Studio Junkyard

The importance of Pro-Actively Maintaining your Web Site.

2011-07-22T13:39:00.000+10:00

The biggest mistake individuals and business's make after they've had their Web Site go Live is ongoing Maintenance and Content Updates.

Maintaining your Web Site is a lot more than just letting it sit on a Server expecting lot's of visitor's to come use your Site, or having the Developer (if you've had it built for you) maintain software or security revisions.

Web Site Maintenance is editing, revising changes in web pages in combination of periodically updating data when required. It is vitally important to keep the website up-to-date, not just to display information correctly, but also to convert the visitors customers and provide fresh information to returning visitors. In respect, this doesn't mean changing the Content of each and every Product or Service you've added to your Web Site, but is rather more along the lines, of adding blog articles, revising product or service prices, and updating necessary content.

When updating or adding new data, it is imperative that original content is used, unless credit is given to the original source including a link when possible. This will help grow your outgoing links and help incoming links to the original author's Web Site. Doing this also indicates to Google that the content used from another source, either has been given permission to be reused, isn't plagiarized and will go a long way to not having your Web Site or Pages the Content appears on from be black listed by Google. You should never use someone else's content without permission or at the least giving credit. Doing so, will eventually be picked up by Search Engines such as Google, and have your Web Site penalised.

Keeping Web Site Content fresh and up-to-date, helps to keep or improve your Search Engine Ranking. Search Engines are an important factor to the livelihood of your online business and sales, but they don't like Web Site that look "dead". Web Site haven't been updated and look static without updates of fresh or even revised content are either ignored or have their rankings dropped in the online world. This includes broken links.

Updating your Web Site periodically can also help you find possible Software issue's with whatever Content Management System (CMS) your Web Site is using, and in return help to keep your CMS up-to-date in respect to Security, and even features to make your use easier. Just remember to report issue's to your Developer.

If you feel overwhelmed or not up to the task of writing content for your Web Site, it may be highly advisable to speak to or higher a Copywriter, and of course one that fits into your budget. A good Copywriter can make significant improvements to your Web Site's content to not only attract new Customers and keep them coming back, but in turn will also help convert Customers into Sales. A good Copywriter can also help improve the look of your Web Site by indicating that some area's of the design aren't working, and need a redesign.

Another often overlooked area of Web Site Maintenance is Statistics. Knowing what pages, products and services visitor's are viewing, or even commenting on the most, can indicate area's that need improving to promote or enhance area's you want to drive visitor's towards. It's also handy to know where visitor's are coming from and point out potential problems like reduced traffic or income from places like Google AdSense and such.

Now you might be thinking "I don't have time for all this". If you can schedule an hour a week, that would be more than adequate. You could also have someone you trust and knows your business, or business goals to perform the updates. You could even do it during a lunch hour. There really isn't much excuse.

Are you Leveraging Social Media?

2010-10-29T20:07:00.001+11:00

The title seems to be a hot topic as of late (well the last few years anyway), yet still I see businesses not taking advantage of what Social Media has to offer them.

Think of Social Media as a Free Promotional Platform to help your business gain more clients, and in turn make that all important commodity that puts food on our tables, and pays our bills.

And it's not just for Businesses either, I've just read an article on Mashable about Job Seekers using Social Media to find Jobs. So if it's good enough for the unemployed, or people just wanting to change jobs or career's, why are you still not using the power of Social Media to help your business grow.

I listed in a previous article over 50 Social Media Websites for you to look at, but leveraging them is much more than just signing up and hoping for it to all magically happen. Unless you engage with others, whether that be with other people, other Websites, or even other Businesses, then it's a waste of time signing up.

I won't say it's easy, there is a bit of work involved, but in doing so, you can make new friends, and even find other Businesses providing services that can enhance your life and even your own Business. I usually advise client's to at least put in an hour or two a day. How many of us watch 2-3 hours of TV a night, why not use that time, while watching TV, to help your business.

There's a lot of simple things you can do, that don't cost any extra work, other than setting things up initially. There's plenty of resources online that you can search for in Google for, but if like me your lazy, I'll list some idea's here, and I'd love to hear any you have:

Placing Social Media links in Email Signature's, not just your Email or Website address.

vCard's. Even though you may not use them often, some Businesses do, and they are so easy to make, so spend 5-10 minutes, so if anyone asks for one, you have it handy already. Much like a Business Card.

Having your Social Media site links on documents and business cards along with your normal email, or Website address.

Do you have stickers on your car bumper? There's plenty of Businesses that can make up a cheap sticker for your bumper. We Might Invite is a good place to start for Business Branding, like Logo's, Banner's, or any printed media.

Connect Media Services to each other. You've probably seen posts on FaceBook where the posts says posted via Twitter, Networked Blogs, or RSS Grafitti. Just to name a few. There's also Browser Addons, one I use is for Google Chrome called Chromed Bird, which connects to your Twitter Account, and lets you see and make posts, and even click on links.

Start a Blog, write compelling articles, and comment on articles you can have positive input into, and if you have an article that can further enhance the article your commenting on, include a link. But don't copy other people's text, as Search Engines will penalize both yours and the original site if they find duplicate content. Besides, people will very quickly put word around, that all you do is copy articles.

Take advantage of any Free Promotion services, like Free Banner Ads, Competitions that can show off your services and skills, or any Free business listing services. Even paid listing services can often be flexible enough that if you talk to them and you have a service they can benefit from they could waive the join up fee, or upgrade your package. Support A WAHP, eMoo Australia, Australian Certified Websites, and Tassie Local are two examples of Businesses that put in a lot of effort, and provide help and services to help local Businesses.

Check out your competition, and see if they're missing a service or product in the market that you could do, but be very careful offering to help other businesses in the same market as your business. Even though they may seem sincere, there is a lot of people out there that will steal your idea's. It's best to be cautious about giving away too much information. Especially, if your offering something where you can both benefit. In other words, always protect your own interests first.

There can also be some very drastic Negative Aspects to Social Media. Generally though, if you stay away from negative Businesses and be aware of what your posting, and consider any Negative Impact posts may have on your Business, or even personal life, then you should be fine. Even a criticism on someone's work or services can have a dramatic Negative affect on your Business. Enslaved Designs, has a great article about this, plus tips on what you can do to leverage your media services.

If you have problems with friends, or even family members from time to time, and have posts on your Social pages showing fights, swearing and negative feelings, then it may be a good idea to have two profiles. One for personal use, the other for Business use, and only link the or be an admin on your Business Page using the Business User Profile.

Which brings me to something I've noticed on FaceBook as of late. I've seen a lot of Businesses using User Profiles as Business Pages, Not only is this against FaceBooks Terms Of Service, but doing so can limit your Business from turning up in Search Engine results. For privacy reasons, FaceBook limits the amount of information a User Page can be Indexed by Search Engines. Whereas, proper FaceBook Business Pages are not limited, so do your Business a good deed, and create a proper Business Page, and have people find you more easily.

There's a lot more that can be done to help your Business grow in any Social Media arena, and I've only touched on a few examples. I'd love to hear your thoughts, and idea's, and things you've done that can help other's.

Help yourself help your SEO and help your business grow.

2010-10-11T17:03:00.006+11:00

I see all too often in the source code of many Websites I visit, incorrect, and sometimes even missing mark-up and information that Search Engines look for when Indexing the content on Website pages.

All too often, this isn't the fault of the business owner, but rather comes down to the Web Designer, and can sometimes be that the owner can't afford, or hasn't been made aware that certain criteria needs to be placed in the code of your Web Pages, and in a particular manner, so Search Engines can Index and Rank Pages accordingly.

I'm going to list some of the most common mistakes, I've come across, along with tips for each of these mistakes. It might pay to speak to your Web Designer about implementing anything that's missing on your Website's pages.

Page Size:
It's a general rule of thumb to make sure the size of pages is no more than 150 kilobytes, before Images, Cascading Style Sheets (though inline CSS can bump file size up dramatically), and other attachments.
You basically don't want a page that is so big in size, that it takes more than 0.05 seconds to download.

Title:
What to look for in code: <title>keyword</title>
Page Title's, should be no more then 70 characters, more than this, and text beyond the 70 characters is ignored by SE's. The text in the Title should correspond to the Content on the page. And how you want the link in Search Engine's to be displayed.
The recommended format suggested by Google for the Title should be:
Keyword < Category | Website Title

Keywords:
What to look for in the code: <meta name="keywords" content="keywords" />
Keywords used to be the be all and end all of getting your Web Pages indexed by Search Engines (SE). These days however, SE's don't bother with them as much.
I do recommend still placing some keywords, with relevant words to your business, Page Title, and Content, just in case SE Vendors like Google, decide to start using them again.
SE's stopped using them, as Keywords were heavily abused. Not just by Business's trying to get better Page Rank (PR), but also Link farms, and other unscrupulous people online.

Meta Description:
What to look for in code: <meta name="description" content="keywords" />
This should be no more than 155 characters and describe the Content on the Page.
The Meta Description is also displayed in SE's just under the link to your page.

Use of Heading Tags:
In the content of your page, there should only be one <h1>Most Important</h1> as the overall Title for the content, like the start of a chapter in a book.
<h2>Second Most Important</h2>, <h3>Third Most Important</h3>, etc, etc, can be used several times, and should indicate the title's of nested paragraphs.
For eg. use &lth1> as the overal title of the page, then <h2> as the sub-headings of the content, then <h3> as headings inside <h2> content, and so on.

Bold & Strong:
Use of Bold and Strong text is also considered as keywords to SE's inside Content Paragraphs. If you don't want to have words displayed as <b>bolded text</b>, you can use CSS to style the <b>bold text</b> tags to not display text as bold, and still take advantage of having Bold text elements as keywords.

Image:
Incorrectly using Image tags is something I see on a regular occurrence, and is such an easy fix, by adding the alt="attribute", attribute to the <img /> tag like <img alt="keyword" src="keyword.jpg" /> indicates to SE's what the image is about, you can also place the title="keyword" inside the Image tag.
Not having the alt="attribute" also breaks Standards Compliancy.

Hyperlinks:
Hyperlinks also need to have certain attributes inside them to help SE's index Content, and to make sure that the link is relevant to the location it's linking to. For eg. <a href="http://www.somepage.com/" title="some page, that has some information">link</a>.
If you don't want SE's to follow links and associate links back to a page you can add the rel="nofollow" attribute option. This can be handy for linking to a site that has nothing to do with your site, and you don't want to run the risk of being penalized, but you still want the link.
I've just come across on Google's SEO pages, that rel="nofollow" is no longer used by Google, and if used any PR that would have been gained, is now lost to the Ether and goes to no one.

Paramaters in the URL:
You should try to have no more than 2 paramater's in the URL if your using a system that parses variables from page to page.

Depth of URL:
You should avoid having more than 4 folders deep in your Website, for eg.

http://www.somesite.com/blah/bleh/

is good,
where as

http://www.somesite.com/blah/bleh/meh/moh/hehe/

is bad.

Those are just some of the most common mistakes Designers make, there are others, but would be too complicated to get into here. Studio Junkyard performs a Website Assessment Service if your interested in seeing exactly what may need looking at, and fixing, including helpful tips. (Shameless plug I know, but at $27 for general businesses and $15 for WAHP's we believe it's a good investment to point problems, and to indicate why your site isn't ranking very well).

Now, how about some handy tips you may not have thought of yet, that you can do to bring in those extra visitor's and hopefully sales:

Social Media:
There's so many Social Media sites out there now, with more opening everyday, that it can be hard to know which ones to use. Personally, I'd suggest ones that allow you to connect to other Social Media platforms, for eg. Facebook > Twitter > Stumbleupon. So when you post on one, the post appears on the other, without you having to sign in.
Below is a list of 50+ of the most promising ones I could find doing a Google Search. Each offer's their own diversity and way of networking, some are even catered toward certain types of business and media:

facebook.com
stumbleupon.com
digg.com
del.icio.us
reddit.com
twitter.com
linkedin.com
meetup.com
friendster.com
pipl.com
care2.com
plaxo.com
123people.com
jigsaw.com
activerain.com
zoominfo.com
hoovers.com
crunchbase.com
tribe.net
glassdoor.com
spoke.com
zabasearch.com
xing.com
naymz.com
wink.com
startupnation.com
focus.com
ecademy.com
score.org
biznik.com
younentreprenuer.com
xobni.com
doostang.com
amightyriver.com
gobinetwork.com
efactor.com
jobirn.com
joined.com
fastpitchnetworking.com
onesource.com
bigtent.com
ryze.com
cghub.com
partnerup.com
isearch.com
flowtown.com
bni.com
apsense.com
yapclub.com
ikarma.com
brightfuse.com
gist.com
meetin.org
ziggs.com

Email Signatures:
You would think, with email being as wide spread as it is, and in as much use as it is, that people would remember to use the signature capabilities of their Email Client. Adding a simple signature, like the URL to your Website, can help bring more traffic.

Blog, Forums and Comment enabled Websites:
Commenting on other Websites with, obviously the comment you wish to make, along with the URL to your site can help not only drive traffic to your Website, but also help raise your Website Page Rank, especially if the content on the page or article your commenting on is relevant to your Website's content, or page the link goes to.

Browser Tools:
This tip kind of works in with the above tip. Before commenting it's a good idea to check the PR of a page or Website. It's usually best to comment on a page including a link back to your Website that has a higher PR than yours, as this can help raise your PR as long as the SE's find the content corresponding and relevant. If you use Google Chrome you can install SEO Tools. This will quickly check the PR status of the currently open page. Facebook for eg. gets a PR of 10 for most pages. This addon can also help on your own site, as it checks a whole lot of information about the open page.

Well, I think that's about it for now. I may add to this page in time, or if anyone has any suggestions on anything they've found that works (and is not Black Hat SEO), then I'll look into adding it, so it can help other's.

Studio Junkyard: What to look out for and ask about your first Webs...

2010-10-07T21:21:00.000+11:00

Studio Junkyard: What to look out for and ask about your first Webs...: "This article is basically what you should ask or at least be aware of when looking for someone to Design your Website, no matter if it's you..."

What to look out for and ask about your first Website.

2010-10-07T21:19:00.003+11:00

This article is basically what you should be asking, or at least be aware of when looking for someone to Design your Website, no matter if it's your first, or if you've had many Website's.

Still in this day and age with Internet Technology being what it is, where we live in a smaller and closer world, where information is much easier to find and easier to access, a lot of people are still not aware of what they should look for or be asking, not just about the Website itself, but also the after care, and the simple things they can do to leverage the power that their Website can do for their business.

Below is a list of things to look out for, and questions you should ask:

World Wide Web Consortium: (http://www.w3.org)
The first things to ask any Designer is "Do you know what W3C is?", and "Do you think it's important?".
If they answer "No" to both, or just the second question, then it's time to find another Designer, and this is for the very basic reason that when a Search Engine is visiting your site to Index and Rank your Site and Content, it expects the Mark-Up that's used to display the elements that make up your Website to be used in a Semantically Correct fashion. If the Mark-Up isn't, then the Search Engine Spider can skip content crucial to your Business, or worse stop Indexing the page it's looking at.
The W3C, in basic terms, are the guys that dictate what can and can't be used as far as the Mark-Up of your Website. Browser vendor's are supposed to follow these recommendations to make sure Websites work as close to the same manner from Browser to Browser.

Domain Name Registration: (http://intaserve.com/)
Domain Name Registration doesn't need to be a complicated, scary, or expensive process. And you don't need to pay expensive prices either. I've seen registrations for over $80AUD for 1 year, this is just ridiculous, you shouldn't have to pay more than $30AU for 2 Years. It's worth shopping around.
One thing that I've discovered recently, is that some Registrar's don't do the registration in your or your business's name. This way they get the renewal notice, and can then charge high prices for renewal. Whereas, if you received the renewal, you would question them why you had to pay so much, when the renewal is so much cheaper, and you should question them.

Free Hosting Companies vs Paid Hosting:
Free Hosting Companies, can vary greatly in the options they allow you to have.
Generally though, and most commonly, they don't allow you to have a Database, and you can only use standard HTML for your Website, or worse your Website could be built up using Flash where any content inside can NOT be Indexed and Ranked by any Search Engines. This means you can't use Shopping Carts, Galleries, Portfolio's etc., that are dynamic and allow easy updating. That doesn't mean to say you can't display products, or photo's, but editing these would be a nite mare, if your products or photo's change often. You may also get stuck with having to have a Banner Advertisement at the top, bottom and in some cases top and bottom. And those can be placed before your content actually starts, putting people off, and can look ugly, and could have services or products advertising business's or services similar to yours.

You also, won't have your own unique URL, but instead have something like yoursite.freewebsites.com or freewebsites.com/yoursite. This also leads to having to use a free email service such as hotmail, yahoo, or google, or even your private email provided by your ISP. Plus, some people see free emails for business, as being unprofessional, or untrust worthy.

Free Hosting can be a great way to start your Web Presence, but don't rely on them for long term use, as they can also have data limits, when once reached, no one will be able to access your Site. They can also have problems with up time, and because it's free, there's usually not much you can do to get the people providing the service to take prompt action in fixing the issue's, it is free after all.

Paid Hosting, can vary from Hoster to Hoster, and they all have their own idea's on Security, Equipment, and Services they provide. The most common type of hosting is Shared, where your Website is hosted amongst a lot of other Websites by a lot of other Business's by a lot of other Website Designer's on the same machine, kind of like using a Taxi where Websites can come and go.

Security on Shared hosting can vary greatly, and it's worth taking the time to make sure the business you choose to do your hosting, takes the time to perform security updates, and takes measures to make sure the hosted Websites are safe. Regardless of all that though, there is still the worry, that even though you or your designer takes the time to make sure the code that makes your Website work is secure from intrusion, it doesn't mean others using the same Hoster has, and generally, if another Website on the same host as yours can be hacked into, then it leaves your Website vulnerable as well. And it's for this reason we use our own Truly Dedicated Server to host client's Websites.

Co-Location, and Dedicated Virtualized Hosting, pretty much fall into the same category as Shared, with the difference being the Dedicated Virtualized Hosting, is an installed Operating System running inside another Operating System. This is done with many hosting plans on the one machine, and can sometimes run as many as 100 hosts on the same machine. As you would imagine these are also vulnerable to security problems, and can also be vulnerable to RAM issue's as each of the installed Virtual Machines use the same Memory of the Host Machine.

True Dedicated Hosting though is a different matter all together, this is a completely dedicated machine running by itself. It may still have many Websites hosted on it, but usually only by the same Website Developer, that can take care of all the security, and there is less likely to be problems with security from unknown or dodgy Websites being on the same machine. True Dedicated can be expensive, though it can be worth finding out what the Web Designer you choose, and is Hosting your Website, what they use.

Design Process:
I'll break the Design Process into sections for things you should be wary of and should ask the designer about how they are piecing together not only the layout design of your Website, but more importantly the underlying code that makes it work, plus some other important things to know about:

Technology: Using the latest Technologies to build Websites can be a two edged sword. Where it's great that a designer is up with what the latest techniques are and is up with the times so to speak, it can be an issue when it comes to Browser Compatibility, and particularly what Browser Software your Wider Audience is using to View your Website. There's not much point having all the latest bells and whistle's if your customer's can't view your Website and Products because they use an older Operating System, or older Browser, or even use a Browser that the Designer refuses to make your Website work in, and the Designer should be aware of these issue's and at least provide fall backs so your Customers always have the opportunity of being able to navigate and use your Website in it's most basic form.

Tables: Building any Website using Tables and worse Nested Tables is a very bad move these days, and shows the inexperience or laziness of the designer. Using outdated methods, like using Tables also indicates that the designer is behind the times, most likely uses a software package to design Websites, which are usually drag and drop editors, and by doing this they don't really understand what makes the Website itself work. Doing this can make editing specialized components that your site might need extremely difficult.

Inconsistencies: Using random or differently styled elements, fonts, text sizes, menus, graphics can be very off putting to people, just remember everyone that visit's your site is a potential customer, and could be the difference of whether you'll be eating that night. This can also be confusing to people, as they may think they've been taken to a different site, and will simply go elsewhere.

Having To Scroll the Website Horizontally: Seeing a Website that's too wide to fit in your screen is very annoying. Websites should generally be made to fit inside 1000px wide, given that some people don't change their desktop resolution from today's standard 1024px wide display. This doesn't mean to say that you can't have a horizontally scrolling Website if it's designed to be that way, what I'm talking about here having the Website too wide to fit it's display, esp. if it's not supposed to be like that.

Pop-Ups: Pop-Ups, are the biggest detractor for viewing a Website, they're annoying, confusing, and just generally bad. People also associate them with advertising, scam, spyware, or virus sites, so don't put yourself in the same category.

Cross Browser Compatibility: These days with so many people having their own preference of what Browser they like to use, it's very important to make sure the designer takes the time to make sure your Website works in the common Browser's. And in different Operating Systems, there's more than just Windows or Mac these days, and with Ubuntu Linux being a very user-friendly Linux, a lot more people are using Linux now. You might think Internet Explorer is the Bee's Knee's, but honestly, it's the worst Browser for Security, and displaying Websites. It's also important that if your designer has designed some special cool widget or effect for your Website, that there's a fall back option, where the functionality for your visitor's still allows them to use your site, even if it's in a limited fashion.

Flash: Or rather designing your Website all in Flash. Or using Flash for Menu's, is very bad for Search Engines. Have a look around at the more successful business's that are online. Are they using Flash, in a limited fashion, or at all? Sometimes Flash Websites can be awesome, but most of them contain heavy content that takes a long time to download, even on a fast Internet Connection. The biggest draw back for Flash though, is that the Search Engines can't Index the content inside Flash. So if you have products, service, and information that's important and should be found in Search Engines, well that won't happen if it's inside Flash.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): These days, it's very important to make sure your Website Designer design's and uses underlying code that is able to be read by Search Engines. If they say things like "don't worry about the underlying code, it has nothing to do with SEO", then it's time to walk away and find another designer that does take the time to write Semantically Correct, and Search Engine friendly code.

Content Management:
Apart from the importance of how your Website is designed and made to work, Managing your Content would be just as, if not more important for your Website to be Successful. When consulting with a Designer, it be very worth while asking about how easy, or how your going to be able to go about updating, editing, adding and removing your content. If you can't easily make changes to the content, or the designer wants to charge you for them to make changes, then again, it would be time to find another designer. If you can't edit your content yourself, or if it's too complex to make simple updates, then this is going to do nothing but waste your valuable time and resources, I'm sure you don't have 4 hours to waste on something that should take less than 2-3 minutes to do.

If your not very good at writing content, or want to have the wording of your content look as professional as possible, and concise, it may well be worth employing the services of a Marketing expert or a Copywriter service, and there's lot's of them on FaceBook (Enslaved Design, Copywrite Matters). This can be an expensive process, but can be an invaluable asset to your ongoing Search Engine Optimization Campaign. And with the revenue that having these services redo, or even create for your Website and it's displayed products and services will soon pay for itself.

Social Media Services:
Social Media can be great asset in helping to grow your business, particularly free services like FaceBook, that allows you to have Business pages, that can be used to directly interact with your customers, and you can give immediate feedback about your services. Other services like Twitter, Digg, MySpace, etc. can all be made to talk too each other, so something you post on Twitter will appear on the other services, without you having to sign into them. Wouldn't you want to have your business promoted on as many free services as possible, basically, it's free advertising.

We at Studio Junkyard take great care with all of the above subjects, and more. There's a lot more we haven't covered here, and are things Designer's should know about, and explain to you without having to be asked.

Well, that's all I can think of right now, I may add more to this article in time, or make amendments. if you have questions, or suggestions on something I may have missed or needs correcting, feel free to leave a comment. Please be constructive though, and please no flaming.

When was the last time you Really Backed Up?

2010-10-04T11:46:00.000+11:00

Isn't it wonderful that we have so many choices of how to store our data now?
Even so, when was the last time you really did a proper indestructible backup?

I can hear you now asking "What's an indestructible backup?".

Well, take into consideration the options to back our data up on these days, USB Flash Drives, USB External Hard Drives, A Secondary Hard Drive, Removable Media Drives, Online Data Storage, Floppy Disks, Writable DVD's and CD's, Printing.

Out of all the above options only one, is a viable means of storing large amounts of Data safely, even though that option isn't totally safe, unless you take certain precautions. And that's Writable DVD's and CD's.

All too often I have client's and even casual acquaintances tell me they back up their data to anything but DVD or CD. So I ask, them "oh, ok, so you'll eventually store the data on DVD or CD?", and 9 out of 10 times they say "No, the External Hard Drive is perfect". Perfect until it's knocked, dropped, or it's Hard Drive decides to fail. And that can happen anytime.

Think of it like this: Anything that's mechanical or even magnetic is prone to failure at some point.

Why do we get out Automobile's serviced? (Car or Bike, let's not discriminate here). Whether we do the maintenance ourselves, or have a qualified professional do it (which we'd recommend). In case of failure, right? We know if we don't look after, service, or keep fluids up to our vehicles, that something will eventually fail.

So, why are we so lax when it comes to our computers, and esp. our data? The components that make up our computers hardware, are in essence, mechanical devices. Albeit, very small mechanical devices. And they are still prone to failure. Even the Chips or IC's (Integrated Circuit's), and they are NOT infallible.

Devices like USB Flash Drives/USB External Hard Drives/Removable Media Devices (Tape Drives, Disc Drives) can be great for moving data from one computer to another over large distances, and be much faster than moving files across a network or Internet. They can also be great for accumulating data, to get ready to store elsewhere. The problem with these devices comes down to how the data is stored. The Flash Drives use Chips like RAM to store the data, get that near a magnet, or zap the wrong voltages into the device, and the data is gone (well not always gone per se, but it can become inaccessible). That can be the same with External Hard Drives too. And they are both prone to read/write failure's, esp. if the power fails during the backup/transfer process.

Printing is out of the question. What if you have hundreds if not thousands of documents and photo's to backup, then printing is totally out of question, as the expense would be countless. And that's not to mention that if you have to modify the documents or photo's, plus the inconvenience of retrieving them, and the space required to store them in a safe place.

Writable DVD's and CD's on the other hand are the perfect solution, and are the closest form of indestructible storage, though they aren't perfect, and you do need to be careful of the brand and type of blank media used, as blank media is not all the same.

If I had a penny for all the times someone tried telling me, that all DVD/CD media is the same quality, so it doesn't matter what brand or model is purchased, then I wouldn't be here writing this.

There are many brands of DVD/CD media on the market, and I won't go into all of them here. But what I will tell you, is they are NOT all the same, and they can vary greatly even in the same brands.
The brand I prefer at the moment, is Ritek, esp. for data storage as they (as far as I've discovered) are the only brand that has an Anti-Fungal Agent in the Ink of the media. Have you ever noticed some DVD's/CD's that get a blooming effect around the edges of the media?, well, that is a fungus eating the Ink in the media. So look for media with an Anti-Fungal Agent, and if you've come across other brands with it, I'd love to hear about them.

Now, I can hear you thinking, "but storing my data on DVD/CD won't stop the media from being destroyed....". Well, no, of course it won't. It's up to you to store the media with your information somewhere safe. A fireproof safe is a good option. A safe deposit box. There are many options, but I won't go into them here.

So in saying, BACKUP YOUR DATA PROPERLY, don't rely on devices that are prone to failure for long term storage, they are an intermediate storage solution.

I'd hate to see you lose your irreplaceable family photo's, 'cos you've been told by an IT sales rep. that storing data on devices like Flash Drives, or External Hard Drives is perfectly safe. And if an IT sales rep. tells you things like that, I'd be dubious how much the know they know. are an intermediate storage solution.

Please Write your precious memories to DVD or CD.

Piracy? Really in these times, why are we still using Pirate Software?

2010-10-01T16:26:00.001+10:00

It astounds me, when people ask me where they can get a copy of something, and they usually ask about expensive commercial software like Adobe's Products, Microsoft Products, or some other expensive software.

What I don't get, is that with FOSS (Free Open Source Software) being, well, FREE, and usually available for other platforms, is why anyone would want to bother with using Pirated software. Not to mention the fines and possible jail time for infringing copyright's.

Sure, Piracy will always be around, and is impossible to stop, it's just that when there's alternatives that will keep you and your business from being closed down, and heavy fines imposed, then why put yourself, your family, and your business at risk.

What worries me more is business's using expensive commercial software that's pirated. I understand the need for certain software to complete tasks for client's, but there is no need to do it illegally by using commercial software that hasn't been paid for.

I have found in most cases that FOSS is better than the commercial alternatives. Usually created by Geeks that have a need, and don't want to pay for software, or worse, have restrictions imposed on them by commercial licensing. How many of you know that there's restrictions on using .gif images? How many Web Developer's who use Windows in a Virtual Machine know that they're breaking their EULA?

Then there's the whole support problem with commercial software. How many of us have tried to get help and support from Microsoft for any of their products. I've tried, gone through their Website, only to end up finding some sort of answer that partially helps or doesn't help fix the issue, and if you try calling Microsoft for help, well, the rep. usually determines that the issue is a problem with your machine. How is that helpful?

Of all the years I've been using Linux (Debian & Ubuntu, in fact, both of which are free) and run into a problem, it's usually just a case of doing a Google search, and 8/10 times been able to find a solution. Particularly in Ubuntu on their Forums. And that also goes for FOSS as well. With closed source software (commercial software usually tends to be closed source) your relying on the software vendor for help, and a lot of the time their is a lack of documentation, apart from how to use the software in a basic means, or they've simply been spending time developing the product, they haven't had the time or resources to write or provide help.

With FOSS on the other hand, as theres so many more people that can work on a project at any one time, with the project being Open Source, and anyone being able to get their hands on the source code, and being able to modify or fix problems. Well, you can see where I'm going. Commercial software just can't compete with turn around time to fix issue's, or provide support.

That's enough of my rambling, how about a sort list of alternative FOSS compared to it's Commercial Equivalent:

Commercial > FOSS
Microsoft Windows (Any Version) > Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.)
Apple Mac OS (Any Version) > Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.)
   For those questioning, Mac OS is based on Unix/BSD, as is various flavours of Linux.
   The main difference is, is that Mac OS is closed source, and since the Microsoft bail
   has unfortunately become insecure and prone to Virus's. There are linux Virus's, but nothing
   like Windows or Mac Virus's, and definitely not in the quantity.
Adobe PhotoShop > the GIMP, CinePaint (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Adobe Lightroom > Lightcrafts LightZone (Windows, Mac, Linux), even though not FOSS
   it is a hell of a lot cheaper, and has more features than it's rivals.
Microsoft Office > Open Office (Windows, Mac, Linux)
AutoDesk's AutoCAD, MAYA, 3D Studio Max > Blender 3D, Wings, Archimedes, BRL-CAD.

As I stated, just a short list, for a more complete comparison, visit Open Source Alternative

If you come across anything that's not listed on Open Source Alternative, then I urge you to let me know, or request for it to be added.

Studio Junkyard: Don't Be Fooled

2010-09-29T18:44:00.000+10:00

Studio Junkyard: Don't Be Fooled: "Would you go to a Auto Mechanic to get your toilet fixed? Would you trust your important business to be published in an Ad campaign or other..."

Don't Be Fooled

2010-09-29T15:27:00.000+10:00

Would you go to a Auto Mechanic to get your toilet fixed?
Would you trust your important business to be published in an Ad campaign or other online exposure for your business?

Well, there's plenty of business's doing (in theory) just that.

Over the last year or so, we've noticed a very bad trend in bad Website Designer's (or what we coder's refer to as "Drag & Drop Template Editors), doing Website's for business's, when they have no idea of what they're doing.

This might seem like a gripe, that we're not getting that work, and the Bad Designer's are, and I guess in a way it is.

What's more concerning too us though, is that these Bad Designer's aren't following Standards Compliancy, are providing Websites and Hosting them in a insecure environment (by this mean the Website Code itself, and the Hosting Server).

In todays world, with Black Hat Hacker's being anywhere, and the Internet making the world so much smaller, can you afford to have the Website you've spent hundred's if not thousands of dollars being developed be insecure and prone to being able to be Hacked easily by your competition (yes, in some cases there's been instances where a business's opposition has been known to hire Hackers to ruin their competitor's Website).

What we urge you to do as a business owner, is to be more diligent in making sure your Website, and more importantly your User's data isn't vulnerable to being stolen or hi-jacked.

When it's such a simple thing to do, to make a Website and Hosting Server Secure, it makes sense to Hire a Grey Hat Hacker (such as ourselves), to point out the vulnerabilities in your Website, so you can then do what you need to protect it, and potentially yourself legally.

Generally (getting back to the Bad Designer's using non Semantic Mark UP) by building Website in a Standards Compliant way, can take care of some (but def. not all) security related issue's. We've seen a worryingly amount of designer's using Tables (and worse Nested Tables) to build layout's. Even though such site may still pass validation checks, it's still not acceptable to use Tables for Website Layouts as outlined by W3C (http://w3.org/), as they say "Table's are for Data, not Layouts".

By using a Website Designer that keeps up with current trends, such as Standard Compliancy, makes sure the designer is up to date with current trends in this ever evolving world of the Internet. Such a designer, usually tends to be more up to date with what's new in Social Networking, and especially SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques that won't get your Website penalized (obviously something you don't want).

So before jumping in with the first designer you find, it really pays in the long run to do some homework and research to find out exactly what best suite's your business.

Don't be fooled, by the old "I can do that", only to find out that business or person can't provide the security and expertise your business needs.