Vote against Labor’s Censorship filter
By Sam PascuaElectronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) today welcomed an announcement by Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey that the coalition will oppose any move to legislate mandatory internet censorship in Australia. On Thursday’s Hack program on Triple J radio, Mr Hockey stated that “we believe the internet filter will not work and we believe it’s flawed policy.”
“We applaud Mr Hockey’s announcement that the Liberal Party will vote against Labor’s filter,” said EFA Chair Colin Jacobs. “The Opposition are very welcome among the ranks of those many organisations and individuals that see the filter as a policy failure.”
A mandatory censorship scheme remains Government policy. However, with The Greens long on record as opposing the internet censorship scheme, Mr Hockey’s announcement means that Labor’s legislation is effectively dead on arrival in the Senate.
“We call on Minister Conroy and the Gillard Government to now admit the mandatory filter policy is dead, and to move on to a debate more grounded in reality,” said Jacobs. “The government must now listen to the experts, and get back to working on giving Australians access to better and faster broadband.”
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Sitecore on Azure
By Sam PascuaSome of you are probably aware that SiteCore have recently released Sitecore 6.3 and are making Sitecore Azure-ready.
Have a look at this MSDN blog post, it gives you a preview of what our Azure integration will look like. There’s also a nice interview with Lars Nielsen, one of Sitecore’s founders.
Read moreIs Magento the right eCommerce platform for your online buisness?
By Sam Pascua
When Magento was released in early 2008, it was met with excitement and interest from e-commerce site developers around the world. It quickly became the preferred software option for mid-range ecommerce sites due to its powerful administrative features and functionality. As Armando Roggio states on www.practicalecommerce.com,
“Magento’s feature list is clearly the result of years of ecommerce experience. The platform includes features like a built-in product image zoom capability, advanced pricing rules to support special promotions, a landing page tool to help with marketing campaigns, inventory management, side-by-side product comparison tools, and more.”
If you are in the market for a new platform on which to run your ecommerce site, here are some reasons why Magento may be the right choice for you.
Read moreThe internet to be censored in the US.
By Sam PascuaThe US is following suit with countries such as China, Korea and Australia with the introduction of laws to censor the web and the voice of freedom. The Americans just as Australians are allowing their government to take away their civil liberties and their right to freedom of speech and the ability to gather news stories from non traditional media.
As stated previously on Di blogs, the time is now to fight for our rights to a free and open web. Australians need to get behind the freedom movement and support organisations such as the EFA.
Read moreGoogle Web Fonts
By Sam PascuaIt has taken way too long, however the day has come, Google has announced that it is joining Typekit, Font Squirrel, Ascender, Font Bureau and others with open-source-licensed web fonts.
The Google Font Directory lets you browse all the fonts available via the Google Font API. All fonts in the directory are available for use on your website under an open source license and are served by Google servers.
We love it, and the first project using these lovely web fonts has already started.
How to Improve Your Social Media Presence
By Sam PascuaSocial media is a large and mostly uncharted territory for a lot of businesses and organisations. We all may have a Facebook page, but how can we best utilise this resource to gain the most from it? As the world continues to focus on the internet as a source of information and marketing opportunities, everybody needs to start getting into the game. From Facebook to Twitter, and from LinkedIn to Fastpitch, the list of social networking sites and marketing methods continues to grow.
If you want to make the most of your online presence, here are a few tips to make the process easier and more productive.
Maintain a Consistent Brand Image
At the most basic level, you need to create a business site that mimics your brand. So much of your customers’ perception of your company comes from the visual and audible messages you are sending out. So it is important to duplicate these messages on your viral marketing sites. Keep the messages you send out consistent with the corporate image you are portraying.
Read moreChoosing an Open Source Content Management System for your Organisation
By Sam PascuaA content management system (CMS) is a generalised term for a computer software system that assists in organising and facilitating the collaborative creation of documents and other content. In other words, it will store, manage and allow multiple lines of access to all of the content you want to include in any particular database. This can be done on any scale, from your personal website to an enterprise-level intranet. These systems have many subcategories focused on providing management services for web content or even media content. However, this article focuses on choosing a CMS for the workflow and organization of digital documents within a business entity.
Dozens of different CMS solutions are available today. Some are developed by leading industry software development companies like Microsoft. Others are not. In fact, there are many great open-source options to consider when looking for a new CMS solution.
One of the greatest benefits of going with an open source system is the ability to fully research the background, development roadmap, problems and benefits of the software. The programming code is open, and so are all of the details of its development. Understanding all the pros and cons of the prospective choices is really important for the decision-maker. Here are some different methods you can use to gain insight into the value of an open source CMS.
Read moreInsights from a Non-Geek working with technical developers at a software startup
By Sam PascuaEveryone is wired differently. Some people are artistic, some are leaders and some are highly technical. Most of the time, it is fairly difficult for these different types of people to communicate effectively and understand each others’ limitations and strengths. This can be especially true if you find yourself working as a non-technical employee in a highly technical field such as software development.
Fortunately, you can ease the relationship with your more technical colleagues if you take the time to learn about their work. Here are some tips to help you better understand the pains and complications that go along with developing and maintaining software from a developer’s point of view, as well as how to position yourself to best work with them.
Start With the Basics
First of all, try to get up-to-date information on the basics of programming languages and industry jargon. Check out Wikipedia or industry blogs to brush up on what is current and get more familiar with industry buzz words.
Read moreCyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet
By Sam PascuaInteresting article by Wired discussing how there is a push to re-engineer the net to assist US Government to spy on all users.
This article shows how there is a world push by Governments to censor and spy on the web, as mentioned in previously Di articles the time is now to save the net.
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