Client Sites We Have Created

Hello and welcome to this weeks blog post. Here we will discuss and demonstrate how we help our clients and their customers to take transactions and bookings online.


Many of our clients use our services to create a simple website (for free) which links into their current site. The new site which links in comes complete with a booking form, this form can be edited before or after the site has gone live, so if you missed any details out you can simply edit them in.


The reason why the booking form is of such paramount importance is that it allows your attendees to create data for you. The data can be stored by exporting it to your computer with excel 2000 or 2007.


By offering this service our clients see a massive increase in sales as their courses and events are now available 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. What's more is that we won't plaster your site with our logo, infact, we'd much rather you had your logo everywhere so as to increase customer experience and give you that bespoke feel.


Below are a few images of sites that our specialist design implementation team have re-created. We hope you enjoy the images and if you have any questions please contact us here! Or call us on 0800 612 6628

The Botnet Threat Bites Again!

Since our last Botnet post in January alot has happened. For our new readers, here is a quick introduction as to what the Beast of Botnet is capable of.

So in the next sentence we will describe what this strange word "Botnet" is. Bot (Robot) + Net (Network) = Botnet, a network of computers. I know, many complicated terms there. Blame Karel Čapek. It is what these computers do which is the horrifically scary part.


In latest news we've seen Wordpress has come under a substantial campaign of attacks from a Botnet. The attacking network utilised more than 90,000 computers to perform Denial of Service attacks or DoS attacks. Another funny word, but thats just when a website shuts down because it can't handle a huge spike in traffic, like a prolific festival website that isn't using our Participant platform for example...zing!

Below is a diagram displaying just how the seasoned Bot Herder uses infected bots to make a resource or site unavailable as hell yo!

But who cares about Wordpress? Well, it turns out this Botnet does, the perfect Botnet attackers are looking to build a more powerful system than the previous (aren't we all?) so after each attack it stands to reason the threat increases it's resources and capabilities, after all, nothing robust got that way from being wrapped in cotton wool. According to W3Techs cotton wool and jargon accounts for 95% of all Wordpress sites, thats a joke, W3 never said that, nor would they want to, they do say however that Wordpress accounts for an estimated 17.7% of all internet sites, which is frankly obscene.

It is reported that in the attack on Wordpress which occurred in mid April 2013, saw Cloudflare (security to Wordpress) fend off around 60million requests in one hour. A staggering amount of work implemented by 90,000 computers, but it gets better. The attack comes a week after Wordpress released a two step log in process. What has also got Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder of Cloudflare worried is that these attacks came from basic desktop computers and there is a distinctive chance that this attack was indeed preparation for a larger DDoS attack (new D = distributed).

For more reading about Botnet and to see where we stole the Bot Herder diagram from click here!

Follow us on Twitter to discuss this in more detail, @ParticipantUK, until next time!

The Doodle Bar & Ferret Comedy Club

The Doodle Bar was first launched as a pop up in 2009, since then it has grown at an exponential rate, playing host to a variety of quirky and interesting events. "The Doodle Bar is a space where people have the freedom to enjoy a good scribble, have a drink and hook up with some fellow doodlers. The bar is set against the backdrop of TESTBED1 - a dramatic and versatile arts and events space for creative innovation, ideas and experimentation"

Recently The Doodle bar have been using the Participant.co.uk system with positive results. The system was first used for The Ferret Comedy Club. Ferret Comedy is a FREE stand up night showcasing London's finest comedians, with occasional payed shows where the profits are donated to charity, and their not just your average comedy night, they also have a house band (ooooh) to sing the acts on stage!! Where else can you get this?! NOWHERE!

The functionality of the system allows organisers to check in attendees with an excel sheet or the Participant mobile app which can be downloaded here.

Jasmin Ford, General Manager of The Doodle Bar had this to say about the system;

"Participant is easy to navigate and the face to face support I receive is also vitally important, it's nice to know there are British based companies offering a cheaper and better alternative to the American ticketing companies that have set up shop here"

As for us, we can certainly recommend that you head down to the Doodle Bar and see The Ferret in it's faboulously furious action. We've popped down to a few events and were lucky enough to see a certain well known special guest comedian throw comedy magic dust onto the crowds, all will be revealed in the picture below.

Russel Howard getting support, from a mic stand

How a festival organiser can sabotage themselves and make it look good

Many businesses and corporations do their best to help their clients, considering the economic hardships we face in Europe not just local communities have stepped into help those most vulnerable. As far as our current research shows, the first festival to lend a shoulder to it's stricken revelers is the Burning Man festival.

The organisers of Burning man have said they to release 4,000 tickets which are heavily discounted to allow those who are struggling financially to attend. Providing adequate documentation is provided, a reveler can walk away with paying $190 for a ticket that costs $390. Excellent work Burning Man, however, the legend of the charitable festival organiser certainly isn't a freak occurrence.

A few years ago, circa 2010 as certain Michael Eavis, (pictured by us here) admitted he once let in thousands of ticketless festival goers. Often an outspoken critic of the festival Eavis has spoken publicly about his frustrations, often promoting the "jump over the wall" tactic that many do not need a second invitation to. The very mind set of festival ticketing has developed a moral compass, however is it wrong to deny people access, turn a blind eye and denounce revelers who paid for tickets. 

It is certainly a divisive question, however Eavis says (paraphrased) that festivals would lose their feel if there weren't people there who had not paid to enjoy the experience, it is very much a classic Michael Eavis, like it or lump it scenario  After all, by his own admission, he's now rich beyond his wildest dreams, after a point, who cares?

Well, the people of Brazil care, by 2016 Brazil would have held the two largest festivals of Sport on the planet, the Olympics in 2016 and the World Cup in 2014. Out of the some 3 million tickets available for the events 10% will be estimated to be sold at a cut price. South Africa did this very tactic also, where 50% of the South African population lives below the poverty line, the organisers and FIFA sold tickets for £13, creating a loss for each ticket sold. Furthermore,  Brazilian organisers have said they do not want discounted tickets, rather, they want to give away free tickets. These free tickets will be given members of society on especially low income, for example, the indigenous population and other disadvantaged demographics. However the buck won't stop there, tickets for foreign travelers will also be extremely cheap compared to that of other world cups as Brazil have identified that in order to stimulate tourism they low cost ticket price will aid in offsetting other travel and accommodation costs.

"You've got mud in your welly, let me get that off for you"

The benefits from E-Ticketing Part 2

A few weeks ago we began discussing just how amazing E-ticketing (ET) actually is, and after discussing it in the office over the past few weeks we've come to realise that at first, as if it was possible, we may have underestimated just how incredibly influential and amazing ET has become.

Firstly! You will never lose your ET. You may lose your telephone, your email address password, even your marbles, however your ticket will be secure for an awfully long time to come. This means that you don't have to reprint, if that is, you've had to print in the first place.

The major factor that we discussed in our last post was just how much the environment benefits from e-ticketing. For example, the International Air Transportation Service says that 50,000 trees would be saved a year.

Apart form the environmental cost, we also see an increase in usability  particularly as the ticket is stored on our ergonomic friends, the smart phone, but we also see a huge reduction in administration, meaning no more printing and sending slips of confirmation to clients and attendees, and most of all, an e-ticket is virtually impossible to copy. Which leads us onto our last point, by introducing e-tickets to your events and courses you are giving your customer more security. Which can never be a bad thing!

Thank you for reading.

Professor Participant.

Benefits of e-ticketing - Part 1

Today we discuss one of the benefits of e-ticketing or 'ET'. We will focus on a variety of different industries that use ET and how they each lay claim to heralding a new era of technology. However how easy is it to send and scan e-tickets and what benefits do they bring?

The Airline Industry, the multifaceted face of travel would unceremoniously like us all to believe that they have paved the way for e-tickets. The past week alone has seen an incredible amount of marketing jargon coming form more airline companies in a thinly veiled attempt at diverting attention from their inherent carbon unfriendliness.

The companies in this over burdened sector have found a new way to make their customers forget they are actually riding in expensive, fuel guzzling crafts of metal and fiberglass. But it's OK, they do e-ticketing, so its financially and morally OK to be burning fossil fuels with seemingly no return on investment.

In reality, Airline companies were arguably the pioneers of ET, however much like Apple, they may have invented the 'app' but open source engineered them to be what they are today. Open source is simply a pragmatic view that software should be distributed for FREE! The link in "FREE!" is our app. Which obviously costs nothing.

The other ET

So to answer the question of; "Just how easy is it to distribute and scan your own e-tickets?" Well, it's very easy, with our simple set up you can create an event site to distribute your tickets within minutes! Then download our app to start scanning in your attendees. Simple. If you don't believe us call on 020 88973 2591 and we'll talk you through it.

We have been championing the e-ticket/carbon friendly cause for nearly 5 years, and we're still finding ways of allowing our customers to have the ability to send and scan without having to buy or rent all of the unnecessary and over priced hardware. Our scanning app is approximately £300 cheaper and equally as secure as a hand held USB scanner, and it lives in your phone! YAY

Gone are the days of additional rental charges for scanners! Gone are the days of long wires connected to laptops and scanning terminals, join us on our journey to easy event management and embrace the technology.

Regards,

Professor Participant

Tech Bosses Who Lost It. Part 3

With little introduction, here is John McAfee. Pioneer of antivirus protection, wanted criminal and disgustingly eligible for this, the third part of our series.

When we say pioneer, we mean pioneer, he is arguably one of the first to trade in ecommerce, driving to computer owners in need of anti virus help in the 1980's which eventually sold to Intel for just under $8 Billion Dollars. Nothing to be sniffed at.

With an insatiable appetite for, it seems everything, McAfee has ventured into many interesting ventures. And here we present the top three not so venerable ventures that McAfee unsucssefully ventured in. Straight in at number three we have...





3. Aerotrekking

Aerotrekking a sport which involves a hang glider, a human, and a small rear facing propellor as demonstrated in the link. It is a sport, of sorts, created by the man who brought us instant messaging (yes he did that also). McAfee, short on adrenaline has named this winged engine "Icarus", perhaps symbolic of McAfee's own spectacular fall from grace.

Why is this a failed venture? Well, in 2006 it was reported that one of McAfee's engine strapped to a glider things had possibly malfunctioned and caused the death of a highly experienced pilot. An ex American Air Force pilot no less, no facing a $5-6 million lawsuit, this is McAfee's inaugural entry into the top three "Not so venerable ventures that McAfee unsuccessfuly ventured in".



2. Pharmaceutical Company

In at number two is McAfee's Medicine company, allegedly started with a 17 year old girlfriend, was designed to develop a anti viral made from naturally occurring substances and alkaloids. We suggest you glance at the linked article which is interesting to say the least. Unfortunately for McAfee the local authorities in Belize (where McAfee decided to move to as he was done to his last $4 million) thought that this was actually a cover for a meth lab, hardly surprising considering McAfee's past.

5 months after the raid on his house and lab McAfee was implicated to be the prime suspect in the murder of his next door neighbor. These claims are denied by the dotcom king who maintains that the President of Belize and police officials made an assassination attempt on McAfee but misidentified the house and killed his neighbor instead...sounds legit.


1. Every investment he ever made
Straight in at number 1 has to be every investment McAfee has ever made. He was, or rather is entrepreneurial however, successful serial investor, he is not. Serial investor, he certainly is. Unfortunately McAfee is all but broke, with latest news clearly indicating that he is looking towards Hollywood for a revival, having sold his story and film rights, the world has not heard the end of John McAfee. Prof P's prediction; another train wreck awaits.

Tech Bosses who lost it. part 2

Masayoshi Son, serial investor, serial looser?

Masatoshi Son is a man of two halves, for those eagle eyed readers among us, yes his name is part Korean, part Japanese, and it becomes more interesting.

Many people in the west have not heard of Masatoshi Son before, and it may come as a surprise that he is infact the second richest person in Japan, dubbed the East's answer to Bill Gates. Not because he can jump over a chair without a run up, but because he is, infact a serial investor with a extensive track record of what on the face of it looks like wild gambling that often reaches disgustingly lucky heights. But is it luck or the intuitive mind that has allowed Masayoshi Son to attain lofty billionairdom, 

Early Life 

Son was sent to the United States as a teen to learn English and study, it is reported he spent the vast majority of his time making money opposed to more conventional classroom learning. His first business was to import and lees pacman machines to bars and cafe's in California. Son began to rise when he struck up a deal with Forrest Mozer who invented the first ever rudimentary speech synthesizer in the early 1970's.

Fast forward to present day, Son's multiple investments have seen him bamboozle market analylists the world over. He is zealous, eager and above all visionary in his procurement and buying power. However, recently, Son has been setting in the land of the rising sun.

     

Masayoshi Son before he purchased spec savers

Present Day


After his acquisition of Softbank, of which Masayoshi is CEO he introduced with the iPhone to Japan, no mean feat, he also purchased Vodafone, a mean feat. It seems Masayoshi knows full well the cycle of investment. Take for example Softbank's acquisition of Sprint last year. Sprint's share price rose by a smug 14% whereas SoftBank's share dropped to a staggering 17% in a single day. Horrific news indeed, considering that Groupon's CEO just committed economical harikiri for a 77% share drop, Masayoshi should have at least removed a digit or two, no? Well, infact no.
SoftBank eventually recovered, however their bounceback-ability is henceforth limited. MAsayoshi's purchase of Vodafone has sent the company reeling into a spiral which it has not fully recovered from. Although there are signs that Masayoshi has no plans in losing further. Rather, it seems Son's dream of SoftBank dominating the market place are receiving much attention. In 2010 Son furthered his plan for world dominance, all be it posthumously.


"A Person's life is over in 50 - 100 years, but a company lives on through the people it is composed of and SoftBank group has to survive even after I'm gone."


Strong words for a man who lost $70 billion, it seems Masayoshi is indeed the CEO that everyone would like to have, shrewd and modest, ethical and honest.
As a demonstration of Son's humanitarian spirit he has agreed to cover the living costs of a few residents of Tamura, which is one of the cities hardest hit by the Japanese Tsunami. By a few residents we mean 1,200 residents, he also pledge to give those left orphaned by the Tsunami a free phone with all bills paid for until the age of 18.

Indeed it has never been so true that one man's loss is another's gained.

Thank you for reading and we hope you enjoy the weekend.

Regards,

Professor Participant

Tech Bosses who have lost it!

Happy Friday and welcome to Prof Particpant's blog, your favorite online membership, ticket and registration software, even if you don't know it yet.

Today we begin our latest series "Tech Bosses who have lost it". A self explanatory title with frankly horrific content. Not has horrific as this website (see what happens when developers and designers aren't paid on time)

Our inaugural subject is Mr Jim Balsillie, 52 year old Canadian and co-chief executive of Blackberry. Estimated to have been worth roughly $800 million in 2011, Basillie today sold his entire share for a meager $434 million (roughly). Yep, that's right, a staggering loss of half his estimated worth within 18 months, or in relative terms it might be easier to stomach; that's a loss of $24 million per month for 18 months, no, actually that's not easy to stomach at all.

We're not sure how BB will recover, with further share prices set to fall after this very embarrassing and very public vote of no confidence by Basillie. 

It may be too early to start engraving tombstones for Blackberry or "Research In Motion" as they are now officially called, but what is certain, that RIM jobs will be at risk over the next coming months, with retailers already shunning the new blackberry device for the iPhone and windows phone, the future certainly holds bleak things for RIM. We look forward to seeing you here next week.

Prof Participant.

                                                       

A Brief History of Transactions. Part 2. As told by Prof Participant.

Hello all! Last week on our ticket management and online registration blog we were talking about the death of the cheque. And how our old friend is now looking increasingly frail and decidedly worn out. So, introducing part two of two; A brief History of Transactions. As told by Prof Participant from www.particpant.co.uk the online leaders of event management systems.

Continued from last week....

The final nail in the coffin for our friend, the cheque, was the introduction of the big banks vendetta against the cheque. Vendetta may be a strong word, infact, very possibly used in entirely the wrong context, unless you read the Daily Mail in the UK. Surprisingly enough The DM has refrained from calling the cheque "The last true British institution" or something else equally as sensational, however, their beleaguered defence is of interest.
"Many big stores, such as Tesco and Marks & Spencer, refuse to accept them, and most utility firms impose a penalty on those paying by cheque" Reference

Unfortunately this statement isn't exactly reliable, however it does highlight how some high street companies are beginning to phase out paper for pin. But does anyone actually mind? Cheques are inherently fallible in terms of security, so are there people clinging on to the hope  that we will never see a demise of the cheque?

"We need to give people a choice. I want cheques to be kept. I am sure if you go out and talk to people, they will say they want cheques." Reference

So that's exactly what we at Participant did, out of the few people we asked, not one of them agreed with the above statement. We received opinions that cheques can easily be forged and therefor were untrustworthy  others believed strongly that technology had already taken over, one young person even admitted they had never written a cheque, therefor why should they begin now?

In conclusion, it is apparent that cheques are already obsolete to the younger generation. However! There may well unexpected savior for the cheque, infact, the very nemesis in which the cheque is embroiled in battle with, yes, that's right, technology may well come to the rescue of the cheque. With the rate of advancement of technology it is highly plausible to hypothesize that through new technologies the cheque may find itself being brought back from the brink, although we doubt it.

Thank you for reading, happy eventing!

Prof.

The Incredible Fee Table Update. Online Event Software

Hello there event managers! Just a quick post to let you know that your favorite online event management and ticketing system has updated our Fees category by adding in a new competitor. We've decided to do this as one of our clients did use this certain competitor, and to show them the saving they have made we developed an extra formula to our site.

Once again, Prof. Participant saving the day and saving you time and money. This time to the tune of £2 on a £40 ticket! Sometimes even we don't understand why our fees are so low. But it seems to keep our loyal customers happy, and loyal.

Regards,

Prof. Pwww.participant.co.uk/register

A Brief History of Transactions. Part 1. As told by Prof Participant.

Good afternoon all. This weeks Participant blog is a discussion about the demise of the cheque. As we are a company that deals with online tickets, event management and payments it is of paramount importance to us and many of our clients to understand and discuss emerging and dissolving trends.

In this weeks blog post we will start by discussing the popularity of the cheque, our main aim is to find out if anyone in 10 years time will ask for the cheque.

We will discuss why the market share has devolved, what the threats to the cheque are, and what new technologies may assassinate or perhaps revive this most ancient of modern monetary transaction medium.

The popularity or usability of the "cheque" has dropped fast (70% reduction since 1990). For a tool that heralded the new age of banking, it is now exhausted and withering fast (we are still talking about the Cheque, not DC).

The first cheque was first written in 1659 on February the 16th, reference, coincidentally the same day and year that Samuel Pepys ate scallops and went to the pub reference. 

They did of course account for a disgustingly large amount of transactions even in recent years, although, arguably in 1990 cheque payments reached their denouement with 4 billion payments made in said year, an amount not surpassed since reference.

To give you some tangible perspective of the number 4 billion; there are 4 billion inches from the most northerly point of Alaska to the most southerly tip of South America, and here is an example of a common cheque.

                                       

1990 was an important year for cheques, not only was that the year of the cheque, it was also the year that banks realised that the cheques days were numbered. Predicting a peak and gradual descent into obscurity the banks needed to create a new method of transferring capital, this heralded the age of magnetic ink.

However, magnetic ink only staved off the inevitable decline, whilst other technologies were being created and developed, it could be argued that magnetic ink did little to suture the hemorrhaging of the beleaguered cheque. The final nail in the coffin for our friend the cheque was the introduction of ....

Tune in next week for part 2.

Enjoy your weekend,

Prof Participant

Funtastic Friday

As you may have guessed from the title, each Friday we will be henceforth known as Funtastic Friday. This invariably means that as your most trusted event management software company we will be making strictly industry jokes and puns for you all to share.

So to kick things off, we will be having a speedy look over some of the content we posted this week. Starting off with success baby.

Success Kid, sometimes known as I hate sandcastle kid came onto the Meme Scene in 2008. Since then Sammy, as the child is known in the real world has even had his image used by Virgin Media in a campaign in February 2012. Seen below.

But what exactly is a meme? According to Google's definition, a meme is as follows;

MEME/MĒM/

1. An element of a culture or behavior that may be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, esp. imitation.
2. An image, video, etc. that is passed electronically from one Internet user to another.

A very specific definition that is not. However, we're sure you understand. In terms of Event Software related memes, there are plenty. Here are a few of our favorites for you to enjoy and share. We hope you have a good Friday and a even better weekend. Thanks for stopping by, Prof. Participant.

  

Participant.co.uk System: Mobile and Tablet Integration

Hello and welcome to new visitors and old. Today we will be talking about the importance of having a mobile friendly event page to sell your tickets through. As many of you are aware, each and every event, ticket and registration page set up on Participant.co.uk is now mobile friendly.

Image courtesy of Salty Waffle

What are you talking about Prof?

But what exactly does mobile friendly mean and how will it benefit your ticket sales and performance?

The coding team at Participant.co.uk saw that none of our competitors could offer a fully mobile optimised event and course management solution for their customers, infact, they don't offer many of the products we have as we discussed recently here.

So what we have done is to allow your ticket website to fit and change to what ever size screen it is displayed on. This mobile optimisation allows 24/7 access to your content on a range of devices, so customers can register or buy tickets with ease.

Show me the facts!

According to Pingdom; the mobile share of internet has increased by 183% between 2010-2012. What's more, 90% of adults who own a smartphone say they use it predominantly to browse online content & check their emails.

In Europe, we are the biggest growth sector bar the Asian market for mobile traffic and transactions. In essence, we want our customers to reach the widest audience possible as 95% of mobile users search products with their phone and 22% then proceed to purchase products online.

Mobile share of web traffic

	2010	2012	Increase 2010-2012
Africa	5.81%	14.85%	155.59%
Asia	6.1%	17.84%	192.46%
Europe	1.81%	5.13%	183.43%
North America	4.71%	7.96%	69.00%
Oceania	2.88%	7.55%	162.15%
South America	1.46%	2.86%	95.89%
Worldwide	3.81%	10.01%	162.73%

Image courtesy of Pingdom

To summarise, mobile optimised websites not only make your ticket selling website look good, it also saves your customers energy and that of their mobile phone! How about that. You can read more on the benefits of mobile optimised websites on mobile phone battery life click here. If you would like to read more about purchase behavior of customers on mobile websites you can find more information here. We hope you have enjoyed this brief insight into the benefits of mobile optimised web page.

Have a great weekend, & come visit us again at www.participant.co.uk.

Thank you for reading,

Prof. Participant

The Mask

Hello, Prof Participant here.

In this post we will be discussing why we offer our customers the choice to mask the URL for their events. To start selling tickets with our event management software simply create an event page and we can quickly customise your event to fit within your existing website.


What does it mean?

As we all know URL stands for Uniform or Universal Resource Locator. In essence, this will mean that with our tailored made piece of code we can change your website from containing this www.particpant.com/yourevent to this www.yourwebsite.com/yourevent or yourevent.yourwebsite.com.

But why mask it?

We offer the choice to mask the URL for several vital reasons. Firstly and arguably most importantly, our primary objective is not to detract from your brand. Participant is an event registration system which will improve the service to your current and new customers. Our customers have found that their website traffic has increased by up to 30% after they integrated Participant into their website.

We like to offer something different! All of our competitors prefer their logo and name to appear on every site built within the system, selfishly using your hits to improve their bottom line.

This aggressive marketing method may compromise your brands integrity and also may lose you customers as they are put off by being directed to an external website which will increase the amount of time it takes them to buy their tickets.

In conclusion

By offering you URL credibility we can assure you that your website reflects the prestige of your brand, which in turn will maintain a high customer experience resulting in an increase in those vital ticket sales.

If you would like read further on the issue of agressive marketing and it's inherent dangers, click here

System Specials Part 2 - Are you paying too much and waiting too long for your hard earned ticket sales revenue?

Hello Participators,

This week has seen the beginning of many new projects and features for Participant, online event registration and payment system.

In today's post we will be discussing a new feature for our event registration and online ticketing system. All releases are exclusive to Participant and our customers.we will be publishing more modules and releases throughout the first quarter of this year!

To get things going we briefly wanted to let you know about our fee and price tool that we recently released and you can use here! This allows you to quickly see how much you could save by using Participant when compared to similar providers.

As many of you are aware, Participant has the lowest fee in the UK for ticketing and registration software. Not only is our ticketing software robust and multi-faceted but our price is also what sees many of our customers using our system in the long-run.

Our fee is simple, £0.99p per transaction and 2.50% payment process fee. Whats more is that we pay you every week, we won't hold onto your hard earned revenue as we realise that cash-flow and solvency is key to the event industry.

The pricing tool is a new edition to the site, developed by ourselves we've consolidated our competitors latest fees and created a tool which will allow your to see in seconds the price you will save. We decided to create this feature for our users to visualise the prices and cost, and therefor make a more informed decision of who to use for your event ticket and registration needs.

To use our new price comparison feature, comparing event software companies please click here.

The Botnet Threat

A superpower of the online ticket world has been somewhat violently exploited in late 2012 by an interesting piece of devious software. We call it devious as it is still questionable whether this type mass buying/ exploitation is illegal.

The largest company targeted was, and most likely still is Ticketmaster, and they are not getting off lightly. The program called "Botnet" is designed to read Captcha codes. And they have taken a large scalp as the whole purpose of a Capthcha code is to differentiate between a computer and a human purchasing a ticket. However Botnet does not only pose a threat to ticket software companies, have a look here to see the Zombie Army Botnet threat to other prolific platforms.

Three men from California were arrested at the end of 2012 for allegedly commissioning a group of Bulgarian hackers to write the Captcha reading program.

This program is the latest play in a cat & mouse game between hackers and E-commerce anti fraud teams. Perhaps this new development may spell the end of Captcha as we know it. And sure enough a new style of Captcha code has been developed. It is called NuCaptcha. No points for originality there, however NuCaptcha heralds a simple alternative to its now easily exploited cousin.

Opposed to to traditional use of a still feature, NuCaptcha will be a short marketing video with a not so secret message, we're not talking about subliminal messages, which have been proved ineffective. In brief, Proffessor Participant's passing prose is that; this will undoubtedly keep the hackers at bay for at least a few weeks, if not longer.

The question which may now be burning your lips is "But what has Prof Participant done in the battle against the bots?"

Well, firstly, we have secured a very reputable payment service provider and merchant provider, this will mean that your revenue is guaranteed to be safe through many mechanisms we have implemented  The most integral mechanism would be our use of HTTPS.

HTTPS effectively means that no person or computer can track your payments once it has been made. As it is a secure payment gateway, all information is terminated once the portal is closed. This ensures that all your (and our) private information is cached and is therefor inaccessible to any third parties.

Have you got any thoughts on how to improve security for event websites and ticket selling systems, feel free to post a comment, tweet us or send an e-mail, we love talking tech and especially future technology options with our friends and clients. And if Ticketmaster are reading, dump the Captcha code guys, surely it's crippling you?

Thank you for reading,

Kind Regards,

Prof P.

Introductory Post

Happy New Year! We at ParticpantUK hope you all had a jolly Christmas and cracking festive period. We certainly did! Mostly we spent our time fiddling, tweaking and snagging our brand new shiny website, whilst all of you were at home relaxing. Well, we are pleased to say that our Event Registeration System has officially launched in the UK today!

Written and developed by event managers, for event managers our system will fit seamlessly into your current and future projects, and here are a few reasons why we stand out among the Event Management Software crowd.

1. We are cheaper that our competitors! 
2. We don't hold onto your cash! We transfer your ticket sales to your bank account weekly!
3. We can mask our URL to help strengthen your brand.
4. You will never need to create a merchant or PayPal account.

These are a few of the reasons why we have over 5,000 happy customers.

But don't just take their word for it, sign up here for free and experience the new online ticket software all the event managers are talking about. If you're not sure click here to enter a live chat session with us.

And remember to bookmark this page for our regular blog posts.

Happy New Year!

The Participant Team + Professor Participant

System Specials Part 1

Hello & welcome to system specials, episode 1. In this monthly www.participant.co.uk blog post we shall be mostly discussing new and exciting features & updated modules we have developed and implemented since the last system specials post.

As you may or may not know, we here at Participant specialise in Event Software and Event Registration for organisers online. Now the context has been set, lets talk System Specials.

Without further delay, lets see what this months system specials has in store for our lovely customers/reader base. Our latest module that we have developed will be sure to grab your attention, it is, the much awaited, much anticipated automated SMS reminder and ticket function.

Oh sweet, divine, radiant SMS text message reminder service from the heart of God himself. At a mere £0.10p per text you can send SMS tickets, reminder and messages to your attendees.

This feature is useful for both large and small events, and we at Participant have been pleased to see many of our existing customers adopt this extra module. Although there is still and emphasis on using our e-mail system for no extra cost to send your reminders, tickets and updates, we wanted to allow you access to the powerful medium of mobile messages.

To use this new module to its full potential you will be required to gain access to your attendees telephone numbers, this process is infact very simple & all you will be required to do is add an additional field for your attendee to complete when they register for your event.

This, in turn, will allow you to gather the data you require.

Any information gathered by our users will be protected and we can assure you that in no circumstances will it be passed on to any third parties. This is applicable to all data gathered by yourself through our system.

If you have any questions, please get in contact with us on Twitter @ParticipantUK or via e-mail or telephone here