill)

Here are the calls that this “dude” routed through is Mud Hut or whatever for a few Dollars:

Skype’s security issues appear to be systemic, I’ve taken a snapshot of a Twitter search, this is just the last day or so, albeit two Tweets of the Tweets are mine.

My home PC auto-logged into Skype. (WTF) That’s how I’ve managed to see my calls for this blog post, even with my old password?! Although only two of my contacts appear to be online…

It’s time to attempt to get some help and talk to someone on Skype’s official live chat support as my machine seems to have half-logged-in and thus, this urgency brings the end of this blog post. (I’m sure you’re relieved.)

Carpe Diem.  Skype Account Diem. Au Revoir.

ps: I’m in a rush, hungry and frustrated and am therefore not going to proof read this post. It’s probably littered with typo’s and grammatical errors. However, I hope this has an effect on getting my account fixed, sends a message to Skype about their “issues” and provides some comfort to you in knowing you’re not alone when it comes to this particular Skype problem.