[Solved] "No service currently available" on Blackberry

A couple of days ago I mislaid my Blackberry. Unfortunately I'd also left it with call divert enabled which meant I couldn't ring it and run around the house / car / garden listening out for the ringtone. So, having turned the aforementioned places upside down, I came to the conclusion I must have completely lost it. I called Orange and reported it lost, which led them to block the SIM card and blacklist the IMEI number. Long story short, I found the phone a few hours later and called Orange to lift the blocks.

Fast forward a few days later and I tried to make a call, but got "No service currently available". Strange, as I had full reception, so I put it down to a temporary network error and used another phone. Next day, the same thing - regardless of what number I tried to call, I got the same error. What's really strange is that I could happily browse the web via the phone, I just couldn't make calls or send/receive SMS messages.

The SIM card was fine, I tested it another phone and successfully made outgoing calls. I then tried properly wiping (factory reset) the Blackberry but still no luck. Eventually, after agreeing with Orange that it was my ageing handset that was at fault, I resigned myself to having to buy a new phone.

But then, through a bit of searching, I came across this thread. Now you can ignore the fact that it's on an O2 forum because, as mentioned, this is not a network issue. Anyway, the bottom line (and solution) is that when Orange originally lifted the SIM bar on my phone, they failed to remove the IMEI from the national handset blacklist - which explained why it worked fine in my spare handset, but not on the Blackberry.

When you call customer services (regardless of your network) ask them to double check that your IMEI number is not blacklisted on this national list of blocked handsets, otherwise you'll end up getting the "No service currently available" message like I did!

Hope that helps - if it did, then post a comment.

W7 cannot access Vista files (error 0x80070035)

I needed to access some files on my laptop (Vista) from my desktop (Windows 7). I set up file sharing and it worked well, but only in one direction: Vista could access files on W7, but not vice-a-versa. The error code I got was 0x80070035. I spent hours searching for a solution, before stumbling across a fix.

My two computers are named as follows:

GB-PC (Windows 7)
GB-LP (Laptop, running Vista)

When I created a test shared folder on my Vista laptop, I noticed it assigned it the address of \\GB-lp\test rather than the address of \\GB-LP\test - i.e. the 'lp' bit was in lowercase. I suddenly wondered if this was the cause of the 'path not found' (0x80070035) error.

To test it, I returned to my W7 deskop and opened up the My Computer folder. In the address bar, where it  says "Computer  >" I deleted this and typed in \\GB-lp. All of a sudden I was prompted for my laptop's login details and it worked! So, my recommendation is to create a test shared folder on your Vista machine and see what case it considers its name to be. I can't imagine it's meant to be case sensitive, but it worked for me!

Barclays fraud dept not answering phone!

Yesterday I tried to make a payment online using my Visa debit card (sometimes you have no choice!). The problem started when I accidentally entered the wrong 3 digit CSV code. A Verified by Visa page then appeared, with some additional security questions to verify my identity. At this point I realised I had entered the wrong card's CSV so I cancelled out of the transaction.

I tried to make the payment again, with the correct CSV, but to no avail. I was now presented with a Barclays "transaction failed" page quoting error code EC15 (or ECI5?) and a 0870 156 6485 national rate number to call their fraud department.

I tried calling this number twice last night (Dec 5th, 6-7pm) and despite holding 10-15 minutes each time, no-one ever answered the phone - and this department is meant to be available 24/7. I gave up and decided to try again this morning (Dec 6th, 11-11.30am). After 13 minutes of listening to the on hold music, it started to ring - only for me to then be connected to silence - #fail, as it's called these days!

I will have to ring back and try yet again. If anyone from Barclays stumbles across this post, then I hope you will investigate what's going on with this awful call centre/dept. I've included the dates and times above so you can query them (if they answer your call) on why they were not answering customer calls for the last day.

In the meantime, I found a freephone number that takes you to the same queue, it doesn't solve the problem of them not answering, but at least you don't have to pay national rate for the privilege of having your call ignored! The number is 0800 015 1358

A4UExpo 2012 London review & round-up

At this year's A4UExpo I met an affiliate who was returning to the industry after a few years off. After giving him the “we’re now calling it performance marketing” memo, I then asked for his first impression of the show, the answer: “there’s a lot more suits these days”.

This, in a nutshell, describes the change that many of us have witnessed over the last few years. Google’s highly effective assault on affiliate marketing has virtually obliterated the ability to make money from simply running a network of exact match domain (EMD) sites. The increasing complexity of Google's ranking algorithm is putting a huge time strain on the average affiliate. Combined with the growing importance of regularly interacting on social media and it’s a wonder that we find the time to sleep!

These pressures have caused some affiliates to quit the industry altogether (or go the agency/merchant route) and those of us remaining are quickly realising, if they hadn't already, that it's all about developing a sustainable, long term, project. While you might still make a ‘quick buck’ with an EMD site promoting this year’s must have product, you also know it's unlikely to keep you going for long.

I know that some affiliates now find events like A4UExpo either too expensive and/or too full of agency types, but I feel the increasing complexity of the industry makes such events a 'must attend'. Also, these aforementioned agencies spend considerable amounts of money and time on analysing ranking factors and developing useful new tools. Without an event such as A4UExpo it's unlikely that us, mere, humble affiliates would ever have access to their findings.

In terms of reviewing the specifics of this year’s A4UExpo, it seems logical to start with the pre-event networking party. Compared to previous years, this seemed to be a relatively quiet affair - perhaps, in part, to being held down in Southwark on a rainy evening. Given that people are encouraged to stay at the Hilton, it would be seem more polite (and practical) to hold it somewhere closer to that. Hopefully next year they'll consider this, I remember some of the best pre-event parties from yesteryear were those held in the Novotel (the official hotel) bar.

While on the theme of boozing, I’d like to give kudos to Matt and team for this year's main networking event at Jewel in Piccadilly Circus. They wisely decided to get people to eat beforehand, rather than repeat the ‘food riots’ (slight exaggeration!) of previous years. I’m guessing this also meant they had more budget for the free bar which was very generous and still going when I left at midnight. It was a great evening and I think perhaps a template for future years – ultimately people just want a bit of drink, a bit of dancing and a quiet place for chatting – all of which were done well this year.

Those following the #a4uexpo hash tag on Twitter will have seen me doing a lot of tweeting on my only-used-at-expos @geoffblog account. Hopefully some of the tips, tricks and links I tweeted were helpful and obviously full credit goes to the presenters. I found the sessions this year to be good, although again it did seem a bit quieter – either that or the rooms were just bigger! I don’t find the panel discussions, other than the ‘fun’ ones, to be overly useful. That's probably because I’m looking for tips and tricks I can take away and implement. If you worked in a larger organisation, or perhaps in a strategy role, then obviously these more ‘zoomed out’ discussions would no doubt be useful to you.

It seemed that Twitter didn’t feature much this year, at least not in comparison to the growing importance placed on Facebook’s EdgeRank. There didn’t seem to be a lot of hard evidence on how this works, more a theory about the value of the different interactions people can have with your FB content. For example it was suggested that receiving a comment could be worth four times more ‘value’ than receiving a 'like'.

In terms of sessions that stood out for me, I found the very first session of the Expo, “60 tips in 60 minutes: Social, search and conversion” by Sam Crocker, Kelvin Newman and Stephen Pavlovich, to be a great session to kick things off with. It was packed full of content and was well organised with the three speakers covering each topic equally and with a consistent style.

As predicted, I also enjoyed “Consumers are socially mobile: Get your mobile search in order!” by Sri Sharma and Bas van den Beld. The session featured some ‘real life’ examples of how Google are handling mobile search, including one particular query (I think for car insurance?) that return of a result featuring lots of ads and just a single 'organic' result!

Dave Naylor and Martin MacDonald did a good job with their session on the various ranking factors for search and social. In an effort to brighten up a rather grey and rainy afternoon, Dave was even sporting a handsome pair of red trousers. Again it’s best to check out the archive of tweets on @geoffblog if you're looking for any specific tips I picked up from this session.

On day two I enjoyed “Turbo-charging your SEO and link-building strategy” by A4U regular Patrick Altoft and Jon Quinton of SEOgadget. Jon did a great job of showing some very specific techniques for identifying possible link partners as well as a nifty way to find your own pages that are ranking well but have a low CTR. Meanwhile, Patrick was able to cover the timely announcement of the Google disavow tool, as well as provide his usual good advice on building a decent SEO strategy.

This review could go on and on, so in the interests of time, I’ll round things up by name checking a few other sessions I enjoyed. These included: “Engaging Facebook through EDGErank, content optimisation and killer apps” by Martin Belam, Kelvin Newman and Jeremy Waite. “Getting personal to drive conversion: customer behaviour meets big data” which was the keynote from Dr Mike Baxter and also “Excel Skills for SEOs” which was an enjoyable and unashamed Excel ‘geek fest’  from Richard Baxter of SEOgadget.

All in all, it was another good year for the A4UExpo in London. Yes it’s become more ‘corporate’ and yes some of the familiar faces might not have been there, but neither of these things should detract from the fact A4UExpo has matured in to a well organised, well run,  content packed event for our industry.

Agree, disagree? Spotted a typo? Then leave a comment below.

PS. To show I’ve got nothing against ‘the suits’, I’d like to point out that I was sporting a lovely (other opinions are available!) M&S suit jacket for the duration of the show ;-)

Shared Google Calendar suddenly missing from iPhone

Overnight I noticed that a shared Google calendar that I could normally view on the iPhone Calendar app had suddenly disappeared. This was after months of it working perfectly normally. I double checked all my settings (which turned out to be fine), before heading to Google to try and find a solution.

To cut a long story short, the solution was posted on the Apple discussions site here:

Try to sign-in to your Google account at: https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect and check all shared calendars [you'd] like to see on your iPhone, then tap Save button.

It was as simple as that. After re-ticking the shared calendars on the link above, they immediately started to show up again on my iPhone. I hope that by re-posting this solution here will help others in a similar situation.