Welcome to reality V2.0Welcome to reality V2.0A blog focusing on Web 2.0 trends, companies and technology. Articles
Securing your systems
2009-06-25 23:10:00 Earlier this week, a colleague was contacted by their provider about their IP. Apparently that IP was breaking the Acceptable Use Policy - by distributing a virus/Trojan/spyware! He was running AVG, a very commonly used antivirus software, and he’s a pretty high level computer user, and yet he was still infected! Without actively monitoring his ... More About: Systems
User interface design
2009-06-20 20:58:00 I will be re-designing a site in the next week or so, the SuperbHosting.net and HopOne.net sites are being updated, and shortly thereafter, we’ll be looking at doing a major update to the control panel used for dedicated and shared hosting customers, as well. I was doing a bit of poking around, and I came ... More About: Design , User , Interface , Interface Design , User Interface
Will we ?bing? it?
2009-06-17 22:25:00 When the new search decision engine, Bing , was launched by Microsoft at the beginning of the month, I wrote an article introducing the newest Microsoft flavour of search. I highlighted the fact that Microsoft had made many different attempts to grow in the search market, including their Facebook search deal, but had little success, and ...
(No)Following the PR sculpting debate
2009-06-16 21:25:00 I recently read an article by Matt Cutts about PageRank sculpting, and the main point that stuck out: I would recommend the first-order things to pay attention to are 1) making great content that will attract links in the first place, and 2) choosing a site architecture that makes your site usable/crawlable for humans and search ... More About: Debate , Sculpting
Do Facebook vanity URLs matter?
2009-06-11 22:57:00 Facebook announced yesterday that on Friday, June 11th, 2009 at 9:01pm (PDT), users would be allowed to flock to the site and grab their own vanity URLs. That means instead of hitting up the pub, watching game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, or catching a movie, people will be anxiously awaiting the opportunity to ... More About: Matter , Vanity , Facebook
Thought of managed hosting?
2009-06-11 21:47:00 I posted an article the other day about a web hosting company, not a host offering dedicated hosting but a virtual private server (VPS) hosting company, that lost 100,000 websites overnight. The attack was a result of a security hole in the virtualization application that the host company was using, an application called HyperVM from ... More About: Hosting , Thought
JayAndSilentRob on Twitter!
2009-06-05 23:58:00 Well, I’m not sure how much I’ll actually use the account, but I thought it was important to get on Twitter and make sure no one else got my alias. Having started looking at Twitter for Superb, it only made sense to look at it for myself, too. Although I won’t be talking about dedicated ... More About: Social Networking
Social networks for sales
2009-06-05 23:51:00 Doing contract work for a hosting company, I realize the difficulties in targeting quality traffic. It’s a competitive market, meaning companies are not only able to outspend each other, they are constantly looking to get an edge or advantage. With something like dedicated servers and managed hosting, this is especially true. An article on targeting ... More About: Social , Social Networks , Networks , Sales , Main
Security still a major issue
2009-01-14 18:38:00 Everywhere I seem to look the last few days, security seems to be a major topic; I briefly read over the headlines from my Computerworld newsletter and Microsoft is patching a ’super nasty’ bug. I open up the daily 24hours newspaper, and a Virus has taken control of the Vancouver school board computers, resulting in ... More About: Security , Major , Issue
Microsoft?s major mistakes of ?08
2009-01-12 17:43:00 I try my best to support the Dark Side, not necessarily because they deserve it, but more because I think they constantly take more abuse than they deserve. An article on IT World Canada outlines Microsoft ’s 3 great ‘08 mistakes and they’re pretty bang on: Poor marketing of Windows Vista The Seinfeld/Gates ads Failed bid for Yahoo! The article ... More About: Products , Major
A 13-year old’s startup
2009-01-10 00:31:00 There’s a great story on Techcrunch UK about a 13-year old in Scotland that’s created his own social network/blogging network. First, I think I should congratulate Scott - Congratulations, Scott, that’s amazing! Now, I have to take a couple shots at Mike Butcher’s article… While many older people may not have the know to find out who writes about startups, send them press releases, and get on CrunchBase, when I was 13, the average older person couldn’t program the time on their VCR either. Personally, I was consumed with computers - but there was no Internet, no startups, no blogs to contact. I was on many-a-BBS, I created artwork in the what was then known as ANSi (wtf?), I had helped network the computers in our house to play Warcraft on no less than 3 computers (not quite WoW, but hey, it was early 90’s!). While living in Vancouver may have limited possibilities, I had a cousin who developed games and lived in Palo Alto and even made nat... More About: Startup , Year
Icons & tutorials
2008-12-10 18:08:00 One of the toughest searches seems to be for good icons. It’s usually easy to find standard icons, but to find a larger or broader set of icons to be used throughout a site or to find an icon set with a specific look and feel can be a bit more difficult. I’ve scoured some ... More About: Tutorials , Icons
Why do we trust Google?
2008-12-09 20:14:00 I was reading an article on Google Watch about trusting Google, and there are some interesting points in the article. That Google lives and dies on trust is why I trust the search engine with my data. Here’s why. I happily use Gmail and Google Reader, not to mention Google search. I harbor no illusions about ... More About: Main , Trust
techFive - Top Five Tech Stories from the Week of 12.05.08
2008-12-05 19:48:00 Facebook Connect Launches - There has been a lot of work done with Identity, and up until now, it seemed like OpenID was slowly becoming the leading candidate, but as Om Malik points out in the article, the number and quality of launch partner sites is one reason why Facebook is going to get more traction compared to its rivals. Another article on the topic is Why Facebook Connect Matter & Why It Will Win. Top Stories & Searches for 2008 - In a year that seemed dominated (on both sides of the border) by the political landscape, it might be a bit surprising that Britney Spears and WWE both ranked higher than Obama on the list, however, there’s probably a reasonable explanation for the results. 2nd Annual Open Web Awards Final Voting - It might be a bit questionable to have the ‘open’ web awards being offered by a commercial entity instead of an organization of sorts, but if it really is the only multilingual international online voting competition that cover... More About: Tech , Week
Good web design
2008-12-02 20:29:00 I’ve made my own informal checklist of do’s and don’ts for web design, but I will always rely on the top-of-their-game professionals and their wisdom to help each individual project. While I consider myself a near expert on the subject, it’s often difficult to explain if for someone else to truly understand. An article on ... More About: Web Design , Design , Good
Microsoft in the news
2008-12-02 18:08:00 Microsoft continues to find its way into the news, but there rarely seems to be much good said about poor old Redmond. On the browser front, Firefox has moved over the 20% market share mark for the first time since November 2004, while Internet Explorer has dropped below 70% market share. Safari, Chrome, and Firefox are all winners in IE’s loss, but keep in mind, there are a handful of alternative browsers. On the same day, it was announced that Microsoft’s Windows has dropped to a 15-year low 90% market share. Again, this is another impressive number with respect to market share, but like IE, Windows has been steadily declining as the available alternatives increase. Finally, Microsoft is yet again in talks with Yahoo! over some sort of purchase related to Yahoo!’s search property. There is tremendous pressure from the board, led by Carl Icahn, to make some sort of a deal to streamline the company, but a total purchase is said to be out of the question. This is al... More About: News , Microsoft , In the News , The News
Cyberbullying, the CFAA, and you
2008-12-01 23:42:00 cyberbullying: 1. the use of electronic means by a minor to torment, threaten, harass, humiliate, embarrass or otherwise target another minor. 2. when someone repeatedly makes fun of another person online or repeatedly picks on another person through emails or text messages, or uses online forums and postings online intended to harm, damage, humiliate or ... More About: Social Networking
Apple’s Black Friday Sale
2008-11-28 19:33:00 I’m usually not that big on the gadgetry from Cupertino, but I’d heard rumours that Apple would be doing some big things today. Then earlier this week, I was in my boss’s office and he was checking out the details on the big day, so I had to take a moment to look at today’s special. Just to help people out, $20 off an iPod or $50 off a computer probably isn’t going to make you rush out and buy everything your little Apple heart desires, but I came across two specials that might make you impulse buy. Office 2008 for Mac is on sale for $148 (save $351.95) - but wait, isn’t that similar to the sale that Microsoft is doing? The most interesting offer for me is the Sanyo Xacti VPC-E2 Waterproof Digital Camcorder Apple has on sale for $198. Similar to what I found with Office, I noticed that Amazon had the exact same camera for that same price. I think everyone would have been looking for some sort of drop on the iPhone, or something juicy with the iPo... More About: Sale , Black , Friday , Black Friday
Portfolio design inspiration
2008-11-27 19:54:00 I keep telling myself that I’m going to finish an online portfolio, but for whatever reason, I never really seem to get too far on it - see what I mean? (I look at that now, almost a year later, and it makes me cringe!) Feeling ambitious, I decided to at least look for some inspiration, and not surprisingly, Smashing Magazine had a recent article with some really creative portfolio designs. Probably worth checking out for design inspiration in general, not just creating a personal portfolio. More About: Design , Portfolio , Inspiration
Photoshop tutorial: Photo to sketch
2008-11-27 19:42:00 Example of Photo shop photo to sketch tutorial I’m always trying to improve my prowess in the area of graphics/graphic design, and at some point I stumbled upon an Spoono’s photoshop tutorial for changing photos to colour sketches. Most of the tutorials that deal with photos to sketches are only for black and white (pencil) sketches, so I thought I’d share this. It’s one of those tutorials that has to be used properly, or at least you can’t overuse it, and I’ll admit, it’s a bit difficult to find a perfect use for it, but the other day I was creating a landing page for an ad and used it to put a server configuration diagram graphic onto a ripped piece of paper to fit in better with the landing page. You can see the original image here. More About: Tutorial , Photoshop , Sketch
Almost a year, and what?
2008-11-26 18:42:00 It has been almost a year since I last posted, and in the last year, what has really happened? Facebook and Facebook apps continue to be popular, but I think the social network is close to (if hasn’t already) peaked; while people will still flock to the site because everyone is there, it doesn’t seem ... More About: Main , Year
Advanced DHTML Colour Picker - and it?s free
2008-01-31 17:10:00 I’m not really sure what it could be used for, but for some reason stuff like this is just really cool; released on the Colour Lovers blog, the colour picker was a spin-off of COPASO. I checked out the widget, and it is a pretty slick, pretty clean online colour picker. I’m sure it could come ... More About: Free , Main , Vance
Website design misses?
2008-01-25 17:52:00 I’ve recently started writing posts for the TechVibes blog, and my last two posts were reviews on sites from the Portland Start-up Index: UrbanDrinks.com and myOpenID.com. While both sites were quite clean and easy-to-use, I stumbled across a couple aspects of their web design that left me wanting. One of my comments about UrbanDrinks.com was while ... More About: Design , Website , Main
Disaster Recovery
2008-01-23 17:50:00 I recently read an article on Computerworld that talked about the possibility of the Internet going down (and discussed it briefly). Not a simple outage, but a major loss of access effecting a significant audience caused by a malicious attacker, terrorist, or act of God. The Business Roundtable, a Washington-based public policy advocacy group comprised of ... More About: Recovery , Disaster , Main , Disaster Recovery
VICTORY in defeat?
2008-01-22 20:37:00 I won’t suggest that it was an easy battle, but at the same time, I will have to admit, had I accepted defeat earlier and simply tried to upgrade to the newest version of Wordpress, it would have solved many hours of frustration. Over the Christmas holidays, it was easier to ignore the fact that ... More About: Victory , Main
GOOG vs MSFT: The battle continues
2007-12-17 18:39:00 The growing confrontation between Google and Microsoft promises to be an epic business battle. The statement, from a New York times article titled Google gets ready to rumble with Microsoft, isn’t something that should be new to anyone. While Google is the golden-boy of the 2000’s, Google CEO Eric Schmidt is familiar with the software giant, having worked for ... More About: Main , Battle
HowStuffWorks - How Hackers Work
2007-12-11 17:34:00 An interesting article on HowStuffWork s.com, the leading source of credible, unbiased, and easy-to-understand explanations of how the world actually works, talks about hackers and how hackers work. The message that was forwarded to me was linked to the third page, Hacker Culture, and had an interesting picture of some questionable looking characters. More About: Main , Hackers
Online Security and Identity Theft
2007-12-06 22:00:00 Since last year's TJX security breach, online site security and identity theft (two aspects of the Internet that have always been a concern) was suddenly pushed to surface and brought to the attention of the average user. While people were always aware of ID theft, nothing had ever occurred on this scale, or at least ... More About: Security , Main , Identity Theft , Online , Theft
Photo Sharing Sites
2007-12-03 21:37:00 Sharing photos online is one of the major reasons for being online. I remember about a year ago, one of the biggest anti-Internetters that I know was turned into a believer when, within an hour of her birth, pictures of his beautiful baby girl were in the hands of his rarely-seen relatives in England. He still questions sites like Facebook and the ability to maintain a certain level of privacy on these types of networks, which in my mind is a valid concern, but at least he is coming around to the idea. Without thinking, I would almost always suggest Flickr for people looking to share photos, however, I know there are other popular options that may be a better choice. Rather than re-inventing the wheel, I’ll link to an article that reviews 7 Alternatives to Flickr. In no particular order, the article reviews the following photo sharing sites: deviantART, Zooomr, Fotki, PBase, Photo bucket, Photo.net, and SmugMug. NOTE: This is an excerpt from an article that was originally post... More About: Sites , Sharing , Hari
Google no match for Microsoft?
More articles from this author:2007-11-28 17:35:00 The ongoing antitrust saga that Microsoft continues to battle with has taken an interesting turn. While those in the Industry are constantly taking shots at the software giant for their inability to evolve at the speed of companies like Google , state antitrust regulators have suggested that emerging technologies like Ajax and companies like Mozilla and ... More About: Main , Match 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 |
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