News

If you've got your website hosting with Choc Chip, it could be about to get faster and more reliable.

We have recently purchased a new server in Melbourne that we're using for all our new website hosting.

This server is housed in a state-of-the-art datacentre in Port Melbourne complete with security, hardware backups, safety measures and (most importantly, we think) super-fast speed for local users.

Visitors to your website in Australia will notice a significant speed increase when using sites hosted locally, especially if they are downloading large files or media. This is due in part to the location of the server as there is physically less distance for the website data to travel.

Our new server hardware is also fast and powerful, meaning processor-intensive tasks are handled more easily, delivering your website pages faster.

Google released a new version of its search engine earlier this month which promises to make searching faster and more accurate.

Code named 'Caffeine' the new technology takes place behind-the-scenes, so there should be very few immediate changes but the increase in speed and flexibility means that future upgrades can happen more efficiently.

Google's Matt Cutts explains, "We're shooting to get results identical to previous version. We'll open up a few datacenters with it first and then roll it out."

"Caffeine will be more powerful, flexible and robust - allowing Google to index faster."

"(Caffeine) builds a powerful foundation for including any changes we want to do with indexing. Not so much for taking advantage of semantic, real-time indexing, but for getting good infrastructure in place for growth and unlock more power."

Bing is a new search engine created by Microsoft as the latest tool in its campaign to take control of the web. But can it outshine Google?

At first glance, Bing appears to be based so closely on Google that it's hard to spot any real differences.

The design itself looks like Google, despite the added background images. Yes, there's the search box. Yes, there's the go button. Yes, there's the links to other types of content searches, like image and video.

The returned results page is even displayed in a similar fashion to Google's results.

Business Victoria is running the largest ever small business festival in Victoria this August. 'Energise Enterprise' will comprise over 400 individual events focussing on helping businesses thrive in tough times.

Highlights include:

We launched the official Great Ocean Road website for the Geelong Otway region a few days ago, and it is already meeting with approval from tourism authorities and readers.

The Great Ocean Road is one of our state's top tourism destinations and this new site, produced for Geelong Otway Tourism, is designed to showcase the region and provide information for consumers on accommodation, things to do, destinations, festivals, and other tourist activities.

I spent some time over the Easter weekend pulling together DailyKu - a website that delivers a daily haiku poem via Twitter.

The concept is simple: gather a database of haiku poems written by the original Japanese masters in the 16th to 18th Centurys, then write a script to post one per day to a Twitter account automatically.

If you're on Twitter, follow DailyKu and check it out!

Choc Chip multimedia is proud to welcome lead web developer and programmer Elbert F to our team.

Elbert is a talented and creative developer who I was lucky to meet at the last Geelong Web Meetup. Not only is he a gun PHP programmer (the language we use to build our websites) but he is adept with many other web languages, has created his own sophisticated CMS, is a Twitter superstar and gets interviewed by web development magazines.

If you're a web designer or are interested in web technologies and social networking tools, join the Geelong Web Technology Meetup Group and come along to the next get-together.

A loose connection of web designers and users from the Geelong region have gathered informally a few times over the last 12 months for a good time discussing our passions and learning from each other. We're now getting slightly more organised and plan to get together regularly, every month or so.

The Geelong Chamber of Commerce is running events over the next two months to help prepare and motivate local businesses during what is predicted to be a hard year financially. If you're in the Geelong region you might find these sessions very useful.

There are three types of events being presented:

1. Information Sessions

These will feature selected presenters talking on a specific topic each time and accommodate a larger audience.

2. Q&A Sessions

These will be similar to past Q&A sessions run by the Chamber (like the one on growing your business online that I spoke at) but the l members will be focussing on topics relevent to financial downturn.

The last few days have been truly shocking as fires rage around Victoria, the death toll rises and more and more people have family or friends directly affected. The threat continues on many fronts across the State.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the firefighters as they work tirelessly to save lives and property, and also with the family and friends of the people who have tragically lost their lives.

I don't usually post about news that is not related to website design, small business or the internet, but sometimes we have to step back and take stock of what's going on in the world around us. You can donate through Red Cross or by visiting any a NAB, ANZ, Westpac or Commonwealth Bank branch, any Bunnings or Myers store.

For many people it will come as a surprise to find that the games industry is double the size of the movie industry.

The Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia (IEAA) released figures at the start of the year that show games industry revenue was $1.96 billion in 2008 - twice as large as the box office and an increase of 47% from 2007.

These figures reveal a major shift in the way people are spending their entertainment time and dollars and provide new opportunities for entrepreneurs.

"We've seen a 137 per cent increase in family games - things like music and dance games, party games, puzzle games, that sort of stuff is really making up the bulk of the dollars," says Ron Curry, chief executive officer of the IEAA.

In an international copyright showdown, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has won control of a website domain in his name after an Indonesian man had tried it to sell him for $55 million.

"Cyber-squatting" is the practice of registering a domain name relating to a high-profile person or brand and then refusing to release the domain to them unless they pay far more than the actual registration fee.

Some people use domain names as a form of investment, buying domains relating to generic words and phrases in the hope that a business will want to buy them in the future. And for some businesses, the investment in a good domain is worth the extra investment.

We've released new versions for the Author Contact module for both Drupal 5 and Drupal 6.

The new D5 version is a minor update, removing the fieldset around the contact form and updating the way theming works.

The D6 version is now working properly and has been fully tested on our test servers.

Thanks go out to those users that gave us useful feedback and patches.

What is Author Contact?

As members of the Drupal community we like to give back where we can. Part of this commitment means sharing some of the modules that we create so that other developers can use them if they have a similar need.

I have been asked to appear on the panel for the next Geelong Chamber of Commerce Q&A event, providing advice for small businesses wishing to leverage the power of online advertising and sales.

The Q&A sessions are a Geelong Chamber of Commerce initiative that provide advice on a range of topics of interest to local businesses, and take place in the form of a panel of experts that the audience can ask questions of.

This month's Q&A has the topic of 'How to grow you business online' and you don't have to be a chamber member to come along.

Read more on the Geelong Chamber of Commerce website or in the invitation pdf file.

Many of our clients run small businesses or startups in the Geelong area. If this is you, you may be interested in these training grants currently available for Gordon TAFE's 'Enterprising Futures' program.

The small business grants provided by the City of Greater Geelong are to undertake business training, skills building and business development. The grants fund half the costs to participate in one of two Enterprising Futures training and business support programs, either 'Explore Your Business Idea' or 'Focus on Your Business'.

This is your opportunity to benefit from expert small business support and training at half the usual cost.

For more information and eligibility please see the flyer below.

Download the Enterprising Futures flyer.