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10 tips to get you started on Twitter

I will be the first to admit it, Twitter is not as easy as it looks. If you look at it on the surface it can be hard to find your particular part of it all. Unlike Facebook where new friends, pages and groups are constantly suggested, Twitter can sometimes be a one-man island. Yes, twitter has the “who to follow” feature but these are usually celebrities who are unlikely to follow you back at first. Without the right strategies, Twitter can be a very lonely place. The second reason many of us struggle with Twitter if the feeling that we need to be tweeting at least 3-4 times a day. Something that is uncommon on other social media platforms. Whether we admit it or not this can be a bit overwhelming. There is nobody out there saying we actually need to do this but at the same time it’s not too hard. A tweet has a limit of 140 characters, many of us would text that before leaving the house in the morning. What I often hear is “How can I tweet every day, when I have nothing to tweet about?

Shoutout to Bizee.co

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  Thanks very much to Bizee.co for mentioning this blog in the weekly newsletter. 

Finding a job during the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction and general premise This summer was the first time in my life that I truly had to engage with the recruitment process while unemployed. Overall it was an incredibly frustrating experience that I would not like to find myself in again. Having recently found employment after a three-month search, I have every sympathy with those who are still searching. I hope you all find something soon.  This post should achieve four things.  1. Layout what my greatest frustrations were as a job seeker.  2. Explain what makes a good recruiter. 3. Explain what traps to avoid as a job seeker.  4. What you should do to avoid said mistakes. Frustrations with the job searching process Frustration 1 - Misleading job openings The first of these job searching frustrations are job searching sites like LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, and many many more. The first of these is that a lot of jobs that are advertised as new jobs, are in fact, not new jobs. When I first started looking I was encouraged by how

COVID-19 is an opportunity to work from home and to reimagine the everyday

Motivation The late Zig Ziggler often spoke about the "I've had it" moment. This is when someone an individual's frustration with their life reaches its boiling point. The moment that individual decides I need to change something, I need to better myself. We as a society have reached that revelling moment in terms of how we live every day. What I am referring to is is how we live. The reality for many people in recent years is the following;  While you read this, I am sure you can think of someone who has retired early because they have paid off their mortgage. Whether we are going to work or school, most people leave around 7:30 am and many of us don't get home again until 19:00 or even 20:00 in the evening. We do this to afford a home that we are never in to enjoy. Wheater you are paying rent or you have a mortgage, the place in which you live is the most expensive outgoing for almost everyone, but we are never there to use it. When one takes a step back and thi

An explanation of SQL (Structure Query Language) Injections

SQL Injection – How they happen Like any other attack this is what happens when a hacker is trying to gain access to a database. This is when a hacker with the use of a query tries to gain access to the database. Essentially what the hacker is trying to do is guess how a query in this database is written and how the database schema must be designed. This would mean trying to figure out under what table things are organised and what tables are in the database in the first place. If one knows the structure of the tables and their attributes they may be able to get into the database and access information that should not be able to do like user’s passwords and email address or even debit/credit card details. A hacker may even remove the need for any password at all.    Using different HTTP requests and SQL queries a hacker can zero in on where and how the database is vulnerable. A search box is a useful tool to hack a database as when a user makes a search query the database is automatica

Discussion of the main themes in the books Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug and The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

  Idea 1 Paul Krug – Don’t make me think (200) The message of Krug’s first chapter is the simple premise that the user should not need to think. Krug writes that when a user looks at a website a number of things should be immediately obvious. For example, what is a button and what is not. This can be done by methods such as shading, underlining or creating tabs. It should also be obvious how to navigate the website or application. For example a sliding bar or a search button to find the needed information or product.    Users should also not be confused about what a button will do if they click on it. For example, a website should say “read news” not “read information” as the user will wonder what information they are going to find. As explained things need to explained in a way that there is no possible confusion. The writer uses the example of a how a button that says “job-o-roma” could be confusing and should simply say “jobs” or “available jobs” The overall message of the chapter i

Describing the Web 2.0 design patterns developed by O’Reilly and Dougherty (2005) and give examples of each.

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 Article in response to:  https://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html What is Web 1.0 and are its characteristics?  This was everything that could be found on the web before the .com bubble of the year 2000/2001. Websites tended to be very static and just displayed text. There was little to no gathering of data and pages did not encourage participation from visitors to comment or add to the conversation. Websites were effectively, “you get what you see” and not a lot more. There were no inbuilt applications like messaging to be found. People also could not tag content and again change the internet environment.    What is Web 2.0 and are its characteristics?    -          large number of very diverse technologies fall under the Web 2.0 umbrella even though they lack any common characteristics   -          Difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 refers to our learning about how to use the web in better ways. A turning point.   -          Tredinnick (2006) argues that We