Featured article

Increasing online conversion rates


  •  Part 1: Using call to actions
  •  Part 2: Optimising landing pages
  •  Part 3: Effective enquiry forms

Read part one of this three part series »

 

AirDropper adds additional functionality to DropBox

On September 5, 2010 in General.
0

AirDropper. Not heard of it? Neither had I, before this evening. It’s a simple website (currently in BETA) which provides additional functionality to the wonderful application called ‘Dropbox’. (Read here about it here).

“But what could possibly make DropBox even better than it already is?”, I hear you cry. Well, DropBox has typically been used for one user to sign up, and share folders and files with himself on other computers (using an online server). Next came along shared folders; The ability to share folders with other DropBox users. This is great for collaborative work.

Now though, AirDropper aims to evolve DropBox one step further. What AirDropper does is generate a link which can be shared socially or privately for people who don’t have DropBox. The link gives non-users access to download files specifically or a folder to choose from. Pretty impressive, especially for distributing to lots of non-users at once, much like how P2P works.

What’s even better though, is that links can also be generated for users to upload files to a User’s DropBox without having to have an account or download any software. This creates an ‘AirDropper’ folder, which I think is probably a security feature in the DropBox API.

Let’s only hope there will be more developments like this from both DropBox and third party applications such as AirDropper!

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • •
 

Make money online: Affiliate Marketing

On August 17, 2010 in Business & online marketing, General.
0

Affiliate Marketing. Iv’e heard this word tossed around all year, but never really delved into it that much. It was only last week when writing my previous article about student laptop deals that I found myself wondering why I was sending my hard-earned traffic to another site with nothing to show, I mean, not even a friendly thank you! This, coupled with a wise word from my old manager, was enough to get my heart racing and mind into gear. “What is Affiliate marketing?” I asked myself, “and how can I use it with MY website?”.

I started by heading over to AffiliateWindow, a site all about affiliate marketing. Here it described how I could be making money online, quickly, simply and with relatively little effort. Now, to make big bucks everyone knows you need to do more than sit back and watch the money roll in (unless your Google!), but I was after a relatively small amount! It is a small venture, but a venture none-the-less!

After paying £5.00 to AffiliateWindow which has now been credited back into my bank, I started linking to merchants. Let’s go back a step to stage one for a minute: Affiliate Marketing is, in essence, using other websites (affiliates) to send traffic (customers) to eCommerce websites (merchants). If you do this and it results in a sale, you get a commission of the sale (usually about 2% – 10%). The customers can often get special discounts too. Everyone’s a winner!

There are other methods of doing Affiliate Marketing (using banners, discount codes etc) but I think this is the most popular method. It means JohnAlexanderRowley.com is officially classed as a ‘content website’ aka A website that reviews and discussed items that it is affiliated with.

Anyway, I’m already affiliated with PC World, Laptop Direct, Play, Maplin and LoveFilm – and there is more to come! Check out some of my articles which make use of this handy money making tip!

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • •
 

Multi-platform file sharing software – Introducing Dropbox

On June 26, 2010 in Business & online marketing, General.
0

DropBox, it’s not just any other FTP. It installs a local folder on each computer it installs on, and any files placed within it are automatically uploaded to an online server. The files can be modified on the local computer, and when saved the version control software within the application automatically does the rest!

They are working on a business version which would solve the ongoing strain on local servers, and make pen drives and data DVD’s obsolete. The software even has an iPhone and iPad application, so you can upload photos and videos strait to the folder, magically appearing on your computer within seconds! You can also view some of the file types using additional applications like good-viewer, which are compatible with dropbox.

Files can be shared between multiple users for advanced use, and there is also an invitation scheme where you get additional space (although 2.0GB is provided as standard to free customers!) to a maximum of 8.0GB.

It’s definately worth a look! There are PC, Mac and Linux versions all available from the website.

Finally, check out the latest developments being worked on to make DropBox even better HERE.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • •
 

Attacks on Google exploited Internet Explorer

On January 17, 2010 in General, Google.
0

It has emerged this week that the attacks on Chinese human rights activists were made from, yes you guessed it, Internet Explorer. Microsoft’s director of Security was quoted earlier this week saying that the attacks were “targeted and limited” and were mainly “exploiting Internet Explorer 6″. Similarly, McAfee stated that the weeks attacks “showed a level of sophistication above that of typical, isolated cyber criminal efforts”.

In Germany the government has urged Internet users to find alternatives to Internet Explorer. In the same article (taken form BBC News) Sophos (an Internet security firm) told readers that the warning should be adhered to IE6, IE7 and even IE8 as the exploits had not only been proven to work on all these browsers but also the details of how to do so posted publicly on the Internet. Google has come under even more criticism as of late, with an open letter from security firms and lawyers asking why the security settings to enable HTTPS 100% of the time when accessing Gmail, Docs and other Google applications is so hard to find.

Google is reportedly considering it’s options regarding their operations in china. It may be that the years of strict censorship over the Chinese Internet has finally built to a head, and the recent attacks have broke the camels back. Either way, Google pulling out of China would be a devastating event for Chinese companies and civilians alike.

Not according to one company; ‘Baidu’, Chinese search engine giants recently posted the following on their blog:

“Google claims it will quit China. What it’s proved is not what the Google fans have claimed, that Google is a ‘Human Rights fighter’. Just the contrary. It’s proved that Google is a hypocrite.”

It’s a bit of a legal battle at the moment – let’s hope Google and China manage to come to some sort of agreement soon.

Tagged with: • • • • • • • •
 

Download all your tagged facebook photos

On January 11, 2010 in General, Social media.
0

This has been on the minds of my collegues and I for a while now – To develop a peice of software to search through and automatically download all of your tagged photos from facebook onto your PC hard-drive.

Export Photo’s Too does this brilliantly. Install the application to your facebook profile and hit ‘Download Tagged photos’. The application then takes some time to compile a .zip folder of all the photos which you have been tagged in. In the meantime your free to continue using facebook.

After a short while you get a notification explaining that your photos are ready to download. Click the link and you can start to download the folder. It’s brilliant! The only negative is that it’s a little slow (as it’s being ran through the developers php pages on a relatively slow server. The fastest download speeds I was getting was 10Kbps with a folder of approximately 20Mb.

Never the less this is a brilliant app! Just goes to show that the little people can still make killer software too! If I were facebook I’d look towards incrementing this to the iPhone’s version of facebook.

Tagged with: • • • • • •
 

Stopping IE6 Optimization

On December 24, 2009 in General.
0

For those of you in the know, you will understand the burden which is IE6. It’s far less efficient, and awkward to boot, at designing websites to look both good and work well. Amongst the problems are;

Images can’t be wider than 800px
Images can’t be .PNG
Padding is calculated differently

IE in general is a nuisance; things in Firefox just work! I’m currently designing a new menu for a website i’m working on, using :hover in the CSS and some onmouseover JavaScript. In Firefox everything works perfectly. However in IE (even the latest 8.0b) the onmouseover flickers. Getting around this requires extensive work – which wouldn’t be required if the browser worked like Firefox!

I realise this is a bit of a rant, but it has hit me time and time again – designing websites and previewing in Firefox, occasionally checking in IE7+ and then realising i’m going to have to re-work the site in order to make it IE6 compatible!

Merry Christmas!

Tagged with: • • • •
 

Automatic Photo Uploads!

On December 11, 2009 in General.
0

I was watching ‘The Gadget Show’ last night, and a particular gadget took my eye. It’s the Eye-Fi. A wireless SD card which automatically uploads any photos on it to either a PC or the internet (such as TweetPic or Flickr).

It’s a great idea – with one minor issue: Naughty photos (such as drunk office snaps) would be automatically uploaded when you return home after a night on the smash! The Gadget Show team brought this up. Could the software be altered so that it adds a simple interface to cameras, allowing you to select the photos you want to upload. It’s a balance between efficiency and safety.

Running with this idea of Wi-Fi enabled SD cards, could an idea be implemented so that they automatically download data? Could this be run alongside version admin software and possibly user access control to give up-to-date files and data from an FTP or server?

It’s a great idea, and I think it will do well. With some good ideas behind the concept it could be the next step in mobile data storage!

Tagged with: • • • • •
 

Google XML-Sitemap ‘www.’ Prefix error!

On December 3, 2009 in General, Google.
1

I have had the ‘Google XML-Sitemap’ plug-in for WordPress installed for a time now, and everything was working perfectly.

However, after the plug-in was updated some time last week it started showing errors in Google’s Webmaster Tools. The error was the following.

“Paths don’t match we’ve detected that you submitted your Sitemap using a URL path that includes the www prefix (for instance, http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml). However, the URLs listed inside your Sitemap don’t use the www prefix (for instance, http://example.com/myfile.htm).”

To fix this is simple, but I had to search around quite a lot to get the fix. All you have to do is go to the General tab under Settings in WordPress and add the ‘www.’ prefix to both the WordPress address AND the Blog address, then rebuild and submit the sitemap.

If you are still getting errors (which I did) check that any additional URL’s mentioned in the XML-Sitemap tab of Settings have the ‘www.’ prefix, as mine reset automatically.

As I said; Simple! But it took quite a lot of re-building and re-submitting to find the answer!

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • •
 

Google Developments!

On December 2, 2009 in General.
0

Google have recently announced some new features, demonstrating again its dominance over the World Wide Web!

Google’s latest feature is the integration of ‘real-time result’s (RTR’s) including Twitter, Facebook and Myspace updates to be shown for relevant search results. Although the feature is currently limited to a minority of key words it will be built upon to produce more and more results in this fashion. It’s a brilliant idea, gathering such vast amounts of information in one place. Although Google haven’t released financial details, Facebook have announced they are making no profit from the setup.

Google Goggles (it’s a mouth full) is Google’s next development – Using images instead of keywords to produce search queries, consequently returning both visual and text based results (including, perhaps, RTR’s). This must use some similar code to the similar image feature (another amazing feature from Google) although it must also feed to a variety of databases in order to analyze and search indexed pages using said image.

Google still dominates the Internet search market, boasting a global share of about 70 per cent share globally. The company reported revenues of £3.66 billion for the quarter that ended on September 30 this year. The majority of the revenue came from Search Advertising. Google may be seen to have competition in local times from Wolfram Alpha and Bing, but its ever-evolving search techniques and developments just show that it really is the world leader in Web Development.

Tagged with: • • • • • •
 

The best game on the iPhone

On December 1, 2009 in General.
0

The best game on the iPhone I think is ‘Orbital’.

It’s a brick-breaker styled game, shooting from the bottom of the screen like in bejewelled. The graphics are great, not to mention the simplistic yet addictive game play which makes for a unique experience.

It’s all about shooting circles and watching them grow as you blast other circles at them, consequently blowing them up! Each circle that explodes is a point. My highest score is (currently) 34 although I’m intending on improving it this Friday on the train down to London.

You can try it out at http://www.orbital-game.com/ but for £0.59 you can play it for hours on the iPhone, and it looks and feels even more amazing!

Tagged with: • • • • • • •
 
« Previous Entries Next Entries »