Notable dates after this are:

• 24^th February 2012 – Joomla 1.7 reaches end of life and is no longer supported
• April 2012 – Joomla 1.5 reaches end of life
• September 2012 – Next version of Joomla is released

After a first look at the beta release this latest version looks good and offers some core improvements. These are well reported in the Joomla Community Portal so I won’t repeat here.

Touchline customers will be offered migration options from 24^th January but contact me if you want more information.

A stream of inane drivel

There are many good reasons why a business should use Twitter, most of which are to do with brand promotion including news, advertising, special promotions and support. Another may be simply that your competitors are using it and you feel the need to match them (although also see Don’t Compare). Twitter can give the impression that your company is young and trendy, which for some industries is an advantage.

But therein lies a potential problem. In the early days of the web, company websites were often the sole responsibility of a junior in the IT department who was keen on playing with new technologies, with no budget and no buy-in from senior management. The result was that, despite substantial marketing budgets, the company message and image (on the web at least) were in the hands of an enthusiastic junior with an overriding interest in Star Trek. And so it may be with Twitter, for a new generation of social media enthusiasts, resulting in a stream of inane drivel in the guise of customer social interaction.

For a Twitter account to have real business value, it needs to be under the control of senior management with a consistent style and message. Thought needs to be given to what you want to achieve using Twitter and how you can build credibility as a source of useful information relevant to your customer community. As with your website, you will need to track your impact in the Twitter community, whether it’s increased sales, better support or other measurement related to your goals.

If used properly Twitter can improve relationships with customers, increase sales and help in developing customer networks. Improper use will damage your company reputation through a lack of substance or inappropriate messages.

As Steve Jobs said "think differently"

For Product Managers, the process of developing their product backlog will, at some point, lead to drawing up a feature comparison matrix or gap analysis to compare their product area with the competition. This is often driven by the sales teams for whom it provides a useful checklist to show to new prospects in a battle of who has the most features.

So what if we don’t compare?

The real art of Product Management is to look beyond our present feature list by observing and understanding what our customers are trying to do right now and by defining what they will need to do in the future. The interaction of creative and talented groups within the framework of thought leadership and technical excellence leads us to a vision of where our product should be going, how it will be used and how it may look. It’s within this area of thought that we can reach the Holy Grail that is disruptive innovation.

Once the vision starts to become clear, we realise that the gap that we should be interested in is the one between where we are now and where the vision takes us. Taking the strategic route puts us ahead of the competition by redefining the market and driving market needs. The conversations with customers then become more about how the product not only solves their present problems but also takes them into new market possibilities and provides them with new ways of working.

So rather than taking the ‘me too’ approach we can aim for greatness in our own right.

All of my Touchline clients’ websites have been converted to use an open source CMS from Joomla!, CMS Made Simple or WordPress. The chosen solution depends on the type of website. For a very quick and simple CMS, WordPress is a good choice (now used for this website) and there are lots of good commercial and open source templates available. For a more bespoke look, that is still easy to use, I recommend CMS Made Simple which I find ideal for converting static websites as the templates are straightforward to develop. This is demonstrated in the Shotokan Worcester website and its sister (or should it be mother) website for the International Japan Karate-Do Association.

Joomla! is more suitable for content rich websites and is used for the colloborative group website for Advanced Power Generation Technology Forum.

Any of these systems can be installed for you and if you’re interested you can develop your own look and feel or Touchline can provide recommendations and bespoke development.

The free application is called ‘Mouse Without Borders’ and it lets you share your mouse and keyboard with other Windows OS computers and even lets you drag and drop files between them.

Download it here

Rating: 4/5  

Note that renewals are not discounted and are priced at £10.49 exVAT, which is more than their previous registration price and probably set high to claw back the discount – swings and roundabouts.

So my advice is to register new domains with UKReg and transfer out to Domain Monster near to renewal.

See http://www.ukreg.com/

The introduction of Joomla! v1.6 and now Joomla! v1.7 isn’t just an upgrade from v1.5 , it’s a migration to a whole new release and requires some serious work. Also, v1.7 is an interim release that will be replaced by v1.8 (or other version number such as v2.5! – don’t ask) in January 2012. The January release will then become the next Long Term Support (LTS) version (after v1.5) lasting for 18 months.

So migrating now will mean applying an update in January and hence involve more work and expense.

If you’ve password protected your PC or laptop Windows account then you may think that your personal data is safe. But Windows user and administrator passwords can be bypassed thereby opening up all of your files for viewing by prying eyes. Safeguarding your personal information such as bank details, tax returns, resume and even family photos etc is an essential step towards avoiding identity fraud or credit card theft.

I use two methods for encrytping files and folders, AxCrypt and TrueCrypt.

AxCrypt, an open source file encryption application for Windows that integrates with Windows Explorer right click (secondary mouse button click) menu to allow file encryption and unencryption on the fly. An individual file, group of files or a folder can be encrypted simply using the AxCrypt context menu. Double-clicking on an encrypted file prompts for the password, and then opens the file in its associated application.

The second method is another open source application called TrueCrypt that allows you to create a virtual encrypted disc or volume as a file and mount it as a virtual drive. It may require a little more technical knowledge to get started but there is extensive documentation available online. The encrypted volume cannot be mounted without a password but once it is, files can be read and written to the volume as if it were another drive.

So keep your hosting and domain registration separate and use an ICANN accredited provider. Over the years, I’ve used a few different registration companies, including Fasthosts (UKReg), Heart Internet and Domain Monster. All have similar prices and all have Control Panels that allow you to change basic and advanced settings for your domain and all offer competitive pricing.

I also look for good technical support by which I mean a fast, knowledgeable and relevant response (hopefully you wont need it but when you do it’s important). Relevant means that replies to my queries are not in the form of stock answers or refer me to the FAQ page but are proper communications from a real person.

My current favourite is Domain Monster who fulfil my basic requirements but also have very efficient, friendly and helpful support staff.

It should be easy to transfer domain names into the service (free for .co.uk and a standard registration fee, extending your registration period, for others such as .com and .net). Transferring out of the service should also be easy and you should not be charged a fee.

The registration company will let you know when your domain needs to be renewed but beware of scam emails or letters from unscrupulous companies offering to renew for an exorbitant fee. Unless it’s from your registration company delete the email or bin the letter.

See the special offer from UKReg and price comparison table here.

Spam, spam, spam, email and spam

Whenever you include an email address on a web page it may be vulnerable to spam attack.  This is because spammers use automated search programs (or spam spiders) to search for email addresses on the web to which they can then send their spam.

In CMS Made Simple, there’s a handy trick to encode an email address so that it displays and functions normally but cannot easily be found by an automated scanning system. This technique is sometimes referred to as ‘email obfuscation.’

Instead of directly adding the email link in html as <a href=”mailto:me@example.com“>, you can use the Smarty {mailto} tag to encode the email address e.g.

  {mailto address="me@example.com" encode="javascript"}

The {mailto} tag will automatically encode the email address into Javascript, hex or other format, concealing it from spam harvesters. The above tag is encoded to:

<script>
    eval(unescape('%64%6f% ... snipped ...%61%3e%27%29%3b'))
</script>

The {mailto} tag supports parameters that allow you to specify the encoding method, text to display for the email link, email subject line, additional recipients and more. See more details on the Smarty {mailto} function at the Smarty website.