One of the downsides of a website contact page is that you can't block individual spammers because the From: email address is your own website.
About the only thing that can make you feel OK about spam is receiving something this funny
Thursday 26 November 2020
Email spam
One of the downsides of a website contact page is that you can't block individual spammers because the From: email address is your own website.
About the only thing that can make you feel OK about spam is receiving something this funny
Wednesday 25 November 2020
Women's portraits at Joomla: Nicky Veitch
https://www.web-eau.net/blog/women-s-portraits-at-joomla-nicky-veitch
Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?
Via Harvard Business Review:
Summary: Why are so few women in management positions? The popular explanations range from women just aren’t capable of being leaders to women just don’t want to be leaders. According to the author, however, the absence of women in leadership roles has less to do with women themselves and more to do with how we interpret leadership traits. Confidence – a trait more associated with men – is often misinterpreted as competence. As a result, charismatic, but incompetent men have fewer barriers to reach the top than women. Individuals in positions to promote and hire managers should think more critically about what seems like a leadership trait versus what is an actual leadership trait. They will find that arrogance and overconfidence – the characteristics that get men into management positions – are also the characteristics that cause poor performance.
Thursday 1 October 2020
No Hassles
I respectfully suggest that "No Hassle" really means "No Service" and "Much Hassle", once they've taken your money and bolted.
This type of stuff drives me crazy. It devalues the industry and the expertise that real web professionals offer, and makes people who don't understand what is required believe they can get something for nothing. It is literally #FakeNews.
There is NO way that anybody can deliver all of this for $99, from any country, in a way that will genuinely help somebody's business.
Monday 14 September 2020
The Social Dilemma
TLDR;
1. Very smart people invented very smart technology which is now ruining social cohesion.
2. Something should be done.
3. The highly successful business model means nothing will change unless they are forced to.
https://medium.com/swlh/the-mechanics-and-psychology-behind-the-social-dilemma-719d618aa8ce
Monday 7 September 2020
The tech field failed a 25-year challenge to achieve gender equality by 2020 – culture change is key to getting on track
Friday 4 September 2020
Friday 28 August 2020
The latest online idiocy - 'brushing'
If you receive something in the mail you didn't order - like seeds or a pen - it's likely you are the victim of a data breach, and your details are being used to generate fake reviews of online products.
Tuesday 18 August 2020
Google Shonkiness
You may have seen a pop-up from Google yesterday warning that the tech giant’s functionality was “at risk” from new Australian government regulation.
Don’t fall for it.
Tuesday 11 August 2020
Tensions rise on coronavirus handling as the media take control of the accountability narrative
Interesting outline of the phases of media coverage. Impact and response are the first two phases, and the third is accountability, i.e. the blame game.
When an issue is close to home, local media are often slower to get to accountability than media further away, because the people who are directly impacted, and who they are directly communicating with, may still be focussed on the first two phases.
https://theconversation.com/tensions-rise-on-coronavirus-handling-as-the-media-take-control-of-the-accountability-narrative-144195
Thursday 2 July 2020
Thursday 18 June 2020
Let's talk about endometriosis
I'm unfortunately part of this 10%, and it's taken most of my adult life to be properly diagnosed. I hesitated about writing this, but in the end decided I'd spent too many years hiding my symptoms and making up stories about why I couldn't do things. Yes, I'm on the introvert side socially, but a lot of my "antisocial" over the years has not actually been by choice.
There are 4 stages of endometriosis, and in 2019 I had a laparoscopy which finally, definitively diagnosed Stage III going into Stage IV.
Without going into specifics, Stage IV is where endo starts to grow onto/into other organs in the pelvic cavity, and if left untreated can cause some fairly awful longer term problems. Nobody knows why this happens.
Yesterday I underwent surgery to have my endo removed. Today my lovely doctors advised they are confident they got it all! Finally, some positive news in 2020!
I'm not looking for sympathy (really, please don't, I'm weirdly awkward and invariably say something dumb), but this disease can have a significant impact on a woman's life and that of her family, and many women don't talk about it or don't feel like they have anyone they can talk about it with, so if you'd like to talk, feel free. Since I started talking, I've discovered several women I already knew who have lived with endo and I had no idea.
Consider 10 women in your life, and then consider that statistically, one is suffering with endo at some level, most likely in silence. They may or may not even know what the problem is. Statistically also, it takes an average 7-10 years to diagnose this condition, although mine took much longer.
As I've joked-but-not-really to several friends - if this affected men, there would have been a blue pill 30 years ago! But we women have a higher pain tolerance, we "suck it up", and we don't talk enough about women's health for a whole bunch of reasons.
I'm very much looking forward to living the next stage of my life without this beast. Feel free to comment or message if you'd like to chat.
Thursday 11 June 2020
Amazon is implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of facial recognition technology
This is an interesting development. Amazon is implementing a one year moratorium on police use of facial recognition technology.
"We’ve advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology"
Monday 8 June 2020
Recommended Read: Social Media is Ruining Your Life
This guy knows the deal. Social media is a massive manipulation engine.
In this interview Jaron Lanier talks about Facebook, YouTube, Google and how the tech and social media giants are using algorithms to record data about their users – and how internet algorithms shape how we see the world and what we’re shown online.
Thursday 28 May 2020
Recommended Read: Facebook Executives Shut Down Efforts to Make the Site Less Divisive
Too often, technology is created for the sake of doing it, to make money, to be first, because somebody else is doing it, or because somebody with influence decided it was a good idea at the time, with little regard for people or consequence.
Today we are witnessing some of the results of these decisions.
#technology #peopleandculture #ethicalleadership #ethicsmatter
Friday 8 May 2020
Facebook Ads example: Social Media Checkup
Example of a Facebook social media campaign conducted during Covid-19 lockdown:
- Creation of a landing page within the website.
- Creation of graphics (as displayed above).
- Creation of a sign-up form incorporated within the landing page.
- Creation of a Facebook post linking to the landing page.
- Targetted ad campaign on Facebook, directed at small business owners in the Melbourne metropolitan area during lockdown.
Tuesday 24 March 2020
This year I was going to be the Event Organiser of JoomlaDay Australia, but...
Monday 23 March 2020
PRINCE2 Certification
Happy to have successfully achieved PRINCE2 Foundation and PRINCE2 Practioner certification last week!
Thursday 30 January 2020
A new website for the Joomla Australia community
I'm very proud to announce the new Joomla Australia website, a project I was the Project Manager for.
In recent years the local Australian Joomla User Groups (JUGs) have joined forces and rebranded to a nationally focussed Joomla Australia.
During JoomlaDayAu 2019 in Brisbane, talk turned to the Joomla Australia website which hadn't been revamped in several years, and a decision was made to form a committee to plan a new site.
The committee was made up of JUG members/organisers in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. A truly national undertaking! On 24 August 2019 we held our first meeting via Skype, to discuss requirements and make a plan, with a goal to launch by 30 January 2020.
The project was a success and was launched on time - an extraordinary effort, considering the project was conducted 100% online, and entirely by volunteers from different timezones, with Christmas and summer holidays in the middle.
