Metro plans big boost in peak-hour services

The Frankston, Sydenham and Craigieburn lines will get 12 peak-hour trains under the plan, or one every five minutes. There will be nine trains an hour to Werribee, South Morang, Eltham, Glen Waverley, Pakenham and Sandringham.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Erin Toomey is nearly finished the chemotherapy she has been enduring for two and a half years

Hundreds of Erin's schoolmates joined with her to celebrate the end of 2 1/2 years of daily chemotherapy and to raise money for children's cancer charity Challenge.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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JANINE Murphy has become a familiar, friendly face at Eltham's Edendale

Ms Murphy was one of more than 500 of volunteers across Nillumbik recognised during National Volunteer Week from May 14-20.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Eltham Veterinary Practice's annual blanket drive.

ELTHAM animal lovers are being asked to help homeless dogs and cats this winter by donating old blankets and towels to the Eltham Veterinary Practice’s annual blanket drive. ... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Miss Universe Australia pageant entrant Tracey-Lee Beswick's studies are on hold

It was at that moment Ms Beswick, who grew up in Eltham, decided to dedicate her career to helping others and study to become a paramedic.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for help with your computer problems.
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Kate Pincheira and her family did the Live Below The Line challenge and ate for $2 each a day.

Getting a small taste of what that would be like, Eltham’s Pincheira family last week took on the Live Below The Line challenge.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for help with your computer problems.
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Ben Deylon - owner of Eltham Home Hardware

When kinder parent Ben Deylon - owner of Eltham Home Hardware - offered to help, the result was a fantastic community project for everyone. ... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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The Eltham Gateway Action Group is worried too many trees will be removed forthe bridge's construction.

THE rebuilding of Eltham’s Wattletree Rd bridge is one step closer, but not everyone is happy.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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AN Eltham man blew 0.178 after being pursued by police on the Eastern Freeway last night.

The driver, a 40-year-old Elthan man travelling towards the city at 60km/h allegedly failed to stop but pulled over after being followed for about two minutes.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for help with your computer problems.
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Eltham Little Theatre is running a 10-minute-play competition

THE drama will be short but sweet when Eltham Little Theatre presents its annual Ten Minute Quickie short play competition.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Eltham College students make a difference in Guatemala

ELTHAM College students were overwhelmed on a recent trip to Guatemala, inspiring them to build houses for a village.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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The family pet keeps Karen Andrews company as she works on her popular parenting blog

THOUSANDS of people enjoy the musings of Eltham mum Karen Andrews, who writes about her family’s ups and downs on her blog.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Drains, sport big winners in Nillumbik budget

DRAINAGE to help protect properties from floods like those seen on Christmas Day is the feature of Nillumbik Shire’s draft budget this year.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Eltham resident Philip O'Brien

Eltham resident Philip O’Brien said he was still waiting for AAMI to replace water-damaged carpet.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Offenders were travelling to Eltham and Greensborough from the western suburbs

A WOMAN from Melbourne’s west was caught shoplifting at an Eltham liquor store after an undercover police sting yesterday.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for help with your computer problems.
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An Eltham chapter of Older Men: New Ideas is about to open

Older Men: New Ideas, a Diamond Creek community group where men meet to chat about everything from life to staying out of strife with the wife, will branch out to Eltham on Wednesday, May 9.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for help with your computer problems.
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The Eltham Rural Group is getting ready for Paddy's Market on Saturday

Eltham’s biggest market is on Saturday bringing its usual array of food, curios, plants and treasures for the perusal of bargain hunters.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for help with your computer problems.
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Landscaper and ceramic artist Jack Latti at work

JACK Latti has soft hands and it’s no wonder - more than 50 species of aloe vera grow in his Eltham garden.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Mitchell Hoskin With his great grandfathers medals and a plane made by his grandfather

LITTLE Mitchell Hoskin proudly showed off his family’s aviation history at Montmorency-Eltham RSL’s Anzac Day service.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Eltham artist Nicola Hoyle reveals her stash of recycled art

NICOLA Hoyle is a self-confessed hoarder with a penchant for discarded red gum timber and metal... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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GWEN FORD - GARDENER

The hundreds who attended her funeral at Montsalvat were testament to Ford's gift for friendship and community. The easy ambience of the wake, held in her mud-brick house and Eltham garden, personified her love of companionship, nurtured in natural surroundings. ... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Eltham RSL site sold

Montmorency-Eltham RSL sub-branch senior vice-president Alan Field said the Main Rd property had been sold for $1.8 million, with contracts signed today.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Masterchef challenge to be held at Montsalvat in Eltham

Challenges will also be held at Red Hill on the Mornington Peninsula, the Lake House in Daylesford, and at Montsalvat in Eltham as the top 50 contestants battle it out for the Masterchef crown.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Australia's Next Top Model winner, Montana Cox

Six months ago, nobody had heard the name Montana Cox outside her friends and family.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Eltham artists Jenni Mitchell and Mervyn Hannan will exhibit in Mongolia in May

TWO Eltham artists will become the first Australians to exhibit at the National Museum of Mongolia.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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ELTHAM'S first Anzac Day dawn service has been deemed a huge success despite pouring rain yesterday

Montmorency-Eltham RSL sub-branch president Bill McKenna said about 600 people braved wintry conditions to attend the 6am service at Eltham’s War Memorial and pay tribute to our fallen diggers.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Minister for Roads Terry Mulder - Wattletree Road Bridge in Eltham

Minister for Roads Terry Mulder announced yesterday that North Vic Constructions Pty Ltd has been awarded the contract to rebuild Wattletree Road Bridge in Eltham.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Eltham's Shae Skinner said she was refused entry to a city restaurant because of her guide dog

Guide Dogs Victoria client and guide dog services general manager Sandro Cirianni said he had received at least one report a week from a client about difficulty accessing a public place... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Melbourne Citymission's Ruth Heenan

The eight-minute flick is a snapshot of the lives of four Eltham Retirement Village residents (the aged care facility is part of Melbourne Citymission), who were touched in some way by World War II.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Housing flat as north-east Melbourne sales stall

In Eltham, the median house price dropped to $615,000 from $630,000 in March 2011... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Eltham's Jenny Disney

WHEN Eltham’s Jenny Disney travelled to Kenya last year she was shocked at how some of the local women lived. ... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
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Veterans from Watsonia and Eltham-Montmorency RSL sub-branches: James Burke, Warren Guthrie, Frederick Allen, Henry Edward Johnson, Harold Hickling, Leslie Hugh Ritchie

To honour our veterans, reporters Megan Bailey and Shaun Campbell spoke to the families of veterans from Watsonia and Eltham-Montmorency RSL sub-branches who had recently died to find out what they were like and what the RSL meant to them.... Read More

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for help with your computer problems.
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Computers solutions in the MyAnswers database now available for purchase at a price you decide.

I like trying new approaches and enjoy seeing how people like or don’t like the approach. There is no right or wrong way to do things, just better ways. I always learn something when I try something new.

The MyAnswers database is a database of my notes on problems I’ve solved for clients and the solution to the problem. I use the solutions frequently myself and for assisting my clients. This saves myself and clients a lot of time and given time is money, that means a financial saving for clients.

I created the MyAnswers database so clients could request solutions to problems and use the DIY approach. If people can solve their own problems with a little assistance then why not. Clients can request solutions they are interested in from that MyAnswers database. If the solution doesn’t help them there is nothing to pay. If the solution solves their problem, I now let clients decide for themselves how much they wish to pay.

Check out the solutions at MyAnswers. There are a large range of solutions covering many aspects of IT, and some areas of interest to me. Because of my nature I often investigate things which interest me that aren’t IT related and I’m happy to share what I learn from those investigations as well.

You can find MyAnswers at www.MyAnswers.biz.  Please note the solutions are only available to clients. It is only because of the support of clients that the bills are paid each month. I hope and trust clients take advantage of the MyAnswers service to help them solve their problems themselves and in doing so, increase their knowledge, have some fun and at the same time, save some money.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

 

Bolton Street Medical Centre - Eltham Ridge Medical Centre

We know the Eltham Ridge Medical Centre as the Bolton Medical Centre. The advantage the Eltham Ridge Medical Centre offers for those in the Templestowe/Eltham area is they bulk bill. The obvious advantage if you need a medical certificate for work is the out-of-pocket saving. Most doctors in the area are now charging around $60 for a consultation and the Medicare rebate is only around $35. That’s a saving of around $25 and quite a bit of time saved going to a Medicate office to the rebate back.

I don’t know of any other medical centre in the area which bulk bills. The others that used to bulk bill in the area have since ceased to bulk bill everyone and now just bulk bill only certain patients.

This post is not an endorsement of Eltham Ridge Medical Centre. It only points out they bulk bill if that is of use to others.

Kelvin Eldridge
http://www.justlocal.com.au/

Google now tracking potentially 10-25% of Australians on the internet

The other day I was checking the statistics for a page on my site. I’m able to see what people searched for in Google and thus why they came to my site. I find this to be useful information. But lately I’ve noticed for the keyword a value of “(not provided)” started to appear, and more recently, on some pages this had become a considerable portion of the traffic.

I decided to investigate. Initially I didn’t know what may be causing the keywords used from not being provided. A bit of research indicated That recently Google decided to stop passing on keywords for searches on their overseas sites and more recently that was implement in Australia.

Knowing how and why people get to your site is quite important information and can assist you to make better decisions and where to direct your efforts. But if Google hides this information in effect, all you really know is they came from Google but you don’t know why.

Now what started to concern me even more, if what I read is correct, is the keyword is not provided if people are logged onto a Google service. The concern here for me, is Google is now able to identify and log an individual’s activity on the internet without them being really aware and I’m inadvertently assisting Google by using their services.

For example, most people will accept that if they perform a search that Google knows about the search. What may not cross their mind is, if they are logged onto a Google service, the searches can be associated and tracked to them. From what I see people don’t even realise they’re logged on to a Google service when they’re searching because they don’t make the connection with Google’s internet search and Google’s other services. I’d even suggest many people forget they are logged on. For example, many people use Gmail. They log on and then don’t log off so that when they open the Gmail site there are their emails ready for them to read. People at work are using the internet all day for work and during the day flip over to check their email.

In addition people are using other services such as YouTube and again remain logged on. Google have a range of services including their Android mobile phones, all potentially logging the activities of an individual without them realising it.

Even when you’re not thinking you’re using a Google service you may be. When you visit a site with advertising is that advertising provided by Google (as it is in many cases), are you being tracked. I’d guess you are. When you view a YouTube video, a Picassa photo, a page that has Google’s services embedded such as their analytics, are you being tracked? I’ve done searches on Google early in the day to visit a site later in the day, and found Google has remember what I searched for at the start of the day and provided ads later in the day based on the search I entered.

I was at a customer’s the other day and signed them up for hosting. When they went to a site with Google advertising that wasn’t related to hosting, there was a hosting ad in the middle of the page. Both the customer and myself was quite shocked to see the obvious tracking occurring, but had I not been there the customer would not have realised, as most people won’t realise.

The page that I originally noticed this keyword “not provided” message has today received 3,407 unique visitors. Of those 91.73% came from Australia and 12.24% produced keyword “not provided”, which from what I gather means they were logged onto a Google service at the time. In other words, 382 Australians were being individually tracked, or over a year that would be 4,000-5,000 people. That’s just from my site. What about the millions of other Australian sites.

Most of us don’t yet understand what is being done with our data or how it can, or even is affecting us. I don’t even know. As an example however, a while ago I searched for travel insurance and the usual ads appeared at the top of the page promoting super discounts and special offers. I decided to check them out. Most were around $700 or more for what I wanted. I then went and got a quote from the company I’ve previously used (I researched a number of companies a while ago) and ended up with insurance for around $450.

If Google knows what you’re doing and interested in, advertisers can use that to their advantage and present you with what looks like good offers, but in fact you end up paying more. The power of tracking you gives away your bargaining position. You’ve told the company already what you are interested in and since they know they have an interested buyer, you’ve lost your negotiating position and can easily pay more than you should or could. When you look at an advertisement in a newspaper they don’t know who you are and generally have to offer a much better proposal to you to get your interest.

The concern I have is Google is gathering too much information on us individually and not just as an anonymous pool of user statistics. How that information is used we aren’t fully made aware of. I’ll leave that to people’s creative imagination to come up with how they think their data could be being used both for good, and perhaps to their own disadvantage.

As an example I read about a leading GPS company overseas that uploaded data from people using the GPS unit. The authorities purchased the data and used the data to determine where people would speed and then they were able to book more people who were speeding. The people using the GPS units ended up potentially creating the situation where the fine they received only occurred because of the information they had themselves provided. Their own information from a service they were paying for had been used against them.

Whilst I can’t change the world, a change I will now make across the JustLocal site is to remove the Google Search facility. JustLocal has been designed to make it very easy to find a business in the local area. You don’t need to search. You just need to go to the postcode page and then click on the logo for the business you are interested in. Trying to find a local business in Google is often close to impossible. You’re more likely to get a list of directories than the business itself. JustLocal solves this problem by providing single click access to a local business advertising on JustLocal. In addition we don’t track what people do.

If you’re concerned about being tracked on the internet there are a couple of things you can do.

1. Make sure you log off any online service you are using when you finish. Don’t leave it logged on in the background.
2. Think about using Bing and Yahoo search as well as Google. If you split your searches evenly Google only sees a third of what you are doing.
3. Make sure you don’t have any toolbars from installed in your browser that may be tracking your searches.
4. Think about varying your use of browsers. Keep in mind Chrome is produced by Google and Firefox receives over 80% of their income as a result of searches using Google.
5. Install all three search engines in Internet Explorer. On my Fun With Search page (www.justlocal.com.au/clients/search-fun/) I provide links which enable you to easily install Yahoo, Bind and Google as search engines in Internet Explorer. You can then easily vary which search engine you use.
6. If you have an Android mobile phone or tablet it is very difficult not to use a Gmail account. It is possible. For a while I used the tablet without having any Google account. Only when I need to download an app would I re-enter the account and then delete it again after. You can use an email account that isn’t a Gmail account for your email. You can also log on to web based services from a Smartphone rather than use the built-in apps.

Right now over 90% of Australians search using Google. Giving a single company, no matter which company it is, access to all your online activities I don’t believe is the best idea.

As JustLocal grows and I have the resources available, I hope to remove the Google services I’m currently using and further reduce the ability for Google to track JustLocal users. This blog entry for example uses Google’s blogger. Sorry. I do this for business reasons and will be able to change once JustLocal’s momentum reaches a certain point. I look forward to that day.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.JustLocal.com.au