Trunk Media

SuperNews! – Social Networking Wars

30 September 2008

This is great, I felt exactly like this guy some time ago. In fact, I got so fed up with having all these different profiles on all these different social networking sites like myspace, bebo and facebook, just to name a few, I ended up going through and deleting all of them!

Let the socal networking wars begin!

Posted in Marketing | No Comments »

Free Enterprise Training Programme for small business owners

24 September 2008

We love websites. And our clients love us. As small business owners we are always trying to find ways to spread the word about what we do and why we are different. There are many different hats you need to wear when you’re trying to expand (and I’m not talking baseball caps and beanies). It’s important to step back from the business and take the time to look at your processes and business strategies. There are always lessons to be learnt and it’s important to have a self-improvement focus.

We recently found out that WHK Gosling Chapman (a chartered accountancy firm based in Auckland) run free full-day and half-day training programmes for small business owners.

The courses are funded by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. Apparently WHK have been running these for eight years! They are a great resource for small business owners and entreprenuers – in particular those that are first-timers.

There are a range of courses on business planning / strategy, marketing / sales, accounting / office systems, employment / people management and exporting. There are also more specific industry-related workshops.

I have been to a marketing and an accounting workshop (with a sales workshop coming up soon). Whilst I have a fair amount of knowledge in these areas, I have still gleaned some handy tips. It is also a great opportunity to network with like-minded business owners. The workshop is followed by a one-on-one coaching session, which is more specific to your particular business.

The courses are practical with take-home notes. They should not be seen as a “get everything done in one day” solution where you can complete the course and have a functioning marketing plan or cash flow projection. These courses are instead designed to give you an understanding of the steps you need to take and a framework from which to work. You must be prepared to take the advice given and apply it to your business and particular situation.

Have a look on the WHK Business Growth website and see if there are any programmes that will help you upskill. To register you need to complete an application form, this is then reviewed by one of the Business Growth team and followed up with a phone call to assess which courses will be most beneficial to your business.

If you are a first-time business owner you should grab the opportunity to learn from these workshops!

Posted in Marketing, Other | 2 Comments »

Palin’s password protection

19 September 2008

You may have heard the scandal about United States Replican Vice-President nominee’s email account getting hacked.

Details about how the actual hack happened are unclear as it has not been duplicated yet but the important point is, it could happen to you. There is no such thing as impenetrable security. If someone really wants what you have, or access to your services, they can get it. The important thing for most people is to be harder than most other people to get at. It’s supply and demand. There is a huge supply of easy to hack accounts so get out of that group and you’re less likely to get hacked.

Sarah Palin’s problem is that she suddenly became high profile and so the demand for access to her account shot up proportionally. So whilst her Yahoo security is very similar to everyone elses, more people wanted it and put more effort into getting it. She shouldn’t have been sending government emails over a system like that. Security breaches are a one way street, there is no way she can hide what has now been discovered.

The scariest thing though is thinking about what people often store in their email systems. Things such as login accounts for their banking or other email accounts or website logins. I’ve heard it all and it is rather scary. So take a moment to think, if an unscrupulous person had access to all of your emails, what is the worst damage they could do to you? Makes you want to change your passwords doesn’t it!

Now fortunately most of us won’t have the profile of Sarah Palin and so the probability of being targeted for an attack is very low. This however is no excuse on why you shouldn’t have good, strong, unique passwords for all of your important sites. Most people I know tell me they only use one password for all of their sites. This is an appalling fact and is used against a lot of people when they get hacked. Do you know that every site you put that password into is looking after your details securely? Wouldn’t it be nice to know they couldn’t use those details elsewhere? As such I have the following password advice for people that find it hard to remember unique passwords for each site:

1. Come up with a phrase that you can remember that is at least 10 characters long eg trunkmedia
2. Make it more difficult by replacing some letters with uppercase eg trunKMedia
3. Now add some numbers to it, some people use text speak and replace similar looking letters with numbers, you could add numbers to it eg trunKM3di14

Now memorise this, it shouldn’t be too hard as it is still the same two words you started with. Now when you go to a website, rather than just using this password verbatim each time, create a rule based on the website address. I might create a rule which says I take the first three letters of the domain name and out them in the middle of my password so:

• Yahoo.com would have a password: trunKyahM3di14
• msn.com would be: trunKmsnM3di14
• Trademe.co.nz would be: trunKtraM3di14

You can create your own rule and do anything you like but what you’ve done is create unique memorable passwords that mean if one gets corrupted, the whole lot doesn’t get corrupted. It also means you don’t have to store passwords in your email system and whilst security experts will tell you that the passwords above aren’t strong enough, they’re stronger and harder to guess than 90% of what most people out there are doing. And if you want to make your password stronger? Just make a longer phrase to start off with, add some non letter characters like the dollar sign or add in some more numbers. Using these simple rules will mean it’s tougher for most people to hack your accounts.

Posted in Technical | No Comments »

Awesome creativity

18 September 2008

Sometimes what people do for no real reason other than to have fun is really inspiring. Have post-it notes?

EepyBird’s Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.

Posted in Technical | No Comments »

Putting your money where your mouth is

15 September 2008

Everyone has an opinion but when push comes to shove, not a lot of people are willing to bet money on that opinion against someone else. Well once again the internet has come up with another solution for the solitary opinion holder who is willing. Obviously when it comes to sports we have multitudes of gambling sites but this latest idea is something pretty new and innovative, it’s an online prediction market.

Head over to iPredict and you’ll see what looks like a cross between a stock exchange and a gambling site. There you can buy “shares” or “bets” on what you predict will happen in various scenarios. The current “stocks” you can buy are mostly political or economic but I can see this expanding out greatly in the future to cover all sorts of public opinion.

The premise is simple but is split into two offerings. The first is straight outcome where you get a full dollar payout for every stock you hold for a prediction that comes true. The second is where you are paying for a percentage result. The current example is percentage of the Labour vote in the upcoming general election. If you buy shares thinking that Labour will get 36% of the general vote in the upcoming election you would try and buy stocks at less than 36 cents each. You will only get 1 cent for every percentage point they get. So if you were to buy at 50c each and Labour gets 40% of the vote then you’ve lost 20% of your investment! It pays to be accurate!

The idea behind the whole project seems to be a way of getting accurate representations of where peoples opinions are really at as money seems to talk truer than opinion polls. It’ll be an interesting experiment to watch as it has has some serious effort put into it by no less than Victoria University in Wellington. It’s all very legal and I know I’m looking forward to seeing how well their hypothesis pans out. I’m not sure if I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is quite yet though!

Posted in Technical | No Comments »