| Crowded House... |
 Certain national web sites have been emailing around their tremendously impressive sounding January 2005 visitor statistics. You may have seen them...
VISITORS: Site # 1: 16.3 mn; Site # 2: 9.8 mn (that's over one visitor to either site for every man, woman and child in the country!)
Stacked up alongside aussiehome.com's 193,000 visitors for January, you might think we look pretty thin, until you look deeper...
PROPERTIES: Site # 1 - 3.35 mn; Site # 2 - 1.57 mn;
aussiehome.com - 5,481
Surely the most effective comparitor is the number of 'visitors per property'?; and when that is calculated, an interesting picture emerges...
VISITORS PER PROPERTY: Site # 1 - 5 ; Site # 2 - 6;
aussiehome.com - 35
With 6 or 7 times as many visitors per property, we might argue that aggregate visitors (most of whom are not going to be looking at your properties) is not all that useful - even as a listing tool. It's how many people will visit your property - like how many through the home open, or who call you. The proverbial "crowded house"... online. |
| Viruses, Worms and other Nasties |
 Worms, viruses and spyware are a sad reality in the wonderful world of the web, but how do you know if you are affected (and infected)?
- You receive an unusual number (higher or lower) of emails
- Things (such as programs) that worked before, or bits of programs, do not seem to work well anymore.
- You are receiving emails from yourself
- When you try to send an email it sits in your outbox
- Contacts in your address book tell you they are receiving strange emails from you.
If infected, you will need to have your IT manager delete the virus or worm from your system, probably using the latest "patches" that are available on various web sites (such as Symantec or Microsoft).
It is virtually impossible to completely protect yourself as the creators of these insidious viruses are always working to defeat anti-virus software. Some lay dormant for weeks and then explode into life (on weekends, when they know they can do most damage before being detected).
So what can you do?
- Always have the latest anti-virus program on your computer with online updates (such as Norton Anti Virus)
- Install spam and spyware filters (which can be downloaded free from the Internet)
- Be especially careful first thing on Monday morning, in case you were attacked over the weekend.
It's annoying - but what gives the Internet its power (freely connecting computers worldwide) also happens to be its achilles heel. |
| Restoration Drama |
 There has been some discussion about the archiving of SOLD properties on the aussiehome.com web site. Properties that have been flagged as "SOLD" in the database, will be automatically archived after 40 days.
This is done to keep the website clean, so as not to annoy web users who are coming onto the site to see up to date listings of available properties.
Please refrain from un-archiving ("restoring") very old sold properties back onto the site, unless they are genuinely new listings. We want to keep the site useful, and so in this way we all benefit.
And with 8000+ visitors a day visiting the site, and a property search done every 4 seconds, aussiehome.com is getting pretty popular. |
| Help you if we can... |
 If you have any questions on these and other matters, we'd love to hear from you:
Sales, Web Sites, Magazines & Systems: Charlie or Phil
Graphic Design, photos or floor plans: Toni
Programming: Amit or Nitin
Accounts: Cathy
Anything else: Service
Add "@aussiehome.com" after our names, and you have our email addresses. |
|
|
