Memory Board

Free Live Chat

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:00:00 +0000

If you want to provide live support, then a quick and easy way to do this at no cost is via Google Talk.

If you have a Gmail account or a Google Application account, you can simply install the chat software. And add the following code snipet to your site, or create a badge

CTRL ALT DEl on a MAC with Parallels

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:25:00 +0000

Quite simple when you know how.

Simply press: fn+ctrl+alt+back delete

Start / Stop Coldfusion Service in a Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:28:00 +0000

There is an app for that! Use the spotlight tool to look for "ColdFusionLauncher". Then click the application to launch the jrun launcher console. You can use this console as a GUI to start & stop the CF service & admin.

It Works! No It Doesn't!

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:34:00 +0000

Not sure why this is but in Apache 2.2, I had "NameVirtualHost *:80" in the httpd-vhosts.conf file. This was seemingly randomly making the virtualhosts point through to the htdocs root. Updating this to "NameVirtualHost localhost:80" has fixed the issue.

Not sure what the cause is, just glad to see the back of it.

Email Marketing Safe List

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 13:47:00 +0000

Top tip is to send new subscribers an autoconfirmation with tips on how to add your domain to their white list.

Add "@YOURDOMAIN.com"as a safe sender in your e-mail client.

Here are the directions in Microsoft Outlook:
1) Start Outlook.
2) On the Tools menu, click Options.
3) On the Preferences tab, click Junk E-mail.
4) On the Safe Senders tab, click Add.
5) In the Add address or domain dialog box, type the e-mail address of the person who you want to trust, and then click OK.

Mac wireless airport problems

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 20:36:00 +0000

Not sure if it local to the following:

Mac OS X 10.4.11
Airport 2
Belkin Routers

but there appears to be a drop in wireless connection intermittantly when WPA/WPA2 is used with the AES encryption technique. I suggest using TWIP/AES or probably best to upgrade the OS.

Restart Apache Server In Mac OSX

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:24:00 +0000

Depending on the location of the apachectl file the following syntax will restart Apache from within terminal:

sudo /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/apachectl restart

Getting Apache RewriteRule to work

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 09:54:00 +0000

No intro or background, to get the RewriteRule to work in htaccess you need to activate it. This is specifically for Apache and not ISAPI rewrite on IIS.

Open httpd.conf
Look for MULTIPLE occurances of AllowOverride None
Change to AllowOverride All
Un comment this line #LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
Save & restart the apache server

Couple of note worthy points:

Apache recommend not using htaccess for peformance reasons. There are other methods for nice urls.
This is a Dev environment. I've not check out if the above has any security issues, for live servers.

Publish your LinkedIn profile to the web

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:43:00 +0000

Make your linkedIn profile readily available to others. Simply:

Login to your profile
Click "profile"
Click "customise your URL"
Click "Promote your profile with Customized Buttons"
Pick a button, copy the code

Most effective protection from copy/paste

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:28:00 +0000

Ever had a client ask for their content to be protected from copy/paste, or specifically tables of data? Well with Coldfusion you've a great head start.

The usual steps for doing this are to:

Disable copy/paste
Prevent drag/drop of text blocks
Remove right click & file bar
Prevent print

But this still leaves, the information available in the source code and as soon as you've downloaded that page you can do what ever you want with it...

Here's the clever bit.

A good way to get round this I thought would be to send this information in via ajax so it's not in the source code. CF steps in with cfgrid which can bind itself to a CFC for remote AJAX calls. Not only do you get an instantly cool looking grid you get the AJAX power grid.

Now, normally this would still leave the ajax call prone to a direct call to display the information, but with CF when you try to call the CFC directly you get the CFIDE login screen. Pretty sweet.

There are obviously ways to still surpass this but I would hazard a guess that even most web savvy people won't be able to get this data and it would require some of us with a little more know how.

Sales Techniques

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:02:00 +0000

Sales are simple, and that's why I'm going to keep this post very simple. 4 Key points to help you on your way with sales are:

Control the conversation
Listen to the customer
Give them a reason to buy
Ask for their custom

That's it! (but I'll expand a little on each point)

Control the conversation
Lose control of the conversation and you'll lost the customer. Sales is a journey. You know the beginning and the end so you just need to ensure you keep the customer on the same journey.

If the conversation starts to stray pick up on what they are saying, emphasise, relate, and bring it back to your journey. It can be the most unrelated simily, it doesn't matter, your back in control. Dumb sales people are often the best, they don't care if it doesn't make sense as long as they keep control.

Listen to the customer
On your journey your customer will talk and give you clues. Pick up on these and make a mental bullet point list. It will arm you to help them make the best choices. Drip feed these points back to them, use it to qualify your customer and remove potential obstacles when you come to close.

Give them a reason to buy
That's great, thanks for that I'll be in touch... SALE LOST. If the customer has no reason to buy now, generally they wont'. Incentivise them. Greed & fear are common tools of the salesman.
Reasons to buy now can include:

limited stock
waiting lists
opportunity from a "cancellation"
Special offers
etc etc

Ask for their custom
You've done everything right so far, you've given your pitch they've listened and you've come to an agreed service offering and price, now what? Sign them up. That's it again, very simple.

You'll be surprised that once customers start to give you details they open up and become much more open to closing. Start asking their details, fill in an order form and ask them to sign. Don't be shy about asking for money, don't ask for money, ask how you'd like to pay and they will do the rest.

Lastly, an extra tip, customers who start by telling you "they are not ready to buy now" are telling you the exact opposite, don't get disheartened you will be able to convert them.

Good luck, now go get some sales!

Twitter Experiment

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:47:00 +0000

I've noted lots of people have started to add me to the list of followers just after a post. I'm assuming these are happening from keywords in my posts, which begs the questions:

a) why
b) how

One can only assume that the why is because if I follow you there is a good chance you will follow me. This can lead to an inflated ammount of followers but are they really useful? I guess if you have enough followers (aka listners) it could be deemed a powerfull tool and not just an ego nursing exercise. So I think I'll test this with a new twitter account on a subject which is more of a hobby to me than anthing else right now, poker. Rightly or wrongly I'm probabley just going to leave this as an automatic update system for now but I think it will be interesting to see how many followers I can get from using a service such as twollo (the how).

Twollo was supposedly developed in a day for $150 but appears to be a paid for service after a free trial, so this may be a pretty short test, but none the less I think its with a twirl.

ps. next I'll be testing out OutTwit

Handy Google keyword analysis tools

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 19:33:00 +0000

Handy Google keyword analysis tools

Not looking good for CF, but this could be misleading with all the other CFML providers out there now.

Stink'ernet

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 22:33:00 +0000

Smells trigger memories but can memories trigger smell.

I've known that distinctive odours can trigure distant memories for a long time, but recently while working on the internet it happened to me again, which got me thinking, if you could brand your site or provide a sales message with an image i.e. an orange, would that sales message be triggered each time oranges were smelt?

Just a musing right now, and not even sure how to sensibly test it but one I may like to revisit at some point.

Thesis Word Press

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:39:00 +0000

There's a lot to be said for research but a lot of the time you can go with your gut and impulse buys can come up trumps.

On this occasion I've earmarked Thesis for future blogs. I'll test this on a couple of projects I've got lined up and may or may not convert this blog too.

Yahoo Query Language YQL

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:57:00 +0000

This is new to me but sounds pretty sweet. I've read that Yahoo is now providing an SQL interface into their data services. There's already a handy coldfusion package over at riaforge.

Off the top of my head, obvious opportunities are:

built in natural language searches on sites
SEO reporting tools
News feeds
Auto image displays

Adapting software start up

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:25:00 +0000

This can easily be done by editing the properties of a desktop short cut icon. Simply edit the target value to pass in parameters as you would do in command prompt.

i.e. shortcut > target > C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe ColdFusion Builder>cfbuilder.exe -data c:\workspace\cfbuilder

Planning

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:32:00 +0000

Fail to plan, plan to fail. But is there anything to be said for too much planning... having a plan b is this a good thing or a sign that you don't trust your plan A and that it's doomed to fail??

I'm going to be writing a few business plans for my interests and want to make I don't make repeat mistakes. Now my plans aren't to raise capital or gain favor with the corporate bank managers, more for a guide of approach and goals.

There are some (to be read) good titles to some help guides but I need to ensure my plan works for me.

Initial thoughts, are that it needs to be short enough to be read. Clear focus on the goals that I would like to obtain. Structured strategy and timelines. And for a change perhaps a little pessimistic (or realistic). Pretty standard stuff, but I'd also like to ensure the overall plan is good plan. "The plan is good, so stick to the plan". That's not say that we can't adapt our stratiegies but the primary goals of the plan should remain consistant.

Time to get writting.

Google Keyword suggest

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:51:00 +0000

Can never remember where to go for this Keyword suggest tool

Photoshop skills

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:18:00 +0000

There's a lot more to photoshop and designing than having a good idea and eye for design. A lot can be said for knowing your software. Check out this post on creating a visually stunning poster.

Blogger vs Wordpress

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:54:00 +0000

I'm a creature of habit so I've opted for blogger for my memory board, but I do hear loads more about wordpress than I do blogger so I reckon that I've probably gone for the lesser option.

I've read a lot about the SEO benefits and plugins for wordpress and have recently came across this post with tips and tricks to improve your wordpress site.

At the moment this blog is really just ment to as a place to search when I forget something I've worked on before, but if I ever make it more public I think I will upgrade to wordpress... watch this space.

Cool jQuery image plugins

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:28:00 +0000

I've just read and seen the demos on 7 plugins for jquery relating to images. The post at sitepoint covered the following plugins:

jParallax and jCrop both look very good although jParallax is likely to be more fluff than functionality

How to Add Twitter (Retweet) Button to Blogger Posts

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:28:00 +0000

Navigate to Layout >> Edit HTML >> Expand Widget Templates

Search for and paste the following codes just before or after it. Adding the code before will show the Retweet button on the top of your post while adding after will show the Rettweet button on the bottom of your post.

For Digg like Button, use the following code.

Retweet this button on every post blogger

Social bookmarking

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:32:00 +0000

Social bookmarking with regards to blogs is a bit of a must and very easy to do.

There are serveral methods for implementing this, some of which will come with lots of additional mark up (code bloating) . I've read that an easy an efficient way to implement social bookmarks is Add this.

Simple steps for blogger are:

Go to Add this
Use the 4 step wizard to create code
Click instal to blogger
Use the blogger layout wizard to place the code

Kuler Colour Palette

noreply@blogger.com (Richard) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:51:00 +0000

Stuck without a designers help, and need to pick a colour scheme? Adobe Kuler colour palette sounds like a quick and easy solution to your problems.

There a good how to guide here but all in all it seems pretty self explanatory.