Just thought I’d throw it out there and let businesses with online shops know that depending on the software used to build your site and the way that it was built etc, you might be in for a surprise when you look at your bank account and find that the monies paid in were actually paid to someone else’s account !!!

Security Patches and Fixes

If your site is not fully up-to-date and by up-to-date, I mean yesterday or today and not in the past 3 or 4 months then I would strongly recommend that you login and install any patches or updates that are available. Each day new robots trawl the net to find open doors at the back of ecommerce website to see if they can hack the site. This is not only in Open Source, but most online shop software and hosting. (For you techy guys out there it could be a folder left at 777 permissions.)

They get into the back of the site and replace your bank details with their own!!

Christmas shopping is an ideal time for these viruses and bots to travel around the net and change your site so they will get all the funds transferred to them !

Be aware, Be safe, install the latest updates available.

http://www.opensource.org/ is a website to promote the use of open source software and is an initiative that Cada Media Ltd have long been advocates of even since I was working as a programmer in Dublin in the Mid 90′s. Back then one of our team, a Russian guy called kyrill was asking the management to move to open source and put our code on-line for other developers to take up and use. It sounded crazy to the owners at the time as they had patents on the software and earned money each time it was sold, but it needed to be revamped and we didnt have the numbers needed to re-write the code from scratch.

£250,000 a year!

This was one of the programmers salary and without this guy the company wouldn’t have been able to continue. He had written the code in such a way that no-one else understood it easily and that code is often written in many files, so it would take a new programmer up to six months to get their head around what was previously written or coded.

Open up this code to other users via the Internet and then the program could have gained wings and been developed in various languages and additional features made. This is exactly the life cycle of open source. You upload the computer code to the internet, another programmer reads it and improves on it and passes it along.

International Skills at Local Level

Collective collaboration has meant that for small businesses such as our own, by using open source software has meant that we can use knowledge of programmers around the world without the overheads. Yesterday, whist giving a training session in a content management/ portal system called Joomla, the person being trained discovered that their are thousands of websites running on Joomla and their is a wealth of resources online for him to study.

New Customers

By adapting this open source early on has meant that we can actually get customers easily and they are not afraid of being locked into a particular package with licensed software as with other content management systems. For instance did you know 12% of the worlds website are run using wordpress.org ?

For more information on how open source software can help run your business whilst reducing costs and increasing efficiency then call Dave Jordan of Cada Media today on 053 9430748

http://www.opensource.org/

More Blog post about open source

http://blog.cadamedia.ie/websitedesign/open-source/

http://blog.cadamedia.ie/2010/02/do-people-still-use-microsoft-office/

http://blog.cadamedia.ie/2009/11/how-to-impress-your-boss-in-a-recession/

http://blog.cadamedia.ie/2009/09/what-email-program-to-use/

Thinking of upgrading your web browser then a new version of Mozilla Firefox 4 is now available to download from their website. We have been using the Beta version for a few weeks now and it appears that they have worked on the speed issues that was causing it to run slowly.

Speed is King !

As mentioned in previous posts, speed when browsing the net is at the forefront of web development these days as the various browsers from Google and Microsoft are battling to be the most popular. Once they have the highest percentage of usage they can then make their search engine the default and thus gain market share.

Firefox has many Add-on’s that make your simple web browser into a real business tool. Add on’s include Social Media booking marking to web development tools. Download management is a favourite for many teenagers.

Get Notified when websites are updated is another small add-on that’s a simple and effective tool.

So as before with the other Internet browsers, have a look at your own website and your competitors to see if its compatible. If not, give me a call and we can schedule in an upgrade for you.

Call Dave Jordan on 053 9430748

We often get into conversations with clients about the Internet browsers they are using. Many don’t think of upgrading it to a newer version or installing an entirely new browser such as

• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox
• Apple Safari
• Maxthon
• Internet Explorer
• Opera

Why upgrade your browser?

Your current browser displays the web as you like it? You don’t trust all the requests to install this, install that. It’s true, we are all pestered with requests to do so, but there is a reason behind it . . . if you stop and think about the bigger picture of why you are being asked to upgrade.

Now before everyone harps on about security issues or bug fixes, look past that and think about the benefits of having the latest version of anything. The new features and accessories that they provide to keep you ahead in an every growing technical age. Some of the requests are to install a Java Script or a new version of Flash. (99% of people have no idea of what these are and reject the request)

As you may or not know there is a cloud over the horizon that has been looming for a while now. It is spoken in the Sunday papers, business networking, tech forums and is a great buzz word of tech talkers. It is “Cloud Computing” and the idea of putting data in a remote location in order to allow it to be accessed via any location. Bit like a website in basic terms if you think about it. It is this accessing remote data that has been talked about in disaster recover situations where we hear about big companies with hundreds of employees and the building burns down. They simply move to a new locaiton with and access their emails and documents from their server and continue working.

Great for large business but is it necessary for small businesses. It is important for us all but in order to even start going down that road you must have the right vehicle and in computing terms that means the device or software we use. The software we use is changing as we see more and more software being used on the net.

But if your Internet Browser is an old version you will not be able to get involved and engage in these changes in technology. Have you every listened to someone brag that their phone is just a phone and it is great. That may be true for them but for those who know the benefits of having a phone that also accesses emails and and the web, we know it can change the way we work. Change our lifestyle and even the way we accept payments.

Now apply that philosophy to your web browser. Imagine what you are missing out on and the features that are available these days. The browser is not just a click forward or backward, ckick Home. The browser is a piece of software that is able to doing online transactions, word processing, drawing and in fact most tasks that a computer can do, but only if that software is the latest version.

This maybe something called Java Script, as it sounds, a programming language that coffee drinking programmers came up with that runs scripts that perform an operation either on your computer or to a online file.

You need it.

Other languages such as HTML version 5 are also being updated to help the processing of data on the Internet. Older browsers are being phased out in order to help the new world order where browsers are the one piece of software that is crucial to the running of all programs as they are run within it. Some functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers.

So if you are still clicking on “ignore” or “reject” think again about what you are rejecting . . you are rejecting change to business and the new business models that are vital in business today.

Upgrade your browsers by clicking on any of the links above.

There are many different types of content management software including paid software off the shelf, licenced software you pay for on a monthly basis or annual basis. We use one called open source, where the application is free to use and we use these for many reasons, but mostly to reduce the costs for the customer.

We use WordPress, Joomla, Mambo, OS Commerce, ZenCart to name a few. These can be found easily online and our many years in business have meant that we can demonstrate how they work and how to get the most out of them.

We have created a demo site to demonstrate how a business can edit their content and publish online information easily, in-fact even from your iphone if you are on the move.

For more information about using a content management system based on open source applications call Dave Jordan of Cada Media to set up an online demo for you to login and use.

Tel: 053 9430748

I know I harp on about open source, but really are people listening ,

Denmark dumps Microsoft

Another government department is starting to use open source,

http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/article890196.ece

Now County Council’s in Ireland, are you listening?

Anyone, anyone , Beauler, Beauler, Fry,  Fry . . .

We get asked all the time what is the best photo editing software and of course it easy to say PhotoShop by Adobe, but this is not practicle for your average Joe, as it is not easy to use, it is not cheap to buy and needs training to get the most of it. It also needs to be installed on a specific pc.

The best option I can recommend to people who want to do the basics to images such as reducing the size of the file, in terms of megabyte size and in width and height and maybe saving a large image to an image thay can use to insert into their website would be an online software as a service called pixlr.com. This is ideal for our clients who are on the move and want to edit images from their 12 mega pixel cameras that are too large to insert in the website via the content management system

This online tool has a number of options, you can use it in Pixlr Express mode to do the very basics or you can enter into the more complex tool to really do the same kind of things you would like to do in Photoshop.

Enjoy !

http://www.pixlr.com

This is a question we got in last week and we were able to point the client to an open source program to allow them to have an easy to use program that was not Microsoft based.

Eudora Mail

http://www.eudora.com/

Windows Mail

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/mail.aspx

Thunderbird

http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/

We would recommend using Thunderbird as it has great plug-in features that the other are only catching onto now, and it easily allows you to configure separate in-boxes for different emails. A common question into our offices.

What are Content Management Systems?

A Content Management System is a program/software installed on your website that allows you to access and update your site through your Internet browser. You can add content from anywhere in the world. There is no need of any prior content management experience and you do not need to understand <HTML> code.

Content Management can be used to manage simple business brochure style website, portal or directory and also an ecommerce online shop website.

To Sumarise if you get a content management system, your site is ready for expansion in the future as it is built on a powerful base.

We have a number of requests to get a content managed system (C.M.S). This is a website whereby the client is able to log in and update and write content, new pages on their own website. Thus keeping it up to date and fresh. This is now becoming the standard style of website that businesses today.

CMS websites are great idea, but a few things must be taken into consideration when you are looking into getting a website of this style as opposed to a “static brochure website” whereby the pages are created in a format that can only be edited by either a web designer of a kid with good web knowledge.

Content management is about being able to edit content, but its a lot more that that it actually allows you to edit the whole site, the menu system, the layout, the colours, the design, everything!

Now here’s the But. . . this is all great but a few factors we would suggest would be required in getting involved in this.

• Time
• Creativity
• Experience in Desk Top Publishing or Graphic Design and Layout.
• E.C.D.L

Time: Being able to change a websites content is wonderful and really puts power in the owners hands. That’s of course if the user assigns time to the project and we have found that the more time the users give to their website management the more they will benefit from this tool. And that’s all this is, a tool to editing the site, so depending on how you use it will depend on the results.

Creativity: Say you edit the text and insert only a few words about a topic. The search engines will see that this is all you know about the topic. Don’t keep this knowledge in your head, put it on the site. Write about your chosen topic and remember you are not writing a book, Think of it as a magazine, you need to understand you reader and the time they have to scan down through you content.

Layout and Design: Ok so now you have the time, you’ve inserted the content. How does it look? Does it look like a long back and white page or have you used indents, bullet points, italic, bold, remember you online users scan down through the content so grab their attention and highlight words for them.

ECDL: These types of courses are great to give the user an understanding of the methods that can be involved. But do note that content management is not MS Word, Its a thousand time more. We think of it like comparing MS Word and MS Excel to Content Management and An Accounting System.

If you post an invoice on an accounting system you can not just click “back” and start again, you have to insert a credit note to minus the invoice. Its a little more structured but there is method and reason for this.

Content management systems are similar to this as you can’t just click back, they are online applications that need to be closed properly otherwise you lock a document. And once the document or page is locked it may not be accessible to edit by another editor. A Desktop application like Word etc can close and you can open it again it may have tried to so an auto-save.

So to sum up, think about your design skills, your time and your typesetting skills.