Kogan Electronics, now applies an IE7 tax to all consumers who purchase goods on their website using IE7.

Good or bad idea? well given they are a private company they can make the rules about the technology they service and provide for. We all know the issues all too well with IE6, and its now almost extinct for good reason. IE7 yeah you weren’t too bad, had some quirks easy enough to deal with.

I like the stand and point that Kogan is making from a tech perspective, I would love it if everyone used a modern browser (and a Mac, but that may be pushing it). His approach seems to be if you want to buy from us using IE7 then you can but we will charge you a “tax” because we need to pay developers to keep fixing issues with a 6 year old browser trying to keep up in a modern world. We have been there ourselves and its now at the point where will support two versions back from the current major release of the browser, anything below that – Lets just degrade that gracefully, hello turn off styles and scripts – well maybe not that bad but we do scale back some of the funkyness.

But clients and users don’t like that, they don’t always understand why they shouldn’t use a certain browser that came installed on the machine they bought from Harvey Norman or the store down the street. Nor should they care. We try and educate on our end the benefits of a modern browser, faster load times, better security, looks prettier but you cant always win. Most of the time people come round, other times you make it work for their demographic.

As we do alot of work with Aust Government Departments, we are often working with IE7 within the standard operating environment and this is purely and economical decision, alot of the internal systems are written for a known environment, ie: Win XP, IE7 Office XXX and they integrate nicely and work well, we have seen it occur, where an early accidentally release of IE8 brought the department to panic. It was just before the payrun and the HR processing system, you guessed it relied on IE6 there were javascript issues, service issues, issues on top of issues. So while as an online consultant I may come in and say “You need to upgrade” I first need to understand why they are still running that software, what are the dependencies, what are their requirements? Kogans approach to this problem seems to be a money driven, cause its hurting his back pocket and not purely for the benefits of the standards community as a whole. Maybe if enough people buy using IE7, he may make enough to recover some costs.

This approach is not a bad one at all, as I started with its a decision as a private company they made, though not all of us in the web community have the luxury of applying made of taxes. I do wonder if they are leaving themselves open to a discrimination case, ie: two vision impaired ladies not able to use Disney’s website: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/02/prweb5073794.htm

So while people using IE7 will simply pay a fee, can it be likened to you having to pay extra rego simply because you drive a Holden and we all know Fords are better….

101 Web Technology has come onboard as a sponsor of the Batemans Bay Youth Foundation (BBYF). We are excited to be able to provide assistance to this great organisation which enables youth from the Batemans Bay area to achieve their goals.

The Batemans Bay Youth Foundation was established in 1994 and as a result of approaches by the Foundation a relationship has developed with educational and corporate institutions so that additional scholarships can be made available. To date over $200,000 dollars has been provided in scholarships offered through this initiative.

These scholarships are in addition to those provided by the Foundation from funds sourced from other sponsors and donors.

The auDA Foundation is a charitable trust that was established by auDA in 2005. Its general objectives are to promote and encourage education and research activities that will enhance the utility of the Internet for the benefit of the Australian community.

auDA staff currently process grant applications and the Foundation typically offers grants in the range of $5,000 to $20,000 to not-for-profit organisations, students and research institutions.

There have been five grant rounds since 2006, totalling $1,286,338 in funding to 72 projects.

The auDA Board is conducting a review of the Foundation.  The purpose of the review is to:

• evaluate the effectiveness and reach of the auDA Foundation grants,
• evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the auDA Foundation operations, and
• provide recommendations to the auDA board about what changes (if any) should be made to the auDA Foundation charter and the operations.

auDA have drafted a Discussion Paper to set out the current situation and invite comments and suggestions for change.

The closing date for submissions is Monday 16 January 2012.
More information is available at http://www.auda.org.au/about/foundationreview

101 Web Technology has recently launched a new business line iApp Marketing. iApp Marketing leverages the power of collaboration to develop your ideas for iPod, iPhone and iPad applications.

Offering a Collaborative iOS Application Development environment we provide a confidential submission process for your iOS (iPod, iPhone and iPad) application ideas. iApp Marketing, will work with you to develop your application ideas for the iPod, iPad or iPhone. If approved iApp Marketing is able to fund the fund the development of your iOS application and work in a capped profit share arrangement. (ie: No Cash Down to you).

Alternatively you are welcome to work with any of our specialist user interface designers, developers and online marketers to help get your iOS application into the world.

If you would like to know more check out www.iappmarketing.com.au

The web development world has had to deal with Internet Explorer 6 aka IE6 for over 10years now and it has been the bane of our coding existence. Its lack of support for the box model, constant use of CSS hacks and conditional elements. The community has had enough, even Microsoft itself has dropped support infact IE6 died 1 March 2010. http://ie6funeral.com/

With the death of IE6 2.0% of internet users in Australia are still using IE6, but this is too much! We need to get IE6 usage down to below 1% to become part of the coveted Circle of Champions (http://www.ie6countdown.com/champions.aspx) We will join the ranks of Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway.

If Australia is to join the ranks, how will we celebrate? what can we do? what pictures will best sum up the happiness the web development community feels at our achievements?

Hmm time to put on the propeller/thinking hats….

We have just signed on the dotted line and sealed our partnership with MailGuard. MailGuard is a 100% Australian Owned, operated and locally supported and is a leading provider of Cloud-based email filtering and internet security solutions for business. Their range of SaaS (Software as a Service) security solutions can provide you with effective spam, virus and malware protection. MailGuard also offer email continuity, email archiving, image monitoring and website monitoring services.

The partnership with MailGuard allows us to extend our offerings in the mail space, with increased storage, better spam control and seamless access between the office your smart phones, laptops and mobile device if your out on the road.

We look forward to sending our further information as we finalise our plans and the services provided in the initial phases. If you would like to organise a free 14 day trial of the MailGuard service, please get in contact and we will be happy to organise on your behalf. During the trial you will have direct access to our support team to answer any of those technical questions.

When you are searching for hosting for your business there are a couple of things to consider and price is not always the deciding factor.

Shared V Dedicated

Shared.

Often cheapest form of hosting, trouble is most businesss will start onsell at full price. Shared infrastructure can be bought for as little at 5;.95 a month for 1gb. Often hosting companies will carve that up to 100+ accounts charging 9.95 each. Makes good business sense, until some on the shared service uploads damaging code and the servers IP’s are blacklisted. This not only affects your site, but any one on the server. Think about it a server could have 500gb + of storage space. So simple maths that is 500 resellers, each selling 100 accounts, thats over 5000 websites out there that are sharing the same resources, same IP, same name server etc etc… The potential to go down hill very quickly is there.

Too often have we seen clients websites offline due to this issue.

Dedicated.

VPS Virtual Private Server. This is for all purposes your own server, though without the physical casing. We will most often have direct access to the administration of the box and more control over the resources and how they are used.

When you are buying hosting from your web development company, simply ask them. Where is my site being hosted and what is the configuration of the hosting? You as the business and site owner have the right to fully understand where your site is being hosted.

We have seen too many clients come unstuck in the shared world and have been offline for sometimes up to 48hours, while the IP is being cleared from the blacklists. At 101 we have a dedicated server with our own IP range, this means while there are multiple sites on the server, we have written each one of them and understand the code that is up there. Within minutes we are able to identify problems and have them resolved in a timely manner.

There is a sence of security that comes with a company that understands that your business is dependent on the reliability of your providers and that is why we will not recommend a shared reseller environment to our clients.

We have just launched a new website for HOTImage Photography Ulladulla. This business was struggling to achieve strong results within the search engines and would not even rank 1st using their business name, let alone Wedding Photographers Ulladulla.

Being a photographer based in Ulladulla a scenic part of coastline on the NSW South Coast, HOTImage Photography wanted to capture some of the coveted wedding photography market. After comments heard that they didn’t know they did weddings, or I really like your product but we have already booked with a competitor. HOTImage commissioned 101 Web Technology to develop an online marketing plan that would consist heavily of search engine optimisation and social media marketing.

The results speak for themselves within 24hours of launching the new site they ranked number 1 for their business name, within 2 weeks they are on the first page for Wedding Photographers Ulladulla and we have only just got started. HOTImage has further commissioned 101 Web technology to implement their internet marketing strategy for the next year and with results like this at the start of the process, who knows where we will be in 12months time.

If your business is struggling to be found on the internet, we can most likely help so drop us a line or send through an email we are always open to helping you make the most of your business’s web presence.

Let me set the scene, I had just updated to the new version of iOS 4.3 (Best feature is home sharing is now enabled on your iOS device), had to restore from backup, when I restored all my apps were no longer organised into folders. How annoying?

When managing y0ur Apps on the device, using the COMMAND + Click (Mac) or CTRL + Click (Win) you are able to select the grouping of multiple apps and drag them to a new group or page.

This is very handy from me as moving them 1 by 1 was getting a bit long. Is this a new feature or have I never found it because you can only select 1 app at a time to move on the iOS device, so I just naturally thought managing the device in iTunes would work the same way? Unsure but it does start me thinking about a new article to write.

I hope the above tips helps when managing your device.

We have posted previously in our Internet Marketing category about Uneke Furniture and the success they have had simply by being involved in online forums, it was that post that lead us to the second re-development of http://www.unekefurniture.com.

For the second time round working with Uneke Furniture, 101 has not only created a fresh new design we have developed the business’ social media strategy for the next 12months. The social media strategy is leveraging the power of viral marketing, along with developing an online following with Twitter, Facebook and their regular online newsletters to subscribers.

The new website can be found at http://www.unekefurniture.com or Google phrase Canberra Custom Furniture.

With 101 on hand to support the mechanics of the strategy Uneke Furniture is well placed to further build on the exceptional reputation of this Canberra based business. If you would like to discuss your social media, internet marketing or search engine optimisation strategies please contact 101 Web Technology.