Most of us have more than one computer, and it becomes a pain when want to use your emails on more than one computer. Emails start going here, but not there, and appointments are on this computer, but not the other one. You may be off site with your laptop and need to look up a contact you know you have on your work computer, so you now need to either drive back to the office, or ring up and ask for someone to get it for you - either way, it becomes time consuming.
Recently Apple computer has launched the successful iPhone into the Australian market, with a huge bang. Many people have gone out and purchased one, as it surpasses any other mobile phone with the amount of cool features it has. one of the iPhone’s features, is that it synchronises with Apples new service called MobileMe.
MobileMe is a great new system that you install on as many Apple or PC computers you have, and it keeps all your contacts and calendars the same. It also does this with your iPhone over the phone network, but even without owning an iPhone, it can be very useful.
For only a couple of hundred dollars, the MobileMe system, is really a great sollution for those who want to keep their Outlook contacts and Calendar at work, the same on their other computers or laptops around the office, or even at home.
It also gives you a really nice website you can login to and access all the data, so even if you’re at an internet cafe without your computer and need to look up someones phone number, you can do that!
If you’re in need of a small system like this, give us a call. We can make sure your email is in Sync, and assist with setting up your MobileMe account.
If you’re reading this, then you’re using a computer and I have a feeling, reading the Design House Blog is not the only thing you do on your computer. We all use our computers every day for all kinds of important tasks.
A couple of days ago I noticed a clunking noise coming from on of the servers. Naturally I wanted to investigate and get ride of the noise. I pulled the side off the server and took a closer look. As it sounded, it was a power supply fan failing. Lucky I invested in commercial grade power supplies, with redundant cooling fans running, so no damage would come of this. Never the less, it was time to swap over the power supplies and get the server back up asap.
Ironically, two months ago I performed maintenance on all three servers, and replaced power supplies in the other two servers, and didn’t think it was required to replace this one.
However, while I was down working on this server, and had the afternoon free, I decided to test out our disaster recovery plan and backup systems. I had other people using the other servers so it wasn’t a full test of our disaster recovery plan, but I still went ahead testing on the secondary mail server, database and web development server.
After restoring from one of the terabyte backup drives, I was fortunate enough to be able to successfully create and repopulate about 200 MySQL databases and load back up about 95 websites, and all of which operated fine.
Hopefully, all of us backup these days, with external Hard drives being so affordable, but how often do you test your backup is working?
You might plug your drive in every day and backup, but is it actually doing that? It may be having errors, partially copying things, all kinds of errors.
You need to be prepared, or have in place sufficient plans for when your computer dies and looses everything.
This Year I travelled to Sydney for the largest annual ICT show in Australia, known as CeBit.
Now, what is CeBit you might say? Well I wasn’t all that sure either when I signed up, I knew it was IT based and really, that’s all I needed to justify a work trip. CeBit is primarily a trade show for CEOs, CTOs, IT managers and the like to come along and discover what is out there and how they can go back home and optimise to stay at the fore front of the technology arena .
CeBit accommodated for members of the IT industry, from those just starting out to the CTO (Cheif Technology Officers). There were small talks on things like how to utilise the power of Plesk or cPanel and how to maintain a Joomla website plus expert researchers explained what the new Government is trying to do with Broadband and what they need to do.
Apart from these free talks happening everywhere there were also conferences in a lot of web based industries, Web 2.0 in Small business, e-Marketing, SEO and things like DSL discussions plus hearing from Federal members on what they are doing with ICT in Australia.
There was so much new technology out there it was fascinating to learn of some of the products that are in the market and how some can help the smaller business streamline their IT and save money. VOIP seemed to be one of the strongest presences in the expo, along with Wireless transmitters and web hosting.
Speaking of hosting I was fortunate enough to meet the Design House dedicated server & domain name provider, AussieHQ Pty Ltd. I met and socialised with the CEO of the company, my account rep and other techs.
There is no secret - we use one of the best hosting companies in Australia, Aussie HQ. I’ve personally been a user from before 2003 when I started some of my first websites.
Where your website is hosted is one of the most important things that can determine the effectiveness of your online presence.
As the old saying goes, “You get what you pay for”, and with your website hosting, ain’t that the truth. I tell my clients on many occasions that we are not the cheapest hosting provider. You get what you pay for. If you go to a budget hosting company and pay $60 a year - then you wont get the same service as someone paying $229 for premium website and email hosting. At Design House we invest every year in a dedicated server that delivers the quality and performance we want to sell to our clients.
Investing in a cheaper hosting provider will get you a slow website, that can go down and not work for periods of time. This normally happens because the hosting company puts so many websites on the one server it crashes, which can be a terrible experience for anyone!
You can read what was printed in the Feb. edition of NetGuide Magazine.
Whenever there is a problem there is always someone there to help resolve my issue! Never have I had service this great! All the staff are polite, friendly, and willing to help at any opportunity. I choose AussieHQ for their reliable hardware, and impressive features. I can sleep at night, trusting AussieHQ to host my valuable clients websites, and email.
What is a customised database driven website application?
It’s basically something that we create from scratch to do a specific task, the way you want it to work!
For example, I have created website applications that store clients and allow staff members to delete, edit, update and do all kinds of things to that data.
Design House has a system like this in-house, where we track all our clients, record our quotes, invoices and other statistical data.
Your Local Garage Sales - which will launch soon has a customised database driven section where the listings are automatic, tracked and easy to run. This system was designed from the ground up for our client - as no third party application could do exactly what they required.
Another large customised application I’ve been working on for about 6 months now, is the Baywide Security portal. The Security portal allows Baywide Security’s clients to login and manage aspects of their account with Baywide.
We developed (and continuely fine tune) internal systems for staff to enter large amounts of data daily. This data can be approved at higher levels of the company and clients with appropriate access are able to login and review their details.
The Portal also integrates with a number of security devices including CCTV, Alarm Pads and DVRs. Allowing Baywide’s clients to have all their security data at their fingertips.
Why Web Based, over a computer program?
A Web based application is far more useful than a computer based program as it allows for users to access them ANYWHERE, no need to install software. You’re not relying on a computer to do it, ie, it doesn’t matter if the computer runs on XP, Linux or Mac, it will work! It also allows for clients to have access to the data in ways you want.
We all know of Google and it’s domination of the online searching market. There are billions of theories on how to get your website to the top of the list. Some spend hours on hours every day reading SEO Blogs, some pay other people hundreds on thousands of dollars for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). SEO is one of the most important element of a websites existence, the greatest website unread, is useless.
There are some very simple things you can do to increase your position in Google, such as links from other websites, relevant content, well built code, a high Page Rank etc.
What is the Google Pagerank system? It’s one of Googles very mysterious factors that is used in positioning of websites in Searches.
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references.
Just lately I’ve noticed that the Design House website has jumped from an average 2 out of 10, which it had sat whilst we developed and launched our current website, to a much more respected 5 out of 10. This shows that the Design House website is getting it’s feet in deep into Google, for one of a better term.
Who is the leading SEO & Web Design business in Hervey Bay and the Fraser Coast? - you can be the judge of that. Google key phrases like, “web design hervey bay” or “graphic design hervey bay” - Currently Design House sits number one at the top for both these searches, without paying a cent be there!
Don’t spend extra on Google Adsense or other excessive monthly charges to get your website to #1 - contact us and get honest advise on how your website can reach the top!
On my usual wondering around the internet, I was reading up on the new fit-PC, by CompuLab. The fit-PC has been developed with 2 things in mind. a) the Size and b) the Power Consumption. The fit-PC draws only 3.5W of power whilst in full operation, running Linux or Windows, this is less than what a regular desktop consumes whilst on Stand By!
This definitely an innovative piece of technology, and something we as consumers are going to see more and more.
fit-PC is a tiny, noiseless, extremely power efficient PC - designed by CompuLab - one of the leading vendors in embedded computing.
fit-PC is designed to fit where a standard PC is too bulky, noisy and power hungry.
Today we all have high spec. digital cameras that take huge photos. Quality digital photos are becoming easier and easier to take. Even a novice such as myself can easily take a good photograph with a good camera. The only problem with taking such high quality photographs is the transportation of the pictures.
Say you take 30 great shots and wish to send them to friends and relatives worldwide, this would take hours and hours to send and most likely not even work as the there is a limit of a few megabytes that you can send in an email.To send 30 photos straight off your camera is looking at about 60megabytes at the minimum.
You’re not going to send 30 different emails, each with an image attached. Professional software can resize your images down to a standard size, simply for viewing, say 800×600 or 1024×768. However, most people don’t have professional photography software on their computers. Even with the software, resizing images is not that simple.
The Microsoft PowerToys for Windows is a collection of simple tools that have been created by Microsoft for simplistic tasks. The entire collection of PowerToys can be found by following this link. One of the most handy tools is the image resizer, this is a tool I use almost on a daily basis.
PowerToys add fun and functionality to the Windows experience. What are they? PowerToys are additional programs that developers work on after a product has been released.
Note: Microsoft take great care to ensure that PowerToys work as they should, but they are not part of Windows and are not supported by Microsoft. For this reason, Microsoft Technical Support is unable to answer questions about PowerToys. PowerToys are for Windows XP only and will not work with Windows Vista. Microsoft PowerToys Website
If you are running Windows XP and need a way to resize images easily, then head on over to the PowerToys website and download the image resizer on the right hand site of the site. (Direct Link Setup Installer)
Once you’ve installed the software, it’s as simple as right clicking on an image, and then selecting re-size!
Choose the appropriate size, for what you need. Generally, Medium or Large will do. You can also specify advanced options if you need to.
Welcome to the Design House Blog! A Blog is an online news delivery system, here you will be able to read what staff members at Design House are thinking about or what is going on at Design House!
This Year I travelled to Sydney for the largest annual ICT show in Australia, known as 
