Category: Technical Discussions

November 18, 2014 / Technical Discussions

I’ve used Xenu for years – probably as long as I’ve been coding websites – and it’s been around longer than that. You’ll see from the website that it’s incredibly old school, but sometimes the tried and tested tools are the ones you should stick with.

I’ve just helped a friend merge two sites together and we’ve used mysql to change some of the internal links but there’s still a chance that some might have been missed. Xenu will let him know what the state of play is.

November 9, 2014 / Technical Discussions


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Lots of small companies don’t get it right with their websites and, to a certain extent, that’s ok because their focus  is on their core business.

Pump – the makers of plastic bottles they fill with water – are owned by Coca Cola Amatil and, it could be argued, they are an enormous marketing machine whose product costs less than the packaging, distribution and marketing do.

Being part of Coca Cola there’s the expectation that they will do marketing well, really well. So I was really surprised at this little snafu. Surely the company has guidelines for different types of marketing activity – or a template of tried and true steps. I know they’ve done this kind of thing before in NZ, surely they have in other countries too?! Don’t they share their knowledge within the company?

October 2, 2014 / Technical Discussions

I love social login and use it frequently on sites where I want to comment or buy something. I’m a bit choosy about when I use Google, Facebook or opt to create an account using just my email.

Digitalpoint forces new users from certain countries to use Facebook to create their accounts – figuring that by adding a step it’s that little bit harder for spammers and scammers. It’s an interesting idea but it’s hard to say it’s working.

Take the Rita’s for example.

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