Harry's Blog

Americans Observing 9/11 By Trying Not To Masturbate

My day job is holding the role of editor for a successful commercial videogames website. I spend quite a lot of my time talking to publishers and third-party PR reps who handle the promotion of their portfolio of games.

The vast majority of these PR bods are very knowledgeable and also work hard to make sure they get their game mentioned in the press as much as possible. Sites like the one I run do receive review copies of the latest games, and contrary to popular opinion are not badgered into giving good reviews. However publishers do expect their review copies to go to good homes.

After all, there's no point sending a disk to some tiny website with three readers. And while the disks themselves aren't really worth anything the time PR people spend dealing with you is expensive. I know from personal experience that you need unique readership figures in the tens of thousands, and in some cases hundreds of thousands, to expect to do business with certain games publishers.

Which makes my new experience in the realm of what we'll call "mummy blogging" all the more odd. The PR reps that deal with mummy bloggers are clearly completely out of their mind. I constantly see bloggers being offered free foreign holidays and expensive baby equipment despite probably having a readership of a few hundred unique visitors a day (and I'm being generous there).

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Readers with a good memory may remember we set up a blog for my wife in the dim and distant past and that although her posts were entertaining she lost interest rather quickly.

Well now she's actually started blogging again with the hope of riches, a book deal, keeping busy for five minutes - who knows.

Any road up, you'll find all her thoughts on pregnancy, motherhood, being a city girl living in Dorset etc. over at joneary.com.

Looks like our obscure village in Dorset will be on Google Streetview before too long. And given I was just stood at the window pointing my camera at the car I may end up online too.

We had a note put through the door the other day warning of a particular scam. It involved being told you had a parcel to collect and to phone a certain number, a premium rate number.

This is not a current scam, it was briefly active in 2005 and was quickly stamped on by authorities. Even when active the warning email was wrong. Yes the scam involved getting you to phone a premium rate line. But this was charged at £1.50 minute, there was no instant £15 connection charge as the warning states.

Unfortunately warnings of the scam are being spread once again. I can completely understand why helpful people would warn others of this. But please don't pass it on yourself, because it's not true anymore.

Click through from a statement regarding this scam from the premium phone line regulatory body which you should give to anyone spreading the scare story.

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