When used appropriately, technology is a wonderful thing.  When it's used to create efficiency or to help your clients deal with you more easily then it's great. When it's used to cut costs at the expense of your clients then it's a killer.

I'm on hold to BT at the moment so I thought I would have a rant.

A couple of weeks ago I parked at Chieveley Services on the M4 for a meeting with a potential client.  If you want to park for more than 2 hours you have to pay £10.  The only way you can pay this is using a mobile phone.  The system that they use is so unfriendly it's not true.  It took me about 10 minutes to pay but I figured it was worth the effort not to get a parking ticket.

Last week, guess what I received? Yep, a parking ticket.  I called to get it cancelled and it had, indeed, been issued in error.  It had already been done as I lease my car and they have to reassign the debt to me instead of the lease company.  I have to wait for a new ticket to arrive and then call in again.  That arrived this morning and after a long wait I managed to get it sorted.  I've now got to wait for notification so that I can send that to Lexus to get a refund on the charge that they make for having to administer an unpaid fine.

All is all, probably about £100 worth of lost production time because technology was used badly.

Then I have to get through to BT to reduce our DD as our account it always in credit.  The first time I called I tried to use their automated system.  I entered the phone number and then the account number but it complained that they didn't match.  I then called back to get to speak to a human.  I had to enter my phone number and account number again.  It didn't complain but I still had to wait over 10 minutes to speak to someone, all the time being reminded by a message that they were very busy and that I should try their automated system.  Guess what, BT, I'm very busy as well and your automated system sucks.

So, eventually I get through.  Of course, one of the first things she asks is what my account number is.  Didn't I just enter that?

The moral of this story is that we need to make it easy for our customers to do business with us.  With BT and the parking company, I don't suppose they care, but most of us don't have that luxury.

The last week and a bit has been a mixture of triumph and disaster.

I was away in Aberdeen from Friday until Wednesday, staying in a castle with no mobile phone reception so I couldn't do a great deal which was a bit of a disaster, but quite nice.

However, just before I went away, 4 of our sites got hacked and it's cost us around £3000 in lost productivity trying to pin the vulnerability down and fix the sites.  These were quite old sites using a third party extension that allowed the hackers access to change the content of files and redirect visitors to some dodgy site in Mexico.  Luckily, there was a configuration setting on the server that we could change to stop them.  This setting is turned on by default on just about every server out there and is quite obscure.  If anyone is interested then they can contact me and I'll tell them what the problem is so that they can fix it.

We're not actually using this extension any more which is why we managed to limit the damage to just 4 out of over 300 sites.

Apart from that, we've had a couple of big projects that we've managed to push forward on, despite the resources we've had to allocate to the hacking problem.  I've just taken on 3 new developers to handle the workload we have on at the moment and get projects turned round much quicker.

The last disaster happened yesterday.  I left my laptop at home and my 3 year old daughter decided to have a play.  She deleted my main work directory and then emptied the recycle bin so everything is gone.  Luckily I have it all backed up in different places but it's a big inconvenience and a valuable lesson learned about backing up.

All in all, I can't complain.  And even if I did, nobody would listen.

Rick Levine: You could become a temporary workaholic today because you want others to see how conscientious you can be in a crisis situation. But it's easy to take your good intentions too far by assuming such a heavy burden of responsibilities that you cannot do a competent job at any single task. Remember, this isn't an all-or-nothing situation; you can effectively moderate between the extremes by finding a healthy balance between work and play.

Me: No *@$£, Sherlock!

You've seen Steve talking about it and you must have heard the word on the streets. The iPad is coming! Love it or hate it, it's Apple's latest must have gadget.  I commented about it when it was first shown in Steve Jobs' presentation and my opinion, having held ours, is just the same.

The laptop was launched and everyone knew that they would use and need a portable computer that they could carry around in a laptop bag to use in Starbucks, etc.

The PDA was launched, followed by the iPhone and everyone knew that they would use and need a portable device for picking up e-mails, listening to music and even watching the odd film in the case of devices like the iPod Touch. This was a great 'emergency' device that you could even stick in your pocket.

Now the iPad is launched and the people I've spoken to are saying that they need time to work out why they'll need this... how they'll justify buying it. It's not a natural decision for people to have to make unless you're one of the people who have to have something because it's got the little apple on the back.

Here you can see our iPad on the desk and me posing with the iPad just like I'd be if I was walking down the street with one.  The manufacturing process is tricky. You have to be quick or the glue dries. We used an Asda glue stick and I can't help but think that things would have been easier if we'd taken Apple's stance on using the best components and gone for a Pritt Stick.  Also, you might notice that the time is wrong. That's just because we haven't worked out how to get into the settings yet.  So it's not intuitive. The learning curve involved is the price you pay for being an early adopter.

If you want you're own iPad then download this zip file. It contains 2 .png files that you print and cut out. Glue it together and, hey presto, you have your very own iPad that you can toss casually on the desk to be the envy of your peers!

We've been talking to a company called K R Associates, an independent environmental testing and consultancy service specialising in building noise control, efficiency and safety, about rebuilding their website based on a design by Spitfire Marketing in Southampton.

We're taking the design and putting the content management system in place to allow them to take control of the site themselves.

We had a meeting this morning to finalise some of the aspects of the site as they want it completed by the 28th February. They're highly motivated and serious about their site which is great for us as we'll get everything we need from them to support their deadline.  This is something we often struggle with when clients take months to get us what we need.

On top of this, they gave us this great tray. We can write on the tray what people are having when we make them drinks. As one who hears the microwave 'ding' and opens the fridge, wondering what it was I needed, something like this will go down well in the office!

The doughnut is mine, by the way.  It was meant for when I'd made the coffee but didn't make it for even as long as it took to boil the kettle.

Usually the only green life in our office is mould in a cup that someone's left on a desk but we decided to go up market with our own plants for the office.

It's quite surpising how much difference a bit of greenery can make! I'm thinking of building on this and turning the office into a bit of a jungle.

Apart from that, it's busy, busy, busy with several sites coming to an end and several more starting or part way through. I think I have 4 or 5 content management systems to install, configure and integrate with the design. So far, it's been a fabulous start to 2010.

Here's to everyone else out there trying to recover from the last couple of years and I really hope it picks up for everyone.