Comments Off on Excel Design Tips – Make Your Excel Spreadsheets Look Good

Excel Design Tips – Make Your Excel Spreadsheets Look Good

Posted by on Thursday, October 9th, 2008

Excel Design






Excel is a powerful numbers tool, no question. Most of the time when we talk about spreadsheets we are focusing on the mathematical side, rather than how the results look. Thing is, spreadsheets are a tool for creating content to be read also. In fact, I would go as far as to say a spreadsheet […]






Comments Off on Creative Commons For Bloggers

Creative Commons For Bloggers

Posted by on Saturday, August 16th, 2008






In our last post on Creative Commons I explained the general ideas behind licensing your content and some of the advantages this gives you. Today I will look at Creative Commons for bloggers in particular. Since the last article I have added a Creative Commons license to my own blog. An “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported” licsense, […]






Comments Off on Testing Cuil

Testing Cuil

Posted by on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Cuil






The search world is buzzing with the new search kid on the block, Cuil. Self-declared “World’s Biggest Search Engine” Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest […]






Comments Off on Google Paranoia and the Tin Foil Hat Club

Google Paranoia and the Tin Foil Hat Club

Posted by on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008






How many times have you seen on forums “Don’t use the Google toolbar!” “I don’t use analytics, I don’t want Google knowing what I am up to” “Guess I can’t use FeedBurner now” “There is no way I am getting a Reader account” … and so on. What is it with all the Google Paranoia? […]






Comments Off on The Growing Threat of DDOS as a Weapon

The Growing Threat of DDOS as a Weapon

Posted by on Thursday, April 24th, 2008






The more we build business and economies on top of internet infrastructure, the more we are vulnerable. I was reading today about yet more DDOS attacks (Distributed Denial of Service) on websites. A DDOS is a lethally effective way to take a website unavailable, and often requires expensive and specialist help to solve if the […]






Comments Off on Nanaimo, the Capital of Google Earth

Nanaimo, the Capital of Google Earth

Posted by on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008






Where would you guess would be the most data-rich place on Google Earth? I expect you would take a stab at Mountain View California, where the headquarters of Google is located? Silicon Valley, Redmond or perhaps New York? No, it’s a small port town in British Columbia called Nanaimo! How Google Earth Ate Our Town […]






Comments Off on From Programmer to Puppet-Master: How I Didn’t Rig the Zimbabwean Elections with a PDF Converter

From Programmer to Puppet-Master: How I Didn’t Rig the Zimbabwean Elections with a PDF Converter

Posted by on Sunday, March 30th, 2008






Here is the unbelievable story … Last Thursday (03/28/2008) a newspaper called “Zimbabwe Online” published an article accusing my company (Cogniview) of helping Robert Mugabe, The infamous Zimbabwean president, rig the Zimbabwean elections. Link to full story The article continues to claim that my company has secret ties to the Israeli Mossad, and that the […]






Comments Off on My Essential Daily Tech Feeds

My Essential Daily Tech Feeds

Posted by on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008






Staying up to date with the technology field is a lot easier than it used to me. Back when I started my career at age 16 it was tough to keep up, the only source of information was expensive telephone directory weight magazines. Not ideal, especially as my weekly salary was only in double figures. […]






Comments Off on Is Google Toolbar Hijacking 404 Pages?

Is Google Toolbar Hijacking 404 Pages?

Posted by on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008






I logged in this morning to see a message from Wendy pointing me at this article. It seems the new version of the Google Toolbar detects a 404 error code and serves up Google’s own “helpful” replacement 404 page. Why is this “helpful” behavior bad? As well as a link to the domain root they […]






Comments Off on Why AppleTV Will Fail. Again.

Why AppleTV Will Fail. Again.

Posted by on Thursday, January 17th, 2008






When I first heard about Apple TV I thought it sounded pretty cool. Then I found out what it actually was, and thought “Ah well, pretty lousy but hey, it’s version one.”. We now get to know the news from Macworld and anticipation was high, along with the new video rental service. This could be […]