Unique Preference – Cold Nuisance & Harassment Calls
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Unique Preference – Cold Nuisance & Harassment Calls

Unique Preference – Nuisance, Harassment & Phishing Calls We’ve all received unwanted nuisance, marketing or unwanted sales calls, some probably more than others. Whether you call them cold calls, nuisance calls or in Ofcom’s language “live telesales calls”, the receiving an unwanted telephone call from someone sat in a call centre somewhere to try and…

“You’re on a business park in a beautiful location AND need fast internet access?”

“You’re on a business park in a beautiful location AND need fast internet access?”

On joining Allies Computing to head up our DevOps team, it didn’t take long to realise that there’s a downside to being based in a converted barn located on an attractive rural Norfolk business park: exceptionally slow internet connectivity. As a company offering software and service solutions, having internet access is vital to the business. We obviously need all the basics such…

Email scams continue – PayPal

Email scams continue – PayPal

Received a strange email from PayPal? Might be an obvious statement if you’re comfortable with technology, but PLEASE don’t follow the instructions. As an exercise in gathering information, we did. It all starts with an email, claiming to be sent from PayPal. If you don’t get many PayPal emails, unfortunately these look pretty genuine and…

Smart watches & wearables – what’s all the fuss about?

Smart watches & wearables – what’s all the fuss about?

As someone who has a vested interest in technology, it may be a surprise to hear I’ve been sat firmly on the sidelines of the whole smart watch / wearable “scene” for some time now. I’ve been watching the emergence of the current crop of Android-powered smart watches with little more than conceptual interest –…

Managing a modern blog – WordPress.com meet WordPress.org?

Managing a modern blog – WordPress.com meet WordPress.org?

So, during this exercise in rediscovering WordPress I’ve been determined to try and make the setup & management side as simple and robust as possible.  As part of this, I’ve been exploring tools for managing servers & streamlining WordPress installations along with the new breed of tools aimed at managing multiple WordPress sites from a…

Review: Samba Mobile – Ad supported mobile broadband (updated)
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Review: Samba Mobile – Ad supported mobile broadband (updated)

  Advertising-supported services for various things have been around almost as long as the advertising needed to support them has. Over the years various companies have experimented with offering a full gamut of services from advertising-supported mobile phones through to PCs and internet access. For various reasons, many of those services are now not around…

Apple iPad Smart Case – a smart option?
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Apple iPad Smart Case – a smart option?

Alongside all the higher-profile news & products emerging during Apple’s 2012 Worldwide Developer Conference was something intended to address one of the most obvious flaws with the iPad Smart Cover. Sold in their millions to iPad owners wanting to protect their devices, it may sound slightly obvious but Smart Covers only cover the screen; leaving…

CloudFlare – Supercharge your website in five minutes?
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CloudFlare – Supercharge your website in five minutes?

Since its launch back in 2010, CloudFlare has been a company with an ambitious goal – help to power and protect the entire Internet. Along the way they also accelerate your website, promising massive performance gains through use of their globally distributed servers – providing everyone with easy access a content delivery network. Content Delivery Networks…

Get started with WordPress & Nginx; 15 minutes from fresh OS to WordPress

Get started with WordPress & Nginx; 15 minutes from fresh OS to WordPress

In earlier posts I briefly talked about the dramatic performance improvements you can get by using Nginx to run your PHP / WordPress websites and touched on some of the vital steps that need to be done to start tuning WordPress for performance. If you’re interested in the idea of using Nginx but wondering where…

Web Hosting – you don’t always get what you pay for…!

Web Hosting – you don’t always get what you pay for…!

Just over a month ago now, we launched a pair of commercial WordPress websites for a local business initially using a top-end “dual hosted” Business plan provided by 1&1. We went this route for a number of reasons, one being the significant amount of advertising 1&1 seem to produce (applying the “they can’t be that bad” concept),…

WordPress Performance Essentials – Shared Hosting or VPS

WordPress Performance Essentials – Shared Hosting or VPS

Following on from my last post, Getting Started with WordPress & Nginx, assuming you’ve decided to go down the VPS or Dedicated server route (rather than shared hosting) there are a few things you need to get installed as a priority to ensure good performance. If however you’re unable to use a virtual private server…