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Thanks,

Ben

The argument in favour of this “prohibition on internet freedom” goes like this….

1. We MUST protect children from Paedophiles.

Agreed. Duh!

Instead of asking the internet industry how. The politicians decide….

2. We MUST filter the internet to protect children.

Agreed-ish, supervision is best for protection and for positive learning but in the absence of a responsible adult a powerful filter can be suitable.

3. We MUST make filtering of the internet mandatory.

There are many serious implications and better solutions. Frankly this goes too far.

The emotional argument

When an objection is raised about this policy the counter argument is the most concerning. Instead of addressing the concerns the response is purely emotional. The proponents have stated the obvious, of course we must protect children from pedophiles, they’ve then linked it to their goal so anyone that objects to a “mandatory filtering” is denounced as a paedophile or a paedophile supporter. This is a outrageous, a politician should use their elected position to be wise and considered not emotional and ill-informed.

Crafty word-smiths know this response can completely bypass all the facts by getting to the heart of the emotional issue without even focusing on what is best for our children, so it goes something like this…

Don’t you think preventing one case of child abuse is worth the risk of harming the internet in Australia?

My response?

Preventing one case of child abuse with this policy means many more children will be put at risk of abuse through a false sense of security, i.e. assuming the internet (in Australia) has been made safe.

@MikeFitzAU’s cartoon below makes the point about a false sense of security very well….

Economic Harm

Testing has been released on systems that will slow our internet by up to 87%, make it more expensive, miss the vast majority of inappropriate content and accidentally block up to 1 in 12 legitimate sites. Our children deserve better protection – and that won’t be achieved by wasting millions on this deeply flawed system.

From http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet/442

Slow your internet by 87%? That would be like going back to dial-up networking for most people. Do you want Australia to go back 5-10 years in terms of internet bandwidth and remain behind every country in the world for ever more? That is not good for our kids.

At the most basic level we all know that the speed of a website is important. If it’s slow we move on. If the whole internet is slow we will use it less, we will buy less online and the evolution of the internet in Australia and all the benefits it has brought over the last 5-10 years will be damaged.

Our knowledge economy will be seriously hampered, all sorts of businesses rely on the internet.

This damage will put Australia at a disadvantage that will grow year after year unless businesses and individuals go to extra efforts to bypass the filter.

What’s in our kid’s best interests?

Not this “mandatory filter” for all sorts of reasons.

1. It won’t protect children
2. It’ll put more children at risk through a false sense of security
3. It’ll harm the economy

Use the money to educate parents and kids about the dangers online so people can understand the need for parental supervision and in-home filtering.

Other links

• MikeFitzAU’s blog post with a great Mind Map of the issue
  
• Dear Minister Conroy. A letter from a father of two about the Mandatory Filter
• China and Google, a comparison with Australia’s plans
• Take action: Join Get Up
• Stop Internet Censorship

If you have a relevant link or a comment please post below.

As the search engine you’ve probably already heard on the media about the massive volume of hits that fooled Google into thinking it was under attack and slowed Google down.

Web Consultant’s Eye

As a web consultant it is interesting to me, okay okay – I love the web, that Google Trends is already showing the following:-

• A mark on the timeline referencing news of Michael Jackson’s death. Nice automation Google.
• If you compare the level of searches over the last 12 months to the time of his death you can see a 30 fold jump in traffic (opens in new window)
• And if you change the scale to just the last 30 days you find two things… first that whilst the number of actual user searches is falling the number of news articles about him are beginning to increase after the obvious surge. NB. This blog post will add to that too.
• Second thing we notice from the 30 days scale is that the “surge” of web traffic over the “normal” level indicates that the factor is only 10 fold…. a bit of simple maths tells me that the traffic before he died was therefore three times higher than over the last 12 months…. which is a great increase for someone trying to make a comeback

your Web Consultant

Here are some facts that you’ve probably noticed or heard but lets put it all together…

• The Yellow Pages is slimming down, basically businesses know the Yellow Pages just doesn’t work like it used to. Anyone with access to a computer uses their computer.
• In December 2008 – 8 million households in Australia (that’s 75%) had internet access. So I reckon that’s at least 75% less people using the yellow pages compared to pre-internet life… and this trend is continuing. Besides as the Yellow Pages hasn’t shrunk by 75% yet you’re less and less likely to even get called as the ratio of readers to advertisers gets worse and worse.
• Also, in 2006/07 87% of Australian Businesses had internet access. So it’s not just at home that people use the web.
• Also in 2006/07 40% of Australian Business placed orders online.

Australian Internet Facts (PDF) – opens in a new window

So as far as I’m concerned this trend is definitive and proves that you need to stop wasting money on the Yellow Pages!

Go Internet Marketing!

Internet Marketing is the way ahead, there is no doubt about it.

The growth of internet use is continuing and completely unstoppable. This is absolutely clear to me after the last few week of my mother-in-law asking me if I can set-up her new PC soon as she hasn’t checked gmail in ages and wants to hop onto Skype. I got her set-up with TPG and using Fedora Linux. Not bad for 70 this year! Go Jilly

The problem is how to do it right. Many businesses in Australia already have a website but don’t see any return from it think about your customers.

• What are they searching for? Think phrases.
• What phrases are important for you to be there, ready and waiting on Google?

Internet Marketing is the future – Try this out.

If you still need convincing or are seriously interested in finding some of these magic phrases then you have to try this out. Google has a service called Google Trends. Google collates data about what people are searching for and enables you to generate your own comparison charts.

As a professional web consultant I use it all the time to compare search terms and gain insights into what search terms are becoming important and which are on the way out.

Get into your customer’s head – Ask them!

I meet people who run businesses all the time and ask these business owners what people use in Google to find their current website…

Number 1 answer is “we don’t know”

Number 2 answer is “our company name”

That’s a sign that there is something seriously wrong with their website. If you’re a Plumber in Brisbane wouldn’t it be nice to be the number one in Google for Plumber Brisbane rather than only get visitors if someone happens to already know your business name? YES, of course it would. It makes the difference by a factor of a hundreds or even a thousand everyday for almost any topic you could mention.

Be your own web consultant for five to ten minutes. Play with this tool and think about keywords & phrases.

Step 1) Visit Google Trends and type in some searches about the type of service you provide. If you get stuck thinking of words try:-

• Free Keyword Tracker
• Google Suggest
  

Step 2) Take some of these phrases to Google Trends and follow the instructions. Type them into the big input box and split phrases up with commas e.g. you want to compare how many searches are made for “Mashed Potato” and “Potato Chips”.

Step 3) Look at the results and ask yourself some questions about anything you see. Click here for my example result and note the format of the text in the input field at the top with the commas separating the phrases. Now spend some time thinking about the result.

• Why are 1.6 times as many searches made about Potato Chips than Mashed Potato?
• Potato Chips searches are trending downwards, why?
• There are two spikes in the Mashed Potato searches, are they pre and post Christmas?

Have fun. There’s lots of interesting stuff to discover in Google Trends

Your web consultant

I’ve just finished a major project for The Betting Guru. This website includes a full PayPal subscription service to protect the valuable private content.

The service

What is it? Well I’ve never been much of a gambler, only the odd horse race, Grand National, Melbourne Cup or Soccer matches (I am from the UK) but his predictions are simple to understand.

As a programmer (and trained as an Aero Engineer) I do know a bit about maths and constructing algorithms. It’s quite clear after spending time with the betting guru that his statistical model is extremely well developed. He has used this model to make predictions on the NRL for some time.

Almost the entire 2008 season NRL match predictions were presented on a previous website with great success. Look at the profit and results here.

Each week the Betting Guru presents a predictions on a selection of matches in the NRL or AFL. He is also investigating models for other sports

Internet marketing

The website went live mid afternoon yesterday (Friday, 20th March) and we emailed subscribers to last years free predictions. Within 3 hours, half of the recipients had already read the email, and clicked through to the website and 6% of these had actually bought memberships!

What a great start

I also helped the Betting Guru get to grips with Twitter, he’s getting there. Follow him at twitter.com/bettingguru

Visit www.bettingguru.com.au for NRL & AFL match tips

How it is built

After listening to the Betting Guru’s need for monetising this unique content I came up with a plan to provide a website environment which enables the following…

• Easy previews of content so potential customers can see what they could get access to after subscribing
• Smooth joining experience
• Secure area for members to access premium content
• Simple subscription model, weekly or annual for NRL only, AFL only or both

PayPal’s subscription system has worked very well in this instance and we already have plans in place to use this on another project.

The system is based on the latest version of WordPress (like this one). I also bought a full copy of the MemberWing premium WordPress plugin. All the PHP code is very heavily customised to enable all sorts of features.

I particularly liked the time that the MemberWing saved in terms of handling the PayPal Instant Payment Notification (IPN). I can happily recommend this plugin

At first I thought… Oh dear, do I really want to know what everyone else is up to? But after a while I realised that for some of the people I know the answer a actually YES.

I’m especially keen to know what my peers are up to in SEO, Web Design and Web Development…. so that’s been my first *benefit* from Twitter already. Working on my own most of the time it’s nice to have a little community and connect with the people in the Brisbane Web Design networking group a bit more than our once a month meetings.

I’m still not sure how I’ll hook it up to my mobile…. which is still struggling after being drenched in sunscreen… but I’m at my desk everyday for at least the next week so I’ll suss it out.

I’m going to posing a few bits of information here now and again about…

• projects I’ve worked on
• business ventures I’m involved in
• “Brisbane Web Design”, the networking group that I organise

Get in touch via mattersolutions.com.au