wanderjahre IT

Don't Get Stuffed!

2009-08-19T22:39:00.000-07:00

For those of you that rely on your Google ranking to bring in the trade SEO is more than just an interesting exercise, it's a essential element of your business plan and discovering that Google has penalised you for over use of keywords can quickly move from an irritation to a disaster in terms of visits. I am aware of at least one PC repair firm that which habitually was in the top 5 for certain search strings suddenly vanishing only to reappear 50 entries down from number. For the company involved and given that people seldom search after the first or second page, this was a disaster. This disaster takes on 70s all star movie proportions when the webmaster tries to put things right only to find that they are still way down the lists.

Background: The site has excellent content when I looked at it, but past version of the site definitely suffered from more than a degree of keyword stuffing. Competitors were close but could not match this site's content, but on checking out the backlinks, I was surprised to find that there were very few. I trawled through the site pages and quickly found although the company had tried to deal with the key word stuffing, some pages still held examples and urgently needed to be cleaned up.

The site's initial reputation was built on some excellent content but the over-optimisation of the site using key words, specifically using the same key word too many times - key word stuffing had resulted in the Google bots taking a dislike to the site which in its turn had caused it to sink down the rankings.

Once the site was penalised, the reputation of the site was effectively negated and the next ranking consideration were the site backlinks, the competition had more backlinks and so they rose while our company sank. The practical result of this will be that for an unknown period of time the company's will fluctuate wildly in the rankings - there is no limit for the amount of time this penalty will continue to be imposed.

So what do you do if you and your company find yourself with a similar problem?

Get rid of key word stuffing and make sure you clean the entire site and not just the index page. This will means that that there will be an end in sight to the penalty eventually.
Build ongoing links, these links will be the foundations of your new credibility, incoming links from quality site will also help.
Check out Google Webmaster Tools and look at the errors/alerts/warnings for your site, also build a new sitemap so that new content and the lack of keyword stuffing will be clearly flagged.
Freshen content - write some of the article and add others - this will provide activity which Google cannot ignore.
Be patient. It could take a while, something to remember the next time you are tempted to do a little keyword stuffing

Good luck.

Google Hacks 2

2009-05-05T07:43:00.000-07:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Get the local time anywhere - not quite a hack, but a useful little tool regardless. Enter simply 'what time is it to get the local time in big cities around the world, or add the locale at the end of your query, like 'what time is it hong kong' to get the local time there.

Flying. Enter the airline and flight number into the Google search box to get the arrival and departure times right inside Google's search results.

Currency, metrics and other guffin: Google's powerful built-in converter calculator can help you out, convert measurements, show how many seconds there are in a year (seconds in a year) or how many euros there are to five dollars (5 USD in Euro).

Compare items with "better than" and find similar items with "reminds me of". The results will almost always lead you to discovering alternatives to whatever it is you're searching for.

Use Google as a free proxy: Google's cache to take a peek even when the originating site's being blocked, with cache:example.com.

Remove affiliate links from product searches by using -site:ebay.com -siteizrate.com -site:shopping.com operator.

Find related terms and documents: Adding a tilde (~) to a search term will return related terms. For example, Googling ~nutrition returns results with the words nutrition, food, and health in them.

Make Google recognize faces: A special URL parameter in Google's Image search will do the "Add &imgtype=face" to the end of your image search to just get images of faces only.

Bad Phorm

2009-05-01T08:05:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Worried about Internet security? But possibly using BT as your provider, after all British Telecom is practically an institution, one to trust right? Er...wrong, with a capital W and a big "rong" attached for good measure. The European Commission has started legal action against Britain over the online advertising technology Phorm. Phorm claims its technology is "fully compliant with UK legislation and relevant EU directives".

OK I am guessing readers are saying, all well and good Wanderjahre, but what's this got to do with me. Try this one on for size, information courtesy of those nice people at The Register. BT admitted last year it had tested Phorm's technology on its network with thousands of customers without asking for their consent or informing them of the trials. It later carried out further trials of the service, which it markets as Webwise, with the consent of users.

More than ten million customers of the UK's three largest ISPs (BT, Tiscali and Sky) will have their browsing habits sold to a very dodgy company who are rumoured to have kicked off their time on the net as spyware. BT’s servers were secretly passing data on subscribers to its "new" advertising partner as long ago as last summer. At the time, BT and its partners refused to acknowledge any relationship at the time.

The Register, usually pretty sound when it comes to matters like this have devoted a big chunk of their websites to have the issues around Phorm have developed. They claim to have the full technical info on what Phorm is up to, check out their site for more information. Anti-virus companies have said that in their opinion Phorm is Spyware pure and simple. Now some users will not be alarmed by this but if the UK's inadequate internet laws permit its existence, do you really want your browsing habits scanned to provide "targeted advertising" For myself I am quite capable of finding what I want on the net without having some company or other throw their ads at me! If I am hooked into a company's VPN what guarantees do I have that Phorm cannot be exploited to enable some unscrupulous type to check out the data I am sending and receiving. Or does anyone including the Phorm truly believe that something like this cannot be exploited by the hacker brigade.

From the legal standpoint the issue centre around whether users have given their consent to the technology A spokeswoman from the commission told BBC News that the EC wanted the UK to ensure there were procedures in place to ensure "clear consent from the user that his or her private data is being used". "Technologies like internet behavioural advertising can be useful for businesses and consumers but they must be used in a way that complies with EU rules," the EU's Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding said in a statement.

Phorm's works by "trawling" websites visited by users whose ISPs have signed up to the service and for whom the technology is switched on, and then matches keywords from the content of the page to an "anonymous" profile.

Users are then targeted with adverts that are more tailored to their interests on partner websites that have signed up to Phorm's technology. The technology differs from other behavioural advertising systems which tend to use data only from partner websites visited by users, and do not work in conjunction with internet service providers. The service has proved controversial for some campaigners who believe it breaks UK data interception laws.

Last year, Phorm received clearance from the Home Office and police closed a file on BT trials of the technology which looked into their legality.

The UK government have said thatthe technology could only be rolled out if users had given their consent and it was easy for people to opt out, although its worth bearing in mind that BT went ahead with trials without consultation. The European Union Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications requires member states to ensure the confidentiality of their communications and related traffic data. States must, it says, prohibit interception and surveillance unless the users concerned have given their consent.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group said: "There are big legal questions surrounding BT's use of Phorm, so we welcome the EU taking the government to task. "BT should respect everyone's privacy and drop their plans to snoop on the internet before they damage their own reputation further. Websites should protect their users and block Phorm now."

BT have declined to comment on the EC's actions.

Firfox users should check the Phorm addon here https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=phorm&cat=all

Google Hacks

2009-04-30T07:02:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Google Hacks – Part 1

Essentially, there are two types of search engines, the first is called the searchable subject index. This type searches only titles and descriptions of sites. The other type is the full text search engine which uses "spiders" pieces of code to index billions of pages across the net. These pages can be searched by title or content, making for a much more efficient search application. Currently, on the Internet it's Google which is the prime exponent of this type of search.

The Google search engine is probably one of the most useful tool ever spawned on the Internet and anyone who uses it to simply check on a website based on key word(s) is hardly using a fraction of what it can do. Lets start that exploration with some of the terms you can use to add a bit more power to your search.

Google will search for all words in a string the default, but by using the operator OR you can specify one term or another

Search: cat, dog generates all the pages that mention "cat and dog"

Search: cat OR dog generates all the pages that mention "cat" and all the pages that mention "dog"

Search: food (cat OR dog) comes up with the terms Cat or Dog along with the word food in Google OR is often replaced with the programming character “ | ” (called pipe)

In addition to simple site search, Google uses a special syntax called “inurl” to let you search the contents of any URL on the net, this will dig down below the main domain into the sub-domains of the site for the content you specify. This is perfect for searching domains with a lot of subs and also perfect for locating useful indexes. Have a look at the examples below.

Try typing the following into your Google address bar

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(.mp3|.wma) ""

This search term will generate a list of website with indexes of MP3 and WMA files and you can browse and download to your hearts content. But say you want to search for a specific file

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(.mp3|.wma) "Peter Gabriel"

To find the file of your choice just replace “Peter Gabriel” with the artist or band of your choice. Looking for applications, try this search

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(.exe|.zip) ""

For a specific application try:

-inurl: (htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(.exe|.zip) "googleearth"

Here we have searched for the GoogleEarth application.

Need to find a torrent file? Here I have asked Google to search for all Linux torrents

linux filetype:torrent

But you can replace the “linux” search term with whatever you want. Google provide a handy search tool which you can download to your own desktop have a look at http://code.google.com/p/googlehacks/

PCLinuxOS to the rescue

2009-04-27T01:33:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Upgrade

Friday evening: OK it was my fault! There I've said it and its true. I broke one of the rules for Ubuntu Linux which basically said "Thou shalt not use the upgrade feature in Synaptic." The rule is download the live CD run; see that everything works and then install the OS as a fresh install to the hardware.

But for reasons best known to a slightly bored Linux fan on a Friday morning I decided that the best way to upgrade my perfectly workable Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Long term support) install was to use the Synaptic function to first upgrade to the next version 8.10 and from there to 9.04 (For those wondering about the numbering scheme in use here, the first digit is the year of release and the digits after the decimal point are the month of release. Ubuntu releases two version year one in April and one in October.)

The reason for using the live CD rather than the upgrade is that this reduces the chances of something going wrong, Linux is a tapestry of applications and scripts and its all too easy for the upgrade make a mess of one or other of the many dependencies - using the live CD means you can have a good look at what you have on-screen, before you install. If everything works, you are good to go and if there is a problem, take out the CD and its back to the original OS with no problems.

All of which I happily ignored in my quest to have Ubuntu 9.04 on my desktop.

8.10

The first shock was that the upgrade was a full gigabyte of data! This is about 400mb larger than the Live CD and should have warned that the was going to be trouble ahead. It would have been quicker to go the Live CD route and by this stage it was pure laziness that was keeping me from backing up essential data and doing the job properly.

Saturday afternoon: Upgrading took the better part of the night and installing the resultant download the better part of the morning. By now there was a little voice in the back of my head shouting "Stop now, there is still time! Stop!" But the same dynamic that would alway cause me to, when lost, "go just a little further" rather than ask directions, impelled me onwards.

Ubuntu 8.10 looked nice but I had heard on the internet forums that it wasn't a significant step up from the previous release so I ignored it completely and like HG Wells' time traveller propelled myself every forward.

Upgrade manager in Synaptic announced that the next upgrade would be - yes, you guessed it, a gigbyte and I had a pretty good idea that it would need another day to download and install. Commonsense would have had me back out at this point and reinstall my trusty copy of 8.04, but no working on the "just a little further" principle I started the next download...

9.04

Sunday morning: I finally had 9.10 on the desktop and glazed at its pristine beauty, it looked lovely and moved with all the speed and grace of Titanic avoiding a iceberg! I quickly that it was significantly less than fast. It may have been touted as "Jaunty Jackelope" but was like "Silicon Sloth" on my hardware. Note to the Ubuntu fan club out there, I am sure that installed on a Live CD and not hamstrung by two gigs of upgrade data it would have been a lot more speedy. It may have even run the .swf applications on my website which despite considerable time on Google and a not small amount of hair pulling I could not get it to do.

One thing it did seem to do well was detect my hardware and just for once I found myself with a half way decent screen resolution. This has been a big issue for me since moving from my old CRT monitor to my TFT. For a more than decent OS I was puzzled as to why a problem with the display could only be resolved by manually editing the xorg.conf file, something calculated to put off all but the most hardened Linux fanatic. Unable to understand the way the file was put together, despite reading copious internet articles, I cheated by copying a workable config file and saving it, reasoning if it worked one time it should work another. Hmmm....?

Sunday afternoon: A couple of hours in the company of the Jackelope convinced me that, while it was probably a great OS, the way I had installed it had borked my system to the point of complete instability. Since I had installed it on my work computer and the new working week was looming with all the appeal of a pasty-faced white contestant on "Britain's Got Sod All Talent" about to do a 50 Cent rap song, and because I could not read all the files on my own website, I decided to go back to Ubuntu 8.04 also known as the "Hardy Heron."

An interesting experiment, thinks I, and now back to my original install and all will be well.

8.04

Sunday evening: Oh..!

Getting the Heron back on my desktop was not difficult although somewhere along the line my back up of Thunderbird mail settings and data had been lost and I had to do the mail settings again. I was a bit annoyed about deleting the file but had been wise enough to forward all important emails to a Gmail account so I at least had a copy of anything I was likely to need. Trouble is, the screen resolution was 800x600, a setting so low as to be hardly usable, web pages zoomed off to the right and descended vertiginous downwards and my three pane email display squeezed the message into a space smaller than an estate agents' bijou residence. I hurriedly installed my config file for xorg and restarted.

Nothing...the screen was still at low resolution, Ubuntu offered to do something about this but various permutation of sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg and Nvidia front-ends did nothing to solve my problem. Hardware detection was known to be an issue with Ubuntu, but usually an edited xorg file sorted out the problem, this time I was firmly in the low resolution barely usable brown smelly stuff.

With the clock ticking and my stupidity coming back to taunt me, I rifled through my collection of LIve CDs and happened upon the latest version of Mandriva, Mandriva 2009, complete with plasmoid widgets and reputedly a look so geogorous that it has turned down proposals of marriage from numerous Linux fanboys and girls.

Mandriva 2009

Sunday night: Mandriva installed and set up and looking good... then looking difficult to configure, then looking broken and then very broken indeed..! What was going on here? Mandriva used the latest KDE interface and the simple fact appeared to be that it was broken, whether this was something I had done or some relationship between my hardware and KDE was unclear. I tried to add short cuts and move some icons around but found that KDE was not keen on me making any changes. Initially I assumed this was simply the way that KDE worked as opposed to Gnome, which I was more used to. On Google I found out that the whole desktop was actually a floating widget and I quickly concluded that the desktop was not all it might have been. Armed with a little info on Google I tried to get a half way decent desktop sorted out. But in short order I had managed to bork the desktop to the point where I could no longer login on any graphical interface.

It was time for a rethink....

I was impressed that aside from the dodgy desktop, Mandriva looked pretty good, it detected hardware with no problem and had it not been for the plasmoid widgets fouling things up, was an OS I might have stayed with. As it was with time pressing I simply did not have time to try and get it all to operate. I needed something that would work "out of the box" as they say and with even trusty Ubuntu unable to detect my monitor I had to come up with another option.

PCLinuxOS

Sunday evening + 2 large coffees: I had started my Linux voyage with PCLinuxOS but move to Ubuntu when it became clear that it would be better able to handle wireless - a function I needed at the time. I had a copy of the latest version so it went into the CD drawer and I rebooted one more time.

Sunday evening + 3 large coffees: PCLOS appeared and offered me the chance to install, I clicked the appropriate icon and answered the questions and in fairly short order had the OS on the desktop. I started to configure. First thing was Firefox, I had a list of addons for the fox and the first one to install was Foxmarks (Also called X-marks) here I stored all my booksmarks and with those back I could get the rest of my desktop organised. Having earlier lost my Thunderbird data I had to do that by hand, but if I had retained the file it would have been a simple matter to copy into the ./thunderbird folder hidden in my home file. PCLOS is a KDE desktop but did not seem to have the plasmoid problems that Mandriva experienced.

Monday morning: I warmed to PLCLOS pretty quickly, it does indeed do what it says on the packet. By the morning everything up and working and I have to say I am pretty pleased with what I see. Eye candy is Compiz and looks rather better than its Ubuntu cousin. Hardware was, needless to say, detected with no problems. I plugged in a wireless dongle and it was detected, I could connect with no problems. Open Office, Amorak, Kompete and Thunderbird all worked perfectly. I have been using for about six hours now and so far the smile has not faded from my face. Its easy to use, works well and looks lovely. I would definitely recommend it for new and experienced users alike, especially since its saved my bacon

Webmail and I!

2009-04-23T01:33:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

There are two ways to handle your email, the first in using POP3/IMAP with an email client like Outlook or Thunderbird. You set up your accounts and download your messages. Read, reply and save or delete as appropriate. Email clients were around when accessing the internet was slow and expensive and one of the things they could do was enable you to download your mail, go off line, reply and then go online once to send the replies. Webmail differs from this in that all the work is done online,(Although Google gears has recently made offline Gmail and calendars possible.) you don't need an email client just a moderate speed connection to the internet and a subscription to one of the webmail providers but like so many thing, not all webmail was created equal. So here's a brief review of the big three. Gmail, Yahoo, and Windows Live Hotmail.

All comments are my own and do not reflect the views of any other organization or person...(honest!)

Gmail
Gmail is an offering from the Google group and in my opinion provides some of the best email organization on the internet. Their pride and joy feature is the interface. Instead of having a threaded list of back and forth emails between you and a friend Messages can be places into labels (folders), started, deleted or forwarded as needed.

Gmail also has integrated IM in the form of G-talk in the GMail interface, and continues to add other functionality as well (such as integration with Docs & Spreadsheets). Gmail is also consistently fast, offering the most storage and free POP-in and POP-out, meaning you can use Gmail to access your other email accounts, or access GMail from whatever email client you use. I tend to forward all my POP email to my Gmail account so that I have a copy of mails when I am on the move. Much quicker than copying folders to my laptop.

Google's security includes spam, virus and phishing protection. All spam is filtered into a spam folder that allows you to separate the good from the bad, all incoming and outgoing messages are scanned for known viruses, and suspicious messages that look like phishing scams are flagged with a big red banner across the top of the message. In the last month my Gmail account has caught more than 300 spam messages and not having to deal with these manually is very useful. Checks on the spam box also show that little or now wanted message find there way in there, another big plus in my book. Gmail lets you report both spam and phishing attempts to Google.

One contentious issue with Gmail is that they do place subtle ads based on the text of your emails on the right hand side of the page, this has lead to complains about the security of the message. Google insists human eyes never see your messages and the work is done by bots that scan the email; however, if you feel uncomfortable with this arrangement consider one of the other providers.

Gmail leads the pack when it comes to additional mail/message features and extras. Gmail was the only service of the three that included an instant messenger program without an additional download. If one of your contacts is signed into their account, you can chat with them. If you both have webcams, Gmail is equipped with video chat software too. With Gmail's docs and spreadsheet feature allows you to post an editable document or spreadsheet online and access it from anywhere, similar to online storage. This feature is great for group projects at school or work, where all members of the team can access the same material. Gmail is also available in dozens of languages from Arabic to Vietnamese.

Gmail provides a plethora of extras. Looks out for Picasa for photos, the calendar for scheduling and the iGoogle customizable homepage with personal tabs and literally hundreds of widgets.

Yahoo Mail
Yahoo Mail is our second test, older than Gmail it has recently been completely revamped with a new UI allowing users to access other email accounts but only some POP features are only available on the paid account for a fee. Storage is on the low side - only 1 GB, which is much less than Gmail offers.

On the upside, Yahoo Mail offers an intuitive, Outlook-like interface. Instant Messaging and RSS integration is available. One slight problem I found with Yahoo is that despite being on Firefox platform, as a Linux user, Yahoo reported that it had not been tested on my system and offered me the classic Yahoo look, there didn't seem to be a way avoid this notification every visit.

Messages can be sorted by all manner of criteria. These include unread, sender, date, size and so on, while searching through your Inbox simply requires you to enter a few keywords. Emails can be flagged for follow-up and you can create filters and folders to help keep everything organised.

Junk Mail is handled well, I checked my account before starting this article and since the last visit – about three days ago, Yahoo had caught 80 spam messages and not unwanted had managed to sneak through. Anything that gets through is easily banished by selecting it and clicking the Spam button.

Windows Live Hotmail
Windows Live Hotmail gives you 5 GB (and growing) of online storage, fast search, solid security, POP access and an interface easy as a desktop email program. When it comes to organizing mail, Windows Live Hotmail does not go beyond folders (to saved searches and tags, for example), its spam filter could be more effective, and IMAP access to all online folders would be nice. You can send from other email addresses using Windows Live Hotmail and includes fast search and it accessible via POP in any email program . On the downside it lacks virtual folders and tags for message organization. No IMAP access is available at the moment. One nice feature which will keep your spam content down is the ability to accept mail only from people in your address book. In addition Hotmail does not automatically download images from unauthorized senders, which is a very useful feature in avoiding viruses. A reading pane, drag-and-drop ease and rich text editing lend Windows Live Hotmail a desktop-like handling. You can set up additional addresses to use in the From: line of mail you send with Windows Live Hotmail. MSN also provides access using various browsers and mobile devices.

However, while technically good, actual operation is less impressive, pages were slow to load and operation felt clunky, especially if you were not using Internet Explorer on a Windows XP/Vista platform. The standard spam filter could do with some improvement. You can report spam easily using a "Junk" button, but that does not seem to have much of an effect and spam in my inbox remained as frequent as always no matter what I did.

Calendar integration is a little odd and not connected to the rest of the functions, which is a shame. One user wrote: "I've been using windows live or MSN or Hotmail for years. Although parts of the mail service have improved, other parts fail. Because its free, they are now adding adds in the email pages. I get a lot of junk mail and take the time to block each one, yet they still appear in my inbox. One such spam will automatically launch a fake anti-virus scanner when I try to delete the message. I'm fed up and changing my email to Gmail. I do NOT recommend Windows live unless you can find a way to block the SPAM yourself, because windows live doesn't."

Other users reported problems with Hotmail and their hardware, now to be fair, this may not be the fault of MSN – another reviewer commented "I can't get Hotmail email to come up on my computer ... I only get error on page. I can't even find out how to contact them to send them an email about the problem. If you're considering a Hotmail email account, forget it and move on ... your stress level will thank you."

Results.
And the winner is....Gmail, at least for now its the winner. Yahoo is snapping at its heels in terms of functionality. The ability to find any mail using Google's search function is a big plus and if you use the label feature – which takes a little getting used to – you can reference emails easily, copy to multiple labels and find your message with a couple of words in the search panel!

Coming in second Live Mail would still need to seem some work, but on the plus side the UI is uncluttered and clean where it falls down for this reviewer is the integration with the rest of the Live suite. This is fine if you want it, but if all you are looking for a quick and simple email client, the extras can get annoying. For myself I would actually rate Hotmail higher than Yahoo simply because the interface is more streamlined, but some of the adverse comments from users are worth taking on board.

Yahoo mail while being good has a UI which is a little cluttered and not as well implemented as the Google version but it may suit others. I found it a sluggish and slow to respond. All three do what they say on the tin, but Gmail and Hotmail do it a little more elegantly.

So if you want a webmail client, consider Gmail as your first point of call, chances are you will want to use one of the other Google features at some time, so you may as well jump onboard.

See you in the virtual world folks...

XP to be retired...

2009-04-07T12:11:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Word on the net is that Microsoft plans to drop free support Windows XP and Office 2003 as of next week. On April 14, the Redmond giant ends consumer support for Office 2003 in addition to Windows XP Home and Professional. Crucially this will mean no more bug fixes except for security.

Customers will need to pay for Microsoft assistance from April 14th onwards. Security fixes will still come down the line for Office 2003 and XP until August after which the software will be 'retired.'

Customers can still get non-security critical fixes if they've part of the Extended Support programme. Microsoft is also "retiring" Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, meaning it will no longer provide support for the release.

For the average home user the choices will be continue to use their exisiting software with a potential for vulnerbilities; move to Vista or wait for Windows 7 to appear on the shelves. There has been speculation that this move to finally hammer the last night in the coffin of XP for home users is also a marker for the appearance of Windows 7, but although receieving some favourable comments from beta users there is still some doubts surrounding the new offering from the Redmond boys. Abandoning XP is something Microsoft have been wanting to do for some time, but the universally poor press on the roll out of Vista has delayed this for several years.

The assumption has to be that with the end of XP for non business use, user will finally make the lucretive, for MS at least, jump to a new OS.

In praise of Twitter

2009-03-27T01:24:00.000-07:00

Image via CrunchBase

Twitter is one of those applications that seems to possess no middle ground. You either love it and want to sign up immediately and see how popular you can become with a horde of followers (add obligatory Stephen Fry reference here...) or you consider it to be yet another example of how normally sane people can be persuaded to spend long hours on the computer announcing that they are on the computer! But for business, Twitter could be another useful tool to get information about your business out into the public domain and get the customers in.

For business, Twitter is an information service for the time-poor web-savvy professional. Naturally, this is a very attractive demographic for many businesses. Using a Twitter account brands you as web-literate, cutting edge and flags that for hundred of thousands of other user out there who are conditioned to small snippets of information in Twitter you are a source of accredited information. Consider this: you are looking for company, a piece of work you want to outsource, that work needs a knowledge of what the net can do. Which do you choose, Company A which boasts a website and nothing more or Company B which posts on Twitter and gives you a pretty good idea of who they are and what they do before you have either called or emailed them!

Twitter accounts give businesses an edge, a chance to make a connection with potential followers in a way that can't be done with emails, printed literature or information on the website. Twitter is part of the Web 2.0 ethos that breaks down the hierarchy between the provider and the consumer. While for some organisations this may be an uncomfortable transition, it is one that will reap benefits. Twitter is essentially a free advertising opportunity that brings customers direct to you. Any company with an eye to the future will want to get on the Twitter ladder, with a customised home page and regular output to the web.

Twitter, like so much of the Web 2.0 universe, is content intensive, so weekly updates are not an option. The way to get followers is to make frequent but useful posts to the web. Having an account, which can be accessed by a number of employees, is one way to ensure content, but the company needs to be very clear about what information finds its way into the wild. In the same way that a press statement would be a carefully considered document, all Twitter releases need to be centred around the values of the company. That is not to say that the tweets need to be formal or dull but posting every time the managing director has a cup of coffee is not likely to pull in the followers.

The application offers the chance to delete followers, so businesses need have no fear that they will be inundated with abusive comments, but the clever company will actually address these comments directly and out in the open often resulting in the would-be heckler slinking away with their tale between their legs or even being converted into an evangelist for the company.

Since Twitter can be used for a mobile device, the switched on company can effectively post impressions and information from conferences and events. Applications such as Twitpix exist to enable users to upload photos providing another link between users and the company.

Its easy to reject Twitter as another fad on the internet and another excuse for anal retentive users to post every passing thought that crosses their mind. But even if Twitter is a fad; its the fad of the moment and given its user base can businesses afford not to use it?

Is older better?

2009-03-26T08:49:00.000-07:00

Firefox logo Wikipedia

There are some web browsers that are safe in older versions and some that aren’t.

If you are like me you may think that the latest version of some browsers out there, far from being bigger and better have mastered the bigger bit at the expense of the better. Firefox is a case in point. While undoubtedly one of the better browsers out in the wild, its been getting larger and larger with each generation; ever more memory hungry and prone to problems. The fastest, most stable version of Firefox was arguably the last release of version 1.5. I installed it earlier today for an experiment and while not as pretty as its younger sibling, it is fast and it is small at around 5mb compared to 7mb for the latest incarnation. It was also the only version of the fox that I could reliably install the much used Freecycle addon. The only snag to this is that all the information on 1.5 suggests that its open to exploitation, so the choice is have the addon and be unsafe or play it safe and do without.

But all the above made me wonder if there were other cut down browsers out there that could be installing in their more venerable forms. Older versions of the Opera browser seem pretty much the same as their younger brother and the newer editions do seem to have more features and feel more up to date.

Running a fast lightweight Firefox-like browser means moving to the Seamonkey platform. Like the fox, this is based on the Netscape Navigator platform and for I tried it earlier today and it does indeed zip along speedily. You can install it with Firefox and they do seem to play nice together.

People who live on social networks should check out Flock which is Firefox customised for Facebook, Myspace, Gmail and the like.

There is no lightweight, older faster version of Internet Explorer, running earlier versions on a Windows XP/Vista platform is asking for trouble! IE is the single most targeted browser on the net, so while it may not sit well, if you have IE the best option is to keep it up to date no matter what.

Versions after IE 7 are considered safe and its worth bearing in mind that if you are running Windows 2000 you are running at best IE6 which is regarded as unsafe. Probably best to download Firefox, Opera or even Seamonkey pretty quickly unless you fancy contributing to the infected computer universe.

IE 8 is new and some people have been reluctant to upgrade for compatibility reasons. Its not much fun to find you suddenly cannot access your bank details, or credit card or some other secure site. With that in mind, its always worth having at least one other browser on your machine and again, the way forward here is Firefox. A copy of Firefox 3 sitting on your machine can be deployed with IE and a website decide they have never heard of one another.

For people who automatically assume that anything from Microsoft was even badly made or impossibly resource hungry (and I confess to being one of them during the early days of Vista) its worth noting that the old firm seems to be getting back on form. Windows 7 is getting a lot of positive reviews and Internet Explorer 8 is looking good with reports that it will toddle along happily on an XP rig with 512mb of RAM under the hood.

Its not really advisible to have the older browsers on your machine, upddates negate possible exploits and while they make the browser slower from time to time, slower is better than compromised with all the expense or hassle of the solution. My advice would be to have Firefox and possibly Seamonkey on tap to go with IE8. You can't really retro-load your browser, but with a couple of other browsers installed you can cover all eventualities.

Firefox not so hot.

2009-03-25T04:37:00.000-07:00

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Mozilla is reported to be feeling the pinch from the opposition and wants to make its Firefox browser a leaner, meaner runtime environment tool, rather than a simple web rendering device. Ben Galbraith, co-director of developer tools at Mozilla, says that browsers are evolving from page rendering applications into application runtime environments and need to be able to recreate many of the functions of operating systems. No argument from me, but I think I can hear the sound of grinding teeth from Redmond.

The spring board for this, has to be Google'a "Chrome" something which Mozilla acknowledges despite the fact that Chrome is a serious rival for the affections of the user and its business model needs to see people using the embedded Google search engine.

In the past five years or so, Firefox has been ahead of the pack but lost ground rapidly to Chrome, Safari and even IE8. It continues to rely on outdated programming which can lead to memory problems and it exacerbated with badly coded addons. It remains more feature rich, but a year or so down the line could be behind the competition, especially where user value speed.

Galbraith says he wants to have a group which will look at the way memory is used in Firefox. "We plan on the initial implementation of this tool to be simple. For memory usage, we want to introduce the ability to visualize the current set of non-collectible JavaScript objects at any point in time (i.e., the heap) and give you the ability to understand why those objects aren't collectible (i.e., trace any object to a GC root). For the cycle collector, we want to give you a way to understand when a collection starts and when it finishes and thus understand how long it took."

Firefox had 21.77% of the market earlier this year and remains the most customisable browser in the collection. But with efficient memory usage the future of the fox could be in doubt.

Socially yours

2009-03-20T00:22:00.000-07:00

Image by luc legay via Flickr

The rise of social networking sites offers people new and varied ways to communicate via the internet, whether through their PC, mobile device or phone. They allow people to create their own online page or profile and to construct and display an online network of contacts, often called ‘friends’. Users of these sites can communicate via their profile both with their ‘friends’ and with people outside their list of contacts. This can be on a one-to-one basis (much like an email), or in a more public way such as a comment posted for all to see.

Outside communication can be observed and commented on by anyone who is part of network. This promotes additions nodes of communication and contact. Social networking sites also have some potential pitfalls to negotiate, such as the unintended consequences of publicly posting sensitive personal information, confusion over privacy settings, and contact with people one doesn’t know, but the evidence suggests that people quickly become adept at assimilating and using the necessary rules.

Adult social networkers use a variety of sites, with the main ones being , Facebook and MySpace, although there are a variety of other including Bebo, Ning, Linkedin and many more. It is common for adults to have a profile on more than one site - on average each adult with a social networking page or profile has profiles on 1.6 sites, and 39% of adults have profiles on two or more sites. Half of all current adult social networkers say that they access their profiles at least every other day. The site people choose to use varies depending on the user. Children are more likely to use Bebo (63% of those who use a social networking site), and the most popular site for adults is Facebook (62%). There is also a difference between socio-economic groups. ABC1s with a social networking profile were more likely to use Facebook. C2DEs, who were more likely to have a profile on MySpace. Social networkers fall into distinct groups and differ in their attitudes to social networking sites and in their behaviour while using them. Ofcom’s qualitative research indicates that site users tend to fall into five distinct groups based on their behaviours and attitudes.

These are as follows:
* Alpha Socialisers – people who used sites in intense short bursts to flirt, meet new people, and be entertained.
* Attention Seekers – people who craved attention and comments from others, often by posting photos and customising their profiles.
* Followers – people who joined sites to keep up with what their peers were doing.
* Faithfuls – people who typically used social networking sites to rekindle old friendships, often from school or university.
* Functionals – people who tended to be single-minded in using sites for a particular purpose.

Non-users of social networking sites also appear to fall into distinct groups:
* Concerned about safety – people concerned about safety online, in particular making personal details available online.
* Technically inexperienced – people who lack confidence in using the internet and computers.
* Intellectual rejecters – people who have no interest in social networking sites and see them as a waste of time.

The opportunities for community engagement using these platform are fairly clear: it allows a user to engage with a large number of people for little or no cost aside from the time use to create and publicise the information; accessibility is not limited by mobility; translation applications exist online so language is not necessarily an issue; BME and hard to reach groups respond positively to situations where they are in control and this platform provides an opportunity to respond from your own machine, at home; information is 'opt-in' and far more likely to be read than paper based literature.

Many people are technologically literate but find traditional websites difficult to navigate. Social networking offers the opportunity engage using content other than simple text and pictures, third party application including maps, photo streams, RSS feeds, and links to other resources are all possible and enhance the communication experience.

Social networks provide for a cornerstone of engagement namely giving the public the means to engage and the opportunity to engage in a time frame which suits them. There is a growing expectation that social networks will be part of the available resources, many public figures now boast a social network profile. Increasing home internet access facilitates the use of social networking sites, although potential users often have alternative points of access (for example at school or at work). Increased connection speeds and the wider availability of broadband enable richer use of the internet, including uploading as well as viewing content. The specific technology that has enabled this growth in the number and popularity of social networking sites is part of a wider online phenomenon, enabling self-expression, communication and user interaction online, known as Web 2.0.

Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families up to the level of nations, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.

The literature on social networks and political participation has generally focused on the role of social networks in mobilizing citizens to participate. Brian Adams in his paper on local democracy and social networks examined the question: once citizens decide to participate, how can they use social networks to help them achieve their political goals? Based on interviews with citizens in a mid-sized city, he argued that social networks are a political resource akin to time, money and civic skills, and that they can facilitate engagement by helping citizens achieve various political tasks.
The Local Government Information Unit (LGIU) is on record as saying "Social networking has the potential to revolutionise how councils engage with children and young people." It recently ran a course which "[explored] how local government can harness the potential of social networking sites to promote youth participation in the democratic process and in the delivery of children's services." (Jan 2009)

The speed of development in technology makes it susceptible to the stalling tactics of the intellectually disinterested who hold to the idea that social networking is actually a distraction from the business of democracy rather than an aid to it. Six months ago hardly anyone used Twitter, in six months time perhaps no-one will anymore. Right now it is the social networking tool of choice for many people, a wide cross section of society that includes MPs, councillors and professionals in a variety of fields, who find the ability to micro-blog information quickly to a group of "followers" an invaluable communication and engagement tool.

Social networking tools come and go quickly and users are becoming used to and adapting to the speed of change. This speed of change means that there’s no point waiting for the rise of a dominant form of communication. Its likely that as a society of users we will become increasingly skilled at picking and choosing those tools which best suit our needs, rejecting some in favour of others as more advanced options become available.

One interesting feature of social networks is that they tend to blur the boundaries between personal and professional life. Many people quite like knowing where their councillor is going on holiday or what their MP is watching on TV. It makes these relationships more human and that's important in a world that is increasingly post-hierarchical and more collaborative. But it also raises some difficult issues and will make a lot of people uncomfortable. The notion of boundaries is one often used by rejecters of social networks, voicing the fear that people will come to know too much about them.

Web based communications have a lot of advantages, low cost, quick, interactive, waste free. It has been pointed out that 35 % of households in the UK are still not online. However there are a plethora of internet sources: libraries, internet cafés and places that provide wireless access and so do much to overcome this difficulty.

Mobile phone using 3G technology offer access and the latest generation will often be pre-configured for Face, Myspace or other social network -further proof of its perceived importance. Young people in particular are comfortable with conducting their online affairs in public places or while on the move.

"Silver Surfers" a term applied to older members of the community for whom the internet is a relatively new experience are another developing demographic and as a group combine a high degree of civic responsibility with a desire to be kept informed, the use of social networks to facilitate this is clearly mandated.

While some local authority ITC managers may be concerned about opening their servers to social networks, there is little to be concerned about, normal monitoring for abuse should suffice.
interaction between users take place online and there is no need to download client software to individual machines. The only interaction likely to be required on for example Facebook, would be the loading of a picture of the user to their profile. It is not that long ago that councils were arguing that junior members of staff did not need email or external internet access and before that telephones, since these were likely to distract from work. Since then email then has become an accepted form of communication with staff at all levels and internet access is an important information gathering resource.

If cloud computing and browser based application become the norm there will be an increasing need to provide online access across the internet. The simplicity of the networks has promoted their popularity in a way which would have been hard to credit less than a decade ago. The general public have a growing expectation that people in the public eye will be available on social networks.

Social network level can improve communication and are not bounded by the normal hierarchies of local government. Given the number of button social networked and, some at least, of their related applications push, in terms of providing access to minority, BME, senior and other members of the community who historical have been hard to reach it is difficult to see any reason for not implementing access to social network immediately and make the general public aware that this is happening through the PR channels.

2009-03-19T13:58:00.001-07:00

Safari 4, Firefox 3.1, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 8 compared

2009-03-19T00:40:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Safari 4, Firefox 3.1, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 8 compared

Whats the best browser? Its not the easiest question to answer, but have a look at some of the notes below before you decide on your weapon of choice.

for surfing the net. Each will act as your window on the web, with support Google Chrome is minimalistic. It aims for simplicity, and the interface is stripped down to bare essentials. A single text field (dubbed the “Omnibar”) acts as both address bar and search bar, and tabs protrude into the title bar to save space.

The middle ground is occupied by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.1. Outwardly, both browsers offer sober front-ends though IE8 does support some interesting new technologies. Safari 4, is a veritable orchestrate of whistles and bells.

Safari has two distinctive features. The first is the “top sites” view. When you open top sites, you’ll see a shiny curved grid of clicka

Image via CrunchBase

ble thumbnails enabling you to jump straight to a particular website. Safari watches your browsing habits and populates the grid with your most commonly visited sites. Safari’s other feature is its history view Safari also gives you a visual thumbnail of each page, making it easy to spot the site you seek even if you don’t recall its title.

Firefox 3.1 seems almost austere. The newer version offers a new plug-in manager to make it easier to manage Firefox extensions. Firefox's approach has always been to keep the main browser relatively conservative and offer a versatile plug-in architecture to enable third parties to add extra features and visual themes - and there are hundreds of free extensions available ranging from simple file viewers to advanced networking tools and interface tweakers.

Image via CrunchBase

Google prefers to trickle out incremental updates, typically upgrading the software every few weeks without even alerting the user. But the main features that set Chrome apart are the Omnibar and the “most visited” view, though rendered more plainly and without the configuration options.

The last contender, Internet Explorer 8 introduces some interesting new ideas: web accelerators let you send text or a link from one page directly to another web service enabling you, for example, to search, define or translate a word at the click of a button. IE8 also features a new mode called InPrivate, which enables you to send out a minimum of personal information while browsing, and to cache a minimum of received content to your hard disk.

Chrome: at its launch, it was able to render pages with unprecedented speed. And, more importantly, its JavaScript engine (known as V8) was much faster than any other browser’s, enabling web applications to become more powerful. It remains a fast browser, but today it no longer enjoys pole position: Firefox 3.1 uses an updated rendering engine and an all-new JavaScript engine, the curiously-named TraceMonkey. IE8 is a long way behind the rest of the pack on speed, so feature-rich sites likely to feel less snappy and responsive.

RAM usage, especially if you’re choosing a browser for use on a low-powered system such as a netbook is a big consideration. Firefox used to be a notorious memory hog, but the current version is impressively efficient. Chrome and IE8 make much greater demands. Safari is not a browser for a lightweight PC and is very RAM heavy in use.

Safari : FOR: Combines superfast performance with head-turning visual effects. AGAINST: Heavy on memory, and some may find the graphics irritatingly showy.

Chrome : FOR: A lightweight, simple and stable browser that just keeps getting better. AGAINST: Neither the fastest nor the best-featured option.

Firefox : FOR: Hugely extensible, with a low RAM footprint and great performance. AGAINST: Rather light on features until you mess around with third-party plug-ins.

Internet Explorer 8 : FOR: Brings some genuinely promising new technologies to the table. AGAINST : The slowest browser for JavaScript by a large margin.

More than half of participants plan to accelerate their adoption of Linux in 2009

2009-03-18T07:24:00.000-07:00

Image by Voice Pictures via Flickr

More and more businesses seek to cut costs and find value, they are adopting Linux.

More than half of the IT executives in a recent survey of 300 executives said they planned to accelerate Linux adoption in 2009. 72 percent of said they are either actively evaluating or have already decided to adopt Linux on the server in 2009, with more than 68 percent making the same claim for the desktop.

The number one motivation executives gave for using Linux was economic (lowering support costs). However, those who are reluctant to go with Linux cited lack of application support and poor interoperability with Windows and other environments as their primary concerns. Key survey findings:

* 67 percent of respondents stated that interoperability and manageability between Linux and Windows is one of the most important factors when choosing an operating system.
* The retail industry showed the greatest potential for acceleration in Linux adoption with 63 percent of respondents planning an increase on the desktop and 69 percent considering the same on the server. The government sector lagged.
* Nearly half of respondents stated that moving to virtualization is accelerating their adoption of Linux. Eighty-eight percent of recipients plan to evaluate, deploy or increase their use of virtualization software within Linux operating systems over the next 12-24 months.
* From a regional perspective, Asia/Pacific is the most bullish on increasing Linux adoption, as 73 percent of respondents said they would increase deployments on the server and 70 percent on the desktop. In the Americas, 66 percent of respondents said they are either evaluating or have already decided to increase adoption of Linux on the desktop and 67 percent on the server.
* The economic crisis has had the biggest effect on the Americas, and in financial services and government. More than 62 percent of respondents said that their budget has been cut or that they are only investing where needed.

An IDC white paper1 summarizing the survey findings can be found here

Stop the bot!

2009-03-17T01:05:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Finding yourself as part of a botnet is no fun. Your computer becomes your worst enemy, watching everything you do which unless you use your rig for nothing more than a quick peep at the news once a week could be very bad news indeed! So what can you do about it!

The Associated Press, Internet security company Prevx has reported that it found a storage facility for data stolen from 160,000 computers. The storage was hosted in the Ukraine and the data included passwords, social security numbers, credit card numbers, addresses, telephone numbers and other personal. The Aladdin's cave for identity theft According to the report, both government and bank sites had been compromised.

So what can you do about it? Macs seem to be safe from botnets, although not completely immune to all threats. But if you have a Windows based machine, Prevx suggests you stay on the lookout for a slow connection botnet infection is using your connection to send or receive data. If that happens do the following:

1. stop surfing, close your email software (e.g. Outlook)
2. open Task Manager by pressing the CTRL, ALT and Delete keys at the same time. When Task manager opens click on the Network tab and see if your PC is using the internet network connection, if it shows more than a few percent usage then this could be further evidence of something using your internet connection without your knowledge.
3 try another security product if your PC is compromised your existing security has already let you down."

Try something like RUBotted (Beta) from Trend Micro, BotHunter from SRI International, or try an online virus scan with the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner.

If you think you need more advice drop me an email.

If you are one of the growing band of Twitter users, you can find me at user name wanderjahre

The Rise of the Social Nervous System.

2009-03-15T01:34:00.000-07:00

Image via CrunchBase

Joshua Michele-Ross published an informed piece for Forbes Magazine called The Rise of the Social Nervous System . His essential arguement is that communication is the foundation of society, business and government. The internet scales up the capacity for this communication and at the same time renders services and coordinates action from humans input. He calls this the rise of the social nervous system.

Josh focuses on now familiar examples: the Mumbai terrorist attacks as reported real-time on twitter, the Obama campaign (and in particular, the Houdini project), and Google Flu Trends. But Josh weaves them into a powerful conclusion:

"Watch the news, and you will see daily evidence of how a system that connects billions of people is influencing the physical world- from recent protests in California against Proposition 8 organized by Facebook to the riots in my hometown of Oakland after several witnesses uploaded video taken from their mobile phones of a police shooting."

Josh explains that key to the Web 2.0 experience is the notion of harnessing collective intelligence; examples of this can be seen in the way that wikipedia allows user generated content, or the way in which Amazon stays ah

Image via Wikipedia

ead of its competitors with the plethora of ways that users can contribute to their website and how that data is then used. But these effect are no longer limited to cyberspace and have an impact on real world activity.

Josh points out that these effects are not limited to cyberspace, but are used to control and coordinate real-world activity. This is the new frontier, moving from "sensing" to "reacting," from "cognition" to "coordination" and group action.

Many of the most successful Web 2.0 system derived their success from implicit rather than explicit data, the contribution made by simply clicking a link from one site to another that is recorded and used by Google to affect page ranking. One of the questions which Web 2.0 writers are struggling to answer is how far does this interaction go. When buy by credit card, we don't think we are contributing, but software at the bank, the merchant, and our personal finance application is listening to that credit card reader.

Those applications will share and sense not just words passed from human to human across services like Twitter, or our search behavior but sounds, pictures, and increasingly, data from senses that unaided humans don't possess at all, or less precisely: a sense of precise location, or the rate of speed at which we move, the power we consume, the carbon we emit, the approaching weather, the state of the financial markets, the unique sequence of our genome, or even the way we smell.

The next great fortunes will be made by the people who discover how to build a system that reacts to one of the internet's new senses.

Google release Juiku under open source

2009-03-15T00:52:00.000-07:00

Image via CrunchBase

Google yesterday announced that it is releasing its Jaiku code under the open source Apache license 2.0

Google acquired the Twitter-like application in 2007, but immediately closed it to the public. Last August it came back with unlimited invites, and now finally has been the JaikuEnginehas been handed over to the open source community.

Jaikido blog last week, "JaikuEngine differs from Jaiku in a few key ways. Although core features like the website, SMS (in the US only) and IM bot still work, feed fetching and international SMS are no longer available." The new JaikuEngine will also include support for OAuth, the open standard authentication protocol that Twitter recently began experimenting with in an effort to give users more control

Jyri Engeström, co-founder of Jaiku and now a product manager at Google, said that it's time to break out of Twitter. "There should be lots of platforms, and they should talk to each other. Jaiku doesn't do that yet, but now there's a decent chance that it soon will," he wrote on his blog.

Twitter has made rapidl progress in the last few months and is gaining market share, the real time information sharing has been finding favour with individuals and companies alike. It will be interesting to see how Jaiku fares with the competition.

Back with the blogger

2009-03-09T08:03:00.000-07:00

My new blog for the old material which I will continue to update see http://webhead.blog.co.uk/

My website can be found at http://www.wanderjahre.co.uk
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