There’s a lot of competition in the tech space generally, but none more so than for website hosting. Companies will tend to choose a host that is located in their own country – or at least, one they think is located in their own country. Just because it bills in your currency and shows what appears to be a local telephone number does not mean they are physically located in your country.
That doesn’t need to be the case though. You can host a website anywhere on the planet that offers the service. Just choose carefully.
Who you choose to host with is only part of the solution to website uptime however. You then have to consider who is going to look after that site – and who is going to keep the website up to date.
There are 2 levels to this. Most hosting accounts will be managed services. That is, the hosting company look after keeping the web server up and running. They update the operating system and apply security patches and other software updates on that machine. This kind of service also locks things down so the end user cannot accidentally do too much damage.
The other half of the story however is managing the actual website that you put on that hosting account. Who looks after that? Who updates the software, plugins and content? That could be a dedicated software team who know what they are doing. But for small businesses this is more often than not, someone who is responsible for marketing. It’s not that marketing people are necessarily more technically minded than other folks – it’s just that ‘websites’ tend to be for selling things, so it falls on the people responsible for selling. (more…)
If you’ve ever wondered about that Hollywood technology you see in the movies that picks out all your beautiful faces from a crowd, just by using fairly low resolution cameras. Wonder no more.
That isn’t just Hollywood at work. It lives and breathes right now in the USA.
And it’s proved so effective that privacy groups have succeeded in getting a federal judge to rule that the database should come under further scrutiny.
The technology, called ‘Next Generation Identification’, is owned by the FBI and has created an enormous database of faces, that could easily include yours. That’s a vast resource of biometric data that has been collected ‘for your protection’, the purposes of which seem to be without much in the way of controls. (more…)
Solar power has been a long time in getting good. For far too long it had been more of a novelty than a mass market product.
Then it slowly moved into the green enthusiast arena.
And finally, we really are now starting to see systems that not only make some sense, but due to significant price drops, can actually give a realistic return on investment.
That is, they can pay for themselves and possibly even save you money in the long term.
And by that, I mean taking into account the installation costs.
Although that does depend greatly on your usage level, the specific equipment you choose to install, and of course how much sun falls on your roof.
Because there’s not much point putting up a roof full of solar panels if you only get a few hours direct sunlight a day. Not if you’re on the main electricity grid.
So if you do live somewhere where sun hours are good, and the sun is strong, then now is the time to look again at the options available locally. Areas such as Australia and Western Europe have made great strides, but solar power in New Zealand is really taking off too now (according to Martin). (more…)
I’m not sure if you can really call it a skin secret, but exfoliation is definitely something that many women forget about – and most men would never dream of doing.
Yet both men and women can greatly benefit from exfoliating regularly. So why wouldn’t they?
I think it’s because it sounds just that little bit too simple. We’ve been trained to look for the complicated or high technology solutions to any problem we have. So simply using a mitten or buffer to gently brighten up and improve skin tone is just sounds too easy. We want chemicals, electronics and salons!
Well, those approaches may get us there quicker (although that is debateable), but the simple at-home approach is probably just as good in the end. It is certainly a lot cheaper, that’s for certain.
So where do you start in your quest to go back to a simpler way? (more…)
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