Facebook and Twitter
Already since some time Budapestagent.com has a Facebook and Twitter Account with some Fans and Followers. Not that many though. Anyways this should not be a post about the existing channels rather than a new feature I embedded yesterday night which lets you easily post articles of Budapestagent.com on you Facebook and Twitter account. Under every article of Budapestagent.com you see from now on a “share” button for Facebook and a “tweet” button for Twitter.
You can with one simple click spread the information written here to your network of followers and friends over at Facebook and Twitter. Of course this is also a help for me to gain some visitors at the end of the day. So be social and spread the news. As I can see some people did already post things on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks for that.
Written in InternetKeresőmarketing Nap 2009
Today I received an email that the day after tomorrow the Keresőmarketing Nap 2009 (Search Engine Day) is taking place again in Budapest. I have been I think 3 times to this conference since I am living in Budapest on the one hand for business on the other hand because of private interest in this topic. I would have gone this year again but if I get an email, which for sure several others got as well, 2 days before the actual conference starts I just have to say that this is simply unprofessional. Any working person has for sure planned his worklife 2 days in advance and simply cannot come.
I have been to several SEO or other internet marketing related conferences if it was SES, SMX or the BAC this year and for every conference I was going I knew at least one month before that I will be there for the 2 days (Keresőmarketing Nap is as usual just one day). OK most of these conferences were much more expensive for regular visitors than here in Hungary but nevertheless you cannot announce a conference 2 days before it actually starts to the paying crowd.
Now for all of you who plan on going there what can you expect? Just another Keynote by Erica Schmidt from iProspect, another pannel on Etarget vs. Adwords again some skin deep Analytics session. Nothing new, same old speakers, same old exhibitors and yet another pen from Google. Wow. But for all of you who begin with SEO these days go there, have a look and listen. You will hear that you need SEO in your company and why but you probably won’t hear what you can do to improve your SEO inhouse, where to start as an affiliate doing SEO nor do professionals get any deeper discussion except from the things they know and you won’t hear any super insights like for example Dave Naylor talked about on the Budapest Affiliate Conference this year.
Enough critics, I really like that a conference like that is taking place in Budapest but they way it is announced and built up is something I don’t really like. As I said if you don’t have deep knowledge or want to network go there, it is something like 25.000 HUF for that day including a warm meal and coffee.
Written in InternetThai Massage in Budapest
A Thai Massage can really heal your soul and make feel as if you were new born. Sometimes you need to give yourself some time to relax and get refreshed by some strong Thai girls hands. After hard working days I about every second week or so I visit the Paradise Thai Massage Center near MOM Park in Budapest. Don’t get me wrong, this is no paid advertisement or any kind of marketing text I am writing here but it is a recommendation if you feel like getting your bones in the position they belong to and your muscles relaxed.
Written in Entertainment, LeisureMargit Bridge Closed
Margit Bridge in Budapest is one of the most used bridges in Budapest and additionally one of the two entrances to Margit Island. This main traffic road is closed now until 2011 at least. First Margit bridge was closed for cars only, except from taxis. Now taxis aren’t allowed as well just trams, bikes and pedestrians are allowed to cross the bridge. So you can walk it, bike it or use the tramp to cross the Danube on Margit Bridge.
So what does that mean for the traffic in Budapest? You might know that for the past years also Liberty bridge was closed and everybody thought that it will be a desaster but it wasn’t. I think in the case of margit bridge it will be the same even though Margit bridge has much heavier traffic than Liberty bridge does.
Written in Budapest NewsHow not to use Twitter
First of all I am a big fan of Twitter and I love the fact of the easy communication but there are several examples of how you should not use Twitter. One of them is the Twitter Account of the Sziget Festival which you can find under twitter.com/sziget which I added before the Sziget Festival started cause I thought I might get some updates on acts performing on the Sziget Festival in Budapest. Well I was disappointed quite fast and by now I am not following the Sziget Festival on Twitter anymore. So here is why.
First of all Twitter lives from followers AND following other people. Have a look on the Sziget Festival account. Around 500 followers but following nobody. Well OK, some people / companies do that because they have no time to reed all the tweets. So there is already no communication and Twitter is a communication tool. Next thing you will see if you check out the tweets. “Sziget on Flickr >>> bla bla message here – link”. Thats about it. They simply took the Flickr RSS feed for the tag “sziget” and use a service that automatically posts all pictures that are uploaded on Flickr with the tag “Sziget” on Twitter. Nothing more, no own posts. The problem here is that Sziget means island in English named after the Hajógyári island in Budapest where it takes place. So what happens if you take a RSS feed which has a generic word? You get tweets with all images tagged as “sziget” including the ones which have nothing to do with the Sziget Festival in Budapest. How annoying is that?
Now automating your tweets is no problem I thing especially if you use it to create fake accounts which are great because whenever you need to you can tweet some ads or self promotion and even earn some cash with it. I have some of these accounts but a bit more creative than the Sziget account.
So here is some recommendation for the Sziget people on how to use the account automated in a bit less simple way. The main thing is that followers don’t just want to see images. They want to watch movies and read articles as well. So?
- Take the RSS feed of a Youtube tag as well to tweet some videos in between.
- Search in Google News for “Sziget Festival” (I think that’s unique not just like “Sziget”) take the RSS and post these news articles to read.
- Go to Technorati, search for “Sziget Festival” and take that RSS feed to cover the blogosphere and tweet their articles.
- Create an Google alert on “Sziget Festival” with “as it happens” and take that RSS feed to cover the rest of the net.
Yo will now have a quite good amount of Tweets on a daily basis which are not just false images but also videos, text, blogs and much more. Every once in a while you should of course tweet the one or other real thing written by your own. I set up a Twitter account about the Sziget Festival and did exactly the above mentioned steps plus some additional features which might even bring some money but that I will cover in another post some time later. So I would bet that I pass the real Sziget Festival Twitter account (if it is a real one) by the next Sziget Festival in 2010. And because I am setting up this account now I will add some more accounts with similar topics to save some time.
So once more for the makers of the Sziget Twitter account. Put a bit more effort in Twitter because it really is a great communication tool with great effects now and in future.
Written in InternetBudapest Affiliate Conference Recap
End of last week the Budapest Affiliate Conference took place at SYMA Event Hall for the conference and several other places for party and networking. I have to give a big shoutout to the guys of iGaming Business for organizing this superb event here in Budapest and I hope Alex that you will come back next year as discussed with the conference.
iGBaffiliate brought over the best of the best in the gaming and casino industry filled up with the top of the Forex industry. The panels were filled with big names in gaming and casino affiliate as well as world wide top SEOs and affiliate marketers. It is useless to go into details now about the program and the parties because it happened so much and at some points I don’t really remember what exactly happened in the clubs afterwards.
Anyways I would love to see iGaming Business coming back to Budapest next year I will be there for sure. If you want to learn anything about the Poker, Casino or Forex industry you should attend this conference as well because you will have the chance to meet top affiliate managers of all programs and network with them.
Check out the video:
It is done!
After weeks and months of working on the new version of Budapestagent.com it is finally online. It has been a hell of work but I think the result is awesome. That is the main reason why I didn’t add too much new content on the old version. I tried to keep the structure as closed as possible to the old version to make the change not too big but some changes had to be done.
I am really proud of the new version which I created next to my daily work, taking care about my child and much more things I do daily. Especially the ability to read got improved really a lot since the last version was a bit small and not too good to navigate. That should change in this version. Additionally the actuality on the frontpage is much better and much easier to handle for me.
As you might realize you have the chance to leave comments and discuss about certain topics which was possible in the old version as well but due to high spam fraud I had to close this feature after a couple of weeks. That should be better with this version.
As my list of events, restaurants, bars, clubs and so on which I have to write about got quite long you can be sure that there will be a lot of new content coming in the next days and weeks. So… I hope you like this new version even thought there are for sure some bugs in it which will be the task of the next days.
Cheers
Written in BudapestagentARC poster exhibition in Budapest
At the moment the ARC exhibition is taking place in Budapest on Ötvenhatosok square which is near the hero square. The task was to create a poster for the topic “What is happiness” which turned out to deliver some very very good results. Some funny as hell, some really serious but all of them super creative. The exhibition will run till 22nd of September and who cannot watch it due to the distance you can watch the pictures in gallerie which you find here. So make sure to check back after September 22nd.
No as I said some pictures were just hilarious for example this one:
It took me a moment to get it but I think thats just simple and good. There were tons of good posters so if you have the chance to see it go for it. It is for free, you can get drinks there and it is open till late if not all night. For all of you Hungarian speakers check the website.
Written in Budapest News, Music & ArtsAC/DC concert in Budapest impressions
I haven’t been to the AC/DC concert yesterday in Budapest Sportarena but I heart from several people that it waas a blast. Well the only proof I could find so far is on Youtube, so check out this video of the concert yesterday.
Looks pretty awesome. Cheers
Written in Budapest NewsThe friendly garbage collector
Today morning at around 7.30, I was already awake but still in bed, it rang on the front door so I had to get up and check who is it and what he wants. Well friday morning it is time to collect the litter bin which we put outside the property on thursday night already. As we moved in that house not long ago there was still some other gargabe on the property like parquet, old, ugly lamps, boxes and all kind of shit which doesn’t really fit in the normal garbage… usually.
Well today the garbage collector rang the bell and asked me if we need to get rid of that stuff. I answered “yes, sure”. From now on he called me “főnök úr” as he saw his business coming. So he asked me if I would pay 1000 HUF to take all the remaining garbage as well in this round. So I gave him the 1000 HUF and let them take it. Usually I would have put it step by step every thursday night in the litter bin until it is gone but come on for 4 Euro he took all the stuff. He and his 2 colleagues can have a nice beer in the pub tonight and I don’t have to care about the garbage anymore. Fine with me.
Thats how Budapest and Hungary is working. A bit of money and he just took the garbage. It is a one time thing, he is happy I am happy that’s it. You find these businesses everywhere, no matter if in the taxi, with the water installation guy or in the hair dresser. That is the daily life of Budapest.
Written in Daily Life, OddBudapestagent on Facebook
Today morning I had a little time and thought about creating a page on Facebook for Budapestagent.com. Well the Result you can find here. Of course still I am learning about the creation of pages, all the applications that can be added and so on. Its not as easy as I thought cause it is mixing up with my normal Facebook Account and all of a sudden I have Twitter Tweets, Rss Feeds and so on on my normal Facebook profile even though I want them to be on the Facebook page.
Well anyways I think it is a nice way to see if and how popular Budapestagent.com is and if the information is really helpful. In my mails I have daily critics, feedback, hate and love mails but transferring that to a more or less open platform is a nice possibility. So if you are on Facebook please “Become a fan of Budapestagent.com on Facebook” I would be more than happy.
As I am really into Social Media at the moment you can also follow me on Twitter.
Written in Budapest NewsRossz, rosszabb, Rossmann
First of all excuse the partly Hungarian title of this post but it couldn’t fit better. “Rossz” is Hungarian and means bad, “rosszabb” is worse but the superaltive is not Rossmann of course, it would be “a legrosszabb”. It is not time for Hungarian lessons today so lets get to the point. Rossmann is a quite large German drug store company with several stores in Hungary as well.
Now why is Rossmann the superlative of bad? Well yesterday a friend of mine went to a Rossmann store to buy 3 articles. Now standing at the cash point the lady scanned all 3 of these articles and let my friend pay the bill but did not give a receipt. Well in 99,9% of the cases you don’t give a shit because you don’t need it anyways bit in this case she would have needed it. So when going to the exit the nice security alarm started to ring and the security guy (in nearly every store in Budapest you find a security guy) asked her to open the bag. She did, showed the three paid items but couldn’t show the receipt since she didn’t get it. They couldn’t even find it in the litter bin or anywhere.
My friend said that they should check the video camera to proof that everything was paid. The answer was a simple “we don’t have a monitor for it”. Second try was to check the system what was on the last bill. Next answer was “We can only do this after 24 hours”. Wow.
So result was that they called the police because of a shampoo which wasn’t paid. By the way it was the cheapest Shampoo and the wallet was full of money. The police had to write a report and asked my friend to sign it in which it basically said that she is a thief. If she would have signed it she would be. So she asked the policemen to let her write her story on this report which they allowed her to do after a long discussion (unbelievable that they want you to sign this report even though you have the right not to do so and exlain the story from your point of view).
End of the story is that Rossmann checked the system yesterday and found out that my friend paid all items which she took. Today the head of Rossmann called her to apologize. She will of course get the Shampoo (she paid it but didn’t get it) and some compensation which most probably will be a rubbish 5000 HUF shopping coupon or something like that.
Well, for having so unfriendly and incompetent employees and security guards I recommend to you to either go to Schlecker, DM or buy your stuff in one of the big stores like Tesco, Auchan or Cora.
Written in Daily LifeBudapest March 15th riots
No March 15th national holiday in Budapest without riots. Of course yesterday (luckily I haven’t been in Budapest) there were some demonstrations by the far right again as nearly every year. Since 2006 I am writing about it but since these are no big news anymore I will just post old links where you will find videos, pictures and articles by famous news sources such as the New York Times, CNN or the BBC.
25.10.2006 – incl. videos
24.10.2006 – with BBC pictures
03.10.2006 – 2 videos
19.09.2006 – CNN news
For more posts about riots in Budapest try the search in this blog or check out Google News about yesterdays riots. Cheers and live in Peace.
Written in Budapest NewsGyurcsány resigned
That was a big news over the weekend. Ferenc Gyurcsany, primeminister of Hungary, offered his resignation. He will leave his place to somebody new if his party, MSZP, finds another candidate for the Primeminster position. Problem is that the opposition votes against any social spendings which makes the work harder than it should be. Fidesz now has the MSZP where they want them to be. Gyurcsány offered to step back from his position if that is necessary to lead the country out of the current crisis.
Till April 14th Gyurcsány will remain as Primeminister, till than a new candidate should be found to avoid completely new elections which the main opposition party Fidesz is calling for. Nevertheless Gyurcsány was reelected as the partys president with 85% of the votes.
With that news the Forint started to be weaker again and jumped up above the 300 mark. At the moment around 302 Forint per Euro which is most likely to go up the next days. So if you are planning to change some Euros into Forint I would wait 2 or 3 days.
As I am not the political monster and just sum up what I read in other sources I recommend to you to read the following stories about Gyurcsány and his resignation:
Written in Budapest NewsIt changed
I needed a blog design change on this blog so I changed it to a more travel, Budapest related and added the Agent in the top left. Of course this design is not the perfect one and still there are some things to do but for now that should be it. The old one was simply to boring.
As I said on Twitter yesterday (hint: Follow me) I try a new blog design (in Twitter it says “profile” which is wrong) thats done now and I am taking into consideration to move the entire project from the CMS I am using now to Wordpress. Why? Simply because Wordpress is so awesome, easy to use and offers tons of Plugins and Extensions which take a long time to get for the CMS I use now.
The problem is that by now Budapestagent.com is so large already that it will not be easy to move alle the pages to Wordpress so easy as well as the entire structure of it. As I am in big stress at the moment with moving, work and another soon to be anounced issue it is not an easy task to get all this done within a couple of days plus I need somebody who knows all about databases where I am an absolute looser in.
So now you have a little overview about what is going on, what is planned and where the way should go. Cheers..
Written in BudapestagentIts been a while
Sorry for not wiriting anything for such a long time but at the moment I am a bit stressed due to moving within the city. The apartment I lived in is now completly empty and the house which I bought is packed with all that stuff but nothing is in the right place, not all walls are painted, not all floors tiled and so on. So there is a lot of stuff to do. Additionally the company I work for has problems moving my internet access from one place to the other and so on.
But in the last days I have been working a bit on Budapestagent.com added some new concerts, restaurants and did some other feauture like the related articles and so on. But I am busy with other projects as well some dealig with Budapest some not. In near future I want to work over some of the existing pages and add new such as a entire section for students in Budapest with a lot of information for the student life here in Budapest.
Thats it with the news, the moving really costs a lot of time, power and patience but it is about to end soon than you will hear more from me again including probably very soon a new, better, nicer blog design. Cheers.
Written in BudapestagentNew Metro trains arrived in Budapest
The new Metro / subway trains arrived in Budapest. Brand new, white and for sure more secure than the old ones the Metro wagos arrived by bus late last month. I don’t know if these trains are only for the new build, soon to be ready (couple more years?) Metro 4 or for all Budapest Metro lines. Check out the Video:
Looks nice and shiny. The question is when these trains will make their first ride in Europes second oldest metro system.
Written in Budapest NewsCAP Budapest 2009
As I read on gambling911 plans for this summers CAP Euro (Casino Affiliate Programs) is most likely to will be held in Budapest in summer 2009. CAP is the leading organizer for casino affiliate conferences which are the leading conferences for exhibitors, gambling merchants and gambling affiliates. Still there is no schedule or and fixed date but it is live on the CAP homepage that the event will take place in Budapest.
For me this is great news since I am in affiliate marketing since many many years, even though not too much into gambling or poker affiliate. But anyways it is good to have a affiliate conference in Budapest once in a while since this topic, which I am actually spending my working days on, is not too big in Hungary yet and it could bring a boost for Hungarian webmasters. Not only in gambling, since online poker and Co are illeagal in Hungary, but also the entire affiliate industry could improve from such an event.
But not only the industry news and panels will be interesting for affiliates but also the networking parties around the conference seem to be loads of fun (Check out the pictures of CAP Euro Barcelona). So if you are up to affiliate marketing and especially gambling affiliate check out the website and register as soon as you can.
Written in InternetForint hits the 300
Well it happened already yesterday or a day before. 1 Euro is worth more than 300 Forint which makes your holiday in Hungary cheaper than ever. Also buying a house would be “cheaper” than ever.
BudapestSun.com about to close
Wow, what a piece of news I read in the Budapest Times today morning. One of the biggest English News sources about Budapest and Hungary is about to shut down, the Budapest Sun. According to the Times the decision was made due to the financial crises. The owners of the Sun is a large regional publisher from the UK called Northcliffe Media which is covering the UK as well as Central and Eastern Europe.
The Budapest Sun exists since 16 years and is/was one of the leading news sources in Hungary in English language. Just a couple of weeks ago they change their design to a rather magazine style than newspaper style and where publishing every fortnight. It is sad that the financial crisis reaches such good papers as the Budapest Sun definetly is. We will see when it will happen and how.
Written in Internet
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