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2008 - The Year That Was...
As 2008 draws to a close, it seems like a good time to look back and reflect.
On the world stage, we congratulate President-Elect Barrack Obama on his landslide victory and wait with baited breath to see what changes take place once he is inaugurated.
Bill Gates steps down from daily duties as Microsoft CEO and throws himself fully into a new life of philanthropy with his wife Melinda. His "last day" video was a hit on YouTube as Bill, Bill's "replacement" Steve Balmer and a number of other celebrities poke fun at Bill and his new found "freedom".
In technology news, Steve Jobs and Apple released the iPhone in Australia to mixed reviews. Suffice to say that for a "phone that's not that good" the staple article in every technology mag seems to be "which phone has a better XYZ feature than an iPhone". And having a shiny new iMac on my desk, I understand why Mac-evangelists are - evangelical...people who don't use Apple gear just don't get it!!!
For insilicoTM, it has been a year of change too with a move to our own office in the Kewdale Business Park and a new look website - www.insilico.com.au - to celebrate our first birthday.
The web design aspect of our business has certainly ramped up and we have joined in the iPhone development frenzy, and we can also manage your domain renewals and hosting as well...
This month, we have to thank Felicity Lockyer from Sensis for helping us with our first foray into the wide world of advertising. By the time you read this, copies of the new Yellow Pages should have been delivered to your office so do keep an eye out for our ad in the next edition.
In closing, it has been a very busy year - despite the (alleged) financial downturn - and 2009 promises to be more of the same.
To you, your staff, family and friends, we wish you a very festive Christmas, a Happy New Year and a prosperous 2009.
PS. Our office will be closed from Friday 19th December 2008 to Monday 5th January 2009, but for emergencies you can still email admin@insilico.com.au or call 0412 543 894. These 2 contact points will be checked each business day during this period.
Business Improvement Showcase
This Month: Tracking Outbound Links
A new feature that has been added to Google Analytics is the ability to track outbound links; that is links from your website to other websites.
"Why would I want to do that?" I'm glad you asked!
One of our clients provides products to resellers around the state and around Australia.
With Outbound Link Tracking he can see how many leads his suppliers get each and every week and he now has this very valuable information at his fingertips whenever he meets with them.
Our client had this to say about Tracking Outbound Links:
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"insilicoTM discussed with me the benefits of tracking our web site activity and introduced us to Google Analytics.
After accepting this option, I have found Google Analytics to be one of the most valuable sales management tools available, it allows me to monitor on a weekly basis all the traffic directed from our TV, Yellow Pages and other print media sources.
With this valuable sales data I can now more easily and accurately determine the effect of our marketing campaign and even report directly back to our national distributors the numbers of qualified sales enquiries we have directed to them.
I have since applied Google Analytics to all of our product web sites with the same encouraging results."
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If you think you could benefit from this type of information, call us to make an appointment to see if Tracking Outbound Links can help your business negotiations.
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So, What Have We Been Doing Since Last Time?
We've been revamping our own website which uses a Content Management System or CMS.
This allows any of us (even the non technical ones) to make changes to the website easily and efficiently. Anyone with basic knowledge of a word processor such as Microsoft Word can be creating new web pages and making changes quickly and easily.
And, of course, all this new content makes Google happy-happy as it sees your site constantly getting updated and improves your page rank so now you can get a better Google Ranking as well...
During the makeover, we added our first online order form to the website.
People looking for a website can now go directly to the order form, choose the type of website they require (custom, content management or shopping cart), select whatever additional services and features they require, and hit the Calculate button.
It even includes calculations for monthly hosting fees and web service agreements.
So if you know of anyone who is shopping for a website, let them look no further - just point them to http://www.insilico.com.au/order-form/.
Latest Websites
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Web Industry Association News
The Edge of the Web conference (known to Twitter fans as #eotw) was held at the University of Western Australia on November 6 and 7, and closed with the Web Industry awards on Friday night, November 7.
According to the Web Industry Association events co-ordinator Edge of the Web was a resounding success, and I for one enjoyed the conference presentations immensely.
The event attracted some respected speakers from the eastern states, and the conference was opened and closed by 2 international speakers.
Among the topics covered were Website Development for the iPhone (a la the cool ANZ Internet Banking website), Open Source software, and Social Marketing. Social Marketing, for those of you not in the know, is the use of Social Networks such as FaceBook and MySpace to allow your clients and customers to voice their advocacy and "fandom" of your business.
WebJam 9 was held on the Thursday night and there was much geekiness as attendees had 3 minutes to showcase some of their latest projects. There was uproar as one project still in the prototype stage fell over but the speaker quickly recovered and was greeted with thunderous applause when he did get it working. Oh, and there was beer! :)
Friday was a day of workshops for the technocrats amongst us so I'll skip the details here, but Friday night was the prestigious WA Web Awards dinner. You've never seen so many geeks in suits and ties - I almost didn't recognise them! :)
Sadly, we didn't bring any trophies home this year but we are re-invigorated for next year. Well done to the winners.
Our team: Paul O'Neill, Naomi Allan, Lee Karolczak and Adrian Toh (Photo courtesy of Oz Pacific)
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News From The Trenches
October and November have seen us relocate our servers to new and more modern premises in the centre of Perth. This relocation will see an improvement in our overall connection to the web, and has also afforded us an opportunity to upgrade one of our servers.
There was an initial short outage late October, but most clients would have been blissfully unaware of the change (apart from our email updates).
Thank you to Matthew Byrne from Oz Pacific for setting up co-location for our servers.
We are approaching the release of our first application for the Apple iPhone. That's all we can tell you at the moment, but there will certainly be more news when we have been approved by Apple's online App Store.
There was a recent discussion on Twitter between myself and 2 other developers about the use of iPhones and other mobile devices in business.
We all agreed that lots of businesses could benefit from this sort of technology but it was often the case that the manager of the business was too busy with day to day affairs to even consider how this technology could be used to benefit the business.
Could your business use mobile technology? Do you have staff that are regularly away from their desks but could benefit from being connected to the office? Then this type of technology could help.
One forward-thinking client approached us over 3 years ago seeking to utilise this technology. He ran a collection agency and wanted a simple application to keep 3 to 5 client appointments and details on their phone.
Alas, back then this was a costly endeavour and even our early estimates frightened him off. But new technology and ubiquitous Wireless Internet and GPRS connectivity have made this dream into a more affordable reality. Many desktop applications can also be connected to mobile applications so the possibilities are endless.
If you think your business could benefit from mobile applications, we're ready, willing and able to put our thinking caps on to design a solution for you.
Closing Thoughts
"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it."
Chinese Proverb
Merry Christmas from all of us at insilicoTM
Paul O'Neill
Technical Director
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© 2008 insilico | admin@insilico.com.au | (08) 9200 4431 | Suite 33, First Floor, 133 Kewdale Road Kewdale WA 6105 | ABN 250 0293 8908
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