Introducing Google Chrome - Google's own browser!
Google hits the next phase in owning the entire web, by releasing their own browser called Chrome. You can get it at http://www.google.com/chrome/ and you can find out everything you need to know about it at ...
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DRM on afr.com
A colleague of mine sent me this link to the Australian Financial Review website. He said they use some Digital Rights Management (DRM) trickery to prevent anybody from copying the story. I thought at first they were just using some script to try and ...
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Face off against competitors with Web Site Grader
This is such a great tool for website SEO (search engine optimisation) that I had to post some more info about it: www.websitegrader.com You can get a great overview on your site's search engine ranking taking into account several factors. Better ...
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Working too hard leads to virus?
Last week while we were investigating the impact of the ASPRox botnet, I visited an infected site. Refusing all prompts and messages caused by the site, I thought everything was fine. It wasn't, and being too busy was probably the issue. Lets say ...
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Cybercrime alert
We sent this email out to customers as most of them don't follow security trends on the Internet. We have posted it here with links to the sites we refer to: We're writing this very plain email without any links to warn people of the current high ...
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Technorati Post Claim!
Just doing some SEO work on the cws site and have setup a Technorati Profile to allow their spiders to crawl our blogs! This site has also been added to the yahoo directory, ZoomInfo and DMOZ! ...
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MSN is not messenger!
When ever I mention the fact that I used to work for MSN, people always go oh I love that program! (meaning msn messenger the internet messenger client). Its funny how branding works and they way people see things. My little brother just msn'ed me ...
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PhatCMS 3.0 Upgrade!
Again appologies to all my subscribers for not blogging for a while, I have been very busy with a major build, details will be released very shorty - very exciting stuff! The last week or so I have upgraded custom web solution's website to PhatCMS 3.0 ...
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Mr Wong, Mr Wong, I lost all my base!
Social bookmarking site (lol) Mister Wong looks hacked just now, it wants to install MSXML 5.0, a typical hack deployed on many compromised websites. Quite amazing that a site which is "one of the leading social bookmarking services with portals in ...
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Caroline Buchanan World #5
Last weekend our friend Caroline Buchanan achieved 5th place in the World Mountain Bike Championships in 4X, and 5th in Junior Women Downhill. Downhill is pretty obvious, you race a mountain bike down a hill, but a lot of people don't know what 4X (Four ...
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What we've been up to...
Well it's been so busy lately and that means less blogs. Drew has been flat out on a new project involving streaming video and advertising, stay tuned for that one. Meanwhile I've been busy working on some smaller projects and PhatCMS 3. Here's a quick ...
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Setting Up PayPal Sandbox
I had a fair bit of trouble getting the sandbox setup properly for paypal so I thought I would put some steps down to make it a bit more easier for anyone just getting started with setting up the pay pal sandbox. 1 - Go to https://developer.paypal.com/ ...
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Day at the track!
I have been out of action motorsport wize for a while because I perforated a disk 18 months ago, but its getting a lot better. Today was its first real test, I did a 3 hour mini GP at http://www.easterncreekkarts.com.au/ with their corporate karts. The ...
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Search our site with MSN Live Search
MSN and Windows Live has got another cool service that you can link into that I've seen on a few sites, a dynamic Live Search box on your web site. It took us only a few minutes to create the one you see below, but we'll see if it works without using a ...
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SEO - Why aren't we ranked first in Google?
I've had three customers contact me this week to ask why they aren't first on Google so it prompted me to write a blog entry. The customers have had other people who are "Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) experts" telling them they need some SEO ...
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rFactor - Best computer game ever
I love car racing games, and they sure cost a lot less than real racing. About a year ago our own Drew McPhee put me onto a game called rFactor, which is a SIM (Simulator) Car Racing game. The thing about this game first up is that it's very realistic. ...
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Printer Dilemma
A little while back we had to print off some documents, we don't print as much as most businesses, but we do keep some paper records and we have to send out physical mail from time to time. We have two printers, both have been playing up lately so we ...
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PhatCMS 2.3 Released!
The new version of phat has just been released, here are some new features.... Further error trapping on key cart and admin functions Mailer Tweaks and streamlining Feature catalogue item on homepage module Content and cart ...
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ASP.Net XML Web Chat
One of the cool things you can do with ASP.Net is a method called a callback. Basically it will allow you to retrieve data from the server without refreshing the page in a similar fashion to AJAX which I wrote about in a blog in 2005. ASP.Net now ...
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Free XHTML and CSS Template?
We developed a basic template for people who want to learn how to code by hand, and to have a compliant CSS and XHTML 1.1 template for ourselves. You can see it in action and download it here, and use it freely. Please feel free to drop a comment on this ...
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PhatCMS with Google and MSN Maps
After working on a solution to be able to provide a single map for a site, we sent out this newsletter about the offering to our clients. A couple of clients took us up on the offer, we can still provide this service to anybody. We then had a client ...
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Check out the craters!
My friend David was so happy that I posted his lunar eclipse pic on the blog, but he was still sure he could do a better job. A bit of reading and he managed the pic below, click for a larger version. On the large version you can just about see the moon ...
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Awesome Lunar Eclipse
Last night Australians were treated to a great lunar eclipse, as reported on many news sites including this story on ABC News. We had a brilliant view here in Canberra and saw the whole thing as it happened from about 7PM onwards. I tried to take a ...
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Rain is good
I'm out of the office right now at a clients site and we're delayed because of rain. The client has an operation manufacturing retaining wall systems called Wallmaster, and with the rain came a late delivery here at their display and manufacturing yard. ...
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New CWS sites
We've been working on several new sites lately and the scope shows what we cover as far as different industries, size of business and the solution provided. We recently released a new site for the Mental Health Foundation ACT using PhatCMS for the site ...
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Lake Monduran via Google Earth
My dad called sent me an IM the other day asking about Google Earth, he's been fishing lately at a place called Lake Monduran. We used to go fishing a fair bit when I was a kid, but I've probably only been fishing 5 times in the last 10 years. It was ...
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PhatCMS 2.1 rolled out!
Been a while since I've blogged, sorry I have been busy with a major PhatCMS update! As well as some bug fixes, we have worked in quite a few changes based on usability and feedback from our clients and user base. Some of the new features include: ...
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The bad with the good
What a week it's been. On Sunday we had an attack on our hosting server via an unpatched vulnerability in our email software. While it only resulted in under half an hour of downtime in total, it took us over 1 day to eradicate completely and ensure ...
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New PhatCMS Help Files etc
We are getting very close to a full release of our flagship product PhatCMS, we are just tyding up the loose ends now with some new documentation. If you are interested in PhatCMS the 2 overview demonstrations will take you on a guided tour of PhatCMS ...
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Happy New Year!
First blog of 2007, may it be a good year for all! We have been very busy last year finishing off our flagship product, PhatCMS, a total small business online solution. Not only does PhatCMS let you build and manage your own website content, you can ...
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PhatCMS 2.0.0.1 hits the streets
After 1 hard long year of development, PhatCMS 2.0.0.1 is a reality and has 95% of the features we ever had planned for it, and then some others we hadn't planned. Recently we have added: Module: Event registration system - Allows event ...
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New server is online
Our new server is finally up after a long night. We had intended to move servers last week but due to a back injury keeping Drew off work we were delayed. Last night when we finally migrated everything at around 2:30 AM the new server disappeared! We ...
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New Alienspeaking Site utilises PhatCMS!
We have rolled out our first phatCMS installation on the new server, blinding fast, so check out our bands site at: http://www.alienspeaking.com Drew Scotty [203.22.237.23] commented on Friday, 15 December 2006: Even faster when we put ...
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Worst Spam Ever!
I just got this spam, and i declare it the worst, most useless spam ever! Keyword gibberish, but quite funny at the same time! message from: charges keep message subject: cached reference images which message body: said quotI will Given openly ...
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Super speedy server
We've hosted in the USA for a number of years now, due to the competitive rates, and the great service we get from our provider there. We're happy to announce that we have now moved to a data center in Sydney and the speed increase is fantastic. We're ...
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New CMS Product nearly ready to roll
After about 5 months of development, we are nearly in the final testing phase to release our new PhatCMS .net site tool. We have had our heads down and bums up over those last 5 months, so we have not had a chance to blog much in that time, my ...
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Eyes on the prize
We've never entered a competition for web sites before, most are judged on the number of visits they receive or other criteria such as design, use of multimedia, popular votes and so on. The McFarlane Prize however is a little different:"While there ...
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The Top 10 Worst Company URLs
Everyone knows that if you are going to operate a business in today's world you need a domain name. It is advisable to look at the domain name selected as others see it and not just as you think it looks. Failure to do this may result in situations ...
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WebShell.Net 1.0 Beta XHTML Valid
It's been a long hard slog but finally we have got our ASP.Net 2.0 WebShell XHTML Valid, using the CSS Adapters for ASP.Net 2.0 Controls. We now also have it working in all popular browsers, including: Internet Explorer Mozilla based ...
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ASP.Net vs. Classic ASP performance
One of our customers sent us a query today regarding speed of their new site which uses our new ASP.Net WebShell. They had a problem with page load times, and on face value it appeared correct. How could one of our Classic ASP sites appear faster than ...
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Customer Portfolio Update
I just added a few of our new customers to both the litesite and webshell customer pages, so check our our new clients and their funky new sites! We have been very busy the last couple of months developing our products to use the new microsoft .net ...
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Phone banking any more secure than internet banking?
I just got a crossed line phone call that was a bit strange....seems it was somebody trying to ring a certain Australian banks customer service line. I heard the beeping of their phones keypad as they keyed in the required response to get through the ...
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Input peripherals a thing of the past?
Touch screens are nothing new, but over recent years several new applications have been developed. The first one I saw quite some time ago is called Audiopad. In the results for Audiopad I also came up with an article: "Survey of Artists Working ...
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Holiday Happenings
Things had been quiet work wise at CWS headquarters leading up to the holidays. We all had a bit of break over the holiday period and refreshed our heads for the new year. The CWS home offices received an upgrade, and we now have more room to move due ...
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.neting and stuff
Sorry for lack of posts, been off the air getting my head around asp.net 2.0. We are doing a .net version of our webshell to help us learn how it all works and so far its going along quite nicely, thank you very much...It's all quite exciting for us ...
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Dot net vs PHP/Postgre SQL
Both these technologies are gaining momentum, and people are considering the cost benefits of Open Source software. In a recent post I mentioned Wikipedia, which has recently been in the news for being a bit too open, so it is not really being considered ...
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RSS and the worlds first computer game
XML & RSS is such a huge part of the Internet these days. I installed Google Desktop today and it has a little SideBar which is a little like Konfabulator. It has a built in news feed from Google News and I happened upon a story at the SlashDot games ...
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Tracking RSS Feeds
Measuring and tracking RSS feeds while a fairly simple concept, is really anything but. Unlike websites, RSS have the added caveat of potential syndication, making accurate tracking a challenge to anyone but the extremely tech savvy. It is not ...
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The Telecommuting Revolution
Prolific blog posting has not been happening a lot lately from me, as I've been busily building a new and better mySWiSHzone. This site is the support site for SWiSHzone.com, an Australian software vendor who we do work for. SWiSHzone is a case study in ...
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Crime Fighting Blogs
If you thought that no one is reading your Blog, think again! From the SMH - "THE CIA now has its own bloggers. In a bow to the rise of internet-era secrets hidden in plain view, the agency has started hosting weblogs with the latest information on ...
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Web Apps on AJAX
The latest buzz around the Web Development Industry is AJAX which sounds like a cleaning product but is not. AJAX basically allows interfacing between JavaScript and XML. If you click either of the previous links, you will be sent to the Gollum Interface ...
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New Version of Content Editor
I've just rolled out the new version of the content editor we use (www.fckeditor.com), which has fixed quite a few bugs. If you are having some formatting issues with the new content editor, some of these tips and tricks may help! If you are wish ...
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litesite.net
Well, its been a big 2 days. Yesterday I started taming the beast that is asp.net and managed within 2 days to pretty much make a asp.net 2.0 version of our Lite Site product. I'm very impressed with the new asp.net version, and happy that we can offer ...
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The trouble with search engines
We deal with a lot of clients who are new to having their own website, or fairly new to using the web, generally having done stuff like Internet banking, basic email and so on. Previously I talked about how the trust placed in search engines can lead to ...
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Fastest video on the Internet
The Google Video search beta has become extremely popular over the short time it has been around. People with video can sign up for a Google account and begin uploading videos. It's that easy, Google has some smarts in the background which will convert ...
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Website or TVC? Web offers better value...
I'm a bit of an insomniac, so late night TV can be interesting. There is a company advertising TVC or Television Commercial production, and "for as little as $15000", which I take is the starting price, you can have your very own TVC. This ...
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$20 whipper snipper
Spent most of yesterday in the back yard, getting ready for the relo onslaught over christmas. My partner, Karen, a couple of weeks ago brought home a whipper snipper she brought at Cash Converters for 20 bucks. I was a bit skeptical at first, but I ...
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Google Optimization Tool
The WebmasterWorld Public Convention is happening now over at Vagas, USA. WebmasterWorld's PubCon is an educational conference and industry trade show programmed specifically for web professionals and website site owners. Matt Cutts, one of the keynote ...
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Bionic Tooth Implant?
We have the tools, we have the technology, we can rebuild him! How much would 6 million get you these days I wonder? Steve Austin got a bargain! About 10 years ago, I used to play Rugby League. This resulted in 3 broken noses (no, i dont have 3 ...
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Free Google Mini Search Appliance
Google have been selling their Google Search Appliance for a while now, it is a 'black box' solution (encased in gold aluminium) which allows Google searching across the Enterprise. I read a blog about an offer in which a free 'mini' search appliance ...
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A very busy weekend
The weekend started out busy, with a 5pm meeting to see a new client. Then it was off to the school twilight fair for a couple of beers (yes they had a beer & wine stand for the parents, cool) and a yummy steak sandwich. Saturday morning while ...
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Everybody has a web site nowadays
In a very short period the number of web sites online has grown beyond all expectations. I was discussing some of the history of the web with a new client and mentioned something about the necessity of having a web site if you are in business, and he ...
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Custom Cart for RawNRG!
Work: Just finished rolling out the latest features of our Phatcart and WebShell Products to one of our best customers, RawNRG at Thredbo, NSW. They run the mountain bike scene down that way during the summer. We just customised PhatCart to allow RawNRG ...
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Body Rock
Came across this site in my travels for the band BodyRockers. You might know one of their songs, "I like the way you move". Pretty good guitar music, if a little bit poppy. The site is interesting tho, its a combination of Flash and CSS, but it ...
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Flowers and Trees
Spring is here in the nations Capital. While Floriade is well and truly over, our garden continues to surprise us after the best Spring rain we've had since we moved here in 2001. Last year a cactus we have had for a long time flowered for the first ...
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Google Flight 767 is boarding soon...
Being an aviation nut, I was quite interested when I just saw this article on WebProWorld... "The search engine company Google has some big plans for its 767-200 passenger jet; two staterooms and plenty of leg room for 50 passengers will be among ...
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Beer and the Internet
I like beer, and Carlton Draught is pretty good for a run of the mill Aussie beer, though Boags Draught is about the same price right now and far superior. Also their website is funnier, and doesn't have a ridiculously useless "You must be 18 to ...
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To Blog, or not to blog...
That is the question! Not much happening today as far as new and interesting things goes. Churned out some new demos today, one of the is the LiteSite tour which shows off our MS Access based CMS. I also added the LiteSite Dropdown Menu Plugin to show ...
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Oh God, not more demos!
Yep you guessed it, even more demos now released in the demo section. We now have a full tour of the new PhatCart features we have been working on. These include Gift Vouchers, Bulk Discounting and even a Customer Loyalty Program. Check it out here.Now ...
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Getting all artsy
CAPO is a local arts organisation that provides grants for local artists from the Canberra region. CWS was approached to look after their website and become a sponsor of the organisation. While not avid art collectors ourselves, we all appreciate good ...
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More Demos and stuff.
I spent most the day working on some more webshell demos. Today I covered Advanced Table Editing, and Flash uploading and insertion into the CMS. Starting to build up some good demos now, which can also be used in training our clients to use our CMS and ...
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Pick a colour...
Article out of date - we no longer have a colour picker! Many of our customers make requests regarding the colour of their site like "can you make the colour a bit warmer", and we sometimes have difficulty getting it right. A customer made ...
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Blast from the Past
Spent most the day cleaning up some current work here and there. We found a bug with the Google RSS reader regarding dates, so I did some asp date formatting to sort that out. There is an interesting article here about asp formatting in dates, with links ...
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Video for the Web
A client of ours who is launching his website soon has asked us to put a DVD video onto the web for him. For this we use Ulead Media Studio Pro, as it has loads of features and is a lot cheaper than other full fledged video production software. The ...
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Saturday Morning Support
My last entry was taking about a script using the JMail POP3 object I have written that had it's first live run overnight. The script is working very well, so welll in fact that we had to turn it off because the server started running out of disk space ...
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More Demos etc
Got some more new demos up today, using the great little tool demo-builder. While making the capturing of the demo very easy, it still takes a bit of time to get the content right...surprise surprise! It tends to make it a fiddley process due to the ...
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Bouncing and Streaming
I've spent the last couple of days building a script to process emails for a client which they have on a massive list. When they send out emails they have a lot of old invalid addresses, around 300,000 email bounces. The script will have it's first live ...
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Content - Heart and Soul of your website.
Why is it your own website takes the longest amount of time to build? A good website is all about content. It can have all the bells and whistles you can throw at it, but in the end, users are there usualy to get information, not to be wowed at gizmos. ...
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Thursday, the busiest day
Thursday is always jam packed for me, as part of promoting our company and what we do I attend a BNI breakfast, basically a networking group that refers business to each other operating on a principle of givers gain, which is the up side of Karma I ...
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Would Google SPAM you?
Only if you asked them... People get very worked up about spam, but they often end up subscribing to spam lists inadvertantly. Google Alerts allows you to target searches and have the top ten results sent by email. In turn some suspect websites get high ...
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Blogging on
After many months of development we've finally released our new WebShell CMS, with Blogs included. Many of our clients won't know what a blog is, but luckily Google can tell you. Our blog will mainly be a place to comment on our work at CWS, in line with ...
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Online Demos
I have been working on getting some online demos happening which you can view here. I have been using Demo-Builder which does a great job at constructing an animated demo from screen grabs, animating any mouse and typing for you. You then edit your demo ...
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New Site Launch
Today we got our new site launched. Using our latest incarnation of our sql based CMS "WebShell", it really does show off all that is capable with our CMS tool. We recently made some major changes to add a whole bunch of new features to it, you ...
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Ordering on Sub Sections
Just been working on the new ordering feature for 2nd level sub items. You can now sort these items in 3 different ways, by the section name, and by date the section was added, ascending or descending. You access the order field by editing the main ...
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