My colleague was speaking with one of our clients earlier today, Organic Cotton Shop, she had just bought Sophie the Giraffe.  So what’s Sophie the Giraffe I hear you ask?  In short its a Natural Latex Pacifier and Teether for babies and toddlers.

Now I hear you ask, what has this got to do with forums.  Well to make a long story short, someone bought one, mentioned it in Roller Coaster’s forum and since then their sales have increases 10 fold for this particular product and the footfall through the shop has also increases. 

This is a great case study to show how user generated content in forums can help increase your brand/product awareness.  

Be aware that you cannot use forums to promote your self as you will get a slap on the wrists but it is certainly a good idea to keep an eye on whats being said and getting involved in threads that are relevant to your business. Dont forget to read their policies and T&C carefully but most don’t mind you putting your business name and website address in your signature (and don’t forget keyphrases in your post if you want it to help your website optimisation).

1. Web designers and developers do not support this version anymore
2. Some websites don’t displayed properly
3. There are security issues which can put your computer, your data and your privacy at risk. The latest versions are safer, easier to use and include a host of new features
4. Its OLD and OUTDATED – would you use a cassette player when you could easily upgrade to an iPod?

It’s FREE so upgrade to IE8 now, just visit http://www.microsoft.com/ireland/ie8ireland/ and download.

There is no doubt that there is a great deal of hype surrounding the term. However there are a few crucial aspects associated with cloud computing that could mean the technology represents a paradigm shift in how we use computational resources.

First among these is scalability. In particular the ‘elastic’ nature of cloud scalability – the ability to effectively scale up infinitely but also to scale down as demand decreases.

Elastic scalability is closely linked to another important aspect of cloud computing – the payment model. In contrast to existing models the cloud provider charges based on resource use rather than any flat fee or contract.
Users pay only for what they use – so they pay more when demand is high but also pay less when demand is low. This payment model bears a close resemblance to that used by utility companies – for example, electricity customers pay only for the amount of electricity used.

It is reasonable to suggest that cloud computing may signal the beginning of a move towards ‘computation as a utility’.

The advantages of cloud computing are obvious and manifold. Firstly initial outlay for computation costs is minimal.

For example, a new website which traditionally would be forced to invest heavily in infrastructure in preparation for a ‘hoped for’ audience of users could instead use a cloud provider and pay nothing until (and unless) the ‘hoped for’ audience materializes.

A similar attraction is presented to existing businesses. If said business expects a large increase in demand for it’s services at a particular time each year (the holiday season perhaps) then traditionally the only option would have been to purchase more infrastructure to cope with the expected spike in demand.

It would be impractical to scale back this infrastructure after demand had decreased. With cloud hosting this would happen automatically. Indeed the cloud would be capable of handling any potential load. Businesses no longer need to plan infrastructure changes based on what “might” happen.

The nature of cloud computing means that cloud providers will necessarily be large companies. The scale of infrastructure will require a huge amount of investment. It is likely that many smaller companies will resell services hosted on cloud infrastructure provided by these large providers. There are obvious privacy concerns with a future dominated by a few large companies.

The idea that a handful of companies will dominate the worlds computation and by extension information is indeed a troubling one. The analogy with other utility providers falls down when the value of information is considered.

It is likely that cloud providers will insist their systems are data agnostic but the theoretical possibility of intercepting data will likely worry many potential customers.

In conclusion it seems that cloud computing is more that just a marketing term. It may indeed signal the next evolution in computer systems.

Even a cursory examination of the Amazon AWS products (for example) provides an insight into the enormous potential and power of the cloud. The prospect of effectively infinite computer power and scalability with remarkable ease of use and a pay-as-you-go payment model is certainly an attractive one.

One obvious caveat is the necessity for a fast and reliable internet connection. Assuming such a connection exists it would almost seem irrational if in future computation was not handed over to the cloud.

Visit Amazons AWS site for lots of info on their services

So my next move was to ask her if she actually worked for Google, she then changed to say that she was calling on behalf of Google but in reality she was probably calling from a call centre, had been given a list of companies to call and we were unfortunate enough to be on that list.

I found it strange that they had not done any research on our company, if she had she would have seen that we provide search engine optimisation services so I would know that you cannot promise a no. 1 listing to anyone unless you are going to go down the route of pay per click. Too many factors play a part in getting you a top listing from the density of key phrases in the page copy, meta data to links and the list goes on. When I said this to her, I think she got a fright and stumbled a bit. Needless to say the call ended.

The moral of this story is to ignore calls from people claiming to be from Google, Google are probably the only company making money in the recession – they don’t need to make cold calls.

If you need search engine optimisation services talk to our expert 046 9730147.

On the other hand there are also a lot of companies using it and quite successfully. The great thing about Twitter is that it is many things to many people. It allows you to keep up with friends and family. Follow local events. Interact with companies and stores where you are already a customer and get questions answered. And even better you don’t have to turn on the lap top every time you want to look at or publish a new tweet. Just set it up on your phone and off you go. So are you using it and how successfully.

Do you want to ensure your email address cannot be scraped?  Use this Email Address Encoder tool http://www.wbwip.com/wbw/emailencoder.html. Its easy and best of all its free.

Lots of people have asked how they can help and there are two key things that can help people in my situation big time.

Firstly you can register to donate bone marrow

Secondly please give blood.  I need platelets daily to keep me alive right now so stocks need replacing!

I hear you ask how do you do this, its actually very simple.  Go to www.google.com/maps, click the link “Put your business on Google Maps”.   Follow the steps. Its really simple.  To ensure you are a legit business they will need to give you a pin number to confirm your listing, this can be given 3 ways – phone, text or postcard.  I would recommend the phone option as its the quickest - just make sure that you are available straight away to answer the phone (this would be the number you added to your business listing) to take down the 5 digit pin number.  One tip would be to try include a keyword in the business name e.g. SitesToGo would become SitesToGo website design

Happy listing.

The Global Language Monitor (GLM), based in Austin made it official on 10th June  at 10:22 am GMT.  Web 2.0 is a technical term meaning the next generation of World Wide Web products and services.   Isn’t it funny to think that its only the one millionth, I would have thought that this would have been exceeded a long time ago.

Without a great deal of fanfare Microsoft’s new search

engine came on-line this week. No doubt they spent a long time dreaming

up a name that would have the same quirk factor as ‘Google’.

In the end they came up with ‘Bing’ – which, although not completely awful, is

frankly a little bit awful!

In any case, bing seems to work quite well but I just can’t see any

reason why a Google user would want to switch.

Check out bing for yourself