Costco Christmas trading hours 2014

I recently dropped into Costco and noticed a sign for their Christmas trading hours. I took a picture of the Christmas trading hours and their regular hours.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.JustLocal.com.au

Your electricity usage reveals more than you may think.

Now that we have Smart meters installed the data being collected may reveal more than you realise.

Here is the graph for our electricity usage during August 2014.

Is there an unusual trend you can spot?

If I said we went on holidays could you tell me the day we started our holidays?

Yes. As you can see your electricity usage data may reveal more about you than you think. I'm always mindful that a considerable amount of fraud is committed not by customers, but employees. In every business a certain percentage of employees will do things they shouldn't.

Who has access to this data?
Is the government using the data in other ways?
Is the data being shared with other groups such as for research purposes?

Ultimately all I can really do is hope that my data is being treated with respect and if it isn't, there's really not much I can do.

What is important is you treat your electricity username and password with respect and secure your account using strong credentials. You should treat your electricity account as an important account and make sure it is secured.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for IT support.

Blogger - Why is my blog disabled?

I have to admit Google is starting to frustrate me. They apparently have an automated process to identify blogs being used for SPAM. The process hit one of my blogs a few weeks ago. In the past week another blog and then today a third blog.

The first blog being disabled was a concern. I inadvertently found there was an option where I could restore the blog so I ran the option and two days later the blog was restored. The second blog was easier. Restored quite quickly. The blog today when I click on the Restore button nothing happens. Hmmm.

If you get a blog disabled due to violating their Terms of Service due to SPAM it may be in error as it has been for mine. There is a link showing the number of deleted blogs. Click on the link to get to the Restore option. Hopefully the Restore button will work for you.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for IT support.

Free tram zone Melbourne 2015 - Begins 1st of January 2015.

A new free tram zone in the Melbourne city area will start from the 1st of January 2015. The area is bounded by the Victoria Harbour, Flinders Street, Spring Street and La Trobe Street. In addition the area up to and including Victoria Market is covered. That is the area bounded by La Trobe Street, William Street, Victoria Street and Elizabeth Street.

The following is a link to the Public Transport map.

Free Tram Zone map

Kelvin Eldridge

www.JustLocal.com.au

Getting a presence on the internet for a micro or home based business can be very inexpensive.

When you start a small home based business there will be dozens of other businesses trying to get you to spend money. They'll push the need for a whole range of products and services. That's OK. They just want to make money just as you want to make money. The trick is to prioritise your spending. Many things promoted to your will simply not make you money, or cost far more than you get in return.

One thing people will tell you that you need is a web presence. There will be people that tell you you need to spend hundreds and others who say you need to spend thousands. The bottom line however is if no one visits your site it will make you no money. Walk before you run.

In my opinion there are many things you can do cost effectively when you start and then when you're making money, reinvest.

Yesterday I decided to put together a website to demonstrate a very low cost approach to having a web presence that can cost you the equivalent of a couple of cups of coffee. Less than the cost of a single networking meeting for a year's presence on the internet.

My reason for sharing this information is that many people starting a business need a presence on the internet and need to promote their presence. JustLocal provides advertising to help people find your site and offers a full money-back guarantee. You either receive value from the knowledge I share or business you receive from being promoted on JustLocal. If you don't receive value from the knowledge or receive business, I'm happy to refund your advertising cost.

So here's a tip on how to have a very low cost and yet quite professional internet presence that works both on desktop and mobile devices.

First you need to register a domain, but don't just register with any domain company. By registering with the appropriate domain company you get to use a domain in both your site and email address that you can add to your business cards and look more professional than those using.@gmail, @hotmail, or @my-ISP. You simply use forwarding to point to your website and existing email address, but the rest of the world sees your website and email address as a business website and email address.

The service I used to create an example site is a service called Wix. To begin you can sign up for free. The compromise is they have some advertising on your site to promote themselves. That's tolerable as once you make money you can remove the ads by upgrading and paying under $200 a year. However make money first and then start spending it. That way you'll be around for the long haul.

The example site I just built is for my preferred Australian English spelling work. I already had the domain english-dictionary.com.au so decided to put it to better use.

If you visit www.English-Dictionary.com.au you'll see the site and I think you'll agree, it isn't too bad for a few hours of typing and modifying the template based site to sell my dictionary products. If you visit the site using a mobile device you'll see the mobile version. A site that works on both desktop and mobile devices is called a responsive site. Wix enables you to create a responsive site.

The Wix site I created is http://sales850.wix.com/australian-english, but rather than use the Wix address, I pointed my domain www.English-Dictionary.com.au to the Wix site and that is the site I'd give to others. The site www.English-Dictionary.com.au is the site I'd publish on business cards and in advertising.

The beauty of this approach is as you grow and generate income and your domain doesn't have to change. You can simply change the technology you use for your site and point your domain appropriately. Your business cards and advertising don't have to change. You also use a similar forwarding approach for your email as you do with your site so your email address also doesn't have to change.

The Wix site is free until you decide to upgrade. If you never upgrade there is no cost. The domain will set you back around $15 per year for a .com.au domain and $10 for a .com domain. There's quite a choice of domains you can use, but it is a good idea to stick to a .com.au or .com domain if you can.

Now keep in mind this is a compromise to begin with. In business we'd often love to have more but often need to compromise. Once you make money reinvest. This approach will enable you to first determine if you can make money, whilst giving you a more than professional low cost presence on the internet.

For more details join JustLocal and get your business started on the internet.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.JustLocal.com.au
Helping businesses to be found by their neighbours.

Fila runners from Target and Harris Scarfe look identical, but with a huge price difference.

I recently went to the Docklands Harris Scarfe as I had a catalogue and wanted to check out the runners. I ended up purchasing this pair for $69.95 discounted down from $110.

Today I was walking through Target in Greensborough and these pair of runners caught my eye.

Do you ever get that sinking feeling you've been had? I did.

I've looked very closely at the images online and compared them to my runner once I get home. I can't see any difference.

I'll need to return to Target when time permits to compare the runners to double check. It may be possible they are different but I've seen games in the return industry where a slight change is made and different codes are provided different retailers so a direct comparison can't be made.

Only time will tell if I've been had or not. Target has a standard price of $60 and Harris Scarfe has a standard price of $110 for what looks like the same item. I do hope I'm wrong, but if I'm not, Harris Scarfe will not see me again and their catalogues will go straight into the bin.

With retailers you really can't let your guard down. Shop around and make sure you compare prices. Even check the online price and the in-store price. I've notice some retailers having better prices online.

Ah well. We live and learn.

Kelvin Eldridge

RACV membership. Do you really need it?

My father had an RACV membership and encouraged my brothers and myself to also join RACV. Like him I was a loyal RACV member for many years. Then a couple of things changed.

I always found RACV's response times pretty slow. On one occasion I waited in Rye for around three hours for someone to attend. When I rang up to see how long it would be I was told I'd been put in the wrong queue. I'd have to go into the right queue and start the wait again. I said that wasn't particularly fair and could they do anything. Their answer was no, but if I hang up and called back again and said my wife was pregnant, I'd get put into the priority queue. I went and got assistance from my father-in-law, fixed the petrol blockage and drove home. Needless to say I was totally unimpressed.

Whilst not related to the car, I also had home insurance. When I was burgled RACV was very difficult to deal with and was trying to pay as little as they could. It took months of persistence to get a reasonable settlement. They were offering around $5,000 on a $13,000 claim. In the end I settled for $10,000, but in hindsight I should have kept fitting. I was very young and didn't realise they were still ripping me off. So another poor experience.

I read once (although I didn't confirm this) that 90% of RACV call outs were for a flat battery or keys locked in the car. The flat battery is easily handled with a portable battery unit with jumper leads. The key issue is also easily handled by making sure we have spare sets of keys in suitable locations.

One issue that also needs to be considered is the need for a tow in the case of a breakdown. That's now easily handled. A call to any Repco automotive repair centre and you can usually get a tow to the nearest repair centre for around $100.

It has now been a few decades since I've been an RACV member and myself and my entire family have never had a need to use them. Yes we've had flat batteries, keys locked in cars, and even a breakdown requiring a tow, but never have we needed the RACV.

The saving each year for all the family's cars have mounted up. I don't know the current cost of membership, but if I allow $100 per car, we're probably talking of $4,000 to $6,000 of savings over the years. That's a huge saving.

With a small amount of pre-planning it is very easy to not need an RACV membership. After a couple of years the savings made should well and truly cover services the membership covers and the rest is money in your pocket.

Whilst it may look like a big decision, the choice is probably easier than you think. What's the worst thing that happens if you're not a member. You join if you need them. The only additional cost is an additional year of members. At about $100 that's really not a great risk. If you have multiple cars and those cars are fairly reliable, chances are you'll be better of even in the first year by not having a membership.

It really is good to look back and realise just how much a saving I've made. All the issues RACV would have covered have been easily covered using other service providers or approaches. I'd even say at a better level of service. That to me is a winning situation.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.JustLocal.com.au

Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter. Has the disk really failed?

The dreaded disk boot failure message is a message that most of us would not want to see on our computer.

The client's computer started up with the message "disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter". They did say they'd seen a few error messages appear before this one.

A good lesson here is if you see unexpected messages immediately do a backup of your important data to an external device. With one disk I had enough time to copy off the client's data before it failed entirely.

Before writing off the hard disk I remove the hard disk and test it using another computer. In this case the hard disk was not able to be seen by another computer so the disk had failed.

What I found particularly interesting is when I installed a new hard disk that had not been formatted I received exactly the same message. This is a good lesson not to assume the disk has failed and always test a faulty disk.

One disk I had I couldn't tell if the disk was failing or not so had not trust in the disk. This can be where there's a trade-off of time over the cost of a new hard disk. Hard disks are not expensive and time can quickly mount up. In computer support often decisions have to be made which is more about a cost effective solution for the client. Whilst it may be possible to repair an issue, sometimes it isn't cost effective to do so. This may mean purchasing a new part, or even a new computer.

Next time you see the disk boot failure message, make sure you have the hard disk tested first before assuming the hard disk has completely failed. Over the years I've been able to recover data for clients from disks others couldn't. Assume the worst and hope for the best.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for IT support.
Also www.Computer-Repairs.Melbourne.

Eltham Village Shopping Centre advertising with spelling and grammar errors.

As I entered Eltham Village Shopping Centre and went down the ramp from the top car park, the hairdresser's sign caught my eye.

The sign is a large poster and would have cost quite a bit to be made and a fee for the position to advertise. You would think there would be an extra effort to ensure spelling and grammar was correct. There should be at least two, perhaps three businesses checking the spelling. The hairdresser, the graphic designer and the printer. How can so many businesses lack care in their work?

How many errors can you spot?

Kelvin Eldridge
www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au
The preferred Australian English spelling.

Cheap computer repairs Melbourne shares low cost options provided by Online Connections.

Cheap computer repairs Melbourne is a page I've added to one of my sites to let people know Online Connections can provide cost effective solutions for those who consider money tight or simply want a bargain. We all love a bargain and Online Connections is happy to cater for the bargain hunter.

Do keep in mind we aren't reducing our hourly rate, simply providing creative ways to achieve the same result at a lower cost. Even if money is no object, taking advantage of the options provided by Online Connections can provide anyone with more cost effective options.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for IT support.

McDonald's hijacks our nickname for their stores by using and promoting the Maccas nickname.

I don't know about you, but somehow I don't feel it is right for McDonald's to hijack our nickname we use to affectionately describe them. The name we as the public use. We've now seeing them using the term Maccas in things like having a maccas run.

Now the problem is companies like McDonald's don't just stop at using the terms we've created, but they also then go and trade mark them. That's the big companies pushing their weight around.

Not happy Jan. I don't think this is good marketing for McDonald's as once they take our slang and use it for their own purposes they push us to use a different nickname. The next nickname on the list is mcscraps and I'm sure that's not going to help them.

So unless McDonald's want to be known as McScraps, then perhaps they really should think about their long term marketing. Hijacking an affectionate name for commercial purposes may be a good short-term idea, but may end up biting them in the long term. I know I won't be using the term maccas any more. Who's up for McScraps, instead of let's do a maccas run, will probably be the catch cry for me.

Kelvin Eldridge

Apple Mac OS X birthday and anniversary reminders keep popping up for November 30th.

Turned the computer on this morning and I had a whole lot of birthday reminders pop up. Weird I thought. So what is it that made all these reminders appear.

I don't really enter contacts into the MacBook Air and I certainly don't enter birthdays, so I decided to check the contact book and see what the birthday date was for one of the entries. It turns out the date for the entry was November 30 1999. In fact all those with birthdays had the date November 30 1999. The anniversary date is also November 30 1999 so I can expect messages for those as well.

Somewhere along the line I suspect this data was input and the dates set up incorrectly. Not sure where this happened. Most of the data has come from my iPhone entries and synchronised to the MacBook Air via Apple's cloud service.

Anyway, if someone's birthday or anniversary really is on the 30th of November then happy birthday or congratulations.

Looks like I made need to do some editing before next November.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for IT support.

Google appears very slow at scanning and reindexing Australian sites I've checked.

I've been checking the .Melbourne site and usually in the past my sites can get reindexed in a few days. I thus suggest to people for SEO to make a change and then wait a week until the change has taken effect.

However as an indirect result of this monitoring I noticed the latest versions of my sites are not in Google's cache since October.

To me that's really disturbing. We could infer quite a few things from this and none are particularly good for websites.

1. Google has reduced the importance of scanning sites in terms of the time between scans. I've always said a company's site is the best place to check for the latest information (hence the reason JustLocal links direct to the site) as I've found Google to be slow at reindexing, but never this slow.

2. If you're trying to optimise your site in terms of SEO with Google then my earlier wait a week suggestion is way off. It may now be a month or more. That has serious implications for those who want to get results from adjusting their site and getting feedback on those changes. It certainly plays into the hands for SEO providers who say it can take months for changes to ripple through. Now you may not see any effect for a month or two and that means you end up paying more until you know what they're doing is working or not. That's a real worry as many SEO practitioners are scammers and it will cost you more before you know.

Perhaps this is good for JustLocal. If you're looking for the latest information from a local business on JustLocal you'll always find it on their site. The site for a business is one click away from your JustLocal postcode page.

Certainly very disturbing. Are websites now being treated as static brochure by Google? This means if you're looking for the latest information from a site Google is not the place to go. Perhaps it's time to look for different places to obtain the latest information that's important to you.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.JustLocal.com.au
Helping local businesses to be found.

PS. If you want to see when your site was last scanned you can type cache: followed by your site into Google as a query and you'll see the cached version of your site.

Computer Repairs Melbourne CBD. Online Connections now servicing residents and businesses in Melbourne's CBD.

For computer repairs in Melbourne's CDB you are now welcome to contact Online Connections. Over the last couple of years I decided to focus locally around where I live, but many business across Melbourne and further afield contact me for support and guidance. To me travel time and parking fees are a waste of time and money. Ultimately however you the client decides what is important to you and I'm here to help. If those costs don't bother you, then they shouldn't bother me as well. As long as you're getting the skills you need cost effectively, someone you can trust is often more important than a few extra dollars.

So if you're located in Melbourne's CBD and need computer repairs or general IT support then you are welcome to contact me.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for IT support.

McDonald's free Wi-Fi perhaps Hijacked at 406 Bourke Street Melbourne!

OK. Today I decided to test the free Wi-Fi at the McDonald's at 406 Bourke Street Melbourne. The Maccas is located on the corner of Bourke Street and Hardware Lane.

When I checked the names of available access points there was no McDonald's free Wi-Fi. A check of the McDonald's site shows the location should have free Wi-Fi. There was however free Wi-Fi available from CafeScreen. I thought perhaps McDonald's had decided to outsource the free Wi-Fi and decided to see what happened if I selected CafeScreen.

I was actually a bit concerned when I saw this screen come up with Hijacked.com.au across the top. I always tell people not to take chances, but hey, I like to test things so others don't have to.

It turns out Hijacked is a service for students so no need to be concerned. However if I was McDonald's I'd be concerned. People now expect McDonald's to have free Wi-Fi and I'm finding a number of McDonald's that don't have free Wi-Fi.

There's now a couple of exposures for the public when visiting Maccas who expect free Wi-Fi. When Maccas doesn't provide the service this opens up two opportunities.

1. For a scammer to set up a free hot spot and set up man in the middle attacks.

2. Maccas have a lot of customers and by not having free Wi-Fi, they leave themselves open for others to take advantage of the opportunity to promote as CafeScreen and Hijacked appear to have done in this situation.

Now I have no idea without more accurate equipment to know if the McDonald's free Wi-Fi had been hijacked but I don't think it has. All it needs is for a nearby cafe or restaurant to take advantage of the marketing opportunity and this is simply good marketing. The iPhone does not provide very good tools in terms of testing a Wi-Fi signal. Perhaps next time I may take an Android device and see if I can better locate the access point.

In general I find McDonald's free Wi-Fi to be a terrible service. Rarely does it connect quickly and most times the performance is extremely slow. Sometimes I think it would be better for McDonald's to get rid of their free Wi-Fi service because it is very irritating and takes away from the Maccas experience. Either provide a decent service or none, but a half-hearted effort as Maccas currently do isn't up to their standard.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.JustLocal.com.au

Search Australia is again the default search for JustLocal.

My apologies for the flip-flopping like a fish out of water, but I've decided to make Search Australia the default search for JustLocal.

My reasoning is, having the JustLocal Members Search as the default is promoting members across Australia the point of JustLocal is to encourage people to buy locally from within their local area. Of course that doesn't stop people from finding and using the products and services of JustLocal members, just that it doesn't make sense to go against the essence of JustLocal.

By making Search Australia the default search engine this makes it easier for people who wish to search, to find businesses in their local area. I've removed nearly 50 online directories so they no longer get in the way of finding the site for the local business. Only .au domains are included in the search. Whilst many Australian businesses do use other top level domains it is not possible to easily include those domains without including overseas competitors.

I've had one Australian business abuse me for not including their .com based site in Search Australia. Had they asked nicely I would have had no problems including their site, but abuse to me is not the way to get things done. In the future if people feel there's value for them to be included for their non .au domains, I'll happily include nominated domains for Australian businesses for a yearly fee.

I use Search Australia all the time to find Australian based businesses and information, so felt making it easily available to others via the JustLocal Search option would be of value to JustLocal users.

You can find Search Australia on any JustLocal postcode page in the menu, or visit www.AdvancedSearch.com.au/SearchAustralia. There's also a link to the mobile version which you can bookmark or add to your Home page for your mobile device.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.JustLocal.com.au
Help your neighbour find your business.

How much electricity does a fridge use?

Today I decided to determine how much electricity a fridge uses. Normally I'd use one of the power meters you can find on the Energy Cost Calculator, but this time I decided to actual electricity as determined by the electricity wholesaler United Energy.

Now you could ask how this could be done but it really is quite easy. I simply turned off every power switch in the house and so the only power being used was the refrigerator. In the past I've estimated the energy of the refrigerator at an average of 40 watts. Here is the graph from the energy wholesaler.

During the hours from 1 pm to 4 pm every power using device was switched off at the switch with only the refrigerator left running. The following is the power reported.

1 pm - 2pm  0.03 kWh
2 pm - 3 pm  0.08 kWh
3 pm - 4pm  0.03 kWh

Averaging the three value we get 0.047 kWh. This 47 watts per hour so my earlier estimate of energy of the refrigerator uses as 40 watts wasn't too far off the mark.

Performing the same test over a longer period may give a better estimate but the real limitation may be the value is reported to two decimal places. However that accuracy is good enough for us to understand the energy usage of the refrigerator.

For those interested in working out the electricity costs for a years, the Electricity Cost Calculator. Plug in your current electricity rate, 24 hours and the wattage which in this case would be 47 watts. The yearly cost estimate for our refrigerator is approximately $108.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.JustLocal.com.au
Helping you to reduce your electricity costs through knowledge.

Compare electricity providers, but to save real money understand your usage.

People compare electricity providers to save money. I know, I do that as well. But have a look at our electricity usage in the graph which compares it to others in our suburb. The graph is provided by United Energy's online reporting service.

The line at the top is the average use of others in our suburb. The bar graph at the bottom is our usage during the month of October. The dotted line is our average use during the month which is 4.9 kWh per day.

As you can see our usage is under half the average use of others and can even be a third or even less.

So how did we do this?

The answer is very simple. I measured the appliances around our home using a cheap electricity meter and understood where we were leaking electricity for little or no gain. We then adjusted our usage without really impacting our lives. Simple things like filling the kettle with the water required, rather than two thirds full. We even bought a bigger and better TV for one of our rooms which will pay for itself in around 5-6 years through electricity savings and got rid of the old clunky TV and set-top box. Little changes in our lifestyle that made almost no difference to how we live our lives.

I wrote this online calculator (Electricity Usage Calculator/) to help me work out costs. Once you know where you're using electricity that you previously didn't know, you're now better armed to make informed decisions going forward.

Of course you can simply shop around for a new electricity provider and that will probably save you 10-20%, or you can look at your usage and save 60-70%. In fact why not do both as we have done.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.JustLocal.com.au

When did Google last take a scan of my site?

When making changes to your site in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO), it is a good idea to keep an eye on when Google last scanned your site. If you make a change and nothing happens in terms of your positioning, it could simply be that Google hasn't visited your site again since the change and thus doesn't know about the change.

I suggest to people to make a change and then wait for up to a week after they see Google has scanned their page. They can use the date on Google's cached version of their site to determine the date. I suggest a week because you want to make sure that after the site has been cached, the effect of that change has then propagated through Google's servers and out to their regional data stores.

If you find a change has a positive effect then keep the change. If the change has a negative effect reverse the change and see if your positioning returns. After you're back to where you were then continue with another change. Trying one change at a time will educate you as to what changes work and what changes don't. Trying a number of changes at once may mean some have a positive effect and some have a negative effect and you won't be able to figure out which change had what type of effect.

Keep in mind that Google is constantly updating their search engine. Google is supposedly trying to improve the search results for users, which would be true, but in addition they're trying to reduce those who have worked out how to game the system and so don't need to pay for advertising. Over the years there's been many techniques that have come and gone that gave an advantage in the search engine and no doubt there still are some quirks that can be taken advantage of. It is important to retest because what worked last year may no longer work this year. I've seen Google push one of my sites up to number one position then only to push it down and the site is currently at position 31. There were no significant changes on my part that I know of. The only way to know what works and what doesn't work from year to year is to keep testing.

A quick way to check the cached version of your site is to type into Google search the word cache, followed by a colon, then followed by your site. For example this is what I'd type for the JustLocal site.

cache:www.justlocal.com.au

For a long time a search for JustLocal had JustLocal in the first position. For quite a while JustLocal  was sitting around the third position. A search for JustLocal now returns www.JustLocal.com.au in the first position. Recently Google did an algorithm update and I also applied a technique I use, but I really can't say whether it was my site getting pushed up, or the other sites getting pushed down. The last time Google scanned www.JustLocal.com.au was on the 29th of October, according to Google's cache. That's handy to know as I've added two new links on the first page of Google to assist my sites in terms of SEO and Google would not have seen those changes yet.

It really is a case of patience is a virtue with Google. In terms of SEO, make a change and then wait and see how the change affects the positioning of your site for the keywords of interest.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for IT support.

Blogger blog deleted.

Every morning I wake up to a bunch of emails letting my know my various accounts have been suspended. All fake of course and containing a nefarious link designed to scam people. This morning was a little different.

I received all my emails from my main account, but then my Gmail account wasn't working and I couldn't seem to get it to work on the mobile. Weird I thought, but with technology not unexpected. I went to one of my Google services and got the following message.

Now again that's not unusual. I accept online services are constantly targets for hackers and minimise my exposure with online services as a result. If anything I have online is lost it will just be a nuisance. With email it would probably be annoying, but other than than, not business critical. All information I consider important is backed up offline. So I provided the code and was able to get into the Google service.

Now my Gmail on my mobile wasn't working so I decided to again use the notebook. There was a message for the Google Blogger team.

Hello, Your blog at http://justlocal3107.blogspot.com/ has been reviewed and confirmed as in violation of our Terms of Service for: SPAM. In accordance to these terms, we've removed the blog and the URL is no longer accessible. 

That's a little annoying I thought. They've deleted the blog. No way to contact them. Just gone. Hmmmm. Didn't think they'd do that. That's an unexpected exposure. Now whilst I'd planned that should I lose all the information in the blog it wasn't much of a concern since it is largely local news items, but to lose that blog as well. Hmmm. Have to think about that one. I decided I'd take a backup copy of the data in the other blogs I run. Some articles may be useful. Apart from generating traffic and sharing information publicly, I find minimal return for my efforts through blogging. Yes I get a huge amount of traffic at times, but most people on the internet want freebies, so traffic rarely converts to ta return. Even if all the blogs disappeared tomorrow it wouldn't be a major concern.

However for some their Blogger blogs is their livelihood. To have Google simply delete a blog and not suspect it, or provide a method of communication to rectify a situation, well that's the risk of using Google's free services. Google, Microsoft will drop services being used by tens of millions of people without a second thought. What happens to one person is irrelevant.

As best as I can tell, the reason the blog probably was deleted was I use the facility which enables me to send posts from my email and they'll appear in the blog. All that is protecting the blog is a password which is part of the email address. This is standard. If the password is hacked then others can post to the blog. I suspect someone managed to hack the password. Nearly everyone using an online service is now usually only protected by a password. The username is often known since many online services uses their email address. In this case people who know how Blogger is set up know there's only a password to work out. Spam starts to appear, Google flags unusual activity. Instead of suspending they simply delete the blog. Game over.

So if you have any type of online presence, do seriously think about your business exposure. Your online presence is being attacked constantly and you will be totally unaware as you can't see that activity. It is only when something succeeds will you find yourself finding you're faced with an issue.

Gmail, Microsoft's online mail, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox and all the other online services expose you and your business directly to the most active and fraudulent sector in our community. Review your exposure and make sure you have a plan in case something goes wrong.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for IT support.