With over 20 of my clients using PayMate to accept credit card payments, the recent unavailability of this service had many worried. At time of posting, the service is back up although their website (http://www.paymate.co.nz/) wasn't, although http://www.paymate.com/ was. This is what happened:
Online payment service Paymate is down due to a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack. The company's Vice President of Sales and Marketing Greg Quinn told AuctionBytes the site has been down since early yesterday morning, and at no time during the disruption has any user data or information of any kind been at risk.
Paymate is an accepted payment method on eBay, and the company said it was working diligently with eBay and its customer service teams to provide updates and ensure proper information was being delivered.
DDoS attacks are not uncommon. Last August, Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal were victims of Distributed Denial of Service attacks (see this report from Mashable). Over the years, other sites in the industry have experienced such attacks, including Atomic Mall, ePier, Andale and ChannelAdvisor.
In a statement today, Paymate said it was unclear who launched this week's attack against it and what their motives might have been. According to the statement, "The company expects the DOS issue will be resolved quickly and that it will soon be back to providing its customers the fast, safe, and reliable experience they've come to expect from Paymate."
Paymate is keeping users updated through posts on its Twitter account.
For more information on Denial of Service attacks, see the following resources.
Understanding Denial-of-Service Attacks from US-CERT - link
Wikipedia entry on Denial-of-service attack - link
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
New website for FuelTurbo uses Google Translate
The Fuelturbo unit does the following:The FuelTurbo unit is a high performance mobile polishing and cleaning system for diesel fuel and fuel tank systems. It allows you to safely recover, recycle and reuse diesel fuel that might otherwise be discarded or become a major problem for diesel engine reliability. Although a high tech system it can be operated by anyone with basic mechanical skills. No fuel pipes, supply or return lines need to disturbed from the engine / equipment that is being serviced. No particular knowledge of the engine or equipments fuel system therefore needs to be known by the FuelTurbo technician.
Because it's being marketed worldwide, we added a Google Translation at the bottom of each page. Have a look at http://www.fuelturbo.com/.
Problem with printing our invoices
Do you receive our invoices via email, and when printed, the right hand side is missing?
This problem is actually the result of a recent Microsoft Windows update, which affects the way Explorer produces printouts. Microsoft products such as Outlook, Outlook Express, etc. are all driven by Explorer - and it is the change to Explorer which results in a chopped off right-hand margin when printing HTML-based email. This will affect anyone who use Microsoft programs for email, and who have also received the applicable Windows update. The accounting software people are currently looking into this issue, but cannot give a time frame for a fix (if any). It may be something Microsoft corrects with another update.
This problem is actually the result of a recent Microsoft Windows update, which affects the way Explorer produces printouts. Microsoft products such as Outlook, Outlook Express, etc. are all driven by Explorer - and it is the change to Explorer which results in a chopped off right-hand margin when printing HTML-based email. This will affect anyone who use Microsoft programs for email, and who have also received the applicable Windows update. The accounting software people are currently looking into this issue, but cannot give a time frame for a fix (if any). It may be something Microsoft corrects with another update.
New logo
Thank you to Rochelle O’Loan for the new logo and website redesign. I’m very impressed with her design skills and she’s available for any design work from February 2010 once her new baby has arrived. Contact me if you would like to use her services.
Website load speeds are now important
Over the last few weeks, there has been lots of talk about Google’s suggestion that page load speed may become a ranking factor in 2010.
While nothing has been confirmed yet, recent comments from Google Software Engineer, Matt Cutts make it seem increasingly likely, so we thought we'd provide you with all the information you need in order to prepare for this new ranking factor.
Why is Google Interested in Page Load Speed?
Google wants searching to be fast and efficient and for users to have a good experience. Google believes it would be fairer for faster sites to be higher up in the search results, so Web pages with faster loading times would have higher rankings than slower ones.
According to Matt Cutts, page load time is already a factor in AdWords advertising searches. He also suggests there is a strong push from within Google to make speed a quality factor in their search ranking guidelines.
How Will Speed Affect Rankings?
There are over 200 other ranking factors that are taken into consideration by Google, so just how important is a quick load time going to be?
With so many ranking factors to be considered, Google will be concentrating on the extremes, for example a page that take 60 seconds to load, or a page that takes a split second. Web pages with an average load time may therefore not initially be affected, however, as faster sites will be given a boost, your rankings may be affected eventually if much faster sites are pushed higher than yours.
How Are Load Times Measured?
According to Google, load time data will come from information sent by users of your site who have installed the Google toolbar and opted for enhanced features. This means it is representative of a global average of real users, which they feel is better than using a spider to gather the data.
Google have already added a page speed report to their set of free webmaster tools at http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools, so you can obtain a summary of the following:
- How long your Web page takes to load
- A graphical history of your Web site's speed over the past few months
- How your load time compares to other sites
What Causes Slow Load Times?
There are two main factors that influence your page load times:
Hosting: Your site's load time is impacted by the quality of your host's connectivity, so Web hosts with slow servers or insufficient server space to cope with demand, and offshore hosts, for example, may put you at a disadvantage.Site Development: Poor site development including improper use of scripts, too many large images or media-heavy sites and invalid code can all slow down your page load times.
While nothing has been confirmed yet, recent comments from Google Software Engineer, Matt Cutts make it seem increasingly likely, so we thought we'd provide you with all the information you need in order to prepare for this new ranking factor.
Why is Google Interested in Page Load Speed?
Google wants searching to be fast and efficient and for users to have a good experience. Google believes it would be fairer for faster sites to be higher up in the search results, so Web pages with faster loading times would have higher rankings than slower ones.
According to Matt Cutts, page load time is already a factor in AdWords advertising searches. He also suggests there is a strong push from within Google to make speed a quality factor in their search ranking guidelines.
How Will Speed Affect Rankings?
There are over 200 other ranking factors that are taken into consideration by Google, so just how important is a quick load time going to be?
With so many ranking factors to be considered, Google will be concentrating on the extremes, for example a page that take 60 seconds to load, or a page that takes a split second. Web pages with an average load time may therefore not initially be affected, however, as faster sites will be given a boost, your rankings may be affected eventually if much faster sites are pushed higher than yours.
How Are Load Times Measured?
According to Google, load time data will come from information sent by users of your site who have installed the Google toolbar and opted for enhanced features. This means it is representative of a global average of real users, which they feel is better than using a spider to gather the data.
Google have already added a page speed report to their set of free webmaster tools at http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools, so you can obtain a summary of the following:
- How long your Web page takes to load
- A graphical history of your Web site's speed over the past few months
- How your load time compares to other sites
What Causes Slow Load Times?
There are two main factors that influence your page load times:
Hosting: Your site's load time is impacted by the quality of your host's connectivity, so Web hosts with slow servers or insufficient server space to cope with demand, and offshore hosts, for example, may put you at a disadvantage.Site Development: Poor site development including improper use of scripts, too many large images or media-heavy sites and invalid code can all slow down your page load times.
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