This is something that crops up whenever I’m doing some work for hotels, leisure centres, gyms and so on – anyplace, really, that’s open to the public and has a whirlpool facility.

Whirlpool, do you mean like a jacuzzi? Why yes, indeed I do. Or is it Jacuzzi, which is what the spellcheckers says it is but that doesn’t look quite right, somehow.

See here’s the thing – and I didn’t know this actually – Jacuzzi is actually a brand name which has come to mean more than the brand itself. It is an example of an eponym.

The Wacky World of Brand Names

In Ireland and the UK kids eat jelly and ice cream, but in North America jelly means jam and they call it and jello, which should actually be written Jell-O. Sometimes brands enter the public lexicon as words to describe the product itself. Ireland’s most famous example of this is Tayto crisps. (Best explained here [slyt nsfw] by Irish comedian Dara O’Briain.)

When we went to the shop after school we’d always ask for “a bottle of coke and a packet of Taytos”, even if it was the really fizzy cheap stuff for 30p and the shop had another brand of crisps. I guess we could have been more accurate, but asking for crisps and a fructose-based soft drink would result in getting a lot of funny looks.

The humble office is, in reality, a treacherous minefield of these genericised words; you might find yourself looking for some Sellotape, or some Tippex or a pack of Post-it notes and a Biro to copy someone’s name off the Rolodex.

These, by rights, should all take capital letters, whereas if you wanted to delete some spam emails that’s fine, unless they’re from someone trying to get you to buy canned ham over the internet, in which case it would be a Spam email. (More on why in a moment.)

If you’re in an office State-side you might need to get something Xeroxed, then again you might need to Photoshop something or do some quick even Googling. Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, the work day’s already nearly over and the cleaners are coming in to do the Hoovering and wipe down the Formica in the canteen.

It’s enough to make your brain implode.
(more…)

The Chinese Domain Name Scam.

I first came across these three years ago, so this is hardly new. Plus there’s already plenty of information on the internet about these scams already. Thing is I started getting a few more of these recently so that means they’re obviously doing the rounds again. That’s why I decided to write this post again as a fresh new warning to those who may not be familiar with the type of scams involved.

The format of the Chinese Domain Scam is simple; you receive correspondence from someone claiming to represent some domain registration agency somewhere in Asia, China or Hong Kong usually:

Dear Manager/CEO/Director/Whatever

We are a domain registration company based in China/Hong Kong/Asia…. (more…)

…And lo, the grateful townspeople watched as Windows XP struck a match, lit a half-smoked cigar, tipped his hat and rode off into the sunset. Roll credits, cue theme music by Ennio Morricone…

You know it’s funny how things change. When XP first arrived on the scene I’d recently just finished a Windows networking course. I was used to working with Windows 2000, 98 and NT4. XP, with its shiny new look and Fisher Price Start bar didn’t appeal to me, nor did the OS itself when I started using it. After Service Pack 2 things started to settle down and I began to appreciate its merits more and more.

The greatest improvement XP provided was its plug and play functionality. Back when I started off in the internet cafe business, my first business, the majority of client computers were still running Windows 98. Windows 98 SE was a lovely OS for its time but as technology moved on its shortcomings were becoming more and more apparent. At the time floppy discs were still the most common media but then every so often a customer would arrive with a USB stick or a digital camera and a good portion of time was wasted installing drivers, rebooting the computers and generally battling to get 98 to recognise the devices we all now take for granted. Simply being able to plug in a USB device and not have to muck around in device manager and reboot every two minutes was an enormous plus for XP.

I’ve been running XP myself for five years and can use it blindfolded. I’ve implemented numerous XP networks with ease and repaired countless XP systems in several languages including Polish, Russian, German, Norwegian, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic. Yes, Arabic; I know XP so well I can literally use it backwards. (more…)

The field of journalism and publishing in general has never really enjoyed a cosy relationship with the Internet. The Web, with its enormous user base, free content and open-ended architecture, where people can comment on content, and in some cases even edit existing content or create their own, is seen as an enormous threat to their business model.

One of the most vocal opponents of this is media baron Rupert Murdoch. Last year Murdoch announced that he would charge people to access online content from his large portfolio of publications, such as the Wall Street Journal Online, and that he firmly believed that people would be happy to pay for quality content.

(more…)

Although Google Instant doesn’t have any direct impact on SEO and search results, one thing that did occur to me when I first used it was how much it would exacerbate any bad publicity a person or company might have. Particularly now, when search engines are constantly monitoring content from highly active, up-to-the-minute social sites like Twitter, changes in suggested searches can be quite swift and can seem to come out of nowhere.

How to become Google’s number one “drunken moron”.

One recent and topical example is that of Ireland’s current leader (though indicators suggest not for very long) Brian Cowen. Ireland, whilst having a large diaspora throughout the world, is a small island nation of 4.2 million with limited global influence when compared with Britain or the United States. Those living outside the Emerald Isle probably would never have heard of Brian Cowen until a couple of weeks ago. So, if you don’t know who he is already, all you need know for this example is that he recently became the centre of controversy over whether or not he was drunk whilst appearing, incoherent and slurring his speech, on a nationally broadcast radio interview to discuss the economy. The result was an already abysmal approval rating, 18% in July 2010 [source] dropping further to 11% by the end of September [source] following the scandal.
(To compare, George W Bush’s lowest, the lowest of any US President, was a comparatively-high 19%.)

In other words, this was a political and public relations meltdown and it would be hard to imagine how it could be made any worse. Enter Google Instant.

Let’s imagine, in the above example, that I was searching for “Brian Cowen DCU speech”, but by the time I type in “Brian Cowen” I can already see the autosuggestion field with “Brian Cowen Drunk” and related queries, and when I type in the D that seals the deal and I get dozens of results automatically for “Brian Cowen Drunk” appearing in the main Google search results.

Now, as far as the world’s most popular search engine is concerned, the name Brian Cowen is permanently affixed to the word drunk and worse still, the search term has gone viral. Suddenly a man who, lets be honest, most of the world didn’t even know existed the week previous, became a viral phenomenon appearing on sites like the hugely popular tongue-in-cheek news aggregator Fark (playing the drunken Irish stereotype angle) as well as countless Tweets, blog posts and YouTube videos.

Now I might sound like I’m contradicting some of the points I made in my last post about Instant, having already said that generally people, when they have their minds set on finding a specific piece of information, are unlikely to get distracted when Google suggests something else. Thing is, if ever there was something that just might distract the searcher it’s a funny video or nice juicy scandal. And as for both rolled into one, well…

So, getting back to the DCU speech example, whilst the end result will invariably be that I’ll continue my search and eventually find the speech I was looking for, there’s a also very high chance it will be after I watch the parody YouTube video.

This should serve as a dire warning for anyone who still doubts the power of social media. Firstly, companies should be acutely aware of how much influence social media has on search engines in general and Google results in particular. Secondly, that it is these very trends which now also dictate much of the content in the mainstream media. Television is prime example. When stuck for material or content researchers will often go online to find out what is popular and “trending”. The result? The man hardly anybody outside Ireland ever heard of is now famous throughout America as a “drunken moron” thanks to Jay Leno.

Thus begins a vicious circle as the Jay Leno video appears on YouTube (a Google-owned company) and also goes viral. With millions searching for the video “Brian Cowen Jay Leno” becomes a top Instant search term shortly after, and the wheels of Cowen’s PR nightmare keep on turning.

Brian Cowen’s name currently appears top of all results on Google.ie for the term “drunken moron”. He appears on all but the last result on page one and continues to appear throughout the results, right up to page 63 out of 66 result pages. He also tops results on Google.co.uk and elsewhere. Now, knowing what we now do about Google’s Instant/autocomplete technology, we can predict a strong possibility that Google Instant will autosuggest the term “drunken moron” every time someone searches for the name “Brian Cowen” and display those results in real time.

It’s part of the Irish character to find incidents like this hilarious, even when, in fact especially when, they have potentially-disasterous consequences. Right now it’s not only make-or-break time for Ireland, but for Europe as a whole, and the ECB and the IMF are watching developments closely. Ireland, with a crippled economy and a dysfunctional banking system, has already had several negative bond rating readjustments and is desperately trying to assuage jittery foreign investors. Having a leader who dominates Google search results for the term “Drunken Moron” isn’t going to help matters. In other words, Google, and the web in general, has become instrumental in destruction of Cowen’s political career.

Reputation management for Businesses

For companies, rather than individuals, the issue becomes even more dangerous. It can be bad enough with autocomplete, whereby someone typing in searches for “Joe Bloggs” or “Acme Airlines” might see autosuggested terms like “Joe Bloggs scam” or “Acme Airlines ripoff” but now imagine the person can also see the results of those search terms and read their content in real time – not good.

Very few companies will ever experience the sort of PRmageddon that BP or Toyota did this year, but that doesn’t mean companies should ignore their online reputation. Signing up to Google Alerts is strongly recommend, so as to be notified of new content containing your name or the name of your company so you can be ready to stamp out any dangerous sparks before they become wildfires.

Of course, Instant or not, whatever’s out there, both the positive and the negative, people are going to find it anyway. And to reiterate the point I made last time regarding Instant and SEO, the search engine hasn’t changed and the information on it hasn’t changed, just the interface is changed, making it easier, and faster, for people to find that information.

Therefore the methods used to counter negative press online haven’t changed either; that is to proactively deal with negative press whilst continuing to build your search engine and local search footprint. The game is speeded up now, however, so your company will need to speed up too, or risk being overwhelmed by the web’s ever-changing landscape.

Brionglóid Media can help your company overcome these sorts of issues, as part of an ongoing web maintenance contract. We can help monitor review sites (e.g. Trip Advisor), Local search sites (i.e. Google Places, Bing Local), social networks, blogs, forums and other online communities and, if necessary, engage with customers on your company’s behalf to help mediate disputes or counter libellous claims against your business. We can also help you to diminish the Google search result ranking of articles or pages which may have negative implications for your company and replace them with more desirable articles and press releases, working to positively promote your business online. For more information please contact us today and we can begin an online PR campaign tailored to your specific needs.

It’s official, Yahoo are out of the search engine business.

Anyone now searching on Yahoo won’t really know the difference, but essentially all they’re using is a rebranded version of Bing.

As many of you may recall, Microsoft have been trying to get their mits on the web portal giant for years, five, by my count, with Microsoft once offering a whopping $46.6 billion US for the company, only to be rebuffed.

Then, last summer, Yahoo announced that it was getting out of search completely and turning over control of the search engine side of their business to Microsofts then-new Bing search engine. The deal would leave Yahoo as a completely independent entity albiet one which essentially oursources its search engine operation to Microsoft.

Yesterday it went live.

This is nothing new for Yahoo, who’ve had similar deals in the past, including a search alliance with Google. Traditionally Yahoo were always more interested in web directories and didn’t understand all the fuss about search engines. When one recalls the early days of search engines it’s easy to understand why. They were still a relatively new phenomenon and, until Google came on the scene, nobody had really cracked it.

Unlike so many others, Yahoo emerged from the Dotcom Crash intact, its market share bolstered by several aquisitions including search provider Inktomi, but by that time it was too late, Google were already leaps and bounds ahead of Yahoo in terms of search engine technology. Yahoo instead began to concentrate more on pay per click advertising and emerging social technologies, once again through aquisitions, such as photo sharing site Flickr and the social bookmarking site Delicious.

The Microsoft deal marks the end of an era for one of the search engine industry’s biggest players and leaves Microsoft now the second largest search engine though still far behind Google which presently enjoys over 70% market share. [source: search engine market share statistics]

Whether or not Bing can ever catch up with Google is unlikely. Though with new social rivals such as Facebook stealing Google’s thunder both in terms of traffic and ppc revenue they may want to rethink all those millions of little side projects they keep announcing and start to concentrating more on their bread and butter; pay per click advertising and search.

Multi-network Instant Messengers

Not too long ago instant messenging (IM) programs, also known as chat clients, where text is typed and shared in real time (along with emoticons) were ubiquitous and all the big web companies had one.

Microsoft’s MSN Messenger, later renamed Live Messenger, was perhaps the most popular, with Yahoo Messenger (YIM) a close second. These services were linked to Hotmail and Yahoo Mail respectively, however with the advent of Gmail, which offered far more in the way of storage and options, Hotmail and Yahoo both lost a lot of market share. Google later integrated its own Google Talk instant messenger program into the Gmail interface so that one could chat with contacts direct from their browser.

Another one-time big player in the IM market (and indeed the web as a whole) was AOL. AOL’s instant messenger, AIM, whilst also quite popular, suffered from a lot of controversy regarding its installation of a component called Viewpoint Media Player which many considered to be spyware.

Other popular instant messenger programs included ICQ, which was also once the property of AOL, and IRC, one of the oldest and also most popular messenging systems, albeit more so with the “geeky” end of the spectrum than with regular users. It was (and still is) highly popular with members of online communities such as the online gaming community.

Over the last ten years, however, use of instant messengers has diminished with the advent of social networks like Facebook and microblogging sites like Twitter, which allow for real time status updates, as well as other Web 2.0 collaborative platforms such as the excellent Google Wave.

With the advent of VOIP programs like Skype IM programs are nowadays more like hybrids allowing old-style instant messenging in conjunction with free, or low cost, Skype-style calls.

Whilst some companies actively discourage staff from using IM programs, because they don’t want their employees chatting when they should be working, many more are unable to function without them. Obvious examples of such businesses include web design and graphic design firms such as ourselves as well as project managers, writers, transcribers or translation service providers where being able to type to a person or persons in real time without having to pick up the phone provides massive time and money savings. Other applications include inbuilt web applets on company websites which allow customers to chat directly with company representatives, for example, to provide real-time technical support.

So, depending on the company type, instant messenging can provide many advantages to one’s company, and that’s not even including the advantages provided by cheap or free calls with inbuilt VOIP telephony. The only real issue is that with so many different platforms from various different, competing companies, it’s all too possible that the person you want to talk to is using a different program than you are. Installing and running seven different IM platforms is not only impractical it would also slow down your computer, and your productivity, dramatically. Thankfully there are programs out there that allow you to use the one program to access all major chat networks simultaneously and best of all, these programs are also completely free.

(Note: to use these you will still need to set up accounts with the various companies, i.e. you will still need to set up an MSN account, a Yahoo account, a Google account and so forth. You just won’t need to download and install all their IM programs.)

Trillian is a lovely little program for Windows, Mac and mobiles, including the iPhone and Blackberry. It allows you to chat with all major clients, such as MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo and AIM, and, depending on your system, is also compatible with Skype as well as Twitter and the instant messenging features of Facebook and Myspace. This is a great all-rounder program, especially because it’s mobile. Plus, what other instant messenger out lets you send an animated octopus as an emoticon?

Pidgin, formerly known as GAIM, is an open source multi-platform instant messenging system available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It is compatible with all major IM platforms including MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, AIM, ICQ, IRC and other programs such as the popular Polish chat client Gadu-Gadu. Because GAIM is open source it means that it’s constantly being developed and so a number of GAIM plugins exist that add compatibility with Skype, Facebook IM, Twitter and pretty much any other platform you can think of.

Free Alternative to Winzip and Winrar

Yes, technically, Winzip and Winrar are not free. They are what is often referred to as nagware. Software that nags you to upgrade to the pro version every time you use it, in the expectation that you will eventually do as you’re told – expect away, because…

7 Zip is an open source archiver program that’s free to download and use, with great superior compression and compatibility with other formats such as .zip and .rar files. Highly recommended.

Download older versions of software

Finally, to wrap this up, I thought I’d mention a favourite website of mine called Old Version.com.
This site, as it name suggests, allows you to download older versions of a large variety of different software programs, such media players, instant messengers, security programs, utilities, etc. This is a good idea for a number of reasons, perhaps because you upgraded to the latest software version before the bugs were sorted out and need to go back. (I find this tends to happen a lot when the makers of one of my favourite programs gets bought out by a larger company.)

Maybe there is some other compatibility issue, for example you are running an older operating system with which the latest version of the software is not compatible. Often, new software also means an increase in its footprint whereas older versions won’t use up so much system resources. Or perhaps, like me, you often don’t like the direction your favourite program has taken over the years and you don’t like all the extra options and superfluous capabilities. Instead you yearn for a simpler time before the bells and whistles and shiny new interface, when the program just done one thing and done it well and just shut up about it and let you get on with it. And I’m sure we’ve all come across a program which made us feel like that.

So, anyway, that’s it for now and that’s the end of this series, though I will, of course, continue to add new free software posts as time continues. If anyone would like to suggest any other free software programs or make suggestions for future post ideas feel free to comment below.

In today’s world protecting your privacy, security and your confidential and financial data is paramount.

Many computers come off the shelf with trial periods of major brand anti-virus suites installed, usually McAffee or Norton. These software suites may offer a degree of protection however once the trial period expires they tend to not just merely nag you, but try to actively terrify you into buying the full version.

It’s enough to make you afraid to get out of bed in the morning.

Thing is there are many antivirus programs out there which don’t cost a thing and, in many cases, offer superior protection to boot. (more…)

Last time we talked about Free Alternatives to Microsoft Office. Following on from that we’re now going to take a look at two more productivity suites, Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Photoshop.

Free Alternatives to Adobe Acrobat

I’ve never much liked Acrobat Reader. I’ve found it slows systems to a crawl, especially on startup, nags you for endless updates and is constantly crashing browsers, printers and causing systems to freeze.

Imagine my delight when a friend of mine – who had previously been having a seemingly endless nightmare involving 20-odd XP machines running Acrobat 7 printing to a Canon copier and crashing on print each time – introduced me to the answer to all his, and my, prayers.

Foxit Reader is free to download and use, it’s as light as a feather and does exactly what it says on the tin, opens PDF files – no more, no less.

Maybe it’s just me, because I love this product so much, but it also seems to me that Foxit actually renders PDFs better and sharper than Acrobat does.

Cute PDF Writer, meanwhile, is a free PDF printer, very handy for if you want to convert files or documents of any sort to PDF.

Free Alternatives to Adobe Photoshop

The Gimp is a free, open source program for editing photos and images. Whilst being called “The Gimp” isn’t exactly a compliment where I come from, this program is actually quite cool. It might not be a Photoshop beater, but it certainly comes quite close. The inbuilt GIF animation function is also ideal for those seeking to create banners and animations in GIF format rather than Flash.

Aviary is free, web-based creative suite. The suite is an offshoot project of Worth 1000, a popular Photoshop contest website (with some amazing graphic work on show). Each of the different applications all have (somewhat Mozilla-like) bird-themed names, such as Phoenix, its own graphic editor, Raven, the online vector graphic editor and Myna, for editing audio tracks. Other projects include an upcoming Word Processor (could this be another Microsoft Office competitor?) and a video editor called Starling. The latter, in particular, intrigues me.

Coming next, some great free antivirus and anti-spyware programs.

Many people still don’t know that, for every paid software solution they might consider, there’s always an open source or freeware alternative that, in many cases, is far superior.

When the price is zero it’s always a great incentive to try something new but don’t think that the applications listed here are somehow inferior just because they’re free. In many cases these applications offer far more options, far more protection and far more freedom of use than their paid counterparts and take up far less system resources too.

So without further ado, let me kick off my free software series with…

Free Alternatives to Microsoft Office

Generally if you buy a new PC with Windows it will be bundled with a copy of Microsoft Works. Works, however, saves its files in a completely different format to Office and so can be a hassle when you want to share your documents with others. Frustrated by this drawback most people generally give up and buy Microsoft Office not knowing that there are other alternatives that can allow you to edit and save Office compatible files without handing out huge wads of cash to Microsoft.

Open Office is among the most commonly used alternatives to Microsoft Office with its own versions of Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux systems, in a variety of languages, and even gives you the choice of having either a US or British English version, which I think is really spiffy. In addition, as of version 3.0, Open Office is also compatible with proprietary Office 2007 files (.docx, .xlsx, etc).

With the ability to be installed on all major operating systems and full compatibility with Office 2007 but no licence costs, Open Office is the ideal solution for multi-platform offices or any organisation looking to keep costs down.

Google Docs is operating system independent. It is not a program but a series of web-based services that perform the same functions as any standard office suite, except that instead of being installed on your hard drive, all the documents are hosted from Google’s data centres with all interaction through your browser.

Google Docs is therefore a perfect example of cloud computing, a term which has become something of an industry buzzword of late but is in reality a concept almost as old as computing itself, that of large servers or mainframes hosting all the files and software for so-called “dumb-terminals”.

The only real limitation with Google Docs is browser compatibility, though this isn’t really an issue with modern browsers like Firefox, Opera or Chrome, as well as Internet Explorer 7 and 8. As of March of this year, however, Google has dropped support for Internet Explorer 6 entirely so Docs won’t work on older systems such as Windows 2000. (more…)