Copywriting – do I need help?

When you’re getting your website designed, you will be asked for ‘content’.  Very few web designers write copy – most expect you to provide it for them and won’t be able to complete your website until you’ve done that. If you’re lucky and work with a web designer that...

Technical confusion

After the last post about the misuse of the word ‘hacker’ a whole raft of other misused words raised its head!  Just to clarify a few technology terminology misapprehensions – or techie words that don’t mean what you thought! Screensaver – this is not the ‘wallpaper’...

Hackers and Crackers

Most people refer to individuals who gain unauthorised access to websites, email accounts, bank accounts and online profiles as ‘hackers’.  That’s not accurate and, if you’re talking to someone who deals with technology, you may find serious miscommunication going on!...

The cost of open source software

Although the giants of software, like Microsoft, have a stranglehold on our desktops, most people have heard of open source software.  These are applications that have been developed and are free to use.  You may have heard of Linux and Open Office (the alternative to...

Climbing the search engine rankings

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a bit of a black art. The major search engines change their algorithms weekly, sometimes daily, so it’s hard to keep up. Here are a few basics to ensure you get your website as far up the ranking as possible without investing the...

Clever phone systems with competitive edge

We installed an internet phone system for a client recently, replacing a previous phone system. They were concerned about the work that would go into programming all the phones in the company with their frequently used numbers – their previous system required each...

Who goes there?

In all the best children’s stories the giant demands ‘Who goes there?’ and you need the password to get by.  Today we all have dozens and dozens of places for which we need passwords.  It’s impossible to remember them all – and it’s...

Do technical support helplines give you a headache?

When your broadband goes down and rebooting hasn’t worked you’re faced with calling ‘technical support’, that can be the beginning of a long, frustrating and sometimes expensive, phone call.  It isn’t what you want to spend all day doing...

When officialdom meets social media

After all the riots across Britain it was apparent that many of the rioters were using social media to get messages to and fro.  During the TV programme Question Time the panel was challenged about the authorities’ failure to keep up with this. The problem is that...

What is cloud computing?

A few years ago files hosted on an offsite server were referred to as ‘being in the cloud’, but things have moved on and now Cloud Computing is about having many servers working together to support your computing activity. This means that your server is...