Reverb Studios Blog » Internet Tips

Website Effectiveness

Leon — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:06:42 +0000

Well done on having a website for your business but is it doing what it should, ie generating hits and sales leads? Here’s a few things you should really be doing to measure and improve your website’s effectiveness if you feel its not doing anything for you:

SEO

Are you sure your site has been properly optimised to do as well as it possibly can in search results. Have you got the right keywords, url and relative content? Here’s some more info on SEO.

Call to Action

You need to decide what the most important part/page of your site is and make sure its easily accessible. That might mean putting a call to action button or link in a prominent place so visitors are left in no doubt about what to do or where to go to enquire or buy your products.

Analytics

You should have some decent system of checking your website stats to see how many visits you are getting, at what times, for how long, what pages viewed, what keywords used, etc.. I use Google Analytics for this. It’s free and fairly comprehensive.

Refferal URL

You should have some kind of form on your site with a question that asks people where they came from or how they found your site. Also, if someone rings, get into the habit of asking them how they found your number.

Internet & Social Media Marketing

Once you’ve done all of the above you need to tell the world about your website and product/service and the best methods of doing that these days are the likes of Blogging, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Online Advertising.

Website ineffectiveness can be caused by ignoring the above but it might also be a reflection on your product or market so don’t rule that out!

Leon.

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Ticket Scams and Google Accountability

Leon — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:26:34 +0000

Lots of talk today about fans of Miley Cyrus (or their parents!) getting ripped off by fake ticket sites as they desperately try to secure seats for their kids. The usual rules apply when buying anything online:

Only buy from secure “https” URL’s.
Only buy from well known sites.
Don’t buy tickets from an untrusted or unknown source no matter how pro it looks.
Ticketmaster.ie is the only place you should really be buying tickets from for major gigs in Ireland.
Visit the Ticketmaster.ie site only by typing it in your browser as opposed to clicking a link in an email or search result.

However, there is another issue here and one that I was reading about only yesterday – SEO is dead, long live SEO in which the author talks about Google turning a blind eye to cynical and possibly illegal practices whereby companies buy links and use dirty tricks to get themselves up the search engine results at the expense of more honest companies who use traditional SEO methods.

What happens in our problem above is that people Google “Miley Cyrus Tickets” or whatever and as well as the legitimate sites coming up in results, you also see a number of fake or “phishing” sites that may only just have been put up a few weeks ago or may even be using Google AdWords to get to the top of the pile.

The question is, should the search engines be doing more to vet or block out these kinds of sites and by doing so wrestle control of the web and safe browsing back from these criminals?

I think so..

Leon.

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Social Media Marketing Comedy

Leon — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:00:52 +0000

Are there any people out there who might be considered knowledgeable in matters of SEO, Internet Marketing or Social Media/Social Networking and often find themselves getting laughed at when they try to explain Facebook, Linkedin, Blogging and especially Twitter to others!? I am one such person and I’ve witnessed others on the receiving end of this too.

I can maybe understand people laughing at Twitter with all it’s funny acronyms – Tweet, Twitterer, Twits, etc..but I’ve been trying to figure out why people’s eyes glaze over when you start talking about this stuff in general and why they think you’re joking when you say this is probably the most important thing you can do to promote your Website/Business at the minute.

My best guess is that the amount of information you often need to convey about how to use each service/site and exactly what it all means and what it can do for people is just overwhelming to the listener and they can’t fathom where to begin or where they’ll find the time to do it all.

So they laugh out loud in frustration!

If you are one such person who doesn’t get it and who laughs at us poor nerds thinking we know it all, then please don’t and here’s a simple definition of what we’re all talking about when we mention “Social Media Marketing”:

Social Media Marketing means making friends online through various different websites with the ultimate aim of letting as many people as possible know about your product or service.

Nothing funny about that!?

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Track Your Visitors

Leon — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:56:40 +0000

I’ve come across a few websites recently for one reason or another and couldn’t find any trace of a stat tracker code (some people might be relying on their host’s stat package). I would have thought most web designers if not their clients would include something like Google Analytics by default in every site they build. Especially considering its quick and free!?

I make a point of installing this code in all my sites at no cost and I’ve well over 100 clients sites added to my personal analytics account now. I have setup automated monthly emails to clients with a PDF attachment showing a quick breakdown of their visitor statistics. I have added some clients as users of my own account so they can login and view more detailed stats.

I believe for me its a valuable add on service and one that more and more clients are asking for and impressed by when you bother to do it.

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Import your RSS Feed or Blog to Facebook Linkedin etc..

Leon — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:23:03 +0000

I’ve recently mentored a few clients in how best to use Social Networking sites to promote their own business or website and I couldn’t help feeling by the end of each session that the client felt a little overwhelmed by either the amount of sites that needed to be updated or the perceived level of technical expertise and amount of time required to get things moving on each site. I’d like to try simplify things here.

The basic rule of thumb or modus operandi for me with all these Social Networking sites is as follows:

Register a FREE account (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Friendfeed, MySpace, Bebo, etc are all free to use),
Add some relevant profile information and be sure to add a link to your web address somewhere,
Find some of your existing friends on the site and connect to them,
Find contact in your market area by searching for related keywords and connect to them also,
Import dynamic content (Articles, RSS feeds etc..) from your main site or blog to each site using site applications or widgets.

It’s the importing of content from 1 central location (preferably your own site) that makes these things manageable and apart from the initial profile setup on each site and networking you shouldn’t have to visit each site too often.

Within your Facebook, Linkedin, etc.. accounts there should be some section where you can add an application to your profile, so look for any RSS, Twitter or Blogging applications and add these to your home page. Then, whenever you write an article on your site/blog or Twitter, it goes straight into your social networking profile automatically, saving you some time!

Some of these networking sites can also communicate with each other so check out the settings in each.

Some applications I use and recommend are:

Facebook -”Simply RSS” and “Twitter”

Linkedin – “Wordpress”

MySpace – “RSS Reader” and “iTwitter”

Bebo – “Twitter”

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New Flock Browser Review

Leon — Thu, 28 May 2009 11:31:20 +0000

Review of Flock Browser

I just recently heard about a new internet browser, alternative to Internet Explorer, Firefox etc.. called Flock which I’ve been playing with for the last few days. Here’s my opinion of it.

Flock, powered by Mozilla, is labeled a “Social Web Browser” due to its ability to incorporate multiple popular Social Networking sites within one interface. So as well as doing all the usual things a browser should do such as browsing, searching, bookmarking, etc.. it also lets you interact with your social networks without having to go to multiple sites, login etc..

The current supported list of networking sites includes:

Twitter.
Facebook.
Bebo.
Flickr.
MySpace.
YouTube.
Picasa.
Wordpress.
Delicious.
Facebook Chat.
Gmail.
And quite a few more..

I’m writing this post from its built in Blog Editor which can handle most of the main Blogging platforms including, Blogger, Typepad, LiveJournal and self hosted Wordpress which is what I’m using here. You can have multiple blog accounts too.

The Social Networking tabs are conveniently and tidily located in the sidebar and your logins are remembered once you visit the sites and login. You can view and update yours and your friends statuses on all the sites directly from the browser as well as upload photos using the dedicated Photo Uploader application which allows for resizing, rotation and tagging.

RSS feeds are supported by default but theres also a Feed Reader built in.

There’s a Media bar also which shows media streams at the top of the screen from various sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Bebo and Photobucket.

There’s a very handy Web Clipboard which can take multiple content/pastes from various sites including both text and images and make them available for use later.

Of interest to me as a user of Firefox was the ability to add plugins and Flock was able to take all of the main ones I had in Firefox so that sealed it for me! It’s now my default browser!

Checkit out at www.flock.com

Rated 4/5 on May 28 2009

Vote on Leon’s reviews at LouderVoice

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Advertising on Facebook

Leon — Wed, 20 May 2009 22:17:50 +0000

You might be familiar with Google AdWords, the service that lets you buy or bid on certain search words and terms and have your add and a link to your site appear in the sponsored results section of a Google search results page. I’d like to suggest an alternative and perhaps better way of doing this.Facebook is known primarily as a Social Networking site but recently its been trying to open its site to Business users. They now offer an advertising section which can be accessed in your account by clicking “Advertise” at the bottom of the home page then “Create an Add”. You get to give the add a title and description and upload an image as well as provide a destination link to your website.

The most interesting thing about Facebook adds for me and the thing that sets them apart slightly from Google AdWords is the fact that you can target your adds to specific Facebook users based on Location, Age, Language, etc.. As you pick these filters the system continually refreshes the amount of people you can target based on your choices. For example I chose to target the add to people over 18, living in Ireland who speak English. This gave me a user base of 142,780 to market to! You can also use keywords based on the type of things people put in their Facebook profiles which is handy.

You can set a max daily spend and an amount per click just as in AdWords but the add you submit needs to be reviewed.

I’ll post results of my add campaign here soon..!

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Paying for Online Social Networking Services

Leon — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:31:11 +0000

Online Social Networking via the likes of Twitter, Linkedin, Blogging, etc.. is fast becoming a proven and effective method of promoting your company and brand and as more and more people realise its benefits I’m sure more and more companies offering to “network” for you will spring up. However I’d like to pose a few questions before you confirm that you don’t have the time yourself and prefer to splash out what’s sure to be thousands of euros on the services of some internet marketing company.

Given that Online Networking requires a a lot of time dedicated to it to be properly effective, where will these companies get the time if they have more than a few clients?
How will an external company best know how to represent you to the world. Will they say the right things on all your profiles and will they interact with your potential customers in a manner you’d be happy with?
If you’re going to spend the time telling someone else exactly what you want said on your behalf all around the net, wouldn’t you just be better off doing it yourself anyway?
Will the marketing company have other clients on their books who are your direct competitors, and if so how would they handle this?

In short, getting someone else to promote your company on your behlf requires time, effort and trust on your part if you wan’t to avoid potential problems.

Isn’t the best person to represent your own company you!?

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Simple Definition of Online Social Networking

Leon — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:00:26 +0000

Social Networking for Business is a term thats bandied about a lot lately and even though I live and breath the internet and have actually BEEN Social Networking online for a few years now, I still wasn’t sure what it really was and what its benefits were until very recently when the penny dropped!

I’d like to offer up this very simple but hopefully useful explanation of Social Networking for those new to the net or the concept of using online networking to further their business image, generate sales leads or partnership opportunities.

“Online Social Networking is the process of Branding yourself and your business online and by talking about them as much, as widely and in as many different ways as possible.”

You do the above by signing up for the following sites (the most widely used among many!) and getting involved! I’ve linked them directly to my own profiles on these sites to give an indication of how you might use them:

You might also do some Blogging and participate in Forums related to your market sector to help raise your profile and interact with others.

* NB – You need to avoid thinking, as I did myself, that getting involved in Social Networking will bring you work directly, it rarely does. Instead what it does is subtly and indirectly raise your profile over a period of time so that people who should know about you and your services when they need to, do.

It does work though, trust me, just takes time!

Leon.

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Twitter iPhone Apps

Leon — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:42:59 +0000

Just a quick word on some iPhone software you can use to send/receive Tweets. The following are some I’ve used recently with varying degrees of success:

Twitteriffic (FREE)

This is the first one I downloaded and was using it for quite a while and wondering why I couldn’t do basic things like search, follow and unfollow. A basic app only just to get you started.

Twitterfon (FREE)

Got this yeaterday just after forking out for the one below! It’s got a nice, intuitive layout and does absolutely everything you need to do on twitter.

Tweetie (Commercial)

Very similar to the one above with the same features but just a bit slicker in my view so its my winner!

Leon.

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Vodafone Contract Unfairness

8 Web Apps for Businesses

Leon — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:25:46 +0000

I’d like to list some applications/software that I think is essential for any business that takes the web seriously as a marketing tool and sales lead generator. I will presume that all businesses have a web site first and foremost, if not, why not, it’s 2009 and we’re in a recessionary period folks – don’t you want sales!?

In no order of importance:

A Blog

Draw visitors and potential clients interested in your market sector to your site by installing a blog and giving them the info anf interaction they need.

Google Alerts

Find out straight away what others are saying about you or your business on the net and find out who is linking to your site.

Newsletter

Offer an incentive and capture customer data by offering an auto newsletter signup, then keep in touch with your database offering promotions and discounts from time to time etc..

Zoho Invoice/CRM

Manage your customers, invoices and sales leads professionally and effectively and setup discreet auto payment reminders via email.

RSS

Setup an RSS feed on your site so that people can subscribe to your latest news posts and keep in touch with your business.

Google Analytics

Every web site needs to have some kind of tracking system that tells you who visited your site, when, from where and why. Google analytics is the industry standard.

Social Networking

Sign up and actively use at least 1 or 2 social networking sites such as Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook., the idea being that you create and communicate with your own business network in the hope of generating some sales leads or partnerships.

Skype

A widely used multi part instant communication system offering real time text chat, audio and video phone calls and file transfers.

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Wordpress Exploit Scanner

Leon — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:15:52 +0000

Donncha O’ Caoimh is offering a plugin for stand alone versions of Wordpress which scans your files and database for signs of exploits or Hack attempts. Well worth installing and I’m a little surprised to find my own blog is clean considering my last post re Akismet Spam stats! Using this plugin along with making sure you have the latest Wordpress and Plugin versions should keep you safe.

Leon.

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Irish Online Press Releases

Leon — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:17:32 +0000

So you’ve got your new site up and running and you’re waiting for the flood of traffic and business!? Having a website is one thing but making sure it brings you business leads is another. So how do you make sure you get traffic?

Theres a few ways!

The whole idea is to get your site talked about and publicized and one of the ways you can do this is to submit online press releases. There are many sites you can do this on both paid and free but I’d like to mention a free one thats Irish related, its www.IrishPressReleases.ie

You simply register with the site and post your press release for free. It then gets submitted for approval and if approved it goes out to anyone who is registered to receive releases from the site. It is also publicised on the site itself.

Make sure to include your web address!

Leon.

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.ie domains 23% More Popular!

Leon — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:59:30 +0000

News out today states that within the last year .ie domain registrations, the top level web address for Ireland, have increased by 23%. I’d like to think that I had a hand in this as I make a point of recommending a .ie for evey new site I build! Heres why.

Here are some reasons for choosing a .ie domain over a .com if you trade primarily in Ireland:

.ie domains require you to be a registered business before you can purchase one which means that you can better trust a site with a .ie address.
.ie domains have been proven to be one of the safest and most secure domains to use and are attacked far less than .com’s.
On Google Ireland, .ie addresses seem to do better in searches than .com’s.
There are more domains and keywords still available in .ie than .com.
There is an air of respectability surrounding a .ie that a .com just doesn’t have. This is due to the requirements you need to register a .ie compare to a .com which can be bought by anyone.

If you’d like a new site or a change of address and want to go with a .ie, take the time to get your business name registered, its inexpensive and fast. See the Companies Registration Office for more details.

Leon.

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Update Multiple Social Network Statuses at once!

Leon — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:28:56 +0000

Came accross a cool site today www.ping.fm that lets you post 1 message/status update from either the Ping.fm site or a desktop IM client such as Yahoo Messenger and have all your Social Network sites update at once instead of going around them all to do it manually. A great time saver.

There is a very large list of Social Network sites supported including the main ones:

Twitter
MySpace
Facebook
LinkedIn
Bebo

You can also post updates from popular Instant Messaging desktop programs including:

AOL
GoogleTalk
Yahoo Messenger
Windows Live Messenger
Mobile Phone

Check it out,

Leon.

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Internet Use by the Old Aged

Leon — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:07:40 +0000

A recent report from scientests at UCLA suggests that internet browsing by the middle to old aged can significantly stimulate and improve brain function and reduce the risk of dementia. Most clients I meet in this age range miss no opportunity to tell me how useless they are with computers and how scared they get when anywhere near a pc but theres no evidence to suggest that these people are any less capable than the rest of us when it comes to learning how to use new technology so get surfing and stop being scared oldies!

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5 Step Web Design Process

Leon — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:14:27 +0000

A lot of people calling about Web Design ask the same question “Whats involved with getting a website?” They want to know if they have to do anything themselves, how long it takes, can they manage the site etc.. Heres how it all works.

First step. In conjunction with the client we pick a suitable domain name that is a good keyword for their business area. I check to see if this domain name is available and if its the .ie version I request ‘proof of trading’ from the client. This is most often in the form of a Company Registration Number available from www.cro.ie
When the domain has gone through, I organize hosting for the site, ie – the physical location of the files and pages that make up the site and allow it to be viewed on the web.
I install the Content Management system or Website Framework for the site.
I sit with the client and take them through picking a suitable template for the site incorporating a color scheme and layout that suits their tastes and sector. I may direct the client to the template viewing area of my site so they can browse in their own time – www.reverbstudios.ie/web_templates.php
I request page content and images from the client to finish the site off. Alternatively, I can sit with the client and talk them through adding their own content and using the Content Management System themselves.

Most basic site builds take less than a week if all content is ready to go. E-commerce/Online Shop sites typically take a little longer.

Leon.

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My Web Design Process Explained

10 Things To Do Online

Leon — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:29:06 +0000

I’ve been using the Internet now for about 6 years, doing all kinds of mad things that most people may not realize are possible, here’s a few of the more useful ones!!

Online Dating – One of the first things I done was met my current partner of 6 years!
Online Banking – I regularly manage my finances and transfer money online.
Tax Returns – I submit my dues via ros.ie each year.
Buisness – I earn a living from Internet related activities. This is my favorite!
Buying – Almost everything you buy is cheaper on the net, so I buy everything I can.
Booking – I have often booked holidays, flights and accommodation online.
Selling – I’ve sold loads of stuff to people all over the planet via eBay from my bedroom!
Communication – Via this blog, email and instant messaging I regularly talk to strangers from far any wide.
Information – I research all the info I might need on almost anything by using search engines.
Writing – I indulge my hobby of writing via my blogs!

Basically, there’s nothing you can’t do without a computer and an Internet connection, one of our better inventions!

Leon.

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Add a Google Map to your Blog

Leon — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:08:19 +0000

Heres a quick Video & Audio tutorial on how to add an interactive Google Map to your Wordpress Blog.

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Important info on Wordpress comment links

Leon — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 23:16:26 +0000

I’m sad to say that following some research done just now I’ve found out that posting comments on other people blogs, (specifically blogs powered by wordpress) just so you can have a link back to your own site is kinda useless. Well on most Wordpress blogs at least.

I’ve been doing a bit of this myself recently and I think its been a bit of a waste of time. By default, wordpress seems to set all external links in comments as ‘nofollow’ links which means that most of the search engines including google will either not follow the links at all or if they do they wont index the linked to pages/sites.

Most wordpress blogs and sites ask for your name, email and web address when you post a comment and when the comment goes live the personal name that you put in becomes a link to your site and links to your site are great, the more the better but the search engines just wont take notice! The link can still be followed manually by other visitors to the blog so by all means continue to comment on other blogs but if you want to be noticed by the search engines then try to get links on non-wordpress sites or sites that don’t use nofollow.

Pingbacks and trackbacks seem to be treated the same way so these are pointless from a search engine point of view too.

*TIP – if you use the firefox or internet explorer browsers, theres a great SEO plugin called SEO QUAKE that will tell you whether a site or ‘Links page’ uses nofollow.

Fo more info on ‘nofollow’ see HERE.

Leon.

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Upgrade your browser please

Leon — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:51:13 +0000

Been having a few problems recently designing and modifying websites. I dont know why its not really been an issue for me before, I guess I was just lucky, but lately some of what I design looks completely different in Internet Explorer 6.0 which unfortunately is the browser most people still have and use!

So I came accross this website http://savethedevelopers.org/ which attempts to publicize the plight of us poor web designers and developers who slave away on the perfect website for weeks, tweaking the very smallest details to ensure perfection (well maybe this is just me and my ocd!) and then we go and test it in as many browsers as possible to see how it looks.

Most developers use the likes of Firefox to browse the internet cause we know the best stuff to use mostly and we design and check away using firefox leaving the cross browser checking untill last and guess what!? Its perfect in Firefox, Opera, Safari, Internet Explorer 7.0 but in the most popular (but oldest and worst!) browser its all over the place.

I’m not just talking about text slightly misaligned here and there but whole sections can be in the opposite end of the page from what you intended! The only solution is to plugin certain fixes especially for IE6 but this can take forever.

I and savethedevelopers.org are asking you all to please update your browsers either by allowing windows to automatically download Internet Explorer 7.0 (its FREE) or go and download one of the other fine browsers out there (also all FREE).

If you dont know what browser you are using, if you seen a graphic link to savethedevelopers.org top right of this website when you fist came then you are using Internet Explorer 6.0 and need to go upgrade now or I will be ver cross! If you didnt see anything then congratulations, you are moving with the times!

You can get better browsers here – http://savethedevelopers.org/

Leon

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Paypal & Ebay Spoof Phishing Emails

Leon — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:02:23 +0000

Theres a fair few emails coming through to me lately (despite my spam blocker) which are fake emails from Ebay, Paypal & Banks. I just want to tell you what to look out for so you avoid giving away your login details or worse.

Some of these emails are getting very professional and I have to have a good look at some of them before deciding they’re spoofs. Heres some of the things to check:

Email Logos & Graphics – if these look a bit shabby or pixelated then it might be an indication of a spoof.
A lot of misspellings and bad english phraseology.
Direct website links to login to your account are never included in emails from these kind of companies, especially banks so if you see one this could be another indication.
If you hover over links in the email and look to the bottom left of your screen, browser or email application and look at the ACTUAL location the links refers to and see if its the same as the link in the email. Often the address will be different when it shouldn’t be.
Check the senders email address. To do this (in outlook express) right-click on the email and select ‘properties – details tab’ then scroll down to the “Return-path”, “Received from” and “From” lines and make sure these display the actual email address of the institution and not some random one.

These tips are good for any email purportedly from a legitimate source and requesting your personal details and which you might be suspicious of.

And remember also, you can’t win any lotto you havn’t entered!!

Leon.

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Recession Boosts Cyber Crime

Internet Impatience & Over Design

Leon — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:05:59 +0000

I am wondering how patient people are when it comes to using the internet for specific purposes. If you set out to find a piece of info or book a flight or whatever, how much do you tolerate fancy, slow sites, animations and sales gimmicks and how relentless are you in achieving your goal??It struck me the other day while browsing the internet randomly in a quiet period that while web sites have generally got a lot better looking, functional and interactive which is good, a lot of sites are filled with pure, useless, distracting garbage!

Designers seem to get carried away with the latest design and web technology and add as much trickery to their sites as they can in an effort to show off or reel in customers etc..(and by the way, I know I am probably a little guilty of this as well but I’m sure I’ll get over ‘widgets’ and ‘gadgets’ soon!).

How many of us want to mess with gadgety bits or sit waiting for stuff to load or would we just prefer if sites fed us the info we need straight away or with no more than one or two clicks? I’m kinda tired of waitin for sites to load or havin to scan a page with a ton of content and info boxes to find the relevant links.

In protest at this trend I purposefully setup one of my latest sites www.responsibletourism.ie in a VERY minimalist fashion!

Don’t lets forget websites need to serve information or purpose fast, efficiently & painlessly, thats their primary function!

Leon.

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Antivirus Spyware and Firewall programs

Leon — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:36:06 +0000

Its a concern for a lot of people these days who own computers and use the internet regularly and I’m often asked about the best anti-virus programs to use. I’m writing it all down now so people won’t ask me anymore!

Many computers come with the likes of Norton Anti-virus, McAffee or some other trial anti-virus software installed straight out of the box and while these are excellent programs, they can be difficult to use, expensive to update and can hog a lot of your system resources, slowing your computer down.

Most casual computer users don’t need to pay for anti-virus software at all as there are many excellent programs out there for FREE and they’ll be more than enough protection.

Heres what you need for full PC protection against Viruses, Spyware, Internet attacks and Spam (all FREE, click to view download page):

Anti-virus

Spyware

Firewall & Internet attacks

Zonealarm

Spam

Bullguard Spam Filter

If like me you use the computer a lot or for business then you might want to fork out a bit for an all-in-one security solution. the one I use and am very happy with is Bullguard Internet Security. It’s automated, handles everything, is fast, doesn’t slow down the PC and its not too expensive per year.

Stay safe..

Leon.

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What is Web 2.0?

Leon — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:22:37 +0000

Web 2.0 is a buzzword often heard these days in relation to the internet. I was never sure what it meant until recently and I’d like to try explain at least what I think it means here using gaming analogies!If you go back in time a little to the early 90’s when the web was in its infancy and take it that the kind of content and sites we seen then were very basic text based affairs with little or no user interaction, images or functionality then this would have been level one of the internet or Web 1.0.

If you go forward in time again to the present day and extrapolate a little and think of all the feature rich, highly interactive, image, sound, video and functional rich websites we now see then this is basically the next level of the internet or Web 2.0.

Web 3.0 is on the way for any who can manage to complete level 2.0!!

Leon

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PC Live! Magazine

Leon — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 20:42:48 +0000

I’d like to recommend an irish computers and technology Magazine -?PC Live. It covers the latest in technology and software as well as everyday technical issues faced by computer users and all with an Irish slant and Irish prices. The PC Live magazine is monthly and at the minute costs an amazing ?3.50 only! Their blog covers categories such as Blogging Business, Music & Websites..

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The Internet and Information

Leon — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:56:08 +0000

Obviously the Internet as we know it these days is all about information and how to find out about things.In this post I’m going to talk about looking for specialized information or news from various sources including:

News sites
Forums
Books
Wikis

If you want to search news sources only, open your browser and go to www.google.ie and click on “News” up the top left. This opens a page solely dedicated to news headlines from around the world. You can browse the latest headlines by location or topic. Google claims to index news from over 4,500 sources so you can be sure of finding that obscure story you heard the tail end of on sky!

Searching for information on forums is done exactly the same way as above only this time click on “Groups”, Google’s term for forums/discussion boards. Doing this opens up a dedicated page where you can input a search term that will return results from groups only, or, you can just browse through groups/forums listed.

Books, remember them!? Google has a dedicated search system just for books. Click on the “Books” option top left of the google home page and you’ll be given results that show book titles only. Clicking on a result actually brings you to a preview page where you can digitally browse through the book and read the content. Some books are completely free to look through or download, others are paid for and google will provide links to locations where you can buy the book.

A Wiki is defined as a piece of software that allows groups of people to easily create, edit and link internet pages together. Perhaps the best known Wiki is www.wikipedia.org which is a large information based site/encyclopedia written by the internet community themselves in a collaborative context to give information on a vast range of subjects. If you feel you know something worth saying (and preferably accurate!) about almost anything, then feel free to post.

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Searching the Internet

Leon — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:20:23 +0000

The Internet has always been most useful when used as an informational resource and contained on its many billion pages is a wealth of information, some completely useless admittedly, but a lot of it is of some value. It is the biggest information resource on the planet and the whole lot of it can be searched instantly which beats any other method of information sourcing by a mile. Gone are the days of paying a visit to the local library! Perhaps this is a little sad but thats progress for ya!

So how do you go about finding this information then? Well obviously a PC and an internet connection is a prerequisite and once you have those the first & most logical place to visit is www.google.com. Google is biggest and best search engine on the internet and its main function is to locate whatever information you tell it to. Heres how to tell Google what to do!:

The Google home page consists of a few elements including the Google multicolored logo, some random links to other Google services and the Search Box which is what we are going to use. Google’s home page is deliberately simplistic because its only function is to serve up the info you require.
The hardest part of any information search is to choose the right keywords to type in. Obviously this is simple if you are just looking for general info on say ‘weather in leitrim’ in which case you just type in ‘weather in Leitrim’! The word in and other similar words such as the, it, him, etc are not necessary and will be ignored by google.
Searching the above term throws up results with links to a Leitrim newspaper and the weather page on MSN which gives us the basic weather details at a glance. Done!
Sometimes you may need to be a bit more specific to find the exact details you need or you may need to do a ’special’ Google search and this may need an ‘Advanced Google Search Operator’!
All this is is a special word you type in before your keyword, for example if you want to know what a specific word means you will find out quicker if you put the term ‘define:’ before your keyword, eg, ‘define:leitrim’ tells us that Leitrim is a “A former UK Parliament constituency in Ireland” – controversial!!
Other search operators you can use are ’site:’ which searches only on a particular site, eg, web design site:www.reverbstudios.ie throws up all the pages in my site with information about web design.
‘allintitle:’ searches only in the titles of web pages, eg, allintitle: web design shows me results for pages which have the words ‘web design’ in their title meaning you get a more relevant search.
You can also use things such as ‘OR’ which searches for either search phrase or ‘-’ which searches for your term but not for the word you put after the ‘-’ sign, eg, ‘graphic design -website design’ searches for Graphic Designers but not Website Designers.
Google can also be used to do basic maths calculations simply by entering 25 – 13, 45 * 3, 35 / 10, etc..
Currency conversions can be done by typing in ‘10 euros in dollars’ etc..
Google also has an ‘Advanced search’ link from the home page which has all kinds of options for filtering search results. Also, there are several sub-sites within Google which search for information in just one topic, eg, Images, Books, News, etc.. links to these can be found on the Google home page.
You might like to download the Google Toolbar so you can search directly from your browser without having to go to the Google site, you can get it HERE.

Happy searching,

Leon.

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The Internet and Communication

Leon — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 18:20:35 +0000

Apart from using the internet as an informational resource, you can also use it as a means of communication with fellow workers, family, friends, or complete strangers! There are a number of ways you can do this and I will discuss some of them below:

Social Networking Sites:

These are special websites that allow users to sign up for a free (usually) account and have their own profile on the site which other people can view. The profile can have as many personal details as you like and you can include your photos, videos, thoughts, contact details etc.. Other people can add you as a ‘friend’ from your profile page which means that you are linked and can interact with each other more easily and use all kinds of fun methods to communicate.

There are quite a lot of these sites about at the minute but the most popular ones include: mySpace (music related), youTube (video related), Facebook (college/mature related), linkedIn (business/professional related) and Bebo (kids!). The choice is yours!

Instant Messaging:

This type of communication involves downloading special free (usually) software to your computer, installing it and running it. Once its up and running you can add your friend’s contact details to it and start communicating with them in real time either by typing instant messages on your computer keyboard or if you have a headset with headphones and a microphone you can actually talk with them just like a phone call. Best thing is that this form of communication is TOTALLY FREE and its becoming a more and more popular way to talk to people, so much so that traditional phone companies are scared! Examples of this type of software are MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Skype.

Both of the types of internet communication above can be combined on a new site called Meebo which allows both online website profiles and online instant chat as well as the ability to create your own topical chat rooms.

All in all the internet is a great place to go to communicate with people from all over the world – if you’re into that sort of thing, ie, people!

Leon.

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What is the Internet!?

Leon — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 23:49:46 +0000

The internet is a repository of (useful!!?) information that resides on centrally located computers around the world and can be accessed by anyone with a computer and a connection to said internet via phone line, satellite, wireless or mobile phone. Once you are connected to this ‘world wide web’ of information you can visit any one one of mumbomillions (lots!) of pages with information on absolutely anything on the great lord’s (good ole Jim Morrison’s) planet and plenty of stuff external to the planet too!

You do this either by visiting a specific address which may have been given to you by a friend or which you may have seen advertised in print or on TV and which usually takes the form of www.blahblahblah.com. The address of my page here for example is www.reverbstudios.ie and typing this into your yoke for viewing internet pages (Internet Browser? no way!) will result in you landing on my fine site.

Another way of accessing these pages is to search for them and you do this by first visiting a special internet search engine page on which you type in key words related to what you are looking for information on. For example if you want to find out if the moon is in fact made of cheese or not you would visit a search engine such as Google (one of the smallest ones, you may not have heard of it!) and type in something like “is the moon made of cheese” and you will receive a ton of results in the form of links to other informational sites which will no doubt contain confirmation from eminent astronomers that it is in fact definitely NOT made of cheese.

This basic function of the internet is one of the most remarkable things known to mankind (not womankind as evidently women have no time for computers “I’ll be up soon dear!). The fact that such a wealth of information is available at the touch of a button has obvious positive implications for us all. Here are some examples of its use:

Diagnose your own health symptoms
Get the latest news from around the world
Find out what the moon is made of!
Research your own interests and hobbies
Help the kids with their homework
Become an instant know it all and expert like me!
Start your own IT company with no experience or qualifications!
and more, much, much more..

These days the internet can not only be used for informational purposes but also to achieve goals or communicate with people. For example you can Buy things online at certain sites without having to trudge through a crowded city centre and get them cheaper in the process. You can chat with people on the other side of the planet in real time as if they were sat next to you. You can sell your household junk to some poor fool in Kuala Lumpur or listen to your favorite music all without moving!

Basically, the internet is good and those who think otherwise are either afraid to learn and communicate or just plain bitter. Go out (stay in actually!) and experience it.

Leon.

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