Jezweb Australian Website Design

Be careful of this one. It's another cleverly crafted scam from overseas that will try and get you to pay big dollars for something you don't need.

The emails look something like this:

Dear CEO & Manager,We are a domain name registration center in Hong Kong, mainly dealing with domain name registration and internet intellectual property rights protection. On May 31,2009 we received a formal application from a company who is applying to register several domains, using “banaz ”as the Internet keyword. After investigation,we find that you are the original user of the keyword. Such similar domain cases may involve your trademark and company name,and may cause website confusion and conflicts. For a responsible attitude, we inform you here and ask for your opinion. If you don't mind,we will finish registration for the third company.Look forward to your reply.Cairns chenTel: +852-31757930?ext.8015?Fax: +852-31757932

Dodgy rubbish. I bet they fool enough people to make it worth their while too. There are lots of other examples of this on various sites on the net.

Part of the government stimulus was an extra tax deduction on equipment purchases for small business. Small businesses entities can claim the 50% deduction for investments in eligible assets of $1,000 or more. For example: A clothing store that buys and installs a $1,200 computer this year  will be eligible to claim a $600 bonus deduction (being 50 per cent of $1,200) in the 2008?09 income tax return.

There are details here: http://tinyurl.com/50percent

If you are interested in getting a custom built new computer email: mail@jezweb.com.au

https://services.google.com/fb/forms/stimulusoffer/

$75 worth of google adwords to try out. That is a likely bonus of around 100 - 200 visitors to your website.

I've received reports of an increasing number of Australian businesses receiving letters in the post from Domain Registry of America. It's a wrought and a scam, complete BS. If you read the fine print the letter they send is an advertisement. The letter looks like an invoice at first glance and I've had a few people already lose over $200 by sending off a cheque for what they thought was a domain name renewal.

The letters make it look like the come from somewhere in Melbourne but there's no real office or phone line in Australia. The whole scam is run from overseas. They try to instill fear in the reader that they are about to lose their domain name, which is untrue but they word it cleverly to ensure they can't be caught lying. The company and it's owner have been in court already in the USA about this practice but it's hard to legally stop them. It's like writing to someone in a serious way saying, you're having a birthday, and you are but it's in 9 months!

The letters usually say something like:

“You must renew your domain name to retain exclusive rights to it on the Web, and now is the time to transfer and renew your name from your current Registrar to the Domain Registry of America. Failure to renew your domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online identify…”

There is some more info and examples here:

http://blog.forret.com/2004/12/domain-registry-of-america-scam/

I know it can be hard to prioritise website building. I have to be quite deliberate in setting aside time to work on my own sites. It’s the juggle between what pays the bills now and what investment is made for the future. A little anecdote I would like to share. We recently completed www.radiatorservice.com.au . We had the design prepared about 18 months ago, first started discussing the website almost 3 years ago. At the end of 2008 I got frustrated with the lack of progress and I wrote up the wording for the pages and sent it to Richard the business owner for review, correction and additions. A few months later he did just that and within the first 2 months of the site being online he is already getting a few quotes a week, from motorbike radiators worth a few hundred dollars to truck radiators worth up to $10,000. If it was the middle of summer it might not be so important but winter is quiet for radiators and so he is very surprised and pleased that the website is already becoming an important marketing tool.

Watched the Tasman trip bio of Andrew McAuley on ABC, very moving. I'd only met him once, briefly, while helping with test runs of a snow kite sled in the Australian Alps, filmed by Catalyst with Lachlan, Ben and others. Andrew was a strong, sensible, robust man, an experienced adventurer. Braver than most, he faced a pinacle of adversity. The ocean can be a very unforgiving vast expanse of punishing conditions. He was doing something that challenged to the extreme, he was so close to an exhausted finish and he went down. He made it, within visual reference of the NZ coastline.

Spam, there really doesn't seem to be any benefit to it for the majority of the population. McAfee has produced a report that describes study indicated that the annual energy output used to transmit, process and filter spam totaled 33 billion kilowatt-hours -- the equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million homes. Meanwhile, the effects of spam amounted to the same greenhouse gas emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars running on 2 billion gallons of gasoline.

There are lots of servers and processing that goes on at internet providers and on home computers to weed out spam. It would be fantastic if there was no spam but that does not seem very possible given the way email currently works and the distributed nature of the internet and the number of computers that get infected every day with malicious software that can take control of a machine and use it to send out spam.

Trying out a few different sound clips and some photos from clients websites to see how well this works.

Photos from Lake Escape lodge...

And these are from the hunter pools site

This is possibly the most exciting new tool for adding content to websites that I have discovered this year.

www.animoto.com

I've put a clip up on the www.newcastleinfotech.com.au homepage as a demo.

Sunny day, mostly nice roads. Traffic was ok. Being a much shorter day we were in Grafton around midday so its been quite relaxing. We're sharing lunch with the dragon boat club. I'd really like to have dry shoes again, and socks. Everything else is great, just not fussed on having hot wet feet all day.

A lot of undulating hills all the way into Grafton. Much better than riding into a headwind in the rain. Off to enjoy an afternoon by the river now.

We've had heavy rain, belting sunlight and gentle drizzle. A bit of everything. The stretch through Coffs was probably the best, lots of hills to challenge and long sweeping downhills plus it was mostly sunny for that half hour period.

Staying at a friends holiday house in Red Rock. A quiet seaside town half way between Coffs and Grafton. Reminds me of what Hawks Nest was 15 years ago.

The pain of riding was similar to previous days, still have a tingling sensation in my outer 2 fingers on each hand and knees are a bit puffy. Considering that I don't normally ask my body to accommodate this sort of exercise regime I'm feeling pretty healthy.

After having cars and semi trailers roaring past us all day on the highway the 5km stretch of quiet suburban roads into Red Rock was something tranquil and relaxing. It rained heavily and whilst you might think that would be the last thing we wanted after a 60km ride it was really refreshing. It washed the days road grime off and the lack of traffic, the peace, it was an excellent conclusion to the day.

Off to Grafton tomorrow and then Ballina on sunday.

Rain, lots of rain. All the way from port macquarie to kempsey, not constantly heavy rain but frequent and at times drenching. Once you're wet though it really doesnt matter that much. Haven't bothered with raincoats for the trip. The skinz dry out fairy well once the weather clears up.

Dan bailed on the ride today, decided he'd rather be at home so it's Chris and I for now until Qld. Today was a bike leg, from Port Macquarie to Valla (north of Nambucca Heads), about 120km. Next few days will be smaller ride distances; Red Rock, Grafton.

Quite a few aches and sore spots but that's to be expected given that we're spending so long on the bikes. So different to be out on the road all day rather than dashing around town fixing things. Although the riding is physically demanding and hard work it's really head clearing. It's a good reminder of how hard it is to travel distance when you don't have a car. I've gone from the mindset of being in a car and going anywhere quickly but still thinking it takes too long. The past few days it's more thoughts of, do we have to do the next 5km, could we avoid this hill, how blissful it is to go downhill. Stuff that you really don't consider when driving.