I love my inflammatory titles. Disclaimer: this is a rant more than a blog post, and does contain rudies.

Here are a few reasons why companies, banks and such are still failing with regard to the internet.

Password Strength

A strong password contains numbers, letters AND punctuation. For a great example of nice secure passwords, take a look at the ones that cPanel generates for you. A glorious mix of symbols.

So answer me this please; why does the financial sector continue to insist on not using punctuation?

I had to change my 3D secure password the other day, and figuring this was my most sensitive password, decided to use cPanel to generate a nice difficult one. Pasted it in, and was told that it couldn't contain punctuation.

What the fudge. There is absolutely no discernible reason WHATSOEVER to not use punctuation in passwords. You guys should be hashing them in some way before storing them right? Right?

You can only view this page in IE

I use IE here, but I've seen them saying Firefox too. Fuck. That. Shit. This to me goes against the very core principle of the internet; accessible to everyone, everywhere, whatever they're using. Christ knows we waste enough development hours ensuring that client websites work in no less than seven separate browsers (IE6, IE7, IE8, IE9, Firefox, Chrome, Safari).

The worst offenders here seem to online applications forms. I've seen them on job applications, loan applications, even simple booking request forms.

90 times out of 100, the offender is ActiveX Controls. For some reason, a perfectly simple application form needs them and so they lock out everyone who isn't using IE on Windows.

It's lazy coding, and in the context of the data-world we live in, outright discrimination. To misquote Rasmus Lerdorf; "if ActiveX Controls is the answer, you're almost certainly asking the wrong question".

Personalisation is to be Feared

I love my webhosts Site5. They're quite well priced, the servers are speedy enough and the usage fair. But do you know what stops me from moving hosts every time I start thinking about it? Their Twitter presence.

The other night I wanted to ask a simple question; is PHP 5.3 support turned on. To open a support ticket seems like overkill; it's really just a general enquiry. Email? Well, I could do, but I have to find the right address to send it to. But I know I follow Ben Welch, one of the guys who work there. So I Tweeted asking him. A little later, I get a reply with an answer. Perfect. One happy customer, determined to stay with Site5 for a bit longer. I feel like I know the guys at Site5, they aren't a faceless corporation who just take money out of my account.

We now live in a time where we're more socially open than ever before. People on the other side of the world can read my thoughts and rants on Twitter, blogs, Facebook etc. We're accessible to more people, in more places, from different walks of life.

Why not carry that over to your company? It's a hell of a lot harder to get angry at a pleasant person, with a nice profile picture and timely responses on Twitter than it is to get riled over a faceless name on an email that doesn't seem to want to help.

On the flip side, if I can follow one of the company on Twitter and ask them a few casual questions about a product, I'm going to be more inclined to do business with them, since I've formed a relationship. It's the old idea of "I know Rob from SuperAwesomeWebDevs, he'll look after me".

So, how about you? What do you think companies continue to get wrong about the Internet?

So, if you're in the UK it's kinda hard to miss the huge government spending review that's been taking place, huge swathes of cuts across public spending ayadayadaya.

For me, one of the more troubling announcements was that of tuition fees for Universities. I graduated in 2009 from University of Westminster, and left my university experience with ~£25,000 worth of debts, around £9,000 of which were tuition fees.

That number absolutely bloody terrifies me. I pay around £80 per month towards repaying my student debt, which means that it'll take roughly 26 years for me to repay my debt (assuming I stay on the same salary, unlikely but bear with me). 26 years. In 26 years time I'll be 48, hopefully married with kids and a mortgage, and yet still paying off that cheeky end-of-the-week dominoes bought with student loan money.

Now I can deal with that, it was part of the terms that came with going to University. But I have to tell you, the money involved really did make me think twice about going.

So what are the students sitting their A-levels now going to think? Universities able to charge up to £10k a year in tuition fees alone.

Let's do some maths.

£10,000 per annum x 3 year degree = £30,000
£14,000 in total maintenance loan.

Grand total; £44,000 to do a three year degree.

More maths, how long to repay?

Assuming £80 per month repayment (it will inevitably be more than this);

Repayment time = 45 years. You'll be paying some of it off with your pension.

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This is all fairly alarmist I know, but I am certain that prospective students (or parents) will be doing these same sums. And I reckon we'll see a large proportion simply choosing not to go to University.

But there may be a silver lining to all this.

I'm a web developer. My degree is in Photographic Science. I learned my web dev skills on my own, self-teaching.

Imagine what would happen though if business stepped in and started accepting interns from Sixth-Form leavers? Train them up within companies, get them comfortable with the company practices, methodologies and missions. You can shape these bright and eager kids into exactly the kind of workforce that you need for your organisation.

Let's take a simple example, I run a software company that specializes say, C++ programming. Instead of waiting for a Computing Science graduate to come along (and then inevitably un-teach them bad habits from their studies), I could simply take an A-Level student who studied say Maths and IT / Computing and get them trained up from day one.

The benefits are shared by everyone. Since they aren't a graduate, they will command a lower salary, saving you money. The kids are earning a wage whilst learning, saving them plunging into near bottomless debt, meaning they have more disposable to spend on cars, houses, insurance. And at the end of the day, you get a young, enthusiastic employee.

I've always felt like the graduate talent pool was supremely underused, but I'm starting to think it stretches further than that. Especially in technology industries, I know kids of 14 - 15 who can code a hell of a lot better than Comp Sci graduates. Isn't it time we started using them?

Anyone who's thinking "Doesn't this sound like a Modern Apprenticeship?" I award you an internet cookie. Apprenticeships are a fantastic, age old, idea for training up people. Maybe other industries need to start thinking about using them too?

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I've never run a business, so feasibility of this is a bit of an unknown, and I'm aware that training someone comes at a cost. This is not a hard and fast plan, but an idea that I'm casting out onto the interwebs. Let's see if anyone agrees.