luxury self catering

This is my entry into the competition to win a €1175 luxury self catering weekend. All I have to do is write this post, mention Luxury Self Catering, link to their website and link to a friend who might be interested. Done, done and done!

I was thinking their criteria for this comptition is quite strange and then as I was pasting in the links it hit me. This is brilliant marketing. This is Search Engine Optimization like none before.

You will get blogs from across the blogosphere linking on that one term and not only that, to their friends website, ensuring the Googlebot won't just pick up the post as an advertisement post. I'm sure Glengarriff Lodge won't be at the bottom of Page 4 of Google search results for luxury self catering as it is now!

I still hope I win! 1175 is a very odd number too!!

future posts

Finally Blogger has gotten off their asses and introduced Scheduled Posts!

I can now set a time in the future I wish my post to be published and when that time comes, it will go live!

Yes, I know WordPress has had this feature a long time, but now the Blogger platform has secured I stay here a little while longer!

P.S. I should be in the Pub when this is Published!

irishman wins world race

Update: Its Official, see below..Irishman, Damian Foxall and his French team mate Jean-Pierre Dick will sail into Barcelona tonight in the Paprec-Virbac 2 winning the 1st ever Barcelona World Race.

The Barcelona World Race is a new two-handed, non-stop round the world yacht race starting on the 11th November, 2007 [and to be held every four years]. For the first time, this race will see the world's best professional sailors from both solo and fully crewed disciplines coming together to compete against each other in teams of two.

I've been following them since late November, when they were battling for 3rd position. It was great to get an update every day via RSS about accidents, masts breaking, teams dropping out, challenges for 1st position! They have held the lead for a while now, with Hugo Boss nipping at their tails, but tonight they will complete the race by returning to Barcelona, winning the competition.
One thing I must say is that the media attention over the entire race has been poor. Only once I heard an update on the news about how they were getting on, and this was a quite news day over Christmas. This is a shame considering there is an Irishman winning this race! I'm sure there will be loads of press today and tomorrow about our new Hero, now the hard work is over!

UPDATE: Its official:

Updated : 11/2/2008 21:02 GMT

Jean Pierre Dick and Damian Foxall have crossed the finish line at 20h 49.49
GMT in the port of Barcelona and officially are the winners of the first edition of the Barcelona World Race. The ecstatic duo are clearly over the moon, jumping up and down in celebration of an incredible feat - 92 days 8hours 49minutes and 49seconds having covered 28,329 miles non-stop around the world.

the game

RULE 1: You are playing The Game.
RULE 2: Whenever you think about The Game, you lose.
RULE 3: Loss must be announced.

The objective of The Game is to forget that it exists.

P.S. I lost.