technotik » tech

Google+ Pages are live

admin — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:55:26 +0000

They’ve been a long time coming but Google pages are live. Google Apps were updated recently so that they could also join G+ and that’s opened the way for pages.

I’ve set up a page for Technotik. It’s early days yet but I’ve got a good feeling about this. Like I said way back in the mists of time, who’d bet against Google?

Here’s the link to create a G+ page https://plus.google.com/u/0/pages/create.

And here’s the link to the G+ Page badge https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/badge/config

New SQL injection attack on Windows Servers in the wild

admin — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:33:11 +0000

.NET programmers check your sites to make sure you’re not affected by this latest SQL injection attack.

https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/mass-injection-attack-targets-aspnet-sites-101911

“There is yet another large-scale injection attack going on right now, with nearly 200,000 pages affected so far. The compromised pages are serving visitors with malicious code that sends them off to a remote server for installation of malware.”

I’d still recommend Linux as a more secure platform wherever possible but good coding practise should prevent SQL injection attacks, whatever the platform.

Google Analytics Realtime

admin — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 21:26:22 +0000

Just read about Google Analytics realtime today, signed up for the beta and it’s live already.

Well worth a look. If you use Google Analytics already switch over to the new version and apply to join the beta here – https://services.google.com/fb/forms/realtimeanalytics/

Here’s Google’s own blog post announcing the new feature – http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/09/whats-happening-on-your-site-right-now.html

Apologies for banging on even more about Google, they do make my life easier though.

Google Docs improvements

admin — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:00:57 +0000

I like the new look Google Docs a lot and especially that text Documents now have a notification feature too. It was added to Spreadsheets way back but that’s a biggie for me and it makes collaborations far easier, which is something I use Google Docs for a lot.

I still highly recommend Google apps too if you need to collaborate a lot. Make sure you try out the free version first if you want to take a look – http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html

Facebook – we’re not sharing your phone contacts with the world

admin — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 18:34:43 +0000

This slightly belated message from Facebook wasn’t amusing at all was it

Following many rumours circulating that Facebook was sharing users phone contacts with the world Facebook released this yesterday – Wednesday 10th August

“Rumors claiming that your phone contacts are visible to everyone on Facebook are false. Our Contacts list, formerly called Phonebook, has existed for a long time. The phone numbers listed there were either added by your friends themselves and made visible to you, or you have previously synced your phone contacts with Facebook. Just like on your phone, only you can see these numbers.”

They could have saved a lot of bad feeling if they’d acted faster but at least it’s done and the word is slowly spreading.

Facebook can recognise your face in photos

admin — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:17:57 +0000

I first spotted the feature on my own account yesterday when I uploaded a few photos from a day out at the weekend. Facebook’s photo app suggested a I tag a few of my friends and the suggestions were right too.

It’s a potentially useful application of the technology but as always with Facebook there are privacy issues here too. It should be opt in and not opt out as it’s set up at the moment. If you want to opt out go to the top right menu, account >> privacy settings and click on “Customise settings”. Then click on “Edit Settings” next to “Suggest photos of me to friends”. Here you can choose to enable or disable the feature.

Here’s Facebook’s own blog post on the subject – https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=467145887130

Google +1

admin — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 23:21:06 +0000

Google’s social search “+1″ just came out of beta and has to be worth a quick look. Users will need to be logged in to a Google account to register clicks but if they like your content they can give it a nudge and long term this is bound to affect site ranking. Certainly in the short term it should be a useful social search indicator.

Google don’t always get things right by any stretch of the imagination, Buzz, or Wave anyone but this is free and easy to add so pretty much a no brainer if you already use social bookmarks, tweet or Facebook buttons.

Here’s a +1 button with a Facebook like and send link.

More from Google here – http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/

Facebook’s new Send Button

admin — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 18:25:49 +0000

Facebook's new Send button

Facebook have added a new “Send” button that compliments the “Like” button or can be added on it’s own. It allows the page to be sent to Facebook users, groups or email addresses and is as simple as adding an extra ‘send=”true”‘ to your current code if you’re already using XFBML.

Here’s a couple of examples I set up today at http://www.bridgnorthmusicfest.com/ and within a Facebook application at https://www.facebook.com/bridgnorth?sk=app_194807670561047

More from Facebook here – https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/494

Foursquare, Facebook Places and Location Based Social Media

admin — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:09:49 +0000

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while because it’s what’s getting me enthused at the moment. Yes really, I have to be careful on this one as I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but take a quick look and see if you get it? If you do you’re getting a glimpse of the future believe me. It can’t happen soon enough for me either. I want crowd sourced local information out there whenever I hit a new town or area. And I’d love to find out where the best places are to eat, drink or catch live music.

If you’re a social business like a cafe, restaurant, pub, club, hotel, gym, any business that acts as a social hub, then time spent looking at promoting your business using location based social media will probably be time well spent. It’s relatively free advertising after all, the only cost being your own time or employing someone to get you up to speed and online. Once you’re up and running it’s crowd sourced local intelligence that will power your online presence. It’ll be well worth offering tempting deals to get people in there in the first place and loyalty deals to keep them coming back, but it shouldn’t take too much time to manage.

Which one is best?

No one would bet against Facebook coming out top here eventually, although plenty of the other location based sites and applications out there have their own merits. Right now in the UK my favourite is probably foursquare.com. It’s fairly easy to set up and claim your own business on there and a doodle for smart phone users to use and checkin. Games aside (and who really cares about being the mayor of your local) it’s a great way to find local food, nightlife and more, including tips and deals. Foursquare is enormous in the U.S. and that’s usually a pretty good indicator of where we’re heading. BUT Facebook are in the game now. Foursquare had a good head start in the U.S. but it’s been slower to take off here. Facebook deals are rolling out so that checking into Facebook places you should soon see deals in your area. And let’s face it Facebook have the numbers already, to use foursquare you have to hope that smart phone users will download the app. Most smart phones already come with Facebook installed and most customers will already be using it.

If you want a Facebook presence then you need a business PAGE not a user account pretending to be your business. Look for your Facebook place when people have been checking in and claim that too, you can merge it with your page too if you already have one.

Applications to look out for also include http://gowalla.com/, http://www.yelp.com/, game based http://scvngr.com/ and the BIG player now on the block too http://www.google.com/places/. Google places have been around for a while but they’ve been increasingly adding social features and now include location based checkins too.

Whichever one wins out it’s exciting times ahead.

It’s a diverse browser world out there

admin — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 12:44:16 +0000

Mildly amusing aside of the day. I was invited to take part in a “webinar” which turned out to be a glorified conference call. As someone who’s hard of hearing you can imagine just how excited I was at that prospect. Then to cap it all it was a windows only conference call which failed again at the last hurdle from my windows test machine. Could it have been Internet Explorer only I wonder? Who knows!

I’m not anti-windows by any stretch of the imagination but I am a little perplexed and amused by the number of businesses out there that fail to accept that the world has moved on. Browsing the Google Analytics for sites that I manage this morning I couldn’t help but be impressed at the number of hits we’re getting from a variety of browsers and operating systems. Including iPhones, iPads, Android, Blackberry plus variations of PC, Mac & Gnu/Linux OS’s and browsers. And let’s not get started on screen resolutions. Make it work at resolutions between 1920 x 1080 to 320 x 480 please

It’s a diverse world out there these days. If you just serve a shrinking and specific proportion of those users then your days are probably numbered.