Patrick Oak

I'm an internet consultant. Over the past 10 years, I have built my own online businesses and helped companies build theirs. From strategy to development to marketing I am a jack of all trades and love sharing my experiences and advice.

Using Secure FTP

If you run a website, you're almost certainly familiar with FTP, the file transfer protocol that enables you to upload files to the server that hosts your website.

by Patrick Oak 30 July 2008 08:40am 2 comments

Six conference call services

In today's globalized economy, with more business being conducted across different timezones, like me you've probably noticed that the number of conference calls you need to engage in has increased dramatically.

This is simply because you frequently have to interact with people in different geographic locations.

by Patrick Oak 28 July 2008 08:40am 11 comments

My security 'set-up'

As a consultant, I store a lot of sensitive data about my clients.

From website passwords to confidential business documents, my desktop computers and laptops contain data that could be damaging to my clients if it got in the hands of the wrong people.

by Patrick Oak 25 July 2008 08:45am 4 comments

Web-based HTML and CSS validation tools

Are you validating your website's HTML/XHTML and CSS? If not, you should be.

by Patrick Oak 23 July 2008 08:45am 1 comment

Six open source web application testing tools

If you're building a web application and have high hopes that it will be used by lots of people, one of the most important things to do before you launch it is to test how it functions under extreme conditions.

by Patrick Oak 21 July 2008 08:40am 6 comments

To phone or not to phone?

I recently worked with a client who runs a relatively small e-commerce operation as a second business.

He lamented the fact that when he provided a phone number on his website, his sales more than doubled but the time required to run the business also more than doubled because of all the phone calls, which was not viable for him.

by Patrick Oak 16 July 2008 08:40am 0 comments

Five cool podcasting tools

Podcasting certainly isn't for everybody, but it has grown in popularity over the years and for good reason.

by Patrick Oak 18 July 2008 08:45am 0 comments

Three authentication systems that can help boost email delivery rates

If you send a reasonable volume of email, you've probably experienced the frustration of being told by some of the intended recipients that they never got your messages.

by Patrick Oak 14 July 2008 10:30am 3 comments

Should your website be in the cloud?

I've recently seen a growing number of people encouraging businesses to look at 'cloud hosting' solutions such as Amazon's EC2 and Rackspace's Mosso.

Cloud hosting takes the concept of cloud computing into the realm of hosting.

by Patrick Oak 07 July 2008 08:45am 5 comments