Solunet Web Design

Business Accessibility

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +1300

In most cases, the only reason to have a website is to make your business visible on the biggest medium on Earth… The internet.

Recently I was looking for a business in my local area, and couldn’t find them anywhere. There was no Finda.co.nz listing, no Yellow Pages (online) listing, and they weren’t in the White Pages (online).

After searching through Google for a range of search terms that would have brought them up if they were online, I thought I’d be clever and try something. I already knew their street address, so I looked them up on Google Street View, and was shocked that (though the quality of the photo wasn’t great) I couldn’t even make out their phone number.

If you want to be seen, you have to make yourself visible.

Big signage is always a good start, but you have to be visible on the internet.

The best thing you can do is have a website. If you don’t want to do that, at least go with a free business listing on Finda. Finda is a free business directory that will let your business rank in Google.

A couple of small helpful tips to make your listing more visible are:

Use your business name as the title, and if you can, squeeze in what you do as your primary service after.
In the description, list your services. These will be picked up by Google also.

As well as having a Finda listing, list yourself in the Google Business Directory.

Source: Business Accessibility

Free Developer Cheat Sheets

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +1200

While looking for some resources on regular expressions (specifically a regex cheat sheet), I found this handy site called "Added Bytes".

They have a handy cheat sheets page, that contains clean, concise information on lots of different topics.

Some of the ones I downloaded were the regex cheat sheet and the php cheat sheet. All of which are completely free.

Source: Free Developer Cheat Sheets

Faulty Vodafone Vodem And Appalling Customer Service From Vodafone

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +1300

In 2008, I (James McFall) ended a long and painful fight with Vodafone over a faulty Vodem. A Vodem is a little wireless modem that runs on the 3G mobile phone network.

At the time it seemed like a very appropriate little gadget to have - allowing you to have internet everywhere. If only it was that simple.

From the start, the device seemed to struggle to maintain a connection to the 3G, and even the fallback 2G network. The most frustrating thing about this Vodem was that once it disconnected from the network, it wouldn't connect again. It required a system restart just to get the thing to reconnect. I'm sure you can imagine this becoming quickly tedious given the poor connection time track record.

Shortly after that it stopped being able to connect all together.

During all this time, I was talking to Vodafone. I took the device in to the store I bought it from (the queen street, Auckland CBD branch) and was stunned when they told me it was fine, despite me not being able to get it working on, at that time, 7 or 8 PCs. They couldn't even get it working in front of me in the store.

This wasn't enough proof for them however, as I was told "It's not our problem". There were a number of heated conversations in that store, all got met with the same complete disregard for my problems.

Instead of taking it to the Vodafone customer service team, what I should have done is just hit a wok for a few hours each time I felt the urge to try to resolve the situation. It would have been more productive.

The incompetence was, well quite something. Over the next few months I paid them, called them, found they'd lost all track of any calls I'd made in the past, and mysteriously never received any of my help desk emails or physical letters I sent through to them.

Not only that, but after being told everything was fine, I wouldn't have to pay the outstanding months on my account (I refused payment of the $50 a month contract due to not having a working product) or a disconnection fee for the cancellation of my contract.

I received an invoice however, asking for all that money. Once again they lost all record of my conversation, and the person I had spoken to apparently did not work there...

In the end I gave up and paid my way out. After over a year I realised I wasn't going to win.

The most disturbing part about this whole thing is, I know quite a few people that have had faulty Vodafone Vodems, and I know no one that has had one that has worked. I even got quite a few comments on my blog article about it from people having the same problem. I most definitely will not be doing any business with Vodafone ever again.

Source: Faulty Vodafone Vodem And Appalling Customer Service From Vodafone

Free JojoCMS Themes

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +1300

In the hope to encourage more people to create some Jojo CMS themes, Solunet have started releasing some converted Jojo Templates. Take a look at our Free Jojo CMS themes page.

Source: Free JojoCMS Themes