TechnicaVita.org

Twitter Fail - Collapse of the Twittersphere

• 13 Jun 10
• Written by John Carnell

Twitter has been having a lot of problems over the last week, from slow time lines to API overloads when you try and tweet, Twitter says they are aware of the problems and are working to resolve them.

The current update from last night is "We’re seeing periodic high rates of errors on Twitter.com. We’re currently working to resolve this."

This is all feeling a little reminiscent of the Summer of 09 where Twitter was down or failing more than it was up and working.

Still even Facebook has large scale problems with bits of it's system (Chat for instance) lets hope Twitter get it all fixed up before the World Cup Finals.

 

Make your money go further with Discount Domains UK

• 10 Jun 10
• Written by John Carnell

New projects regularly require new domain names to go with them, however you should always be mindful that paying an agency to register a domain for you can be very costly given that most domains actually cost less than £10 if you register them yourselves.

Cheap domain names from Discount Domains UK is one of the lowest priced I have found, seriously don't pay more than £20 a domain name even if it's "fully managed" register it yourself and put more money into the sharp end of your project.

Another option is to use the money you save to purchase some extra domains to support your project, these could be keyworded landing pages using the brands call to action or form part of your email address This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Domain names can be powerful and when used together can create a great deal of reach, making the pennies go further opens up more options to create a great domain presence on the web and in the search index's

 

 

Sync your computers with iDrivesync

• 06 Jun 10
• Written by John Carnell

One of the most frustrating thing about modern computing is trying to keep all your computers current with your latest work. I have lost track of the times I've needed a document on my laptop at a critical time and it wasn't their or it was an out of date version.

Well know longer using iDrivesync Online Sync I can install their application on my desktop computers and my laptop and any files I choose will be copied and kept current across all my systems. This is going to be very handy for road warriors or people shifting computers between home and the office.

Even better it keeps a copy in the cloud acting as a backup just in case disaster should strike, in built sharing makes it easy to share files from your system or the cloud dashboard.

I like the fact you can install it on up to 5 pc's as well, you get 2gig of online storage for free and unlimited for $4.95 making this one of the best priced services on the web.

While still in beta the service appears to be nice and stable, thumbs up from me on this one I like it alot.

 

 

The Power of Social Media to find solutions

• 04 Jun 10
• Written by John Carnell

As you know this site is as much about the people behind the technology as the technology itself, and I really like to take the opportunity to highlight when Social Media has had an unexpected impact.

The other day I was having a bit of a head scratch about some new bugs that had appeared in the BullyingUK code, I hunted high and low for a solution once I was able to identify where the problem was. However knowing what's causing the problem and working out how to fix it are two entirely different issues.

Enter Twitter if theirs one thing you can guarantee ask a question on Twitter and someone will find you the answer or a person to help. Now I wasn't exactly expecting an answer for a complex problem distilled into under 140 characters but you never know.

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Twibbon and JustGiving - Fundraising Social Style

• 02 Jun 10
• Written by John Carnell

I wrote about Twibbon when it first launched, since then they have really fleshed out their service adding Facebook support as well as Twitter and also adding a few personalisation options to your campaign.

JustGiving as you will all be aware of is the UK's leading donation service provider making it easy for the public to donate to their chosen cause. Together they have come up with a rather clever way to allow supporters to show their support and at the same time prompt supporters to make a donation using JustGiving.

The Custom Campaigns feature allow you to customise some aspects of your Twibbon in Edit Customisations look for section 4 it's clearly marked. Here you can enter your JustGiving landing page when a supporter adds your badge they will be redirected to your JustGiving page and you can prompt them for a donation.

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Update on BullyingUK and WhiteBox

• 31 May 10
• Written by John Carnell

So cool when I get to write a post like this, two weeks ago I wrote about BullyingUK starting to use WhiteBox and how I was impressed with the services potential to scale. You see for every search a supporter makes using the search engine Yahoo make a donation.

To date Yahoo have donated £38.74 thanks to supporters searching 1490 times. I have started to work some new angles of promotion including putting a button on every page of the BullyingUK. When pressed the button installs the search engine as the supporters browser engine, supported with copy to help the user decide to press the button.

I'm also having a trying with Facebook ads as well, if it costs £1 to acquire a new Search2Donate supporter we make that pound back on around 50 searches. Actual cost of acquisition may be much lower around 20-30p a supporter time will tell on that one.

 

 

Add the WhiteBox Browser Search Button to your charity website

• 25 May 10
• Written by John Carnell

Whitebox allows any charity, school or community group to raise money by asking supporters to use Internet Search provided by Yahoo. For every search a supporter makes Yahoo will make a small donation to your charity as an example BullyingUK has raised £24 from 900 searches in a little over a week.

The easiest way to get supporters raising money is to ask them to make you their default browser search engine, this is the small box that appears at the top right of most web browsers interface. It's also one of the most popular ways to search.

Using the code you can add a button to your website that will automatically make your charity the supporters default search engine.

This button supports BullyingUK see what it looks like on our site supported by a call to action.

Here is the code, you need to change the bit in bold to your Whitebox ID you can find that by doing a search using your WhiteBox search box and looking in your address bar for OrgID=#### where #### is your unique ID.

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Google Wave for ALL

• 19 May 10
• Written by John Carnell

WOOHOO Google have announced that Wave it's collaborative authoring service is now available to everyone, since Wave was released as invite only Google have fixed a huge number of bugs and added loads of user requested features.

Go ahead and check it out wave.google.com and head over here for a complete set of Google Wave guides to get you started.

Wave is a fantastic way to collaborate around any topic with your contacts, you can add Video Conferencing and other great addons via the Gadgets and Robots.

As one of the early wave adopters I still use it every day, it provides me with an easy way to throw ideas around with people and more importantly threaded in an easy to follow way.

 

How To add Raffle.it to your Charity Facebook Page

• 17 May 10
• Written by John Carnell

I don't know about you but I struggle some days to keep on top of all the exciting prizes Raffle.it add to their prize board, making sure your supporters are aware of them as well can be a challenge.

Today I fired of a Tweet to Pascal Head Raffler of Raffle.it asking for an easy way to add Raffle.it's prizes to our Facebook page, I wanted a passive way that Raffle.it could let our supporters know about the latest prizes they could win but without me having to remember or have time to do it myself. (I'm not lazy just only so many hours in a day)

As I have discussed before in my other Facebook Articles, it can be difficult to add external services onto your Facebook page. As I have covered previously it is possible to add a Donation Button and Google Analytics to your page if your willing to play with a bit of HTML code.

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Facebook Stealing your Fan Page Keywords for Spam

• 09 May 10
• Written by John Carnell

A change to Facebook is having an unintended impact on Charity / Non-profits, Howard Lake of UK Fundraising let me know that the change was already having a negative impact on charities.

Let me explain what has happened, Facebook created a system called "Pages" a few years ago this system was supposed to be used by Brands to build a place where normal users could connect and reference that brand.

What Facebook didn't count on was users creating Pages for all sorts of purposes including creating negative pages about a brand or personality.
To solve the problem a few weeks ago they created "Community Pages" these pages are created automatically by Facebook and have NO ADMIN.

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