Blogs by Bernard Van der westhuizen

On yet another unseasonably warm Cape Town winters day the team began the day in high spirits and excitement. Todays tasks included completing the bookshelf structure, painting them and then also mounting the support beams that will eventually hold together the shaded area we are constructing for the children.
As the pictures below will, tell we [...]

n every recession recorded in modern history there has always been one company or organisation that’s seems to escape the negative growth cycle. In this current recession it seemed that Google would escape the brunt of the recession. In its 10 year existence Google has never reported a quarterly loss, until now that is.
Google [...]

Microsoft claims that their search capability has improved significantly over the past few years. The only problem is that its hard for internet users to notice or even appreciate as their brand loyalty belongs to Google.
Microsoft has therefore announced a search strategy overhaul and called it “Kiev”. This will be rolled out over the next [...]

TwitterJobSearch, has introduced the first “smart” search engine.
This means that it extracts the meaning of a search term from Twitter content database and creates a resource that will link and or associate all jobs posted on their platform. This is achieved by using algorithms developed by Workhound, a leading job search portal. Twitter regards [...]

Google Analytics(G.A) has for a long time been sitting pretty as the king of analytics packages. Not only is their product efficient and user friendly but the major advantage its held over its rivals is that it is absolutely free of charge.
Armed with these factors Google Analytics has gained the majority market share among [...]

Someone has managed to detect a “defect” in Google’s search capability in a voice recognition search application designed specifically for iPhones. Great in theory but as with most things in life completely different in practice.
The problem is that the software does not recognise many accents. This has been particularly highlighted in the U.K. where certain [...]

Being relatively new to the web analytics world myself, it seems somewhat of an injustice for me to pass comment on arguably the world’s foremost web analyst practitioner’s blogs. The writer of Occams Razor,  Avinash Kaushik has for years now authored books, held conferences and offered advice about the intriguing subject of web analytics.
The content [...]

With what has the feel of admission to failure to
it (Vista’s failings that is), Microsoft
C.E.O., Steve Ballmer announced the release of its new operating system called Windows 7. It will be
made available worldwide on Friday, 09 January 2009.
It needs to be noted that
this will be a beta version (trial) and that the official version [...]

As the sun goes down on 2008 it is a time for many of us to reflect on what has worked and also that which has not worked. In past year the world’s history books were rewritten with both good and bad factors.  Microsoft too did some reflection on what has worked and that which [...]

From a little software company to the industry giant in the space of 33 years.  That is the success story called Microsoft. We look at the key points that made them so effective, but also the things that did not always go according to plan.
Here are some of the key success points:

Bill Gates, Microsoft founder [...]