Anyone can start up a free Twitter account from http://www.twitter.com and can register from the home page. Registration is easy: the fields required for initial setup are:
Some months ago, Google announced that there would be no more private profiles in Google. It was around the time when rumours of Google+ started leaking out in the form of Circles.
Here is the wording (emphasis mine): Continue reading
I work mostly with large corporate websites and know that they are managed by numerous people, all with varying degrees of knowledge and care about the big picture. Hence they break all the time.
I usually choose Singapore Airlines (SQ) when travelling to Asia. Being a former frequent flyer, I don’t visit Flyertalk.com much these days, but I took a peek and found the current thread about SQ’s new website:
New singaporeair.com website issues
Hmm. It’s the first time I have come across a travel site with such a dominating calendar on the home page. There isn’t much information there until you click through to other pages. I trust they had good reason to change to a minimalist theme.
An ad for the BMW X1 caught my eye and I clicked through to BMW Australia — actually its ad landing page.
The price might sound high for the US or UK, but is what we have learnt to accept as “low” in Australia for this brand. So how would you explore this site?
Do you click the links on the left — the car or Build your BMW? You might, but I had noted the important words “no optional extras” for this price. So I thought I could find a page listing this model and all its features. Continue reading
I saw a retweet of this tweet by @codelust:
I don’t want to focus on the Indian tweeter, who later tweeted that he quit Facebook in 2010, but it got me thinking again about Foursquare. A few people I know who are active on Twitter and FB don’t bother with Foursquare. Continue reading
Did you know that you could check your YouTube video speed history, comparing your ISP with other states, country and the world? In the graph below, my ISP NetSpace (now part of iiNet) is the yellow line that’s going south. 
LinkedIn Labs has released a tool called LinkedIn Connection Timeline that enables us to view our connections over a time period.
In the last two years I wrote about online directories and real estate websites in the US. For a change I decided to look at Asian sites. So, I have just published a report on the Search Visibility of Singapore Banks in 2011 and it is available for download without needing to supply your email address or your first-born.
Why Singapore? Because it is small and has a small number of banks in a small geographic area. Why banks and not pizza shops? Mainly because I have specialised in banking websites in Australia for the past year.
Summary of findings: Continue reading
If you own an Apple iPhone 3GS, iPad etc, the latest update of the iOS operating system version 4.3 comes with a personal hotspot for Internet connectivity. This has killed the market for personal hotspot gadgets, currently costing around $200 from Vodafone, Huawei and so on.
A personal hotspot enables you to connect a computer or tablet to the Internet via a cable, WiFi or BlueTooth. The device used to have its own SIM, thus requiring you to buy a second plan, but the advantage is that you can share up to five devices at a time. Continue reading
The CAPTCHA project is a worthy initiative from the Carnegie Mellon University and is commonly found on forms to reduce bot spam and exploits. I was reading an article at NAB’s Money Basics site and happened to notice the CAPTCHA text below the comment form:
While going through my unopened email from last month, the following text caught my eye:
You have received an infraction at SEO Best Practices Search Engine Forums.
Reason: Multiple Spammer
This infraction is worth 50 point(s) and may result in restricted access until it expires. Serious infractions will never expire.
All the best,
SEO Best Practices Search Engine Forums
Again, please do not reply to this email. You must go to the following page to reply to this private message:
http://www.ihelpyou.com/forums/private.php
Early last August I wrote to Foursquare support:
Recently, I spent two weeks in Orlando and its environs. At Cape Canaveral, while standing in front of a tour bus at the bus stand, I was told that I was too far from @Tour Bus @Kennedy Space Center. I took a photo of this message with a parked bus behind it. The bus tour covers a few miles and I tried to check in at a few places. I was finally accepted when the bus was about to enter the main visitor complex, i.e. a few hundred feet from the stop. It seems that whoever created the venue started typing once the bus was under way. Perhaps these moving venues should not be allowed. Continue reading
