Author: Sarah King

This is my website.

September 17, 2014 / Technical Discussions

There has been so much noise in the NZ media about surveillance, the GCSB and NSA and what is or isn’t being done.

Seriously? 28k searches in a month?
Seriously? 28k searches in a month?

In the meantime we are all blindly using the internet with no real thoughts about keeping ourselves safe. I don’t use secure email and I only know one person who does. I don’t use anonymous browsing, I’m always logged in to Google – and it can give me some scary stats about my own internet use. There wasn’t even 1 day in August where I didn’t search for a thing?

How many of us really understand how the Internet works – or give a thought to the mechanics of it all? We pay our ISP and magically we can connect with computers all over the world to get information. We are more realistic about how websites pay for themselves and somehow teens talking about makeup become YouTube sensations and earn not just a living but a fortune.

Lets take a typical web request to facebook – most of us have accounts and use it.

August 12, 2014 / Technical Discussions
July 13, 2014 / Technical Discussions
June 27, 2014 / Technical Discussions

I got a bit sidetracked by an NZ Herald on passwords: Tired of passwords? You aren’t alone. I find myself in both camps, both the user of passwords and the enforcer of rules. The self loathing as I had to type up the error message “Please use at least one upper case character” into my script.

The article itself was nothing particularly new and as the cost of automated SMS messages drops we’ll find reputable websites start sending us one use codes instead of relying on us to remember passwords – just don’t lose your phone or leave it in another room or you’ll be scrambling.

June 21, 2014 / Technical Discussions
June 4, 2014 / Technical Discussions

I have all my main email addresses listed as alternates on my account page. It makes sense to me and I’m happy for Google to have that information about me.

google-calendarIt’s been a source of irritation, though, that Google haven’t recognised those other emails when used within their apps such as Analytics and Calendar.

February 7, 2014 / Social Media

I recently had a really interesting experience with facebook. I made a post on a company’s facebook page that was, perhaps, incendiary, the other party certainly thought so and took an extremely heavy handed approach. I’d tried to word my post so that a positive spin could be taken – I wanted the company to come out smelling of roses, that would have been a win-win.

January 17, 2014 / Search Engine Optimisation

Content Spinners have been around for a long time now, some are very sophisticated and some are like blunt force instruments. Put one in the hands of someone who is ESL and it all falls to pieces.

spun-contentIn my example the “writer” is Indian – and the level of English literacy coming out of that nation is usually very good. Not in the case of ashokdhan, sadly.

Ashok appears to have consulted a thesaurus and discovered that where the original document might say:

I confess to spending lots of my time with purchasers fixing technical problems