VVVVVV - A very AWESOME game

You play as Captain Veridian!

 VVVVVVV (That's 6 v's) is a game created by Terry Cavanagh that follows the adventure of Captain Viridian as he saves the rest of his crew from impending doom after his ship started to malfunction! It is reminiscent of the consoles of the past, the unique retro aesthetic blended with the vibrant colours creates a very beautiful game. The music created by Souleye matches the mood and feeling of the game perfectly, with old 8-bit tunes such as Positive Force and Potential for Anything.

The core game play focuses on a simple mechanic that involves switching gravity. You will only use 4 buttons in the game - but don't let that fool you, it's frustratingly difficult much like Super Meat Boy or I want to be the Guy. You cannot switch gravity in the air, which means you have to time and plan out how to progress through a room which is conveniently sprawling with nasty spikes! One hit, you die. But don't fear! You start again at the last checkpoint (which there is plenty of in this game). The difficulty is spot on. Where Terry gives you a challenging room, there is often a checkpoint nearby to ensure you can jump right back in.  

Feel the game is too hard? Well you can also collect trinkets! These trinkets are littered across the map in hard-to-reach areas and serve as the only collectable in the game. Some of the most impossibly frustrating rooms are purely based around getting them (Veni, Vidi, Vici springs to mind..) and once all collected you unlock new modes!
There are a number of different modes to be unlocked, some of them can be unlocked by completing the game quick, some unlocked by getting hardly any deaths and some unlocked via trinkets. The hardest mode to note is the 'no-death' mode, good luck with that!

Terry has given out tools for people to create their own maps and adventure. VVVVVV already comes with a few included player levels (even Notches!) and you can easily download other peoples creations from the internet to play. Though, this feature could be expanded on in the future as there is no in-game browser for these. Player levels are even more punishing than the original game, so I'd leave them to last if you want to stay the slightest bit sane!

The downsides is that although this game brings a brilliantly unique concept, the length is disappointing. Although this can be remedied by the addition to player-created maps, it would of been nice for a slightly longer game. Overall, if you don't own this game then I'd highly advice you to go buy it! It has been available to purchase from Steam and 3DS store (In North America at the moment) - you won't regret it!

Is it worth it?

Thank you and welcome to my first review! I will be reviewing the new mobile phone network GiffGaff that has seemingly sprung up recently.

GiffGaff is a sim only phone network provider. What does this mean to you? If your phone is unlocked, you can simply pop their sim card in and start using it! This is good news on people who are lucky enough to have unlocked phones (I bought and use a cheap one from ebay, suits me) but if you are unlucky enough not to have one, Giffgaff offer a service called Unlockpedia that helps you get under way to unlocking your phone! So enough of the waffle, here’s the question you’ve been waiting for:

So is GiffGaff a scam?

Nope. Not at all. Giffgaff offers mostly cheaper prices than other networks and don’t bog you down with 24-month contracts, hidden terms and conditions and stuff. It’s finally a mobile phone network provider that doesn’t bog you down with silly hidden charges and hundreds of tarrifs. They have one set tarrif that is cheap, reliable and not over the top. The real thing that makes them stand out is their unique system of GiffGaff goodybags.

What are giffgaff goodybags? Miniature sized packages that let you choose how you want to use your phone. Want to text? Top up £5 and you can choose the unlimited texts goodybag and receive unlimited texts with your top up. Maybe you love to surf the internet, so topping up £10 will get you unlimited internet, unlimited texts, unlimited giffgaff to giffgaff calls and 200 minutes. I’m not trying to sound like a salesmen, but compare these prices to other providers.

So far giffgaffs coverage seems to be better than my o2 coverage. I’m guessing this will depend on where you live but I’ve managed to get a good signal from everywhere I’ve been so far. The only problem I’ve had is that giffgaff doesn’t like to send me delivery reports, though this may just be my phone, it really is a small annoyance.

The overall giffgaff community is very helpful and helping out on the community can earn you points. These points are for giffgaffs payback system, where you can refer people to their service and they will literally pay you money. They allow you to either use the money as credit for your phone, paypal (over £10 only) and donate to charity. This system can be effective if you have a few friends and feel like getting something extra out of your network. The only downside is that giffgaff only pays out twice a year. So don’t be expecting a monthly income from this.

Conclusion

Giffgaff is NOT a scam. Is giffgaff any good? Heck yes! Infact, it’s a very good network provider for your phone. It looks like I’ll be using them for my primary provider at the moment. Feel free to order a sim straight to your door by clicking here, it’ll be worth it! Get giffgaff today!

A budding new website has emerged named Andrew and Andrew.

This website shows the world how it is to be an Andrew; The life, the challenges and more.

They have things such as picture of the day, their own personal blogs and the weather forcast. Although small, I helped start with website and it is already getting 100's of visitors a day.

So feel free to visit Andrew and Andrew today!

Hey guys, so I've been buying a number of domains recently for a few projects I have lined up in the not-so-distant future. So I've used GoDaddy special promo codes to get some money off the orders. When you're on a tight budget, these can really help:

promo10 - This cuts 10% off your total order, very helpful for large ones.
cjc749dom - Cheap .com domain registration for GoDaddy, helpful when ordering!
promo15 - Cuts a whopping 15% off your order if you spend more than 75$

These are a few codes, there are others but I found these to be the most helpful! Make sure you always look around before you buy.

So you've come here because the latest layout sucks? They've changed chat again? They keep messing with your messages/chat settings? You're not alone. There are 'how to change new facebook' 2,280,000,000 results, that number is pretty shocking. I'm guessing you didn't come here to be told numbers or anything, so how do you change it?

Get rid of Facebook.

'What'?!

Yup. There are work-arounds for the Facebook layout, changing stylesheets and such but Facebook is constantly updating their service. Usually their updates are nothing more than a small facelift to make the website seem new again. Changing your Facebook layout will require you to delete it! There you go, gone forever.

'BUT I DON'T WANT TO!!!'

I can understand to some extent, there is one small work-around. If you don't like the new fangle-dangle Facebook, then visit m.facebook.com
It's the mobile version of the website, it's simple and quicker to use. But of course, the vast majority of Facebook wants something flashy so..

Use Google+, it's good. Although the transition can be slightly daunting, the simplicity of the service is perfect. No more 'phantom facebook notifications' or such. You could use Bebo.. or even Myspace if you're desperate for nostalgia. I'll continue to use the latest Facebook change, even though most people hate it, they'll adapt. People hate change yet they'll stand by and let it happen. Like a certain Naruto character once said, 'People are stupid'.

The process to building backlinks can be a rather slow, laborious task. For most people, backlinks is vital when building up a small, fledgling website! There are a lot of different services, tools and methods people use to build backlinks fast which tends to work in their favour, in the short-term.

Google ranks links determined of the websites pagerank. Having 100's of pagerank 0 websites link to you means nothing compared to one pagerank 9 link. Buildings these links can be a pain, especially when using so-called 'seo backlink building services' which tend to give your website spammy backlinks, which actually DEVALUES your website. I've fallen victim to one of these packages before, one that promised quality backlinks that actually gave me terrible ones in the long run. As a test, Google moved by pagerank right down to 0 once it detected these.

If you want to build good backlinks, then you must have time or a dedicated team of professionals to help build for you. The most essential, VITAL piece of help I can give you is to produce good content. Good content will get organic traffic, make people want to share your link and promote your website entirely free! A good example would be websites like kokatu which is a BLOG but it reports the latest and rumoured news revolving around games. This pulls in a lot of interested readers and they get backlinks entirely from good content. The key is to write about something you enjoy, you're knowledgable about and you know it hasn't been done 100x.

This is not saying that you shouldn't write about things that other people already have done, for example, I posted a Youtube video that reversed a piece of music but someone else had done this 3 months prior to me. They only had 500 odd views, mine had 0. I knew if I could promote my video and get more people interested in it, I would become more popular despite them being older. I ended up posting on websites that were interested in the genre, I promoted it on other videos and ended up getting 5000 views in under a week. Keep to this rule, if you can write it better and more interesting, then do it. If they have posts that are poorely written and not being promoted well, then create yours and do it better. If they have a piece of well written, well promoted, popular post, then don't copy it. Doing this will produce you backlinks and of the good kind.

The other and more simpler method would be asking the owner of other websites to link to you. This reminds me of the late 90's webring phenonema, where a lot of websites would join webrings to get more visitors. This only works if you have a real niche subjects yet closely related. If you're a small website talking about Health, then link-exchanging with a website about games won't do you any favours. Most small websites are likely to accept your offers, but try to keep these links to a minimum. A lot of websites known as link farms operate entirely through this method and can harm your website.

Submitting to directories has been subject to many debate, some people believing this will improve your traffic whilst others are a little more dubious. The truth is that submitting to spammy, 0 pagerank, 0 traffic directories is as much use as trying to dodge rain. Try to aim for the bigger, more well-known ones to get any value out of your submission.

Forums generally allow you post a link in your sig. This helps if you visit the forum often and act as an active member. Being active on a forum is key to actually getting something out of your sig-links. Try to be strongly opinionated, start debates and stand out. Even if this is fake, this will naturally get more people interested in your person and end up gaining more traffic to your website through the link as people decide to think 'What is HIS website about?'. Sticking to a forum that is based around the 'genre' or style of your website can be the most key thing. Like I said earlier, posting in a health forum with your games website link won't help at all. Try to make your links fit for purpose, give them value and a good reason to be there.

Lastly is the most common of all link-building methods, blog commenting. Comment on blogs around your website genre (If it's politics, post on politic blogs or post, if it's health, post on health, etc) This will not only insight the author to reply to you, but you'll always gain the curiosity of other readers to click on your link. Comment something good and worth while to read and people will come.

I hope these tips have helped you a bit! If you have any more questions, then please do not hesitate to comment below!

When you type a Google search, it is common for people to make spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes and such. It doesn't help when your company or website is listed under one of these mistakes, like mine was!

For the past year or so, I've had this small website up and running getting a small amount of traffic. I've managed to top the Google searches, Yahoo searches and Bing searches for 'chumm' (Small achievement, as it is my name) The problem was that Google recognised this as a spelling error and always presented a 'Did you mean Chum?' Of course this is annoying, especially when your website is listed as spelling mistake which in turn drives away potential website visitors!

So how can you combat this? For a small website, you usually can't. The only way Google determines that it isn't a mistake is when your website starts getting a lot of traffic. Then it'll remove the Did you mean? message and things will be as normal! Just get more traffic, it couldn't be simpler! It will take from weeks to months to stop google from listing your website as a mistake, patience is a virtue!

Google has decided to withdraw all websites with the .co.cc from their website search. This includes both of my proxies (www.surfree.co.cc and www.unblockme.co.cc respectively)
Googles reason was that most of these domains were being used by spammers more than actual users. If you already own a .co.cc domains, you will no doubt of seen the major drop in traffic over the past week.

I highly suggest anyone with a blog/server using the domains to switch over a more professional .com domain. You'll get much more traffic and the benefits outweigh the negatives.

So far Google seems to be the only search engine that has done this, with Yahoo and Bing still indexing these websites. It may only be a matter of time before these decide to stop listing .co.cc as well so I'd switch over before you lose the majority of your traffic! Afterall, if you aren't listed in Google, you aren't going to go anywhere.

This is going to be a short review on the website adf.ly, a service where you can gain money from shortening links!

No doubt if you used Twitter you've used bit.ly or another shortening service to transform your links into a smaller, easier link. Perhaps you've used Linkbucks to change your links into ones that generate better income for you? Now you can do both with adf.ly!

I have personally used a number of these services and the general consensus is the Pay per Click is extremely low. If you're looking for a big money maker, then stick these links on a link that people will click often. The advertisements are generally better than the ones you will find on Linkbucks, as they're less instrusive and more user friendly. I have found they also pay more per click! I made $1.5 in one day from a single one of my links. A small amount maybe, but imagine having 100 links doing the same? It adds up.

Usually these services can be hit or miss, a lot of them dissapearing and reappearing frequently but adf.ly is here to stay I think. I don't really use many advertising methods on this website (Apart from adsense) but I can see myself using these links in the future to generate a small amount of income!

HOLD YOUR HORSES! I am not bashing Linux at all. This is meant for the average non-tech user that you'll find often paying some IT tech to fix their computer every 6 months and buy a new laptop every year because the old one got too slow. So on with the reasons

Too complex?

Schools, College, etc all use computers primarily running Windows. They teach their pupils how to use Word, Excel, Designing Websites, programming applications, etc using Windows. When you go to buy a computer in a store 99% of the time it will be Windows (unless its a Mac, hiss), if you buy a computer online it'll most likely be Windows, if you buy a new printer it'll work with Windows, if you buy a new PC game it'll work with Windows.

Can you see? It's been drummed into you so much. The average user most likely would install Linux using a Windows mindset and start asking questions like 'Where is the start menu?' 'How do I install itunes?' 'Why wont my games work anymore.' 'Why do I need to keep entering my password'. Most average users don't have the patience, they'll simple shutdown and go back to what they know and love.

Compatibility

This isn't Linux's strongpoint. A lot of hardware can work flawlessly when first plugged in whilst others can be confusing. I had to hunt down the right driver for my printer when using Ubuntu that took a while but most people would simply give up. Windows comes pre-installed with everything to work as soon as you install it when Linux may need some tinkering to get certain things working (DHCP wouldn't work, so I manually had to enter network cfg to get it working but the average non-techie wouldn't know that). Amongst other things, a lot of peoples favourite programs simply won't run on Linux, even under Wine.

What distro?

The Linux community is divided. Their are hundreds of different distros around and it can be confusing for a newcomer to choose the right one. The support isn't always their as it is for Windows. They can no longer get their local tech friend to come over and magically fix their problems. A problem maybe down to that specific distro, your hardware, anything. I know most people wouldn't trawl through forums to find some vague post on how to fix it.

Linux is the ideal choice for most people.

Away from those negative points to a more positive one. The majority of people don't need Windows at all. A lot of people just use their computers to browse the internet, go on youtube, use IM, use email and go on Facebook. They can do this all on Linux. Give your grandma a laptop with Linux on it, teach her to use it and it'll be all she needs. The problem with Windows is they dominate the majority of the market share, so all the programs and hardware are created with this in mind and also Windows gets all the viruses due to this. My advice is, if you want to get a computer for someone who has never had experience with them, Linux is your best bet.