</techtranslated

Update

andrewjhscott — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:28:31 +0000

So the hackers are persistent. Or just automated.

Decided to delete my entire site and start again.

Momentary pause in activities while I rebuild some layouts and content…

The first hack

andrewjhscott — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:22:29 +0000

So I checked my site earlier today to find I had been hacked. Odd since I’m pretty good with passwords, patching and scanning. Turns out not so good with the regular backups so that’s a lesson learned.

The hack was via the rather vulnerable timthumb.php that handles image resizing in a lot of themes.

Fortunately, like with most things in life, there’s a WordPress plugin for that.

So if you’re running a WordPress site you should install this and run a scan. It even updates the file(s) for you and suggests any questionable files that have been placed on your server.

Or if you’re sensibly running a theme from the folks at WooThemes then just make sure you’re running the latest version of their framework and all should be well.

Panic over. Carry on.

The power of tweeting blog posts

andrewjhscott — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:56:05 +0000

So we have a great blogging property; it’s probably the best blog in the UK asset management space. It’s good because it’s well written, timely and focuses on market opinion – and doesn’t try to sell the firm or the product set.

It’s been attracting good email subscription rates, good traffic and moderate RSS subscribers.

Then we started tweeting from the beginning of August every time we posted to the blog. And then started tweeting generally.

What happened to blog traffic? It doubled.

OK we’ve also seen an increase in the number of blog posts and of course the Eurozone meltdown helps – but it’s pretty stark.

Next time someone asks (especially in financial services) why we’re doing this social thing; point them here.

London Startups

andrewjhscott — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:30:52 +0000

There’s a perception (OK a reality) that the majority of web startups are US-based. Hard to argue when you see the pure volume of new apps and services being created every day. But London (and the rest of the UK!) is slowly building a credible presence alongside Europe.

There’s a couple of services that I’ve started using; GoSquared for realtime analytics and cubesocial for social CRM based right here in the UK.

I’m pretty sure there’s a large list of UK startups that just aren’t known yet – but here’s a starter from the Business Insider.

Get To Know The Startups In London’s Tech City

SEO Dashboard: Introduction to Ginzametrics

andrewjhscott — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 12:32:46 +0000

If This Then That

andrewjhscott — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 12:20:16 +0000

www.ifttt.com Fantastic service – you’ll sit and ponder for some time.

Your website loads.in good time?

andrewjhscott — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 07:00:47 +0000

loads.in is a free service that allows you to enter the URL of any site (more sensibly your own site) and analyse how quickly it loads. But for a free service it offers pretty good tools – choose the location and browser and it stacks the tests for comparison. Each test also allows you to view the waterfall chart to see what’s taking time to load.

Here’s a series of tests:

Xobni for Gmail BETA

andrewjhscott — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 19:49:14 +0000

This has been out for a while but I just received a ‘it’s nearly here’ email that reminded me about the service. I like plug-in CRM tools – I don’t need a stand-alone service but it’s nice to have a tool that tells you more about your contacts and in my case remind me that I haven’t been in touch for a long, long time.

I’m currently using Rapportive which is a good tool for Firefox, Chrome and Safari but I’m keen to see what Xobni can do for Gmail.

You can click here to sign up for the beta – it’s also coming to Android.

Google tweaks Apps interface

andrewjhscott — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:44:30 +0000

Google has tweaked the design for the Apps toolbar. It’s minor but it tidies up the look and feel of the Apps interface and moves aways lightly from their simple text/links approach.

Dropbox for Teams

andrewjhscott — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 21:15:16 +0000

I love Dropbox. It’s one of those apps you just install and forget (well, actually if you run it on a laptop with Windows 7 64 bit OS it has a wee issue with not letting your laptop sleep properly but I’m sure they’ll get that fixed).

There are other perfectly good sync options like SugarSync but I like the simplicity of Dropbox.

Now they’ve launched Dropbox for Teams. In their words ‘Dropbox for Teams combines the synchronization, sharing, and security features of traditional Dropbox with new administrative and group capabilities that make it perfect for businesses, organizations, and groups.’

US$795.00 per year for 350GB and five members. That’s a lot of space.