Pete White's ImAFish 10.2 Seabass - Blog, Articles, Media, Forum Extra! -

I was looking at some of the past yearly reviews and they all seem to say the same "This year has been the best ever bla bla bla bla", as I don't like the disappoint, the past 12 months have been another record year for myself and ImAFish.

In 2008 ImAFish had a massive 100,000 unique visitors, 69 blog posts and over 3500 forum posts. Some of our top articles this year include 10 useful Mac tips, an overview of the cashback site EI42 and our very own Drupal Module - CommentLuv.

We welcomed in a host of new websites including:

www.ipodhistory.com
www.autoknock.com
www.killerauto.com
www.iphonevideos.net
www.scaryvideoclips.org

The end of the year saw us launch our pilot TV show, for the Diggnation style ImAFish TV.

Personally it's been an even better year as I purchased a house with my long term partner Laura. At work I've built websites for international companies including Aston Martin and Honda, on a national scale for the YMCA and on a local scale Marches Energy Agency. I'm especially pleased with the ecommerce site I built for Cath Tate Direct, its a technically complex ecommerce site that I had to overcome a lot of difficulties with.

As always many thanks to everyone who has contributed to ImAFish, 2009 looks to be as exciting as this year with an all new ImAFish design coming within the next couple of weeks.

This is the pilot episode of our technology based ImAFish TV show. The show uses the same format as Revision 3's Diggnation and aims to give a British/European touch to a US show.

Let me know what you think as we are always looking for improvements. The show is 40minutes long and we discuss a range of this weeks top topics from the social new site www.digg.com.

Email us at tv@imafish.co.uk with your comments and suggestions

I hope you have a great Christmas and New Year! We have an exciting new look coming for ImAFish very soon! Until then here is a trippy Christmas Tree.

I've had a lot of problems with my Xbox over the past month, for starters the day after I purchased Gears Of War 2 the machine red ringed and had to go away for repair. This took about a week and my Xbox came back with one months free Xbox Live.

The last time I used Xbox Live was over 6 months ago but with a new game I decided it would be fun to play online again. When I tried to redeem the Xbox Live Code I was given an error message and had to call Xbox Support.

It turned out that because I cancelled my credit card half way through a year long Xbox Live subscription they had locked my account (tip: always buy the pre-paid cards rather than using your credit card online). It took them a further two weeks to unlock my account. 

When I finally came to play on Xbox Live I find myself with little free time to use my one months free subscription. Which is how I came up with the idea of pay per use rather than a monthly subscription, if I could buy say 10 hours of game play I can simply score my time off against how much I use it.

Say I get a new game that is really good I may burn through 10 hours in a few days (and could therefore buy 100 hours at a significant discount). This way I'm not put off by signing upto a subscription that I might not use - instead I can decide how many hours up front I want to buy and use my gaming time accordingly.

Ideas?

I've recently signed up to LinkedIn and have been updating my profile:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/petewhite

I've been working on getting connections and recommendations. LinkedIn is aimed at social networking between business professionals. 

Has anyone else used LinkedIn and more importantly have they got business through it? Does it mainly cater for certain industries (tech I expect) or is there a wider appeal for the service?

Has anyone been recommended in their office to join the service?

I had this comment earlier on my iPod History site:

Thats the reason why I like to moderate all my comments!

This picture was taken over Shrewsbury whilst I was cycling at the end of September, its taken a while for me to edit and process it.

I've run the photo through Photomatix to bring out some of the color.

With Christmas coming up now is the perfect time to start pushing your EI42 store. Top retailers such as Amazon, Play.com, HMV, Comet, Dixons, Orange, Toys 'R' Us and Marks and Spencers allow yourself and your friends to earn cashback through EI42.

With the average Cash Back around 5% on a Christmas shop of £1000 you will be saving £50! Now imagine your friends spending that and you earning cash back on their purchases!

If you have signed up already your EI42 shop URL will look like mine below. Now is a perfect time to be emailing it to your friends and family, adding it to social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace, adding it to your email or forum signature and telling people in the pub!

www.ei42.com/pwhite/

Happy Christmas shopping and I hope you earn plenty through yours and your friends cash back!

I took these photos whilst the sun was setting last week at about 6:30pm (before the clocks changed). The first one I've run through Photomatix to enhance some of the colours.

Franchise Gator is a UK based website that allows you to look for franchise opportunities within a range of sectors. Their front page is split into clear sections allowing you to browse franchises by industry, location, work style (e.g. working from home or from an office) or by investment.

Franchises start from £5000 making it easy for anyone to start their own business. Each franchise has a clear description of what is involved, background information about the company, costs and contact information. Within the search functionality you can select multiple opportunities, the request list follows you down the page allowing you to see which opportunities you have selected. Once you are happy with your list you can request further information.

Finding the right Franchise, UK is not always a simple process and you might not see what you want straight away; Fortunately Franchise Gator can email you weekly with new and recommended opportunities.

The website has a clean look and care has been taken into making it easy to use. The content accelerators made available such as search and the 'franchise selector' make it very quick and easy to browse the site. Franchise Gator is a member of the IFA (International Franchise Association).