Posts from — October 2007
Broadband may be on its way
The more I work with and write about the Internet the more acutely painful is my sense of how many people in this country do not have access to good broadband connections.
It’s not really so long ago that people (in Europe) would have to go down to the local village well or pump to collect water. Now those of use in the industrialised world take it absolutely for granted that we have hot and cold running water literally on tap in numerous places around our homes and workplaces. It’s inconceivable that we would not enjoy instant clean running water.
In the early 90s having an Internet connection was rare, and involved hours of waiting to send and receive even tiny amounts of data. It was the information equivalent of drawing water at the well: get the bucket, go out into the world, collect the precious resource, come home, use it.
Broadband is connection ‘on tap’: click here to buy a book, click there to download some new software, click again to enjoy a free video chat with your loved ones across the world. No preparation. No frustrating connection waits. Broadband is instant-on, instant use, immediate. It’s become an essential utility, like clean water and electricity.
Things move fast in the world of Internet: we need everyone in New Zealand to have access to fast Internet connections that work well and don’t cost a fortune.
And now, finally, things are looking up, for 80% of us, at least:
Telecom’s new chief executive Paul Reynolds … announced Telecom would invest $1.4 billion (three times what it had previously said it was prepared to stump up) in extending the reach of its ADSL2+ technology so that 80 per cent of New Zealanders could have access to broadband at speeds of up to 20 megabits per second by 2011.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
October 28, 2007 No Comments
Secure a bulletin board to block spambots
Cathryn Symons of the Camden Kiwi blog writes about her experiences with the phpBB Bulletin Board software — apparently it’s not very secure by default. Securing a bulletin board:
First of all, read this very good post on the phpbb forums. Spambots, which automate registration and then try to post junk on the board, are constantly laying seige to boards which allow self-registration, and there are ways of keeping them at bay. Our big problems were having the membership list visible to anyone who came in, and spambots registering themselves. The standard software allows you to stop the spam registrations from posting, but can’t prevent them from registering.
Spammers are a well-known problem on bulletin boards and forums (as well as everywhere else, sigh). If you can stop them from posting spam in the first place then you won’t have to spend hours each week cleaning up after them.
Visit Cathryn’s post for details and links to useful information. I your community organisation already runs or is considering running a bulletin board, then this is useful information to have on file.
October 26, 2007 No Comments
Instant Messaging bonanza
if you’ve discovered the usefulness of Instant Messaging you may be using whatever software first came to hand. But there are many choices available, as Read/WriteWeb point out in their Instant Messaging Round-Up:
… we’ve listed a large number of online and offline instant messengers, as well the various protocols supported by each, so that you can more easily find the one that’s right for you. … (Note: we did not link to any official offline clients.)
Mentioned are: Meebo, FlickIM, Kool IM, eBuddy, ILoveIM, RadiusIM, Imo.im, Mabber, IMUnitive, Snimmer, EasyMessenger, MessengerFX, IMhaha, Google Talk, Yahoo! Web Messenger (web.im), MSN Web Messenger, AIM Express, ICQ2Go, JWChat - Jabber Web Chat, Trillian, Pidgin, Adium, AirTalker, Miranda IM.
October 25, 2007 No Comments
Publish a five word summary
Summarise what your organisation does — in 5 words.
Now put that in a prominent position on your website.
Don’t bury it several levels down in some sub-menu.
Don’t write 50 words, or 150, or 500 (though you can do that in addition to the 5 words).
Visitors come to your website for many reasons. It may be to read all your wonderful information, but it also may be to quickly summarise what you’re about, grab the link and pass that information along to others — in a blog, training materials, news item, email or even on a phonecall or in a text message.
The harder you make your visitors work, the less likely they are to tell others about you.
Publish a 5 word summary.
October 24, 2007 No Comments
Confirm arrangements by blog or Twitter
Today 130 tuatara are being released into Karori Sanctuary in Wellington. A powhiri at lunchtime will welcome the tuatara. There’s a chance that wild weather in Cook Strait could delay things as the tuatara are coming from Stephens Island, off the tip of the South Island.
Because of that possibility, and because the weather was pretty bad yesterday I followed the instructions in the invitation to call the office to check that the ceremony was still on. It is.
So: I made a phonecall. Someone in the office had to stop what they were doing to answer the phone. I explained what I wanted, they confirmed the arrangements. We both said goodbye and hung up.
It took maybe 2 minutes. Now multiply that by everyone who’s attending. I have no idea how many that is, but even if it’s 30 people, that represents an hour of someone’s time. Time wasted, I might add.
If the Sanctuary had a blog it would have taken someone 5 minutes (at most) to add a post confirming arrangements. Those attending could check at their leisure, or get the update in their RSS feed.
If the Sanctuary had a Twitter feed it would take at most 2 minutes to send a confirmation. That would appear automatically for any ‘followers’.
Office time spent to provide both types of confirmation: about 7 minutes (or less), leaving most of the hour for more productive work.
October 19, 2007 No Comments
