techcosupport.com » Social Networking

Max Rebo Band Website Live

bgt — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 20:20:53 +0000

The featured Blog this week is Max Rebo Band Website, which is a WordPress site using the default Twenty Eleven 1.2 theme. Kudos to Rich Pegler, the band’s drummer and webmaster, who has set this great site up from scratch. This just shows you the flexibility of WordPress out of the box, and the Max Rebo Website is a good place to see what is possible.

Max Rebo are a great four piece band, based in the area around Bristol and Weston-super-Mare, who are described as the best covers band this side of the galaxy. You may have guessed from the band name, and other Star Wars references that there is a theme to the website. May the Force be with you; this is the band you are looking for! Along with the usual band Biog, Events Discussion Board and Shop, there is a Media section where you can hear and download some of the original tracks penned by Max Rebo, as well as some of their great covers.

Once you have visited the site, you may be wondering how Rich has managed to achieve all the features, just using standard WordPress plugins. Along with Mingle Forum, ShareThis, Status Press Widget, Widget Twitter VJCK, WPaudio and WP Photo Album Plus the site uses:

Events Manager, which is an Event registration and booking management plugin for WordPress. Allows recurring events and shows locations, with links to google maps.
Flash MP3 Player JW2.3, a user friendly MP3 Player widget which you can add to your sidebar. You edit the playlist through the intuitive options page.
GRAND Flash Album Gallery provides a comprehensive interface for managing photos and images through a set of admin pages,
with a very professional feel.

A great band from the southwest, with an interesting WordPress implementation. Click here to visit the Max Rebo Band Website

How to change your Email Address on LinkedIn

bgt — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:29:32 +0000

A fellow linkedIn colleague recently asked me How do I change my Email Address on LinkedIn. As this is not the first time we have been asked this, then there are likely more people out there who would like to know to make this simple change. The good news is that linkedIn recognize that people need to change their email address from time to time, or even have multiple email addresses, and have made it quick and easy. In fact LinkedIn recommend you add at least one personal address and one work address.

How to change your Email Address on LinkedIn
To add a new email address, when logged in to your LinkedIn account, take the following simple steps:

Under your name at the top right of the page click on Settings
In the right text column click on Email Addresses
Next to Primary Email, click on Change
Add your new email address in the email address field, and click Add email address

After adding the new address, go to the email account and click the link in the confirmation email. Add as many addresses as you’d like, and just follow the instruction for each account. Once an email address is validated, you can choose it to be you primary address by selecting it from the list and clicking on Make Primary.

If you are not yet a linkedIn member and are wondering what this is all about, Click here to Join LinkedIn Today

Google Data Protection Audit Report Published

bgt — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:30:35 +0000

Have you ever seen the the ICO auditers? If your company was to receive a call from them, how well do think you would fare?

This week the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has published an Executive Summary of its Data Protection Audit Report on Google, following the revelation that Google were inadvertently collecting wi-fi signals while mapping the country. According to their website, the ICO carries out consensual audits with data controllers to assess their processing of personal information.

Last year the ICO became aware that that Google Street View vehicles, which had been adapted to collect publicly available wi-fi radio signals, had mistakenly collected a limited amount of payload data, likely to include a very limited quantity of emails, URLs and passwords. Google agreed to facilitate a consensual audit by the ICO.

The framework that was included in the audit scope is as follows:

Framework: Google will conduct an internal assessment and provide a confidential written report (“Privacy Report”) to the Commissioner. This Privacy Report will analyze Google’s implementation of the privacy process changes it outlined on October 22, 2010 as it applies to Google’s UK operations. The Information Commissioner’s Office may then validate the Privacy Report’s accuracy and findings via an in-person meeting to review the Privacy Report at Google’s U.S. headquarters or at the offices of Google’s UK subsidiary. Google shall provide the Privacy Report to the Commissioner before such meeting.

Google has responded to the ICO report citing that the findings provided “reasonable assurance that Google have implemented the privacy process changes outlined in the Undertaking.” This was posted on the European Public policy Blog by Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering, whose appointment was announced on 22 October 2010.

While there are a few areas for improvement noted in the executive summary, there are none that would warrant the description of Earth shattering proportions. We would consider that any company that had been subject to a consensual audit by the Information Commissioner’s Office would be quite satisfied with the report. Knowing how good Google are at marketing, they will probably want to make capital out of it too.

Before we leap to judge Google, it is worth pointing out that in UK, the Data Protection Act 1998 requires every data controller who is processing personal information in an automated form to notify the ICO, unless they are exempt. Failure to notify is a criminal offense, and entries have to be renewed annually. If you are required to notify but don’t renew your registration, you are committing a criminal offense. Do you need to register?

If your company was to receive a visit from the Information Commissioner’s auditors, even with nine months notice like Google, how well do think you would fare? How many pieces of personal data has your company inadvertently collected over the years, and are still retaining for no legitimate purpose? Perhaps it would be worth a visit to the ICO website to find out if you need to do something now?

For more on the story:

Happy 10th Birthday to Wikipedia

bgt — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 22:58:27 +0000

According to popular culture, and Wikipedia, it is ten years today since Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger set up a wiki to help with a problem they were having with their current project, an online encyclopedia called Nupedia. Today the Wikipedia site has become one of the best sources of information on the Internet, and often tops the list of sites returned in the Google search results.

On the 9th September 2007 the English version of Wikipedia passed the two million-article mark which makes it the largest encyclopedia ever assembled. Nupedia servers were taken down permanently in 2003, and its text was incorporated into Wikipedia.

Invented in the mid-90s by Ward Cunningham, a wiki is social media at its most radical. It is built on the basic assumption that people care, and so edit the pages they care about. You don’t need permission to add, alter, or delete text, and when you are done, you don’t need permission to publish.

Wikipedia was formally launched on January 15, 2001, as a single English-language edition at www.wikipedia.com. Ten years later it has become the largest encyclopedia ever assembled and the most popular general reference work on the Internet. Happy 10th Birthday Wikipedia!

If you havent yet visited Wikipedia check it out now at en.wikipedia.org/

The Network for the Post-Bureaucratic Age Featured Blog

bgt — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 20:20:07 +0000

The featured Blog this week is The Network for the Post-Bureaucratic Age, which is a WordPress Blog hosted at WordPress.com. It uses the Freshy theme by Jide and may be described as a comparative newcomer in the blogosphere, with its first post date-stamped on 28th June 2010.

The current headline post dated 8th September 2010 is a leader for a report entitled Better for Less: How to make Government IT deliver saving. This critical report by Liam Maxwell investigates the quagmire of government IT. In fact you might say that he has slammed the whole way that Government IT procurement is handled. The report is linked from the site, and should be read by anyone in government IT with responsibility for procurement.

The main reasons for singling out this site as a featured blog, is more about what it represents rather than it’s august history. This is a Think Tank, close to government which is criticizing the status quo. We consider that at least five of the seven examples of potential saving have merit, and the others may be examples where savings could be made without massive changes to the infrastructure

A test environment for development companies with easy access to rack-space
Open Source on the desktop through the use of Open Document Format
New models sought for software framework (may we suggest Apache, My SQL, PHP for a start)
Commoditization of Email and office productivity
Common Security Framework
Migrating Schools to Free email services
Prizes for IT innovation in education

Plaudits to The Network for the Post-Bureaucratic Age for hosting this message on WordPress.com and using the most popular blogging platform on the planet – WordPress!

Click here to visit The Network for the Post-Bureaucratic Age

Featured WordPress blog is Twingly

bgt — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:20:11 +0000

The featured WordPress blog this week is Twingly Blog, and more specificly a post by Martin Weiger called Europe’s 50 most popular startups according to the blogosphere.. Using data from their Twingly Blog Search they rank blogs in the global blogosphere from May 1 to July 31. This gives you a useful list of web and tech startups to check out for inspiration.

The blog has posts going back to September 2006, and provides lots of interesting comment and links to resources. It also contains the observation that A blog is a timeline; The fact that every blog is an ordered record of thoughts and opinions makes the aggregated data of many blogs very valuable.

This is a useful tip to remember when you are structuring your own WordPress posts, as you should consider that you are also writing for history, as well as promoting your latest product or venting your spleen. Surf back through the Twingly timeline and see how the writing style has progressed, and the rated Social Media sites and tools have emerged. Consider the way your own posts might be viewed in three months, or after a year, or in five year’s time.

The Twingly Blog uses the Neutra Theme, by Artmov which is a simple and elegant free theme. The site is hosted at WordPress.com.

Resources to check out:

3 Top Tips For Marketing Via Your Blog

bgt — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:20:14 +0000

In response to a number of inquiries about How to boost your Search position on Google, here are the three
Top Tips For Marketing Via Your Blog which we cover on our Low Cost Marketing Using WordPress one day seminar.

Chose a Compelling Title
Keep It Simple and To The Point
Tell Your Readers What They Want To Know

In order to boost your search engine rating on Google, Yahoo! and Bing, and make the most of your marketing effort, make sure that your blog posts take account of the advice they give about SEO. SEO is an acronym for “Search Engine Optimization”, and describes the techniques of improving the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines via the natural or un-paid search results.

In the context of marketing your business, using your WordPress Blog to tell people about your goods and services is a great idea, so you want the most people to see it. This is the way to make Blogging help your business for very little cost, and so get the word out to as many people as possible. A good Blogger grabs the attention of their readers, and holds it long enough to establish an emotional connection, so that they will want to return.

Compelling Title
First of all chose a Compelling Title to grab the reader’s interest and attract them to visit your site. This may be repeated in the content, which will help the search engine spiders correctly rank your site. On Google, the PageRank will determine how close to the top of the search results your site or page appears in the list returned to the user. Make sure your title is relevant to your content and brings visitors who want to know more about your subject.

Keep Content Simple
Once your visitor has arrived, you have only a few seconds to give them enough information so that they can chose that they want to read on. Keep your content simple and to the point to hold their attention, and if possible provide a bullet pointed list near the start to aid comprehension. This will allow them to confirm that they are on the right site for their needs without wasting time reading the detail. It is better to have someone decide that they do not want your content and leave quickly, than have them read to the bottom and leave disappointed.

Give Them What They Want
Finally, tell your readers what they want to know, rather than what you want them to know. That means you have to write to satisfy your readers’ need for information, rather than for your need to tell people about your new Widget making process! Tell them what they will find immediately useful, so that they will feel grateful and want to visit you another time. A happy reader is more likely to buy from you than a resentful one who has had to wade through all your marketing copy to find the nuggets.

A word of caution about taking the optimization too far: some SEO experts will claim to get you to the top of Google using secret techniques known only to a few, for which you will pay a premium. As Google will tell you, deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site.

So in summary

Chose a Compelling Title to grab the reader’s interest
Keep your content simple and to the point to hold their attention
Tell your readers what they want to know, so they will visit you another time

To maximize the potential of your visitors, without spending a lot of money on marketing, apply the three tips listed above and you will satisfy your readers’ needs, help them to feel good enough to want to come again, while aiding the search engines put you it the correct place in the rankings. That has got to be a good deal,and a win for everybody.

Other Resources:

The Battle of Fearlessness Is Released

bgt — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 10:00:27 +0000

As announced in the Tweet from Aleksandr Orlov, there is a new epic movie on release from Aleksandr Orlov productions in association with Meermax. Called The Battle of Fearlessness, it depicts the struggle between Aleksandr’s great grandfather Vitaly and the Mongis Khan, the evil Mongolian mongoose and his mongoose army.

In his inimitable style Aleksandr himself announces:
“New movie is now launch! For watching of ultimate display of fearlessness click here http://bit.ly/bAOi7P (not suitable for meerkitten)”

We know how treasures from Aleksandr Orlov are so eagerly awaited, so to assure you that this is not a late April fool’s joke, we are providing an embedded direct link to the source for you to enjoy:

Our verdict: the best Aleksandr Orlov film yet, a must see! The sound track also deserves a special mention, for it’s stirring musical qualities and crescendos. We will not spoil the cliffhanger ending, just watch it for yourself and enjoy. However, also check out the official site which provides links to reviews and a downloadable poster. Click here to visit the official site for The Battle of Fearlessness.

Maximizing WordPress Through Social Networking

bgt — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:22:18 +0000

Our featured blog this week is the WordPress hosted Smoke-Free Texas if for no other reason that it has a good message!

However, check out the sensible inclusion of Latest Flickr photos, Twitter feed and Smoke-Free Texas on Facebook links, maximizing their targeted inbound traffic potential. There are useful WordPress plug-ins for these Social Networking sites available from WordPress.Org Social Network

Another Trojan Email Is Doing The Rounds

bgt — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:17:52 +0000

Another Trojan Email popped into the spam basket today, this one entitled Facebook Password Reset Confirmation. The Email, purporting to be from Facebook, claims that the user’s Facebook password has been changed and informs them that the new password can be found in an attached document, which is a zip file.

You may receive a email claiming to be from Facebook Manager titled “Facebook Password Reset Confirmation. Important Message”. The message is a trick designed to fool recipients into installing a trojan on their computer.

Those who open the attached file, Facebook_password_3921.zip in this case, ostensibly to view their new password, will in fact be launching a copy of the Bredolab Trojan. Once downloaded, the virus gives the sender complete control of the target computer, allowing cyber criminals to potentially spy on users of the computer or use it to steal personal information or distribute more spam

As with any such dodgy emails, or unsolicited attachments, the best action is to delete the lot, and think no more about it.

Click here to find out more about the Bredolab Trojan on symantic.com.