Anz Bank

We’d like to inform you that your Secure Messages Center has 1 new message.

Please login to your Online Banking and visit the Secure Message Center section in order to
read the message.

Log On to Online Banking.

(The Message Center contains only important information about your account and online banking.)

Copyright Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited ABN 11 005 357 522, 1996-2011.
ANZ’s colour blue is a trade mark of ANZ.

The log on link goes to http:// nogueirametalurgica . com . br/www . anz . com/index . php

This is a typical ploy where they hide the link to a hacked website. Here they have placed a site that looks the same as the target (This time ANZ) and hope that you do not look at the link that appears in the URL section of your browser.

Whenever you get a dodgy email, you can often just hover over the link in the email, and the email program will show you the link that you will be taken to.

If it is anything like this, then stay away

http://storconnect.com

It is a tablet (iPad/android) powered contract system for the Self Storage industry.

On the Deepweb side, we have been working with the following clients:

• Northland Marquees
• Kerikeri Primary School
• Garden Services Auckland
• Skydive Zone Bay of Islands
• Chocolates and Cupcakes
• LucasOil
• Isobar Surf

Plus many more.

September and October look like they will be just as, if not more, busy than the last wee while.

from paper application forms and replace them with an electronic form.

To do this, we have created a web application that interfaces with Storman Software, (software that manages the self storage facility). We have called this StorConnect.

This means an elimination of errors on the input side, as the customer is the one doing the inputting, plus a virtual removal of paper in the office as all of the documents are stored electronically. Good for the environment, but also a great disaster recovery option, as they are stored offsite.

After the initial installation at All Secure, we launched the product and the Self Storage Association of Australasia (SSAA) annual conference last week.

This was a great time, meeting facility owners, talking with other providers and the feedback was extremely positive and we were delighted to sign up some facilities to this new product.

The icing on the cake was winning the 2011 Innovation Award at the conference Awards for our new product. We were up against another significant player in the industry for the award and so are delighted with the award.

You can see more information at the StorConnect website.

I’ll be heading off to Australia next week to launch a new project at an industry conference, but more of that in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, there has been plenty of output, so here we go:

• Beachfront Apartments – Accommodation in Coopers Beach
• Absolute Bliss – Great views of the Bay of Islands
• Colonial Gardens (rescuing a site from Frontpage)
• Waiora Apartments – eco friendly retreat in Paihia
• Trish Nicholson’s Words in the Treehouse – Writer from the Far North
• Blah Blah Marketing – Local Paihia marketing firm
• Envirofur – Upgraded shopping cart to OSCMax (Souped up version of OSCommerce)
• Natural Arena – natural products directory
• Words and Scenes – New hosting

Some other big projects in the pipeline too, so must get back to the grind

But I got into Google + today. It’s a bit echoey, but looks like it might actually have some interesting features to it that will attract a few people.

They real question is what effect it will have on the social scene.

Will it be a threat to Facebook?

Will it become a social aggregator like Friendfeed was.

One thing is for sure, Facebook felt threatened. With their “awesome announcement” today that Facebook will be integrating Skype video chat into it’s site, Facebook has shown that the video feature of Google+, the hangouts, was enough for the to appear to rush this announcement and get product to market.

I can imagine the code cutting that went on since knowledge of the inner working of Google + became known to Facebook. Determined to release something before Google+ made it to general release.

In turn the Facebook announcement seems to have hurried up the public roll out of Google+. Originally the invitation beta was due to last a few more weeks, but there are now noises that Google+ is going public pretty much straight away.

Competition in this way is great, it speeds up innovation and we the user get the benefits.

As Google get closer to a social network and Facebook drive more search within it’s site it is inevitable that competition between these two juggernauts will escalate.

How have you found Google+

Make that really angry.

The Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill is a contentious bill with history of internet protest. Maybe the knowledge that more highly visible protest would precede any passing of this bill caused the government to rush the Bill through parliament under urgency.

While the Bill has been changed to be more balanced than in it’s early incarnations, it’s termination clause was still a reason to protest.

But what this really highlighted, was not so much the content of the Bill itself, but the politics surrounding it.

Admissions from National politicians, that discussions with other countries over free trade talks were a consideration, gave a feeling that there were underhanded reasons for what was happening last night.

So what is urgency? Here is a link to the NZ Parliament site that explains:

The House of Representatives sometimes goes into “urgency” to make progress on business additional to what would be possible under the normal rules for sitting hours and progress of business.

Now this session of Urgency was called to deal with legislation related to the Christchurch Earthquake. However, completely unrelated business can be added.

Given that Copyright issues have absolutely nothing to do with the earthquake, one can make the following assumptions:

• The Government had some other agenda (Maybe this was part of the free trade negotiations)
• Pressure was being applied by supporters of the Bill (In this case the likely supporters are Record and Movie companies)
• By passing under urgency, with no notice, anticipated protest could be held to a minimum

Regardless of your opinions on the pros and cons of the “Three Strikes” and final sanction of internet account holder suspension, the conduct of the MP’s who were in the debating chamber last night made for some interesting insights.

I was up watching Parliament TV streaming online here, so were many others, possibly giving Parliament TV it’s best ratings ever. Alongside my stream was my Twitter feed and especially the comments tagged with #blackout.

It was an amazing and compelling evening of watching most MP’s wallow in their abject understanding of the topic they were debating, while those interested spectators spouted vitriol towards them via Social Media.

Special mention must go to Gareth Hughes (@GarethMP), Jacinda Adren (@jacindaardern) and Clare Curran (@clarecurranmp) who seemed to at least have a working understanding of what was being discussed.

Brickbats go to Melissa Lee and Jonathan Young who seemed so unsure of the terminology and the concepts being discussed that they are now stars in their own parodies of themselves.

Quite how a piece of legislation can be debated by those who are completely unqualified and also when key players are away (The Minister of Commerce, Simon Power) is amazing, maybe there should be a quiz before entering the chamber to test the knowledge of those wanting to participate in the debate.

As of this morning, the Bill was passed, with both Labour and National voting for, with the Greens the majority of those opposed.

It won’t spell the end of the internet, but the political process has exposed to many as a farce.

It seems the Greens got a few more supporters last night. Will it make a difference come election day?

Most definitely I am not. It harkens back to the day when I was at University and spent the entire 3 years of my computer science degree and did not touch a PC at all.

Now, I have always thought that Universities are supposed to prepare you for your career after you leave, but to not even use a PC is a bit of a joke.

Anyway, we used Apple computers for the first two years doing programming and other things. My flatmate was an Apple devotee, I was not. I can see the design aesthetics, I can sometimes see the usability benefits. But I much preferred my PC.

Zoom forward nearly 20 years and we have now have two iterations of the iPad.

I am using one (v1) at the moment for a client project and so have had quite a play with it.

It’s nice, it’s easy to use (for some things) and it makes my kids go all gooey, but it still leaves me cold.

My smartphone and my laptop seem to be a better combination that the iPad. It just seems to me to be a device that does things OK, but it doesn’t seem to fit a need.

What is there that the iPad can do that other devices can’t? What is it that made it a “must have” device?

Seeing the recent launch hysteria of the iPad 2 makes me wonder if it is any better than the original.

Can anyone help me out with this one?

Here are those new clients and existing ones with recent changes

• Ounuwhao Harding House – Bed and Breakfast in Russell. A beautiful house.
• Kerikeri Organic Tea – A new carbonated iced tea. An amazing drink
• Zeal Dog Fool – natural dog treats
• Abbey House – Bed and Breakfast in Kerikeri
• Robins Quilts – Home made quilts and cushions

In fact it is actually the Columbian country code that has been opened up to be registered by anyone.

So what’s the big deal?

In the sales pitch, the people running this launch have this to say: (found as a sponsor post on Read Write Web)

The .co TLD will provide companies with a TLD that represents “company”,
which is a viable and possibly even superior alternative to .com. With
the .com domain inventory nearly exhausted, .co gives businesses the
opportunity to brand themselves online to the fullest extent possible.

LEt’s break that down into it’s parts:

1. .co to represent “company” a viable possibly superior alternative to .com – To be honest, I can’t see much to this, ok it is 1 character shorter and to some areas, like URL shorteners (apparently, Twitter is looking at t.co as an in house URL shortener) it is useful to achieve their requirements. But for the majority, overcoming the habit of the .com is going to be hard to break.
2. With
   the .com domain inventory nearly exhausted, .co gives businesses the
   opportunity to brand themselves online to the fullest extent possible. – Excuse me, the .com space is not nearly exhausted, this is just an excuse for lazy marketers. Agreed, most simple words are already taken, but it is no where near exhausted.
   It also raises the possibility of more domain name disputes as existing brands have to fight again to save their brands form being hijacked.

As I mentioned before, .co is actually the country code for Columbia. I can expect some technical issues with the search-ability of sites with .co as their TLD.

Google bases it’s local and pre-filtered searches based on the TLD and/or the location of the server that a site is hosted on. As an example for a New Zealand company it is important that either the site has a .co.nz domain or is located on a NZ based server. This gives Google an idea as to who to provide results to for this site.

When you have a .com address on a US based server, you need to use Google Webmaster Tools to tell Google that your market is in NZ, if that is the case, as it not necessarily easy to determine this just from your content.

How quickly will this issue be fixed once the .co TLD is released. Similarly, Google will need to be told that your intended market is not Columbia, given that is what .co domain really means.

I believe this is a marketing opportunity, pure and simple. I cannot see any real credible reasons for creating this confusion between the established .com and a new ambiguous player in .co

My advice to people is to ignore .co. If you need a global domain, go for .com. If it is taken, look for creative ways to claim a .com domain, as I expect it will take many years (if at all) for the .co TLD to mean anything to anyone outside Columbia.

Please comment if you have received any correspondence about this, how are your registrars selling it to you?

There are plenty of bloggers out there who can write, just as there are plenty who can’t, but technologies ability to enable everyone with an internet connection to have their say has flooded the internet with voice and opinion.

Twitter and other social networks were lauded for enabling protesters to distribute footage and news of the Iranian elections and protests. Historically, these images would have been less likely to make it into the public eye.

While not as serious as protesters being killed during political demonstrations, the XT network has failings of it’s own.

Paul Reynolds hair has been widely acknowledged as the real winner amid the storm of publicity around the repeated failures of the XT network.

Who would have thought Trademe would have been the hub of one of the most intriguing protests of recent times.

Check out this auction of a Lemon (Sold as the XT Network)

Through the questions and answers section at the bottom of the auction, New Zealanders have been able to vent some frustrations at Telecom and their flagship mobile product.

Congratulations must go to the seller, for his efforts in replying to every question (well over 500) to encourage further conversation and comment about the networks failings.

If you have time, read them all (It will take a while), as it is a really funny read.

The auction closes later on today, but for a week (and who knows what will happen once the auction closes), XT was vilified, parodied and generally made fun of by ordinary New Zealanders having their chance to make their point.