sfsw.net

Need external plugin storage?

1TB on up USB2 drives are common place – but using laptop drives and simple USB2 SATA devices is even simpler, and far more cost/space efficient. Heat dissipation may be a problem for continuous use – but as backup devices these are simple, small and use no screws.

compare:

320GB USB pocket drive from $125 plus GST
one primary USB cable, no external power, pocket size, light
480MB/second transfer rate

500GB USB pocket drive from $150 plus GST
one primary USB cable, no external power, pocket size, light

with: 1TB SATA external drive from $225 plus GST
requires a power supply, portable, but more bulky

sfsw.net is proud to present
a new website site
just launched in
collaboration with
the artist, Anna Rugis.

http://enviromusic.co.nz

The site is to release 6 of her CDs of music for kids that will help them understand about caring for the world we live in. Full article here.

Online scammers hijacked a Facebook account and started to use it to intimidate her friends into giving her (them) money with stories about how she was stranded and lost her credit cards and needed funds wired via Western Union. $1000 was sent.

Facebook shut her account down upon request, but took 12 hours to do this, meaning that the corruption had a chance to spread as a direct result of the trust relationship that Facebook assumes should exist.

How do you protect yourself from Social Network crime? Read more.

See: Stuff.co.nz

SFSW recommends three:

1) Wordpress

Best for simplicity for running the website, to get content refreshed takes a few clicks including sophisticated tagging, comments and best of all – plugins to do all sorts of things. Terrifically well supported.

2) Drupal

Superb for content creation, and often used for large programming projects with the CMS acting as a framework. It features a rich API for managing your content in a variety of formats, some of which are customised. It is a full fledged product and the work of an individual. Industrial strength and well featured and supported with a library of themes and plug-ins.

For a website integrated with specialised software we would normally use Drupal.

3) Joomla

A slightly easier CMS for the programmer to write stuff for, the content creation workflow is too hierarchical for me – not streamlined enough. Its templates are sophisiticated. I would choose Joomla for site builds that are more technical integration challenges, less for content creation.

If you want to discuss your CMS option, feel free to drop me an email and we can setup a CMS on your domain in a few minutes.

sfsw.net has been working with a new artist on new ideas.

This week’s achievments include:

a) progress on enviromusic.co.nz (an artist site co-production is a prototype of a work in progress, for producing children’s music for school productions)
b) explorations in Drupal (new preferred content creation tool)
c) first fully professional video published on aucklandmusic.co.nz for a Jazz Ensemble
d) My photograph selected for leading Gospel Choir first CD cover
e) two new business ideas, they will be under wraps until release

This entry started life as a Tweet on Twitter.

Using Twitter to generate ideas and content, then exploding them up to an article on a blog is a useful business medium. It has immediacy and followup. A good momentary idea can be exploited and expanded into a useful article or business document. And if you forget it, it just remains as a brief statement.

The “drivers” behind the extraordinary rise of social media include cost (lack of) and traffic jams (avoiding). It is easy to form a party using Facebook, so long as you do not invite a bunch of strangers to your account (fans!).

But when you use it for what it is intended, it does spell the death of another “profession”. It is not just replacing the news media, it is replacing the need for IP distribution. All you need is a willing network.

How are you putting your business online? How are you building contact?

Social media is a revolution. And it is only just begun. It will change the way government works.

Tech News Blog

It has changed the way people work. But beware of carrying your Blackberry on holiday. Out of hour work can lead to inadequate downtime or even none. Is that in the best interests of your company?

NZ Herald article

Here are a handful of ideas that I found improved email management.

Maintaining a CMS each day is vital to stay in touch with your customers. Integration with Twitter makes this possible – even in a taxi