conect.com

Number one rule of blogging: Blogs are NOT Twitter! Nobody cares what you ate for breakfast, nobody wants to hear your pithy quips.

I have just been brought back down to Earth by this very relevant observation found at : http://www.thecommunityarchitect.com/

It is interesting to see how Twitter has formed the basis for this rule. I would probably not put it at Number one but it is a critical rule. It stung me because I have allowed myself to drift off topic here and even worse have directly contradicted my own recommendations from the very first blog.

There were of course good reasons ‘at the time’. But in hindsight they were irrelevancies and diversions from the real purpose.

So, stung into action, I have deleted the offending items and offer my humble apologies to those few who visit here from time to time.

A friend sent me a Youtube video offering some ‘no-bull’ insights into how to get your site ranked so that it appears on the first page of Google.  An interesting piece of commentary from someone who has a lot of experience at it.

One of the things he has done is put up a couple of PDFs of Google ‘Best Practice’ For your convenience, you will find them
here (Aussieweb Best Practice)

The reason that I posted this is to try out a theory about how everyday users access web sites using Google. One thing I have noticed is that there are an awful lot of people who don’t know what the address bar is and who think that the only way to access a site is to type it into Google search. At first this strange behaviour puzzled me, but I quickly found that it was often faster to do that than try and get the URL in, even for short site addresses, such as conect.com

Occasional readers will realise that I don’t post often. This is due to the influence of a comedy show that I watched as a child called ‘Mr Ed’. Those who have seen it will understand. To all the rest, I suggest you consider the latest Telstra ad aimed at reviving interest in the (failed?) Trading Post (online) and wonder if it is an original idea?

Tell ‘em their dreamin’

If there is a result or some interesting feedback this topic might go further.

This is to update those who are wondering about why there has been no follow up. A few quick observations:

1) If you are not on Twitter, do it now. The rest of the story can wait. Just get in and get your place at the table.

2) About Blogging: one thing is that it does create a sense of obligation. You put it out, some read it and then you have a social network that wants to know what happened next. Have at least 3 articles in draft that may or may not see the light of LCD.

3) Watch out for misleading domain renewal or search placement invoices as these seem to be on the rise again. Make sure you understand what you accept or sign-up for.

OK, so that sorts it.

Cheers

Since the exposure of Clickjaking in September, a lot of effort has gone into working out the implications and potential solutions to this problem. There is a great deal of information now available about the problem which was first described at http://ha.ckers.org/ You can follow the technical discussions there or through a search.

This article is not about the technical how and why of Clickjacking, but I will offer a short definition. Clickjacking is the execution of hidden code on a web page such that a user executes some action without being aware of it. JavaScript is one way that this can be achieved. To see an example of how this works without Clickjacking take a look at the example on this page: http://www.pages.org/javascript/email_button.html It contains a very normal button to open up your Email and send a message. This is common on many web sites.

Now consider the effect if that button was invisible and placed above a screen that looked ’safe’. It could be placed as a transparent layer so that anywhere you clicked on a screen would activate any piece of JavaScript without your knowledge. That’s Clickjacking. Clickjacking can be as simple as when a web page contains a transparent button that executes a download from another site. In this case the user will be unaware that the software download does not reside on the site they are visiting.  This may be well intended, such as simplifying a set of tasks that would otherwise involve many more steps. However, the fact that the user is unaware of the process allows for more sophisticated diversions that can compromise security by redirecting or skimming data.

So what can you do Cliackjacking? The major vendors are aware of the risk and the industry is working on patches. The status at present appears to be that the issue is so complex and fundamental to web browser functionality that a solution is some time off. Which raises the question of what to do in the meantime? Faced with this, I have come to the conclusion that there are two reasonable defensive actions 1) only use Firefox (http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/) with the NoScript plugin installed ( http://noscript.net/). 2) be extra vigilant in observing browser sessions particularly where personal data and passwords are involved. As always, as a minimum, make sure you are confident in the sites you visit.

These two steps do not eliminate the risk.  What they do is reduce the risk.

Web browsers are more aggresive in warnings about security certificates. This extends to the content of embedded advertising links on pages. If one of the links uses https then a certificate scan is in order.

What happens if the certificate is not liked by the Browser?

Your visitor will get a warning message about security of the page. At this point most will QUIT, many choosing never to return. Their trust has been broken. One thing that developers often assume is that the ordinary public can work out for themselves what is happening. As a trainer, I can vouch that very few users have the courage to doubt a security warning on their browser. Most will assume it means they face a great and unknown risk.

So make sure that your secure affiliate and advertising links have valid certificates. You will also need to test them across the different browsers, as each has their own take on how to manage security. IE might pass something that Firefox or Opera will knock out.

An interesting support situation has just been resolved with Ebay. All of a sudden listings started to fail to be found when searching. After much head scratching and checking of listings it became clear that something had happened at their end.

An enquiry produced the response that an upgrade had been made to the database server the same day as the fault. No one could say why that would lead to lost listings. After two weeks and trying everything they and we could think of, it suddenly emerged that Ebay Australia had decided to filter out all listings that had the word ‘asbestos’. Really!

The catch is; that included listings that stated the product had no asbestos. It’s working now, but I am not sure what fix they put in. Just for this site? And what else does Ebay ban?

The problem of the erratic mouse has been around for some time. Having personally experienced this fault, I know it can be one of the most puzzling and frustrating problems.

In my experience, there are five unrelated causes to this problem. The difficulty comes when trying to work out what is the issue for you. If you get it wrong, the prospect is that you will add a new cause rather than solve your problem.

The best way to proceed is as follows:

1) Your mouse might actually be faulty (though this is rare). Or, it may be dirty so that the trackball does not run smoothly or the optical window is blurred, depending upon the type of mouse you have. The best way to eliminate the mouse itself is to try it on another PC.

2) If you have an Optical mouse (one with light emitting from it’s base), then the absolutely most common cause of erratic movement will be your Mouse Pad or the surface that you have the mouse on. Almost any surface can cause the light refraction to be uneven and confuse the mouse as to the direction of movement. The mouse may not even need to be moved for this to occur. Simple vibration in the environment can be enough to cause a light shift to which the mouse will respond. So always start treating the erratic mouse fault by using a velvet finish, dark coloured mouse mat. These are usually the cheapest you can buy and have the best light response characteristics.

3) Once you have the correct mouse pad, if the problem persists, then you need to check your BIOS settings. Some BIOS allow for a USB mouse. I don’t know what this setting does, except that if set incorrectly it can cause the erratic mouse problem. I suspect the reason may be due to a timing of the interrupt for the USB port; as a mouse is an always-on device whereas many USB devices are temporary attached or intermittent use.

4) Are you sure you did the above? This third step should only rarely be required and can make the previous two causes worse thus making your fix harder to achieve. Go to: START/CONTROL PANEL/MOUSE/HARDWARE/PROPERTIES/ADVANCED SETTINGS/SAMPLE RATE Set the rate lower than already shown and whilst on the way through make sure that the mouse installed is what you have (There is also a listing for HID compliant mouse. Ignore this as it is a system interface protocol driver used by windows to map the mouse hardware to the desktop via USB.) Really you should not need to be here at all. So are you absolutely sure you did steps 1 and 2.

5) Still not working, then you are in some difficult territory. Make some careful observations. If the problem occurs when you have multiple instances of your Internet browser or other multiple programs open, then I have found that this arises when you shift focus, or close a window. In this case, the issue is memory displacement and management and there is no fix that I am aware of. However, this fault is very rare and not persistent even when it is a factor. At least you will not have to put up with it often.

Once you make the decision to get online and have registered your domain name, the immediate problem you face is how to choose a suitable provider. The first part of the decision is very simple. You have to decide what level of performance you want for your site. If you are going to develop a commercial site it is important that you select a provider that is in close physical proximity to your main market. So, if you are selling to Australians, you will need to host in Australia.

If performance is not important to you (and your customers), you can select a web host provider almost anywhere in the world.

The reason for this is that within geographic markets, ISPs participate in National peer networking that delivers local content at low cost and high performance. ISPs will, in most cases, have high capacity pipes between them that allow users at any node to get near equivalent performance.

Once you set up your site on a server in another geographic zone, your traffic back to your home zone will be noticeably slower. If you do a lot of Email or transfer large files, slow performance can be frustrating.

Another factor to consider is how you will cope with system problems that will arise. In most cases it will be you who does the diagnosis of a fault. Support staff are often under heavy demand and so require concise fault information. They also receive a lot of calls for user-end errors and so may not immediately accept that a fault exists. If your provider is based in the US or Europe and your traffic is mostly Australian, you will find that the peak periods of traffic to your site are at times when the ISP will have minimum staff ready to fix faults and provide support. That is not to say that Australian ISPs will always be prompt. Some have very few support staff and may even close after hours. It is important that you consider how much downtime is acceptable to you, then choose a provider that can respond to faults within that time span.

By way of example, a well-known Australian provider had a recent outage on one server that took approximately 15 hours to rectify. Although they claim a 99.9% service availability overall, for those on that server, this single outage breached that statistic. We have experienced faults at significant US based provider sites that have extended as much as 4 days! The fact is that stability and support have a direct relationship to the price paid for hosting. Our experience is that the most stable provider, offering best support, is also the most expensive.

The type of site you want to operate will also have an influence. An Ecommerce site can be expensive to install with some providers. You need to check the cost of buying SSL certificates, having them installed and the provision of a permanent IP address. Costs for these vary largely between providers.

One of the most successful Australian businesses we know relies on email for over 90% of its web-based revenue. Web host providers offer Email services using different strategies. Some ISP’s place your SMTP and POP on the same server as your Web content. Others have high performance specialised Email servers. Each approach has different advantages and cost structures to operate.

Generally, we place high value content with local providers, with non-critical sites and bulk content hosted in the US.

Whenever a customer leaves your business unsatisfied, you not only have lost that sale but the future growth potential from all others who had the same need and similarly did not consider that you could satisfy them.

A recent coincidence of events provides some fresh insight into this. Both these examples come from the food industry, namely McDonalds and Subway. These are both well run franchises, with solid business models.

In one case, the business operator was short staffed. Customers were queuing for service and then giving up and leaving. This had the effect of creating frustration and discouraged return visits. Others, seeing the queue, would simply decide not to join it and turn around and walk away.

In the other case, there was a consistent customer product demand that the operator knew was going unmet. Other operators in the franchise group had already taken the upgrade. However, the new features required a very large investment and it was difficult to commit to meet this new demand. The store operator felt it was not really core to their operations and they were doing a good job already. He simply did not understand the need. He resisted the customer feedback and watched over a long period as customers left the store without making a purchase.

Both these businesses were losing current and potential business. Each decided finally to act. One doubled their staff and found that there was sufficient demand to meet this 100% increase in staff level. In fact the realisation was that they could service even more customers if the store was expanded further. The other made a large commitment of $250,000 to remodel their store and found a whole new customer base that significantly exceeded the needed revenue targets. They were amazed and pleased by the response and sales growth. It opened a whole new opportunity.

The key feature of both these outcomes was not that they retained existing loyal customers, but that in both cases they expanded their market share. Listen to your customers and invest in their needs. Your future is in them.

(Apologies to Kermit)
The excitement of having your web site listed in a major daily newspaper is hard to overlook. Imagine the hit rate now! You might reasonably expect that a half page article about you and your site will pull in vast numbers. The fact is sometimes surprisingly different. Not every article that makes it into the news will gain the same readership or result. The case of a filmmaker who managed to get the story of their self-funded movie published is a good example here. The story was well written but the topic failed to gain traction. The number of downloads of the trailer 48 hours later was under 600. When you consider that a popular YouTube clip will get 300,000 or more downloads, 600 is a very low result.

What went wrong?
The concept was good – send out a press release, get some free publicity. But the message missed the mark. The newspaper’s audience was wrong – the topic was not suited and the article just didn’t make the video sound interesting. It concentrated on the producer’s story and not the content. It just did not make you want to see the video. What they missed out on therefore was the impact of social networking - the YouTube phenomena of punchy content with a clear message.