Is Your ISP Good Enough?

Ever wondered if you ISP is providing you the amount of bandwidth that they claim they do? Well recently I needed to upgrade my broadband plan to include more download and faster speeds. My ISP here in Oz is Telstra Bigpond… somewhere back in the archives I did say I was going to dump them but never did… Well the cable plan I’m on now boasts up to 30 Mbps, however there are a number of factors that Bigpond say may affect performance, like location, the bandwidth of the site you are downloading from etc, you get the general idea.

So I decided to test my bandwidth using Speedtest.net and on my iMac using the built in wireless and I got the following result. I managed to get up to 5131 kb/s out of a possible 30000 kb/s. Although the speed is pretty reasonable it’s not that good compared to what is available.

I figured that maybe the wireless connection on my iMac could be part of the problem. So I fired up another box I have that is wired directly to the router and got the following results.

Wow, just by plugging in directly to the router, I was able to manage another 4000 kb/s. So it seems that these factors claimed by Bigpond might just have some substance. In any case 5000 kb/s is still pretty good in my book and 30 Mbps is a good marketing strategy by Bigpond even though you may never ever see it.

How good is your ISP?

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Posted in Internet | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Installing Social Bookmarking Plugin in Textpattern

Until today I have never really spent time customising this blog, so today spent quite a few hours playing with the WordPress plugins and I was very impressed with what what is available and can see why it is so popular as a blogging engine.

Well another open source Blog/CMS I’ve been playing with is Textpattern which was created by Dean Allen with the first stable release of of Textpattern being released in August 2005. That’s enough history but what I will say about Textpattern is it is at the very least, definitely worth considering for you next web project.

Anyway after adding social bookmarking to this wordpress blog I thought I’d try to do the same on one of my work in progress Textpattern sites. I found a suitable plugin called social_cab from the textpattern resources site and downloaded the plugin which was created by Dejan Čabrilo.

Once downloaded I then like WordPress just upload the files to the server however with Textpattern you need to paste the plugin code in the admin interface plugin tabs textfield and then hit upload. Then all you need to do is add the the txp tag in your form where you want the bookmarks to display and then activate the plugin.


WordPress Maintenance Plugin Snapshot

Example code of how you add the txp tag to the article form

<ul class="sociallist">
<txp:cab_social tag="li" imgdir="/images/social" />
</ul>

And how it all looks in the post once it’s all up and running.

Social Cab Bookmarks Example

I’ll be writing more about my Textpattern experiences as I learn more about it.

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Posted in Textpattern | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Upgrade Your WordPress Blog in Style

I’ve been using WordPress for blogging for sometime and the great thing about WordPress is the community of developers that come up with great plugins. One of the plugins that is worth a mention is the Maintenance Mode plugin which allows you to upgrade your wordpress blog to the latest version without your site visitors getting ugly code errors during the upgrade process.

Now upgrading is less stressful knowing that your site visitors get a much friendlier and customisable message saying that your site is currently under maintenance.

The plugin is developed by Michael Woehrer who has developed the plugin for free so if you like it feel free to send him a donation as he currently doesn’t support it due to lack to time most likely trying to earn a living like the rest of us.

Example of the default maintenance screen.

WordPress Maintenance Plugin Snapshot

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Posted in Tips | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Generate Exponential Traffic with BlogRush

If you haven’t seen it yet then you will soon with the BlogRush widget for Bloggers. The blogrush widget gives you the opportunity to generate exponential traffic over time.

It works by a blogger signing up to Blogrush which allows you to generate a small chunk of code, choose a relevant category that matches your blog topic and then you can then add the widget to your own site. Everytime your blog post displays the blogrush widget you get 1 credit. For each credit you receive you get one your blog post marketed out to another blog that has the widget. The best part comes when bloggers sign up by clicking on your blogrush widget which then gives you credits for any impressions their blog generates. You can do this for up to 10 levels deep of referrals which could add up to significant traffic. The more impressions you generate the more opportunities you get gain exposure and build your blog readership.

As with any new venture there are teething problems and blogrush has already had their fair share with some bloggers cheating the system to spoil the experience for others doing the right thing. Blogrush have just released flavors which means you can now choose a color that suits your blog design. The team at Blogrush are promising more cool stuff coming soon.

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Posted in Marketing | 2 Comments

Google vs Microsoft – Who Wins

Today I got my first taste of Google Docs which Google provides as an online word processor and spreadsheet which is most likely targeting Microsofts Office Suite of products. Microsoft practically built their empire with the Windows operating system and office suite of products over the last 10 years and have up until now, never really had competition that can really give them something to worry about.

Trying to tackle Microsoft head to head in their core business would almost be impossible as they are so strong in the desktop software market however Google have such a strangle hold in the online space that they are in the perfect position to launch a full scale attack from where they are strongest.

I recently read a book by Seth Godin where he talked about how Apple used a similar strategy which have made them the leader in online music downloads, portable music players and soon mobile phone market by using iTunes which then allowed them to tap into their current user base to push more of their products and services which is much easier than marketing to new market. Couple this with innovative products and Apple now dominates this market.

Google has many of us using their search engine daily. We have Google accounts which mean we can easily tap into the growing range on online services Google provides. This is the platform the Google is using to slowing lure Microsoft Office users away from their desktop software as well as providing a link in Adwords reporting offering to view your report in Google Docs instead of downloading it as a csv file which you could then open in excel.

You use it once today, another time in a few weeks and soon enough you’ll find yourself getting dependent on using it and it starts becoming your main choice for word processing or spreadsheet processing. You can’t help being drawn to using it, as you get to save your files online for easy access and also makes it easy to find later… just log in. It’s convenience and it’s FREE.

With Microsoft being such a huge company, it’s hard to imagine Google doing so much damage and it’s even somewhat concerning that Google has so much data domination.

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Posted in News | Tagged , , | 1 Comment