One page web sites for local businesses.

Over the years I’ve been amazed that local businesses often don’t have a presence as simple as a one page web site. I suspect the main reason is if they approach a web designer they’ll often be quote hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, when to get started it can cost much less.

To put this in context, all a small business generally requires is one new customer, or keep an existing customer from going elsewhere and their web presence can pay for itself.

Many times when I’ve wanted to buy take away for family or friends, the only menus we can find online are the big companies, yet most of the time we use the smaller local businesses for ourselves. I’ve done some testing over the years and small take-away businesses can get a reasonable amount of business by having their menu online. At worst they don’t lose potential business from good customers when the customers need to see a menu online.

To show local businesses the value of promoting themselves online I’ve now sponsored a number of local business to provide them with an online presence. They are the businesses I use so now they’ll gain my business when I need an online menu.

 

Flying Dragon Chinese Restaurant, Papa Loui's Pizza and Pasta, Bolton Fish Shop, Panic Pizza Doncaster East, Middle Camberwell Fish and Chips

If you own a small business and would like to have your menu online for your customers, but don’t want to pay a small fortune, then send me an email. The way I set up a small business is I create a one page site with their menu and then help them sign up for hosting and registering their domain, By getting the business to register domain and sign up for hosting they retain total control which is a strategy in business. Most web design businesses tie businesses in so if they want anything done, they have to go back to the designer to get expensive changes done. My approach is to have businesses use me if they want to, but because they have total control over their site, they can easily have someone else, including a family member or friend, look after their site. No lock in means businesses use my services because they want to, not because they have to.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Helping micro and small businesses with a cost effective online presence.

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Alert: Apple Store - 100 AU$ credit, Apple Store - BONUS OFFER

I noticed a couple of emails pretending to be from Apple today offering $100 credit for $9. I hope that at this stage people realise these aren’t real offers. In the past I’ve noticed scams targeted at Apple users get a large amount of traffic, most likely because Apple users aren’t used to being targeted. With Apple now having a much larger user base, even compared with just a year ago, Apple users are now being more actively targeted.

You should discard any such offers. The rule of thumb is, if it sounds too good to be true then it probably isn’t, applies very much in this case.

Whilst in this case of these emails are poorly formed and writing the dollar value as 9 $AU, is something we’d never use in Australia, good fakes are very easy to create and can easily trick people. One email contained a htm attachment as a form. I’ve not seen any business use such an approach, but only scammers. The other provided a link to a site and it was obvious from checking the link, it was not an Apple site.

The bottom line is trust your gut instinct. If something doesn’t feel quite right don’t click on it. Delete the email. Most people say to me they thought something didn’t feel right just before they infected their computer, but still went ahead. Their gut instinct could have saved them a couple of hundred dollars in support costs cleaning up their computer and also much grief.

If you are in doubt about an email then consider having it checked out by a computer professional if it really interests you. For example I charge clients in intervals of one tenth of an hour and an email can easily be checked in that time to determine it isn’t legit. You could also contact the company sending the offer (not by responding to the email) and if it is legitimate, they’ll let you know. Of course the answer most times will be it isn’t legitimate.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

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Apple Mac Flashback botnet malware infection

The Myth of Apple Mac computers not being infected by malware has now well and truly been busted. The Flashback botnet, has according to reports in the media, infected around 600,000 Mac computers, with an estimated 30,000 being in Australia.

The Flashback botnet only requires a Mac user with Java installed to visit an infected site to infect their computer. You can read more information on the CNET site.

I don’t currently provide Mac support, so should you find you’ve infected your computer, you may need to contact a Mac support person. I believe a patch is available so you should perform any updates available for your Mac computer.

A number of suggestions are: apply any updates available, install antivirus/malware software on your Mac, if you don’t need Java on your computer think about removing the software, if you wish to keep Java installed, consider disabling Java in your browser.

I hope this information helps those using Mac computers.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 if you require help with your computer.

Servicing Doncaster, Templestowe, Eltham and the surrounding area.

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MozillaFirefox - Client feedback requested

One thing I've noticed providing support to clients, is most clients using Mozilla's Firefox browser have had their search engine hijacked and aren't aware.

This became quite apparent helping one client recently. She typed into the search field, "print boarding pass virgin" and didn't get the results expected. I then suggested she use Internet Explorer and she obtained the site she wanted immediately. The problem was her Firefox browser search engine had been hijacked.

Generally I recommend clients use Internet Explorer, but there is one situation where Firefox is better than Internet Explorer and that is you can install an Australian English spellcheck dictionary. I previously stopped supporting Firefox because the project instead of contributing to the dictionary I created, took a copy, forked it and changed the licence. I particularly did not appreciate the change of licence which was against my wishes. If open source projects contributed back to others rather than just taking from other projects, all the projects would grow. Instead my work was withdrawn and users ended up with a fork which had been incorrectly modified giving users a lower quality dictionary.

Because some clients like to use Firefox, if there is sufficient interest from clients I'll make the version of the Australian English spellcheck dictionary for Firefox and Thunderbird available again.

Clients please contact me via email with your feedback.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 if you require help with your computer.
No problem too small.

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The credit card linked to your T-Suite(R) account is due to expire

I received an email yesterday which was unexpected and perhaps a bit disturbing. The email is from Telstra and is advising me the credit card I use is expiring. My first thought was this may be the usual scam attempt.

The email was unexpected because I don’t have any services currently with Telstra that require a credit card, and the service I use is a prepaid 3G wireless hotspot, which has nothing to do with T-Suite. I pay as I go so I don’t expect the credit card details to be kept on the system after the transaction.

I find this disturbing because I did use the Microsoft’s Office 365 mid last year, a service provided by Telstra in Australia. I cancelled the service in September so I have no service with Telstra, but they have still retained my credit card details in their systems. Should Telstra servers be hacked I would have had no idea they were retaining my credit card details in their systems.

For Telstra this shows a flaw in their systems where they’re notifying me of an expiring credit card where there is no service being used, for a service which was cancelled over six months ago.

This also raises the question as to how many other companies are also storing credit card details after you cancel a service. With sites regularly being reported where credit cards are being compromised, including this week in the States, it is a concern that companies are storing credit card details after a service has been cancelled.

It is a good idea to minimise the number of companies you provide your credit details to where they will regularly use your credit card. In this day and age it is very difficult not to provide your card details to companies, but where there is a payment option where you are in control, it may be a good idea to use that payment option rather than giving another company control over your credit card.

Kelvin Eldridge
http://www.onlineconnections.com.au/
Call 0415 910 703 if you require computer support.
Servicing Templestowe, Doncaster, Eltham and the surrounding area.

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Doncaster East ADSL broadband support

One thing I’m promoting to residents and local businesses in Templestowe, Templestowe Lower, Doncaster, Doncaster East, Lower Plenty, Montmorency and Eltham, is the advantage of dealing with a local computer support business.

Because I’m local and don’t charge a call-out fee, travel time, or a minimum fee, the only cost is the time to fix the problem.

One example is a restaurant in Doncaster East had Telstra repair a telephone point which ceased to work. The point was repositioned in another location, but the repair person didn’t know how to set up the broadband correctly for the business. The business called me in and I set the wiring up correctly, checked that all their devices worked correctly,  including access to their Wi-Fi service.

The cost was $33 for a quarter of an hour’s work. Normally people could expect to pay much more for such a service.

Not all local businesses work this way, but it is the way I work. I once went to use a local business in Eltham to repair my garage door. Their call-out fee was the same whether I lived in neighbouring Templestowe, or lived in Werribee. To me that doesn’t encourage people to use a local business.

I’d like to encourage other local businesses to reconsider their call-out charges. It should be more cost effective to use a local business than calling out a business from the other side of the city.

By not having a call-out fee, travel time, or a minimum fee, in effect I’m now as cost effective as having a person onsite, but only being paying for their services when required.

If you have a computer related problem give me a call on 0415 910 703.

 

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 if you have a computer related problem.
Servicing Templestowe, Doncaster, Eltham and the surrounding areas.

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Alert: Android tablet buyers wanting to use Adobe Flash.

One of the benefits of Android tablets I see promoted on television is the ability to view Adobe Flash content. Many sites are designed using Flash to display high quality images. One example of such a site is the Monkey Mia site where a serious of pictures are displayed showing the beautiful scenery at Monkey Mia.

The Apple iPad, iPhone and Touch devices don’t support Flash and that was Apple’s design decision, but Android tablet devices are being promoted on TV as supporting Flash. The problem is the Android 3.2 operating system used on tablets does support Flash, but if you upgrade to Android 4 you’ll lose Flash support. Adobe have stated they’re no longer supporting Flash on mobile devices.

If you’re considering buying an Android tablet because it supports Flash then you should reconsider. I’ve now upgraded my Acer tablet from Android 3.2 to Android 4. Previously I was able to view the Flash content on pages and now I can’t. Others will have the same experience.

I found Android 3.2 to be quite a flaky operating system and Android 4 is a significant improvement. In fact I found Android 3.2 to be so bad I really couldn’t be bothered using the Acer tablet. I waited until Android 4 was available and upgraded as soon as I could and the tablet has now become useful. I still find Android 4 to be flaky at times, but at least now the tablet gets some use.

To me it is a real shame Adobe are no longer supporting Flash on mobile devices and in particular tablets. The cost to businesses to develop their Flash based sites in many cases would have been thousands of dollars. Now if site owners want mobile users to view their sites, the businesses will need to have their sites redeveloped at considerable cost.

If you’re considering a tablet and Flash support is part of that consideration, then you should factor in that Flash support most likely won’t be available.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for computer support.
Servicing Templestowe, Doncaster, Eltham and surrounding areas.

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