The Captain's [B]log
As a less formal home from home, The Captain’s [B]log exists to bring you closer to Bendigo Web Design, both professionally and personally.
We hope you like it.
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Mid 2010 will see the City of Greater Bendigo launch their first Inventor of the Year Award.
$20,000 in prizes is the substantial incentive for the inventive and although Bendigo is not necessarily world renowned as a hotbed of innovation and invention, it should be pointed out that some great Aussie innovations were born here, such as Gillies Pies, Fernwood Ladies Health Clubs and the iconic Chiko Roll. Let us not forget the removable shirt cuff, the self-firing rifle and of course, the recent breast feeding sling!
Further information is available from City of Greater Bendigo Business Development Manager, Peter Jeffery (03) 5434 6241 or email p.jeffery@bendigo.vic.gov.au
The team from Bendigo Web Design would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and offer a huge “thankyou” for supporting us throughout 2009!
We sincerely hope you have a great New Year and that all your wishes be fulfilled in 2010. Having said that, please be careful what you wish for.
A few dedicated elves will be available for technical support over the holidays in the unlikely event that the Internet breaks or Santa’s mail is accidentally diverted to our servers and so we would like to advise all clients to either email us, post on the discussion forums or fill out a support ticket for a rapid response.
Before we leave you for this year we should mention some news.
- Referrals – We will reward you with 10% commission for any referral that results in a new web site or redesign. For new hosting account referrals, we will credit you with a free month’s hosting. There are no limits to the amount you can earn so get talking to your friends, relatives, work colleagues and business contacts. All you need to do is point them in our direction and ask them to mention your name and email address. You then send us an email confirming who you referred. As soon as their project in completed and final payment received, we then credit you with your commission. We have made the referral program as simple as possible to understand and use but for further details, please contact us.
- Do you know Joomla!? – Bendigo Web Design is looking for a Joomla! guru to join the team. If you have no idea what I am talking about, don’t feel embarrassed as not many do but you needn’t apply However, if it’s as familiar to you as PHP, MySQL, CSS, XHTML, W3C standards and cross-browser compatability, then you are free to get in touch.
Merry Christmas,
Bill & The Team
The response to our first giveaway could be described as underwhelming at best and I’m not going to waste time analysing the whys and wherefores. Instead, we will be offering a fully featured web site and a year’s complimentary hosting to the one and only entry as a thankyou for making the effort.
Congratulations go to Liam of Not Half Bad Productions, who I’m sure will agree that it was neither difficult nor time-consuming.
Send us an email and we’ll get the ball rolling.
To mark the first ever computer-to-computer link, established on ARPANET (which grew up to become the Internet) on 29th October 1969, and in an effort to ease the woes of the recession locally, Bendigo Web Design is offering you the chance to win one of 26 awesome prizes worth over $4000, including websites, blogs, domain names and hosting.
Deadline extended to Midnight Friday November 13th, 2009 to get your entries in.
All you need to do is register on the Bendigo Web Design discussion forum and tell us what eye-popping domain name you would register and tell us all about your proposed website. Finally, answer the tie-break question by telling us why you deserve a website.
Your site idea might be a recession-busting business or perhaps you’ve decided that it’s about time your already established local enterprise joined the Noughties. Maybe you would like an online gathering point for a club, society or organisation, a blog for your own personal musings or perhaps something completely kooky. Whatever your reason for wanting an online presence, here and now is your chance!
Remember, the more interesting, entertaining or eccentric your suggestions are, the better your chances are of turning them into reality.
Have more than one idea? Increase your chances of winning by submitting up to 3 separate entries!
Registration is free and painless and you could walk away with one of the following great prizes:
1st Prize
1 x lucky winner takes home a fully-featured website package incl. 12 months free domain name registration and secure Melbourne-based hosting.
2nd Prize
2 x lucky winners will receive their very own feature-rich blog site with 12 months free domain name registration and hosting.
3rd Prize
3 x winners will receive their own personalized email address package free for the first year.
Consolation Prizes
20 x entrants will receive a voucher code for 20% off any website package from Bendigo Web Design.
What’s included?
Your choice from hundreds of themes and templates, custom graphics including a custom designed logo should you require one, a domain name of your choice*, Australian hosting, free management tools, search engine optimization as standard, complimentary search engine and directory submissions, comprehensive traffic statistics, lifetime* of maintenance and technical support, inclusion in forthcoming press releases, hints and tips on how best to promote your new site and the knowledge that your new site is locally built.
What’s the catch?
There isn’t one! You do not have to order or purchase anything from Bendigo Web Design to take part. It might sound somewhat trite but we really do believe that our local community is an important asset and an essential pool of resources, especially during the current economic blip and so we would be happy to put something back in.
Don’t forget, you have until Midnight Friday November 13th, 2009 to get your entries in.
Good luck!
The inaugural Bendigo Motorcycle Expo is the first such event to be held in country Victoria.
Saturday 3rd & 4th of October 2009.
Bendigo Exhibition Centre, Prince of Wales Showgrounds, Bendigo.
It is anticipated that the Expo will feature all the major manufacturers of on and off road motorcycles including but not limited to Yamaha, Kawasaki, Harley, Suzuki and Triumph.
The smaller motorcycle manufacturers, scooter manufacturers, leather goods, customised parts manufacturers, after markets suppliers, airbrush artist, motorcycle trailer manufacturers, insurance representatives, pins and badges and motorcycle memorabilia will also be represented.
In fact, if it’s related to motorcycles in any way, shape or form, we sincerely hope to included it.
The cool Can-Am Spyder
Win Your Own Motorcycle!
Included in the modest $15 entry fee, you will receive one complimentary raffle ticket for the chance to win a brand new motorcycle!
To increase your chances of winning this fabulous prize, additional tickets may be purchased at the Expo for a cost of $5 each.
The proceeds of the raffle will go to purchase a life-saving machine that is desperately needed by the RADIOTHERAPY FOUNDATION at the Bendigo Base Hospital.
We look forward to seeing you at this new and exciting Expo and who knows, you may be riding away on your very own motorcycle!
In the meantime please take this opportunity to browse our web site.
The site was created by Bendigo Web Design to promote the inaugural Expo. You can read the latest Expo news or related articles, share photos and video clips, as well as participate in our lively discussion forum.
With a little over three weeks to go, tickets are flying out the door! So what are you waiting for? Get yourself over to the site and register on the forum.
www.bendigomotorcycleexpo.com.au
If you are reading this, then the chances are that you are just slightly/somewhat/rabidly (delete as required) curious aboutBendigo Forums or else very lost. The following information is for the benefit of the former, although the material is for general consumption and so encourage the latter to read on regardless. It goes some way to explain what the site aims to do, why it was created and by whom.
Created back in early 2007, this modest little site was born with communication in mind; the collation, discussion and dissemination of information. You might think that there is already enough of this sort of mundane tripe parked up and down the ‘Information Super Highway’ and that by adding to it, I’m merely wasting valuable bandwidth, not to mention burning a hole in my pocket. However, my mate Google informed me that Bendigo did not have any significant online discussion board or at least one that wasn’t affiliated with a commercial venture and so I took it upon myself to createBendigo Forums.
“How very altruistic and philanthropic of you.” I hear you think but the truth is that my family and I were new to the region and tools such as the Interwebthingy and Bendigo Forums, enable us to network, discover the region, answer questions, share views, discuss local and national issues and who knows, maybe even make real friends (As in ugly bags of mostly water as opposed to the virtual ones who exist only in Cyberspace).
Forums, sometimes referred to as discussion boards, are unlike conventional chat room facilities in that participants are not required to be present at any given time in order to take part. They can log in and read or join in the discussion when it’s convenient for them. Also, each individual discussion has its own unique thread which is in turn filed within the relevant subject category. These categories are created in advance by me or the nominated Moderators but should demand prove it worthwhile, additional categories can be easily added. The various topics are saved so that they might be visited at any time in the future and thus serve as a useful archive.
The great thing about forums is that as virtual meeting places, they do not discriminate against race, religion, age, sex, disability or even which AFL team you follow. Forums and their users are neither affected nor restricted by time or location. They are open to anyone at anytime from anywhere on the planet (with the possible exception of Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam who have recently been ‘blacklisted’ as ‘enemies of the Internet’ by human rights group Reporters Without Borders 
).
Bendigo Forums aims to be a family-friendly, fun and informative free resource for anyone and everyone with an interest in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia and as such, I encourage you to pop over there now and sign up for your free membershipand get posting now!
Above all, I hope this site will be of some use to someone, somewhere but if nothing else have fun!
You might also like to read Bendigo Forums.
….dead in the water or simpy ahead of it’s time?
The development of an online community can be seen soul-destroying given the amount of work that one can put in for such little initial reward, and by reward I mean satisfaction and not financial gain. The methods employed by commercial and non-commercial social networks to increase participation are often very similar but for very different reasons.
Increasingly, companies are integrating social networking concepts into their online presense to build brand loyalty, push products and services and generally increase their market. Very few Australian businesses have recognised the potential of integrating a simple discussion forum into their sites, for example (obviously where relevant). There are examples in Bendigo, including one that did but paid very little attention to its importance.
When your customers form alliances with others to share their views, business needs, and interests, it can forge stronger emotional ties to your brand. These social networks grow virally and exponentially after customers invite their friends and colleagues to join and so on.
However, while the ‘IT business that shall remain nameless’, will no doubt come back with a more fully-featured, interactive community section having seen the potential of a rival site (their words not mine), there will always be the presence of commercial fluff to distract the user. This is the obvious aim and one which should be pursued as it will eventually pay dividends for them and rightly so.
Bendigo Forums is not commercial. Other than possibly introducing a few Google Ads to help pay for the running costs, that is the way I intend it to stay. Bendigo Forums aims to encourage a social network based on a mutual interest, Bendigo. The potential for local government, business and the community in general to benefit from a site like this is great and probably the reason others will hurry to jump on the band wagon once they realise.
I’m a social entrepreneur by nature, with very many fewer self-serving interests than your average businessman and no corporeal product or service to sell but I do believe Bendigo Forums has the potential to offer something to the community in terms of the general concepts of social networking.
As the numbers of those who engage in online communities grow, more and more look towards forums and discussion boards when researching a product or service. After all, wouldn’t you like to talk to the customers rather than just the sales staff driven by the desire to sell? With this in mind, it is increasingly likely that those in search of information pertaining to Bendigo and the surrounding region will look for discussion groups and forums related to the area.
With relevant content, visitors will stay long enough to read and glean the information they require. With healthy debate and discussion on all aspects of the subject matter, visitors are more likely to sign up and participate. Visitors need a reason to return and their involvement in discussion is just one. There are numerous other methods of promoting ‘stickiness’, from offering chat facilities and interactive games, to regular competitions and multimedia sharing facilities.
The attitudes of most of those who have already been invited to participate in Bendigo Foruns are disappointing and there are alarming parallels in the attitudes, delivery and uptake of Information and Communications Technologies in the region, to those in rural Wales over ten years ago! I was very much involved in the development of the ICT infrastructure for rural regeneration and development in Powys, Wales and so I’ve seen it first hand.
For the moment Bendigo Forums is little more than a hobby I’m willing to share with anyone who’s interested and not a conscious effort in community development. It could be though! With a little effort on my part it could take off very quickly.
And so if you have an interest in Bendigo and the surrounding region, get yourself over to Bendigo Forums, sign up and start posting. It’s free and very simple.
Read about Bendigo Forums.
The Bendigo Web Design sponsored pool team have won Division B2. The Reservoir Hotel faced The Farmers Arms in the Division A2 finals held at the Cambrian Hotel on Monday evening.
Having already met twice, the honours were shared going into the final and both teams knew it would be a close fought encounter. Their second successive finals win was more satisfying than their enaugural foray into the Monday night league with stiffer opposition but still the same friendly atmosphere.
Thanks to all for giving up their Monday nights, especially the super-subs who stepped in at the last minute.
Well done and good luck in Division 1.
The presentations will be held at the Weigh Inn from 12.30 on Sunday 5th April. Unfortunately, I am unable to procure the services of a suitable babysitter and so miss the event.
With the appeal set to officially close on the 17th of April, Bendigo Web Design will follow suit.
We will continue to donate 10% of all projects until this date and would like to take this opportunity to thank those who chose Bendigo Web Design for their development needs, enabling us to donate a substantial sum to the appeal.
Should you not require web development services but would like to donate to the record-breaking appeal, you may do so by using the secure online donations form or by phoning 1800 811 700.
If you have been affected by the bush fires, the following contacts may provide help:
- Victorian Bushfire Appeal Fund: 1800 180 213 email: vicbushfireappealfund@dhs.vic.gov.au web: www.dhs.vic.gov.au/bushfireappeal
- Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority: www.wewillrebuild.vic.gov.au
- Victorian Bushfire Information line: 1800 240 667
- CFA website: www.cfa.vic.gov.au
- State Emergency Service: 132 500
- Australian Red Cross Blood Service: www.donateblood.com.au
- VicRoads: 13 11 70 – www.vicroads.vic.gov.au
- GriefLine: 03 9596 7799 – provides caring listening in times of sadness and distress. Hours of operation are 12 noon – 3am
- Bushfire legal help line: 1800 113 432.
- Victorian Bushfire Volunteer Line on 1300 366 356
- Rural Workforce Agency Victoria: coordinating GP and locum services: www.rwav.com.au
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