Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Google DNS 8.8.8.8
Secondary 8.8.4.4

http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Online Image Map Tool - Upload your image, map it, get your code!

Monday, August 03, 2009

Social Networks

Use the right social network for the purpose. The landscape as I personally see it may not be the same for others. If you have a different agenda with these web brands, I would greatly appreciate a comment below!

Twitter: useful for getting links to your works published, to an almost random audience, with the potential of turning interest streams into tsunami - somewhere - most of the time. A democratic engine if there ever was one.

Facebook: What starts to appear to be "keeping up" with old friends may provide opportunities to reconnect with them. Discrete communication that leaves an edible trail. Publishing too much of your inner idiot, or too much profound professorial-ness - both maybe traps to avoid.

Warning: Watch their content copyright terms. Not the place for original works of art.


myspace: a place to exhibit and advertise your art, interact with others, make new connections that do not necessarily result in anything. There appears to be a sort of "museum" culture, people do not remove things (they should!), and very little is actually "for sale" - links to individual sites are far more common. Some write their lives, other use it as an opportunity to opportunity to make connection with like minds.

Warning: Anything owned by Rupert Murdoch may suddenly "change direction".


trademe.co.nz: this is exactly like ebay only this is brilliantly designed. ebay has that utilitarian kind of look, is far far more successful of course - whereas trademe is the brainchild of one person that was sold to the local news media giant Fairfax for 750 million NZ$ (about US$600 million, at the time). It is a very successful social network embracing the huge second hand market and quite a lot of retail traders as well.

Warning: don't cheat the tax dept here - its all public record.


Linked in: professional relationships.

Warning: If you start socialising here -

Orkut: Important if travelling to South America. If you speak Spanish or Portugese there are lots of conversations to be had. Growing in other markets as well as it is Google's own early acquisition and now is extremely web 2.0'd and possibly useful.

Ning.com: a cloud (rather than "server based") system that can of course keep growing forever (as long as humans are interested in your subject - i.e. you domain name). But this is the Luxury model - fully featured and firing on many cylinders. Annoying things are some of its imposed limitations. But it works - it grows members if you have a good idea and can drive it with an appropriate dynamic.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Hunch.com

A new type of search engine pretends to be able to advise you when you need to make a choice and do not know what you want to do, in fact fairly aggressively surveys your inner opinions more randomly and coercively than a call centre on amphetamines.

Or it is an incredibly useful conversational thinking tool that helps you identify products that align with what they can sell you according to what you say about yourself.

Our inner need for gratification, recognition and interaction ensures that many people will have a lot of time doing patchwork marketing surveys. As a Web 2.0 application, it goes beyond the expectations of that medium - perhaps it is an early Web 3.0 application.

Social Media Safety



A recent media article points out the inherent danger in using social media sites explaining "what am I doing" as it may tell burglars when you are away from home, if they are tech saavy enough to monitor you, and stupid enough to want to burgle you. Tech saavy burglars are also aware that the forces of detection - although maybe a little behind their own level of criminal genius are right behind them, potentially tracking disturbing web activity.

The other side of this nonsense is not that social media sites necessary want to know where you are unless you are stupid enough to have your location publically tracked by owning a mobile phone and switching it on. No, when the media attacks social networking it is due to a fundamental mistake when it comes to social media. It is partly about getting invited to parties and it is partly about leading people along links to material online that you feel are important. A twitter feed that tells me a housewife in Ontario is cooking an omlette is simply not that fascinating or useful to me. But one who posts a link to the best omlette recipe on her twitter feed is doing me a service and at the same time building a following for her intellectual point of view, even if they are not all there all the time as some may think.

It is the combination of mobile phones and social media that invite people to say what they are "doing" and revealing location. But it is the phone that does that, rather than the social media concept - that is a marketing wet dream come true.

NZ Herald article

Monday, May 18, 2009

Questions to focus on what is important for a customer website.

1. publishing articles or notices
2. publishing surveys/polls and presenting results
3. making and publishing video
4. online face to face consultation via webcam
5. encrypted email services, mailing list
6. cutting edge design
7. social networking
8. guaranteed complete privacy
9. technical cutting edge advancement
10. market exposure
11. minimal fuss
12. income making

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Extremely wise words by my old accountant - Bruce Shepherd. Could not agree more.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Microsoft Internet Explorer Users Exposed to Flaw

It's official. Do not use Microsoft Internet Explorer as your machine can be "taken over" by people who certainly do not have your interests at heart.