I am NOT Maverick Marketing Sydney

This blog is built using WordPress – and I am in love WordPress.

In actual fact, my heart runs THAT pitter-patter just thinking about it, I might EVEN MARRY WordPress.

And HERE are 10 REASONS WHY.

Reason 1: Google loves WordPress.

Google sends its bots over to my blog within 15 minutes of a new post being published. Since everyone I’ve ever met loves Google, and Google loves WordPress, it makes sense that the world should love WordPress too.

Reason 2: WordPress is FREE.

You can download it, plus a choice of themes, plus a whole heap of plugins for nothing, NADA, ZIP, ZERO. Because we all love WordPress, there is an active development community that keep creating new free plugins for you to choose from. There are also some fantastic paid themes (such as Thesis and Woo) as well as plugins you might have to fork out for.

Reason 3: Ten Squillion Web Developers

know WordPress (give or take a few thousand either way). This means you can shop around for a great price on getting your blog set up (although I should put in a plug for the brilliant, amazing work done by Chris in this particular blog).

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The firm says that it’s taken the App Store just 2.2 years to shift the same number of items as the iTunes store managed in five. It reckons that by the end of 2010, total downloads for each are likely to hit around 13 billion.

This is despite the fact that the total number of apps available is far smaller at around a quarter of a million. This is way below the 12 million songs available on iTunes – although one mustn’t forget that many, unlinke songs, are free.

“If the current download rate is maintained (17 million apps/day) and if the pricing of $0.29 per app is preserved, then $1.8 billion will have been spent on iOS apps this year,” says Asymco.
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Here is some good news for lovers of their iPhones and iPads.

Apple has lifted its develop restrictions to enable apps to be created using Adobe Flash.

In a surprise turnaround from the war raging earlier this year, Apple has released new developer agreements and old restrictions have been lifted.

The new contractual language not only appears to allow developers to use pretty much any programming tool, including Adobe Flash Packager for iPhone, but it also appears to allow the use of third-party advertising and analytics services, such as Google’s AdMob.

Adobe likes what it sees in the new contractual terms.

“We are encouraged to see Apple lifting its restrictions on its licensing terms, giving developers the freedom to choose what tools they use to develop applications for Apple devices,” a company spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement.

Read more at Information Week.

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Thinking of using a freelance web guy to help construct your website? There’s good news, geeks are for hire. Mind you, they aren’t all created equal so choose carefully.

LOCATING A GEEK.

Geeks lurk everywhere. You can find them in Google, at Chris’s Web Freelancer website (and you should head to his blog for a brilliant tips blog about Elance and using web freelancers generally).

They also have a couple of online hangouts - Elance or Rentacoder (now called VWorker).

In this post, I’m going to cover off Elance (and the same views apply to Rentacoder), although nowadays I use Chris (who is a bit too normal to be a genuine geek, but let’s get back on topic).

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY.

So, I’ve used these types of services, and met more than my fair share of geeks, and in my experience, here are the pros and cons that apply when you use a service like Elance.
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Unedited Press Release as I received it…

STERLING, Va., September 1, 2009 – Neustar (NYSE: NSR) announced today that it is now accepting proposals for two-character .BIZ domain names through September 30, 2009.

Earlier this year, Neustar received approval from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to make short, memorable one- and two-character .BIZ domain names – for example, www.ny.biz, www.my.biz and www.i.biz – available to the public. This is the first time any major global top level domain (gTLD) registry has released all one- and two-character names.
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Before you buy a domain, think about how it looks on the web. And if you want to know why, check out these web administrators that learnt the hard way (or perhaps it’s a sense of humor on display?)

Is this Cumbria Storage Systems or something that’s (err) entirely different?

www.cumstore.co.uk

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FRUSTRATED IT workers

have shown that a pigeon can transfer data faster than a major internet service provider (ISP).

Workers at a South African information technology company this week proved it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom, the country’s leading ISP.

Africa’s largest economy has poor internet speed and connectivity – and high costs – because of a bandwidth shortage.

Local news agency SAPA reported the 11-month-old pigeon, Winston, took one hour and eight minutes to fly the 80 km from Unlimited IT’s offices near Pietermaritzburg to the coastal city of Durban with a data card was strapped to its leg.

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So you’re about to set off on a grand adventure into the wild, wild web.

The first thing you’re going to need is a domain name.

Now, getting a domain name is different from getting a website built although many hosting companies will provide them to you.

You can buy a domain name from many different web companies that supply them.

Shop around – prices vary wildly for exactly the same domain name.

It doesn’t matter where you buy it as long as you are free to point it to whichever hosting service you choose.
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Let me tell you I’ve been bitten. Seems to me that plenty of other people have too.

If your hosting service goes down, and you own an online store, it means your trade is gone. Kapoof, and it’s disappeared.

It could cost you hundreds, even thousands, of dollars of lost business.

Even if your website is informational, no-one can access it.

No-one can see what products you have, how those products solve their problems, why they should buy from, what other customers say about the experience of dealing with you or where their nearest retailer is located.
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