Why bother sending it in the first place if I can redeem it......well you can really but you have to go through the hassle of creating another Google account. I have to say it was worth the hassle as the last voucher I received was £75.

I just dont see what account age has to do with it, especially when I can simply work around that by creating a new account. If Google are resigned to giving me £75 worth of advertising (thanks by the way) then just let me redeem it on my usual account.

I found Noah's Classifieds and although I was not totally sold buy their website and demo of the software, I did find the recent feature of a bridge to Wordpress very interesting and useful. So having found nothing better I decided to purchase the latest E-Commerce SEO version at $199.95 and the Wordpress Noah Premium Widgets at $49.95 (I believe the actual bridge is free).

So having just spent $249.90 I was eager to get started. The email arrived from Steve (the owner) with the script and plugins etc, it also contained a link to a video guide for installation.

I watched the installation and carried it out without to much bother. So I had a Wordpress installation with a Noah installation in a sub folder. I then initialised the premium widgets/plugins and the bridge. I then set about getting used to Noah (as Im pretty good with Wordpress I thought I would leave that until last), this I found was no easy feat. The admin is poorly laid out, illogical and clunky. The code is also not the best Ive seen, a lot of use of tables and inline styling. It also feels like it hasnt been built from scratch, more like its been adapted from something else.

Anyway having fiddled around with it a bit I decided to make a start on my Wordpress theme. Upon trying to log into the Wordpress admin area I found I couldnt. It threw an error and gave me no access. I asked Steve for help and he couldnt understand my problem and why I was having difficulties and told me to simply start again. Install Wordpress then Noah then initialise the bridge. I did this and it seemed to work until I tested out the functionality of the bridge and widgets.

The bridge hardly functioned at all; I created an account in Wordpress and tried to login to Noah with those details....it didnt work. I also found out from another Noah user that the bridge only works one way! So it only works if users register through Wordpress...well it didnt even do that for me, but even so releasing the bridge in this state seems like its only half done.

So obviously I looked to Steve for support and found none, he simply replied "nobody else seems to have these problems". Which is obviously a lie as there is numerous people unhappy with the software and Steve's lack of support, he replies to your emails quick enough if you are interested in buying Noah but as soon as you hit any problems you will be lucky to get a reply!

After countless attempts to get it working, contacting Steve (to get no reply) and visits to the 'cleverly' called Norum which is the owners forum (which also uses a horrible forum script, thats slow, clanky and looks rubbish) that is rather sparsely populated and you will need to wait for a reply if you get one at all. Steve also doesnt support his product through the forum, he lets other Noah customers do the work for him.

It got to the point where I was so annoyed with everything I asked for a refund, to which Steve replied with an email basically saying that nobody else had any of my issues and that other noobs to the software manage fine and so its my fault. Doing his usual and not addressing the issue raised. I pushed the matter further and now receive no feedback whatsoever.

I thought I would check the terms and conditions on the Noah website and found these two lines:

"REFUNDS: Payments made to Noahsclassifieds.org are final and shall NOT be refunded under any circumstance."

"REFUNDS: Payments made to Noahsclassifieds.org are final and shall NOT be refunded under any circumstance. Unless you elect for a 30-day Money Back Trial Period."

I dont remember an option for a 30-day money back trial period when I made the purchase....funny that!

I suppose its my own fault. If you look at the Noah website, the checkout system, the forum. Non are particularly good and well designed so why would the classifieds script be any different. I hope by writing this review that people looking to purchase a classified script will avoid Noah like the plague and realise the lack of support should you run in to difficulties.

Im currently looking into other options and think I found a good alternative which I will write a review on when I have tested it. Still Im angry that I have wasted over £150 on rubbish that I no longer want to use and have no hope of getting a refund for.

UPDATE: I have found a really good out of the box classifieds software called ikiclassifieds. Its very easy to setup and has excellent admin customisation options. It also boasts excellent adsense and banner ad integration. You can set top ads (featured ads) and homepage placement ads payable via Paypal. Overall the site is excellent with phpBB included. I havent customised the code too much as I havent felt the need to, everything is almost perfect straight out the box...a highly recommended bit of software. Support is slightly slow (think the time difference effects it) but so far so good, they have answered all my comments etc. I also think its quite new so cant wait for updates!

UPDATE: Please read all the comment before purchasing iki. There may be a better option for you like using Wordpress and a custom theme like Classipress or Classifieds Theme.

Everyday Im on the road I see these muppets driving along with their foggys on, even if its blazing sunshine. OK its not so annoying during the day but at night it can be quite distracting and blinding.

Aside from the fact that driving with fog lights on when it isnt foggy is dangerous and annoying....its also feckin ILLEGAL!!!

You can recieve a fine and three points for your stupidity. I knew a guy who drove with his foggys on all the time, he was stopped by police and given a warning. He didnt take the warning on board and said "it makes my car look cooler".....what a tit! Anyway he was stopped again by the same policeman and was promptly given a fine and points!

HAHA serves you right for being a selfish twat.

The title read thus; "Important news about changes to your Bank of Scotland Current account" it should have read something like this; "We have thought of a new way to screw more money out of you"

The changes are to the overdraft fees. Bank of Scotland are no longer charging a debit interest rate but will be charging a pound a day for every day you are in your overdraft (for overdrafts upto £2,500)! At the moment I am charged around £12-13 per month for being in my overdraft all month, with the new system I will be charged more than double that at around £30!

What really yanks my noodle is the robbing bastards are trying to make it sound like they are doing me a favour by saying; "At Bank of Scotland we're committed to fees that are clear and simple to understand".

So not only are they trying to pull the wool over my eyes, pretending to do me a favour but they are insulting my intelligence by saying I cant comprehend a simple interest rate and it must be simplified for me!!!

These new overdraft charges I feel are purposely made to penalise people like me, who live in their overdrafts, the very people who are probably struggling to cope financially and should be aided not made worse off. Yet again the banks find away to penalise the poorer ranks of society.

Of course all Banks will be looking for ways to wangle that little bit extra from everybody after their almighty f*&^ up. They screw up, losing billions of pounds, we the tax payer foot the bill and we are thanked by increased charges masked with PR smoke blown out these jumped up bankers arses! And what can we do......not much really, change your bank maybe? Well they are all just as bad. Phone them up and complain maybe? Hah...if you can be bothered waiting 20 mins on the phone to do it! No there isnt much that can be done which is so frustrating, just write a rant on a blog nobody cares about.

Bank of Scotland a friend for life? Aye right

Ive got quite a few businesses listed but only one ever got displayed for some reason? The listing that appeared was for the key term "Web Design Perth" and my website http://www.webdesign-perth.co.uk was the one displayed (although I have two others business websites listed which dont appear?).

I recently added another business to my Local Business Centre account and now nothing shows up. No listings are displayed anywhere in the local results!!

Because I am no listed prominently in the proper organic listings I rely on the local results to get a bit of traffic! I dont think anything I have done anything that would cause this to happen but if anybody has any ideas why my listings have been dropped please use the comment form below and share.

I have noticed that there has been some recent Algorithm changes and now Google has introduced 'Place Pages' which display more information on the buisiness and take away the need for the user to actually visit the website, I think this will detriment the businesses and web designers. The business will suffer because the user might not visit the website to get the latest info and deals, plus if you run Google Adsense then this could reduce your revenue (and Googles, although it will offset because more people are staying on Google and clicking as they go). Obviously web designers will lose out because business owners will say why do I need the expense of a site when Google lists me front page with all the information I need. So now its an even harder task to talk them around as to why its a good thing, and it is!

Well Im a bit pissed off anyway, if Google are going to drop my sites from Local search the least they could do is put them on page one for the key terms I want......where is Google CEO's phone number again...phone him and get him to sort it personally for me...

Any thought about anything above anyone?

Now if they create an account for you (or you do it) and they phone you to take you through the login process, do not do it! They will tell you just to click their terms and conditions confirming you have read them, this means you have entered into a contract with them. If you decide from this point that you do not want their service they will send you threatening letters and take you to court, stating that you have digitally signed and entered into a contract with them.

So please do not log into their system and agree to terms and conditions.

Creditsafe and Marketsafe operate an "easy in, hard out" style contract, its easy to agree to it and difficult to get out of. There are loads of cases online about their "auto renew" policy. Basically if you do not write to them explaining you wish to opt out of their auto renew system they will just go ahead and charge you for the next years service. It has been documented on a number of forums online that the company will sometimes increase the renewal cost by up to 10 times what was paid in the first year! Scary.

Check out the thread about Creditsafe/Marketsafe on money saving expert's forum here: Money Saving Expert Forum

The service they offer isnt even that great, you can achieve a similar service yourself for free, its called Yell.com! You can find just as many business contact/leads by searching Yell.com (for free) as you can with Credit Safe! The Credit Safe database is also innaccurate as its supposedly tells you if a business has a website through their system, as a web designer I thought this would be useful but upon cross checking their database with my own searches online I found that the seriously need to update their database!!

Anyway I cant recommend enough you STAY AWAY FROM THESE COMPANIES! It will only cause you stress, if you are interested in their services perhaps look at their competition or look for free ways to achieve the service!

Creditsafe and Marketsafe suck and sail close to the winds of being a scam, using bully tactics to sell and retrieve funds.

Please feel free to comment below and share your experiences with the company!

Twitter...........what a complete load of pants that's been jumped on by every celeb with a PC and no common sense. I mean come on what real use is Twitter providing apart from keeping the sad celeb chasing stalkers updated with the next piece of uninteresting news, take P Diddy (IAMDIDDY) for instance when he says: "let's go! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!!!!!!!"

Wow....deep. And hes not the only one writing pointless rubbish cluttering up Twitters nice website that surely no sane person cares about. Nope your every day Jo is writing crap too like; "brushing my teeth" while part of me wants to applaud their multi-tasking skills, the other wants to wrench the brush from their tweet typing grasp and ram it down their throat in a heroic attempt to get rid of the crap spewing forth onto Twitter!

Twitter is producing the human equivalent of static noise; a perpetual stream of annoying noise that makes no sense!

OK, OK maybe some people have got some interesting things to say but how much good stuff can you cram into 140 characters? So what real use does Twitter serve? I mean it only became popular once 'celebrities' started using and talking about it! Of course its good to have an outlet to keep people updated about gigs, events, thoughts etc its called a blog! Where one can choose to write more than 140 characters if one cares too (what forward thinking). Hurrah!

But to the real crux of the matter; why oh why is everyone yapping on and on and on and on about it! Its a never ending stream of Twitter this and Twitter that, with everyone jumping on the band wagon. People talk about it on the radio, on the TV, its in the news, I get 10 bloody articles about it in my email everyday! WHY? Its just not that great! It hasnt brought any real good or usefulness to the world. So please here my plea stop talking about it so much and let Twitter die its enivitable death sooner rather than later!

Microblogging on a Twitter-like scale is the scurge of the internet and a complete waste of web space. RIP Twitter Bird