Advanced Information Networks Product Range

Advanced Information Networks is a company formed by the partnership of Attitude Group and AEC Electronics.

The AIN site has just been updated to provide information on the full range of products AIN offers. Attitude has worked on the web connectivity of the XE-8000 SMS Controller. The XE-8000 allows wireless control, monitoring and logging of remote and mobile devices. The XE-8000 can be configured from the web and log data back to the web.

An example probably makes this more clear. Here is a demo of the SMS to Web Technology, which shows hourly temperature readings being logged back from the AIN offices in Christchurch. Anyone with web access can view this data. We can download the raw logged data. Alarms to mobile phone or email can be triggered based on particular temperature conditions.

In addition to the XE-8000, Attitude has worked with Advanced Information Networks to offer machine to web gateway services, including email event logging and datalogging to web.

"By placing the "&tmpl=E088" characters at the end of a Yahoo search results query, they'll be able to see what are reportedly the Inktomi-only results."

MarketingWonk: 'E088' Template Gives Sneak Peak at Coming Inktomi Search Mayhem

Discussion here seems to suggest that Google is undergoing an update this weekend:

WebProWorld Forums :: Search Analysts Predict Coming Google Shift

Conversion Chronicles - Without Conversion Rates You Don't Know If You're Mickey Mouse Or Mickey Mantle

Good article covering the importance of measuring conversion rates, regardless of the type of site. Provides information on what to measure for sites focused on prospect acquisition, online sales, in-house cost saving or customer service and how this allows you to assess the effects of small changes to your site.

Clickz article: A Golden Opportunity: Politics and SEM

Brief discussion of the unexplored potential of search engine marketing for political campaigns.

It will be interesting to see whether New Zealand politicians learn anything from the importance of the Internet in the recent campaigns of Dean and Clark in the US. As people increasingly use the web as a news and research source, there are important opportunities to communicate and mobilise support. Whether, in general, New Zealanders care enough about politics for this to be important is another matter.

Another related Clickz Article: Google's (and Inktomi's) Miserable Failure

Clickz Article: Online, We're All Introverts

What does the introvert want online? Try:

• Offering contact options other than just a telephone number.


• Including the price whenever possible.


• Revealing what comes next. (e.g. shopping cart checkout process or order form)


• Letting the buyer set the agenda. (e.g. allow them to specify the times you can contact them along with the request for phone number on an enquiry form)

For a break try some fun Picasso drag and drop art ...

Mr. Picassohead

Sitepoint has released several blogs of interest to web developers, including Harry Fuecks PHP Blog: Dynamically Typed. One of the early entries describes how to write
Lazy PHP, which is code designed to reduce the amount of unnecessary code parsed by the PHP engine.

Worth a read for couple of reasons. Sitepoint's standards for content are high. Harry has also written some great stuff on PHP coding. He is the author of Sitepoint's new PHP book, and has his own excellent PHP site: phpPatterns().

The Washington Post supposedly had their domain offline and email down for a day after forgetting to renew their domain. Good lessons for everyone on managing domain names:

"1) Network Solutions remains a terrible service provider, and companies still using them deserve whatever headaches they get. 2) Most competent registrars provide the option for domains to be backed up, so they won't be automatically suspended if a company doesn't respond to the expiration notices in a timely fashion. 3) Register using an address (email and postal) that someone will actually check at some point in the future. 4) Using GoDaddy, it costs $7.95 per year for domain registration. A firm like the Washington Post, which is presumably planning on being in business for a while, should go ahead and splurge for the 20-year or 100-year preregistration package."

MarketingWonk: Washington Post Forgets to Renew Domain

The osCommerce Stylesheet Creation Tool provides information on all styles used in the standard osCommerce system and allows you to vary these on a demonstration cart. Changes are immediately viewable and will be saved for when you next login. You can navigate the site to see how the changes you make look throughout the standard osCommerce cart. You can also output the full stylesheet to use on your own site.

The tool can be used to create stylesheets for osCommerce or as a reference to the various osCommerce styles.

Full details are available at osCommerce Watch: Free osCommerce Stylesheet Creation Tool

osCommerce Watch, a weblog related to osCommerce news and views, was launched early December.

Here are some highlights from the first couple of months:

Simple Manual Order Entry - a contribution developed by Attitude that allows orders via phone or mail to be entered through the cart.
Shipping Calculation Problem? - highlights a couple of settings that can be easily missed and could produce unexpected shipping amounts.
Debugging osCommerce AuthorizeNet Module Problems - a small modification to reveal what is causing problems when installing the osCommerce AuthorizeNet module.
Installation Support Options - ways to get help when problems arise installing osCommerce.
osCommerce Stylesheet Reference
Comparing osCommerce to other Shopping Carts - reviewing some of the issues highlighted for and against osCommerce.
GZip Compression and osCommerce - information on what the GZip setting in osCommerce is for.
Learning from the best: examining Amazon.com to improve your osCommerce site

If you have an osCommerce cart you should find something there of value. There is an RSS feed to subscribe to if you want to know of new content.

I welcome feedback and suggestions for content.

Just Say No to Google Algorithm Chasing

Following the algorithm change a couple of months back many site's Google rankings were tipped upside down. This article is probably the most sensible reaction to this I have read: don't chase the algorithm - contentrate first on making a good site with good content.

Contrasting this, for a couple of articles that offer some smart advice for getting good placement in Google:

Google Optimization: E-Commerce @ $0 Cost (Part 1)
Google Optimization: E-Commerce @ $0 Cost (Part 2)