John Behan – Web Consultant

Blogging for the New Year Part 2 – What to blog about?

This leads on from the previous article about why to blog. Once we’ve answered that question we next need to figure out what to blog about.

It’s very important to define this before you start writing your blog.

Knowing exactly what you’re going to blog about it an important part of starting a blog. You might say, “I know exactly what I want to blog about – Film!”. But that’s not enough. Film is a very broad topic. You need to really narrow down the area within Film that you want to blog about.

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Blogging for the New Year Part 1 – Why Blog?

New year’s resolutions are all well and good in the afterglow of the silly season but despite our best efforts these major life changes are rarely followed through on.

I’m as guilty as the next person when it comes to making unrealistic promises to myself. Guilt. How familiar is that guilty feeling when you see the unused gym bag gathering dust in the corner or have just one more biscuit with your mid-morning cup of tea?

Enough pessimism! After all it’s a new year, possibilities are limitless!

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Happy New Year 2010

Happy New Year to all my readers for 2010.

I hope 2009 was good to you and 2010 will be as good and hopefully better.

One of my resolution’s for 2010 is to blog regularly, at least once a week. We’ll see how I get on.

Last year I resolved to get fit, I don’t know how I got on with that, but I’m definitely fitter now than 12 months ago. Daily sessions in the gym and a cutback in beer has seen me lose almost 3 stone. Now how do I turn the effort I put in at becoming a “gym monkey” into becoming a regular blogger?

Over the next week I want to look at – “Getting Started with Blogging”.

I say “Getting Started” because, even though I actually started this blog some time ago, I don’t feel as if I ever really started blogging properly. That is to say I don’t blog regularly. But that’s all about to change.

Over the course of this series of articles I’m going to look at -

1. Reasons for Blogging
2. What to Blog
3. When to Blog
4. Measuring Success

The new year is three days old already – time for some action!

The BBC iPlayer goes to 11

While watching the enthralling Roy Keane Interview on the BBC site (includes the classic mobile phone-gate! but, alas, there’s no FAI rant included in this one) I noticed something of interest.

The BBC’s iPlayer volume control goes to 11! – (ref – This Is Spinal Tap)

Roy Keane as we know and love him

Brilliant! I hope that wasn’t designed but some programmer late at night having a little laugh!

You can hear the rest of Roy Keane Interview on Youtube. The man speaks a lot of truth. Gut-wrenching – “You may laugh, that was the World Cup!”

Customer Relationship Management

I’ve been looking into setting up some kind of Customer Relationship Management(CRM) workflow for my business.

There are lots of options out there.

Salesforce is the leading online solution, but it’s overkill for what I need. As is the free, open-source SugarCRM
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Pirated Software Crackdown in Thailand

In the past week Thai Police have raided businesses for software piracy.

Many businesses have had equipment confiscated and received large fines.

This is a bit of a problem for many as the cost of legitimate software in the country is quite high in comparison to average wages.
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Password Security

My mother has recently started to shop online and has signed up for Paypal. Naturally security is a concern, so I helped her setup a strong password for her account.

The problem with a strong password is that by its very nature it is designed to be difficult to guess. But that also has the unwanted consequence of being easy to forget.
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AIB Scam Emails

I’ve been getting several unusual emails from AIB in the past few weeks.

Unlike many of these email scams the AIB emails are well written, and seem genuine as they come from an aib.ie email account.

The first two were about “unauthorized” access to my online banking account. The giveaway was the American spelling in an email from an Irish bank!
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10 reasons to love Google

I love Google.

There. I said it. One time Google was my friend but lately it has become more than that – I just don’t know what I’d do without it!

I don’t think I’m alone, and today I hope to show you 10 reasons to love Google. Or at least get to like it very much. From their Search Engine to Maps, I use Google all the time, everyday. Here are ten of the Google services and apps that I use regularly.
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Twitter’s Top Users

I came across this link the other day – Top Twitter User Rankings & Stats. It lists the top 100 twitter users, ordered by the number of followers they have.

Most of these seem to be celebrities, though I haven’t done a close read of it.

Amazingly, Ashton Kutcher is number one! The mind boggles. Demi Moore aka MrsKutcher comes in at 12. Poor Bruce doesn’t make it into the top 100.

Top Twits

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