Really looking forward to my trip to London next month to hook up with some clients – even moreso as I’m having lunch at Google’s HQ.  Ever heard of the Google 15?  Apparently Google employees put on 15 pounds of weight within a couple of months of working there as the canteens are so good.  Bring it on.

On the whole it’s been a tough 12 months on the PR front for this $200billion dollar advertising company.  Check out this clip:

I guess it’s all in the presentation but when you watch what Google’s achieved from this perspective, it’s hard to avoid cynicism.  That said, maybe it’s got a lot to do with being both innovative and a bit of a show-off.  Whether it’s some good old fashioned Murdoch-baiting, to developing mobile phones or even just the occasional invasion of privacy, Google get the headlines…good or evil.

When I’m there next month I’ll do my best to find that special elevator that takes you straight down to Gomorrah…pretty sure Rupert Murdoch will have one too…who would you rather give your details to?  Rupert or Sergey?

Regular visitors to this blog will be aware of how interested I am in the various online mapping systems that are out there.  This time last year, we took a first look at how Glasgow looked on Google Street View and hypothesised about where Google would go next.

Fasten your seatbelts folks…Bing have launched a demo version of their new Bing Streetside mapping system and it looks awesome.  It’s probably going to be in beta for some time – at present they’ve just got Vancouver and Seattle added but the features look amazing.  Stuff like being able to look up at the sky and see star formations from any location and the use of Photosynth technology to integrate Flickr photos in Bing Maps could only just be the start…  In turn, this makes it a much richer experience than the ’vanilla’ Google Streetview.

Downside (and with Microsoft, I guess there always has to be one) is that the current demo only works if you’ve got a Windows machine….

Don’t let that deter you from checking out the clip…

We’ve just completed a bit of a website re-skin for Mclaren’s Pianos.

We started working with Jamie Mclaren (aka The Piano Wizard) when he was selling second hand pianos from a tiny workshop just along from our Glasgow Web Design studio in the Hidden Lane some six or seven years ago.

Whilst his previous website has been great for his business, it was felt it was time for a bit of an overhaul.  Mclaren’s also benefit greatly from our website optimisation and SEO services and as a result, pretty much own the first page of Google for terms such as ‘piano sales glasgow’, ‘piano scotland’, ‘piano glasgow’ and a whole raft of other piano-related (and ultimately income generating terms).

In fact last year, we even highlighted the work we’d been doing on his website to highlight how effective basic website optimisation can be.

His business has gone from strength to strength as a result of his hard work and his prominent search engine positioning and we’re delighted to be working with him, every step of the way.