Roger's Blog

Bookies Selling Email Adresses

Running my own domains means I have the fortune to be able to have unlimited email addresses, so when I sign up for things online I invariably use a unique email address. That way when I start receiving spam emails I know where they have originated from.

I am also pretty careful at checking all of the options for privacy, not giving my email to other "reputable" companies/newsletters etc when I sign up.

However, it would appear that the vast majority of bookies have either sold my email address on or worse still they have had their customer databases hacked. The emails I am receiving on those addresses tend to be either Viagra/Pharmacy ones or the sign up for our casino for $500 bonus or "you have won the lottery" type emails and typically originate from the Eastern Block.

I will name and shame the bookies involved here:
Stan James
Blue Square
Tote
Littlewoods (Bet Direct)

Blogging on RTG - The Future?

Its become pretty clear over the last few years that the product used to host the blogs on RTG is on its way to becoming obsolete.

The support from the developers has been none existent and the code was never the greatest in the 1st place (I think I have fixed more bugs in it than they have).

Meanwhile the world has moved on and we get more problems with spammers etc but this product doesn't have the tools to deal with them.

So, sometime fairly soon, we will have to say goodbye to the current RTG blog system. The big question is, do I replace it with something else and attempt to import the existing blogs into that or do I just drop them altogether?

Let me hear your views - particularly if you are an existing blogger here and directly affected by this.

Time for my annual look at the website visitor stats

I can't believe it is over a year since I made any blog entry so to put that right here is my annual look at the RTG visitors browser profiles.

Firefox continues to grow in popularity, but its the marginal players such as Opera (where did they go wrong?) that are getting squeezed as much as Microsoft.

The latest figures with last years figures in brackets are as follows:
Internet Explorer    63% (71%)
Firefox 27% (19%)
Safari  5% (3%) - presumably because of the iPhone
Chrome 2% (n/a)
Opera 1% (4%)

The others include PS3 and Netfront with the PSP dropping off the radar.

Microsofts dominance of operating systems is actually even stronger now and Linux appears to be in the decline with the iPhone being the new entry here:
Windows 92% (91%)
Macintosh 4% (4%)
iPhone 1% (n/a)
Linux 0.5% (3%)
Symbian 0.5% (1%)

We now have 90% (75%) of you using screen resolutions of 1024x768 or above with nearly 2% of the rest being very low resolutions (ie. from phones/mobile devices)

Browser Wars

I did a post about a year ago looking at the stats from RTG visitors, so now its time to revisit that.

Firefox is continuing to gain popularity but Microsoft are still hanging on in there.
The latest figures are as follows:
Internet Explorer    71%
Firefox 19%
Opera 4%
Safari  3%
The others include PS3, PSP and Netfront.

In terms of operating systems, again its a Microsoft whitewash:
Windows 91%
Macintosh 4%
Linux 3%
Symbian 1%
Others include iPhone, iPod, PS3, PSP and Wii

Nearly 75% of you now use screen resolutions of 1024x768 or above, but the other interesting statistic here is the resurgence of much lower resolutions, presumably from phones and other portable devices.
Maybe its time to get back to our roots and develop a low bandwidth, low resolution theme again?

Its not quite the Emirates Stadium