web-development « WordPress.com Tag Feed

Beautiful Palette Generator.

T1amat — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 00:45:07 +0000

Sometimes a task to design a simple web page arises. First step is designing layout of site. Second step is designing color palette. For me personally it is always a most complicated step which can be accomplished with an external help only. Lately I found a beautiful helper – http://colorschemedesigner.com/.

It simply does everything. You just need to choose a color and color layout type. The rest will be done by software. It will offer you to adjust layout, to see sample designs on HTML page, to export designs in several formats and make you coffee. I recommend.

Do You Know a Pro? Professional Athlete That Is.

bfletcher — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:43:36 +0000

White Ink Studio is in the final stages of development of a state of the art web based platform designed to allow professional athletes and their staff to manage their web presence, their personal brand, and leverage their celebrity across the net. We are currently searching for a limited number of pros to participate in beta testing and provide feedback to help influence the finished product.

The platform will feature:
* Content Management System to allow the athlete to easily update and add to the content of the site.
* Video Update Via Vimeo.
* Video Blogging.
* Central Dashboard to Facilitate Live Updates to Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.
* Fan Club Building Functions
* Online Store
* Custom Design to reflect Personal Branding.

If you know a professional athlete please let them know about this opportunity to participate. They will thank you.

Also, watch for our premier athlete site launch scheduled for the first of the year featuring six time triple crown title winning surfer Sunny Garcia.

Sincerely,

Bill Fletcher

White Ink Studio

949.813.3861

Jobs at Fishpond

Rowan Simpson — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:00:32 +0000

When a start-up business is growing quickly and everything is humming there is no better place to be. Which is one of the reasons why I’m excited to be involved with Fishpond – I’m an investor and also work with them as an advisor.

From their warehouse in Auckland, Fishpond run Australasia’s biggest online store, shipping books, movies, games, music and (just added) toys to customers around New Zealand and Australia and around the world (it’s a great place for ex-pat Kiwis to source their Outrageous Fortune fix from overseas, for example).

They are currently looking to add some more smart PHP developers to their team. There are both junior and senior positions available.

I think this is a great opportunity – a chance to work on a busy and popular website, which still has lots of room for improvement, and some complex back-end warehouse systems, and be part of a team that has a big influence on the success of the company.

If this sounds like you (or somebody you know) I’d encourage you to check out the job descriptions and apply.

I’ll look forward to working with you…

Tips to Buy a Web Domain Name

web developer — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:09:54 +0000

Tips to Buy a Web Domain Name by Thomas Crown For those who are wanting to move their traditional br

Gina Trapani offers a brief overview of Google Wave at Web 2.0 Expo

dash30 — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:40:09 +0000

If you’re just starting out with Google Wave or wondering what all the fuss is about, Gina Trapani does a nice job walking you through the app’s potential in this 15-minute video:

I also recommend her book, The Complete Guide to Google Wave.

More of the Web 2.0 Expo talks are available on YouTube.

MintTwist Co-Create Project - BEAD Architects

Elliott King — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 10:56:55 +0000

#MT-CO-CREATE Project – BEAD

Web Design concepts for BEAD, a firm of architects in the UAE. The Design Process being followed is based on the MintTwist Method.

1. Home Page

Home Page web design concept

2. Portfolio

Portfolio web design

3. Portfolio Drill Down

Portfolio Drill-down web design

4. Portfolio Drill Down (Open Image)

Portfolio Drill-down (Open image) web design

For comments, suggestions, questions or just to connect with the friendly web designer behind this work contact Lee Baillie.

Wordpress.com's Syntax Highlighter vs. Different Languages

gdemeny — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:15:00 +0000

This is a test post to see how WordPress.com’s built-in syntax highlighter works.

HTML

So, first let’s see how it handles HTML:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
   <title>Hello World</title>
   <meta name="robots" content="NOARCHIVE,NOFOLLOW">
   <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
</head>

<body>
   <div class="test">
      <!-- OK, let's do this! -->
      <p>Hello World!</p>
   </div>
</body>
</html>

This looks gorgeous in spite the fact that wordpress.com’s documentation doesn’t list the language=”html” option. There are a couple of issues however.

First, I can’t do indentation which will make the code much less readable. This is my first time trying out this so there might be a way to indent. I’ll ask Google and update if I find something.

Update: I didn’t have to Google it, I realized I can simply use spaces to indent. Duh. Three spaces look to make nicely indented code.

The second problem is that if I didn’t have enough text to push down the first source code block, it would cover the date on the right. This might be an issue with the theme I’m using. Will have to verify.

JavaScript

Now let’s move on to JavaScript.

<script type="text/javascript">
   // No comment 
   document.write('Hello World!');
</script>

It looks good but at this point I realized something WordPress’ visual editor does. If you save the page and go back to edit it later it will strip some code such as the script tags and even the div tags. To avoid it you can switch to the HTML view in the upper right corner of the editor.

It’s also notable that WordPress will replace the smileys even if they’re inside source code block but will not actually show the image.

ColdFusion

And now, let’s move on to ColdFusion.

<div>
   <cfset thisYear = Year(Now())>
   <p>Hello World in #variables.thisYear#!</p>
</div>

I’m sure you’ve noticed the alert when this page was loaded noting that there’s no brush for ColdFusion. That’s even though the above mentioned documentation specifically says there is one. Not sure what’s wrong, will have to Google it.

Spring Roo: First Impressions

Paulo Renato — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:31:29 +0000

Two weeks ago I attended to the event The Developer’s Conference, down here in São Paulo, Brazil. I covered it here and here. One topic I decided to cover separated is Spring Roo. Rod Johnson, from SpringSource presented it in the conference, and really got my attention.

During the last few days I’ve being spending a few minutes per day with the tool. Following are an explanation about what it does, and my impressions in general. Hope you enjoy =)

The statement that describes better what Roo tries to do is “Roo is Rails for Java, but better”. Rod Johnson said something similar to this during his presentation in the TDC event, and I can agree with that. Rails productivity is nice, sure, but it doesn’t have the power of the Java platform. So bringing this productivity “home”, to Java, is an excelent idea.

To achieve this goal, Roo generates code for you. This isn’t, of course, a new idea. But the way Roo does it is what makes it really interesting. The concept is that you should be able to read and edit any code generated by the tool. Also, you should be able to use whatever IDE you prefer during development, without Roo getting in your way – I actually use Netbeans to edit the source code files, and although the IDE they officially support is Eclipse (the base for their Spring Tool Suite), it worked just fine.

The code generated by Roo has also desirable qualities: it follows good programming practices, like separation of concerns, and has good performance – there is no reflection in any of its “magic” to slow things down, for example.

This is how Roo looks like when running:

Roo Shell

This is the Roo shell. It is where you type commands and execute tasks when using the tool. It features TAB completion, which works very nicely, and a lot of development support – you can type hint anytime to get a help message. Also, you can type help to see full list of commands currently available.

We haven’t created a project yet, so hint shows this:

Hint on an Empty Folder

Lets take a look at Roo in action. In the next screenshot, I’m using the command project to create a new project called JCranky:

Project Creation

Notice the TAB completion working; also, notice how Roo tells you what it did to your files, so that you can keep an eye on his behavior

I’m don’t intend to write a tutorial, so I’ll just show one more code generation example and go back to commenting. Lets install persistence support, and then create an entity. The command to do the former is persistence setup and for the later is entity EntityName. The next two screenshots ilustrates the result of these commands:

Persistence Setup

Entity Creation

Again, notice how TAB completion helps us. We don’t have to remember all those commands. Just hit TAB and Roo tells you what commands are available. Notice on the entity creation that Roo created a few .aj files. This is one of its secrets: it uses Aspects to insert code into your class, making it more simpler during source editing time. So boilerplate code like getters, setters and toString are inserted automatically in your entities to you. To understand a little bit more about this, take a look at the Aspect J site.

I’m not a fan of Spring, which obviously is used a lot in Roo and in the generated sources. But this tool seems to work so nicely that it might make me change my mind. And the same thing goes for maven, which Roo uses in the generated sources. But in this case, Roo also allows you to replace maven if you want to – but in this case you will have to write your own plugin to do that, at least for now.

I’ll stop here, but if anyone asks for more I might feel like writing another post =D. But before closing, lets mention the only one thing I really hated about Roo: it seems to generate code with TABs instead of whitespaces. So, Roo developers, I beg you: please generate whitespaces! I know it is a small thing, but it really freaks me out…

For more information, besides the official site, these three blog posts are very interesting: Jump into Roo for extreme Java Productivity; Getting Started with Spring Roo and Exploring Roo’s Architecture.

bye!

EDIT: After Ben Alex’s comment I looked again into the sources generated for my tests and couldn’t find any TABs. So please ignore this part of the post, until I find them again =D

The Information Age...

mediaengineer — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:00:40 +0000

I suppose I am what they call a “true veteran” of the “information age.” I have been “around the block” quite a few times over the years in my sales and marketing career – and yes – I have the gray hair to prove it!

Working with hundreds of clients over the past several years gives me a very unique perspective. I remain dedicated to helping all of my clients cut through the foremost sales and marketing dilemma of the day – ubiquitous media clutter.

Engineered media solutions must be uniquely crafted to deliver quantifiable results to each and every client. My aim is to provide clients with only the highest quality digital marketing and web site optimization services.

I am a “new” media blogger and I look forward to sharing my thoughts on how small business can best navigate and leverage the ever changing media landscape.

Small business people must be “ever vigilant” and committed to participating in the “real-time internet” !! So please visit my blog often. I hope and plan that it will be of value to your growing business. These days we must to leverage every new communication technology we have at our disposal to survive the current financial markets!

I’ll also be adding some useful motivational tips that I’ve picked up over the years to help keep you (and me) moving in the right direction!

We always want to focus in on our customers and their needs!

Good Selling!

Bob Stephens / Dallas, Texas USA

http://MediaEngineer.wordpress.com

214-501-7338 (direct)

Zend tip: disable all rendering in controller when serving AJAX request

jarlostensen — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:51:21 +0000

NOTE: this assumes you already know a fair bit about how the Zend framework’s rendering and layout engine works.

I have a Zend Framework powered web site that I’m adding some AJAX to. Serving the AJAX request inside a controller by looking for requests with the isXmlHttpRequest flag set to TRUE is simple.
Inside the controller you then assemble whatever JSON or HTML response you have and return it, like this for example:
$this->getResponse()->setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/html')->setBody($response);

Ok, the point here is that when I did this and dutifully called setNoRender using the viewRender helper, my clean and simple response had a large chunk of HTML appended to it.
Now, I am using “response segments” in my Zend layout, i.e. I’ve got a controller action that automatically renders a part of every page, regardless of which controller is the active one. It was this controller’s rendered output that – still – was generated and appended to my neat AJAX response.

So, it turns out, that to prevent this to be rendered I had to disable all controller rendering and setNoRender doesn’t do that. It just disables rendering from within the current controller.
The code to include is instead
$viewRenderer->setNeverRender(true)

This works, and it is auto reset every time you reload the page.

Now my AJAX response is just what it should be.

Benefits of using Flex on your website

ferventseosolutions — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:38:59 +0000

Flex application development is a newly introduced term and may not be known by many. It basically relates to Adobe flex, which is the cross-platform, that is based on the Macromedia flash software, which is a development framework and a comprehensive application advancement tool. It is also a solution for the development and delivery of RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) within the enterprise and also throughout the web to enhance the interactivity for the Internet.

Benefits of using Flex on your website.Here are some reasons for deciding to put a Flex application on your website:

To have a very robust application that attractively visualizes complex data sets
To engage your users or visitors and let them feel empowered
Flex is the technology of the future – it shows your organization is modern
It works on all major platforms and users don’t need to install anything
Audio and video can be integrated, allowing even greater interaction
Data synchronization allows real-time data push from back-end to application

We, Ferventsoft can help you designing, uploading content and developing wordpress site. If you fell we can help you please contact us
Office Phone No: +91 1164688450
E-mail: fervent@ferventsoft.com
sanjeev@gmail.com
http://ferventsoft.com

Tips for Social Media Marketers

ngokarmic — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:35:48 +0000

1. Every brand can be and should be “social” – Conversations about your brand and products are happening everywhere. You need to be part of the conversation and if H&R Block can make taxes social, your product can be social too.

2. Just get started – It doesn’t take a big budget to get started in social media marketing. In fact, much of social media marketing is human capital. Start by listening. Set up Google Alerts to look for conversations about your brand or product. Use TweetDeck and set up a brand search to monitor what is going on about your brand or product in the Twitterverse. Then participate in the conversation; just remember to be authentic, honest and transparent and you will be fine. If you take the first steps to engage in the conversation you will learn more about how your brand or product fits into the social media space and it will help guide any future programs.

3. Integrated marketing vs. social media – There is a difference between an integrated marketing campaign that includes viral components or online/offline coordination and a social media program. A marketing campaign has a short life; it is singular in desired action and is usually focused on demand generation. A social media program is a commitment to engage and communicate with consumers where the consumer wants to communicate. If you are going to start a marketing campaign with social elements versus a social media program, you must start with the end in mind. The worst thing a marketer could do is build a group of fans, friends or followers without a clear exit strategy after the campaign is completed.

4. Find your brand’s own path – What works for one brand in social media does not mean it is right for another. For example, the path of engagement with a movie franchise is very different than engaging consumers about taxes. Remaining true to your brand promise is the best way to approach social media. Utilize your brand promise as a guiding principle across all your social media efforts. Reflect it in the content that you create, the tone that you use, and the programs that you develop.

Web Design Tutorial Resources

domainating — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:02:55 +0000

Originally, I started making this list as a quick reference page for our Web Design and Development group at Google Groups. Unfortunately, real life interrupted and I never got this list done.

So instead of posting the incomplete list of web design and development tutorial resources to the group, I thought I’d post the start of it here. This way, the general public can comment on the resources or even add additional online websites offering tutorial resources.

Note that web design requires more than simply knowing how to code and present information in HTML & CSS. Usually in any such position, highly proficient graphic design skills are required with demonstrable hands-on knowledge of the Photoshop and Illustrator creativity application suites will also be required. Further skills such as Flash, javascript, or php & MySQL coding proficiency, or experience in SEO or online marketing may well also considered an huge asset.

The aforementioned reason is why it’s often hard to find just the type of tutorial you might require, everyone wants something different, and most tutorial resources only cover specific skillsets. One site might be offering HTML tutorials while not offering XHTML tutorials. Another site might cover the CSS standard to version 2 and completely ignore CSS3, etc…

Therefore, I am trying to build a quick reference table of online web design and development tutorial resources. I want it for my own reference as much as for anyone else’s. Technology is always evolving in this industry, so it is great to have reliable up-to-date resources from which to learn and to reference.

The W3C (the WorldWide Web Consortium) is apparently too busy developing standards and defining them with barely understandable legal speak, so do not expect any good tutorials there on the site…

http://www.w3.org/
[Standards Documentation in Legal Speak]

However, If the W3C was surely interested in leading the web technology standards, I think that they would have long ago identified their inability to communicate effectively with the rest of the world as well as addressed this problem with some easier to understand interpretations, examples and tutorials. I personally take exception to some of the things they do, the way they do them, and the way they refuse to explain their lack of reasoning in doing some of the crazy things they do.

Since they don’t recognize this issue we are left to scavenge the web for decent info and tutorials in order to just have decent results. And no one place completely covers any one standard, let along the lot of them. In fact, there is no one decent authority to rely on. Hence, I complied the following list of web design tutorials.

http://www.w3schools.com/
[Free HTML/CSS Tutorials - Paid Certifications]

http://www.quackit.com/
[Free HTML/CSS Tutorials for Beginners]

http://www.tizag.com/
[Free HTML/XHTML/XML/CSS/Javascript/AJAX/VBScript/Perl/PHP/MySQL/ASP/Flash/SEO Tutorials for Beginners]

http://www.how-to-build-websites.com/
[Free HTML/XHTML/CSS/Dreamweaver/PHP/Javascript/Flash/Actionscript/PHP Tutorials for Beginners]

http://www.webmonkey.com/
[Free Web Developer's Resource with many tutorials, articles and reference materials covering almost any web design subject]

http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/
[Inexpensive HTML/XHTML/XML/WML/WAP/Javascript/SSI/PHP/MySQL/ASP/Cookies/Flash/FTP/.htaccess/Promotion Tutorials]

http://www.hscripts.com/
[Free HTML/CSS/Javascript/Perl/PHP/MySQL/SEO/Linux/Photoshop Tutorials]

http://htmlite.com/
[Free HTML/XHTML/XML/XSLT/CSS/SSI/Perl/PHP/MySQL/Javascript/FTP/.htaccess Tutorials]

http://www.tutorialtastic.co.uk/
[Free HTML/XHTML/CSS/PHP/MySQL/Javascript/Graphics Tutorials]

http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/tutorials/index.php3
[Free HTML/SQL/MySQL/Javascript/Flash Tutorials]

http://www.echoecho.com/school.htm
[Free HTML/DHTML/XML/CSS/SSI/Perl/PHP/ASP/Cold-Fusion/Java/Flash/Graphics/Design Tutorials]

http://www.sergey.com/web_course/content.html
[HTML/DHTML/XML/CSS/CGI/Javascript/Java/ASP/HTTPS/SSL Free Web Technologies Overview Course]

http://www.jessett.com/
[creating a website: Usability/Graphics/HTML/Dreamweaver/CSS/DHTML/SEO]

http://www.webdesign.org/
[Free HTML/CSS/PHP/ASP/Javascript/Design/Usability/Color/Templates/Photoshop/Fireworks/Gimp/PaintShopPro/CorelDraw/Illustrator/Flash/Swish/3D/SEO Tutorials]

http://www.academictutorials.com/
[Free HTML/DHTML/XHTML/WAP/XML/XSL/XSLT/RSS/DTD/Perl/PHP/Python/ASP/.NET/SQL/Javascript/Java/VBScript/SVG/SMIL/Flash/Photoshop/Gimp/Matlab/Gnuplot/GIF/Graphics/SEO & more Tutorials and Quizes]

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/category/tutorials/
[Free design tutorials for anything to do with design, all levels]

Feel free to leave me a comment and add your own suggestions. As indicated, I was nowhere near done when I started this list and the current list above only represents a small portion of what is currently available.

SlickPlan: Easy and Free Flowcharts

Thursday Bram — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:05:56 +0000

A flowchart can be crucial for explaining certain tasks or ideas. SlickPlan’s goal is to make sure that you can put together a flowchart quickly, no matter where you are. The web-based application also enables you to put together site maps and interact with your existing designs. It was created with web designers in mind, but anyone can quickly learn to use SlickPlan’s flowcharts.

SlickPlan doesn’t really differentiate between creating a web site plan or a flowchart, which can be a little confusing at first. But once you realize that it uses the same tool for both, you can quickly start adding items to a chart. The tool is fairly simple: You click the “Add a New Page” to add a bubble (whether it represents a page on a web site or an item on your chart) and select the page or item under which it will be located.” You also have a side bar listing each element and allowing you to move, edit or delete individual pieces. There aren’t a lot of fancy bells and whistles — but you won’t miss them. Instead, SlickPlan does one thing particularly well, allowing you to create a chart in no time flat. Even better, any project you put together with SlickPlan is clean and attractive enough to send out to clients comfortably.

Once you’ve got a chart or site map put together, SlickPlan offers you a few different options on what you can do with it. Most importantly, you can save it and work on it later. You can also save multiple versions of a project. By opening up individual projects, you can access an HTML embed code that allows you to add your chart to other sites, export your project as a PDF and send a link to anyone you need to look at your chart. You can save an unlimited number of projects to your SlickPlan account at this point.

There are a few places where SlickPlan could use a little bit of polish. The application itself is easy enough to use, but the way certain buttons are labeled can make it seem like you can only create site plans, rather than use it for flowcharts and other options — uses that are specifically mentioned on the application’s web site. The application was developed by Atomic Interactive, a web development studio. SlickPlan was not created for a client, however; instead, it’s more of an internal tool meant to eliminate the frustration of trying to build site maps in Illustrator or InDesign (s adbe). The resulting application makes knocking out a fast chart easy.

You may find that SlickPlan is not quite so useful if you want to add notes about individual elements or need to make more elaborate charts. In such scenarios, you may want to consider a more robust tool. Otherwise, it’s a useful tool at the right price. SlickPlan’s developers intend to keep it free, as well, relying on ads and donations to cover the site’s costs.

What tools do you use to create flowcharts?

ASP.net is Better Than PHP

innovationswicked — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:42:12 +0000

There is a current battle between programmers. They are debating and vigorously concluding that ASP.net is better than PHP and vice versa. They are trying to make out which of the two can provide a good source of web programming language. PHP was the first one to came on the scene. It’s loyalist are claiming that with a name that it has established, it is currently the most credible general-purpose scripting language. On the other corner, ASP.net loyalists are saying that their bet is better because it has surpassed what the counterpart can do or has accomplished. And since ASP.net is a newly introduced and regarded as the “innovation” in programming language, it has the lead. Let us see why more more modern programmers prefer ASP.net for better website development.

First and foremost, ASP.net is backed by a very large company, which is Microsoft. It can react better in a more predictable manner. Backward compatibility is not lost in a point release, like what was experienced with PHP many times.

Innovation means better change. And that’s what ASP.net is. Important points and feature of this emerging programming language are:

Performance- ASP.net has the advantage on this because it is compiled all the way to machine instructions on the target machine before first execution.

Scalability- ASP.NET is designed to be used in a web farm or web garden. Facilities like profiles/personalization means that many applications can be written without session state. But even with session state, this can be shared among the servers. You can use a speciel session state server (included), use a SQL server (provider included), or build your own provider.

Built-in templating – templating frameworks of PHP can’t match ASP.net’s in terms of performance and functionality.

Master Pages – In PHP this must be accomplished by using a complex, centralizing architecture of front controllers or app controllers. In ASP.NET a masterpage is simply a page with a special “contentplaceholder” tag.

Membership controls and providers – ASP.NET comes with 2 providers: active directory and SQL server. More can be downloaded, or you can develop one yourself. Its merely implementing an interface.

WebControls

ViewState

UserControls

Theming/skinning

Internationalization/localization

Authorization/authentication

Site structure controls and providers

PHP may also have some of these features, but ASP.net’s are way better and come integrated.

Another advantage is seen on the time taken to generate and display results for a search of a small website. From Wrensoft the average time for PHP site is 0.1500 seconds while for ASP.net, 0.0150 seconds. The difference is very large. Same thing goes if it is for a larger site. PHP required an average of 1.0097 seconds while ASP.net only needs 0.0810 seconds.

Agile Technosys in the Top 5 in Elance

Chetan Kelkar — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:06:52 +0000

It gives us tremendous pleasure to announce that we have made it to the Top 5 in the Elance ranks for web development out of 26,000 provider companies!

Agile Technosys in top 5 Elance provider companies for Web development.

This achievement has been made possible due to the unwavering faith that our valued clients have showed in us every single time. It is to them that we owe this success. The support that we received from them during the entire process has led us to this moment of glory. We would like to take this opportunity to assure them that now we would strive even more to maintain and enhance the quality of our work. Your satisfaction is our final reward.

The prominent reason for this success is the strong domain knowledge understanding and application expertise of our talented team. Their undying passion and dedication for their work is the key factor in this accomplishment.

At this juncture, we would like to thank all the people who have played their parts to perfection, which has resulted in this awesome achievement. We promise to keep up the standards of our work and reach the Numero Uno position.

How You Can Make PPC Succesfull Campaign For Your Website?

ngokarmic — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:11:10 +0000

PPC (Pay Per Click) is a paid search that is conducted on a search engine for progressive search results.There has been numerous arguments and comparisions between the performance of SEO and PPC as to which is better.Typically, search engine optimization specialist may be busy with content, page titles and links (internal and inbound). Paid search professionals monitor bid amounts, tinker with ad copy and revise landing pages.But If these professional from their respective fields combine together then the entire community of SEO and PPC activists will benefit to a great extent if the following operations are performed succesfully so:-

Analyze and then share your keyword research.The research should be conducted with specific keyword tools.
Share and keep a tally of creative copy of search produced.
Keep a constant comparative study of pages downloaded from the net.
Take a joint decision as to when a natural ranking is high enough for a PPC ad that has a warrant.
There is an important aspect in SEO called Link Exchange.Sites submit their url in link directories to exchange links with websites.But on a common basis sites from one category are not allowed to exchange links with sites from another category.This is where PPC comes into play.

Drupal 6 node.save services taxonomy xmlrpc php and python

honewatson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:54:43 +0000

Drupal 6 node.save uses different methods for saving taxonomy for different taxonomy types.

For multiple select based taxonomy:

(php)

$nodeObj->taxonomy = array(2=>array(15,19));

(python)

nodeOb['taxonomy']['2'] = [15,19]

For tags based taxonomy:

(php)

$nodeObj->taxonomy = array(
  'tags' => array(
         2=>'military,navy'
   )
);

Lego, Wombles and Linked Data

Tom Scott — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:38 +0000

As a child I loved Lego. I could let my imagination run riot, design and build cars, space stations, castles and airplanes.

My brother didn’t like Lego, instead preferring to play with Action Men and toy cars. These sorts of toys did nothing for me, and from the perspective of an adult I can understand why. I couldn’t modify them, I couldn’t create anything new. Perhaps I didn’t have a good enough imagination because I needed to make my ideas real. I wanted to build things, I still do.

Then the most exciting thing happened. My dad bought a BBC micro.

Obviously computers such as the BBC Micro were in many, many ways different from today’s Macs and if you must PCs. Obviously they were several orders of magnitude less powerful than today’s computers but, and importantly, they were designed to be programmed by the user, you were encouraged to do so. It was expected that that’s what you would do. So from a certain perspective they were more powerful.

BBC Micro’s didn’t come preloaded with word processors, spreadsheets and graphics editors and they certainly weren’t WIMPs.

What they did come with was BBC BASIC and Assembly Language.

They also came with two thick manuals. One telling you how to set the computer up; the other how to programme it.

This was all very exciting, I suddenly had something with which I could build incredibly complex things. I could, in theory at least, build something that was more complex than the planes, spaceships and cars which I modelled with Lego a few years before.

Like so many children of my age I cut my computing teeth on the BBC Micro. Learnt to programme computers, and played a lot of games!

Unfortunately all was not well. You see I wasn’t very good at programming my BBC micro. I could never actually build the things I had pictured in my mind’s eye, I just wasn’t talented enough.

You see Lego hit a sweet spot which those early computers on the one hand and Action Man on the other missed.

What Lego provided was reusable bits.

When Christmas or my birthdays came around I would start off by building everything suggested by the sets I was given. But I would then dismantle the models and reuse those bricks to build something new, whatever was in my head. By reusing bricks from lots of different sets I could build different models. The more sets I got given, the more things I could build.

Action men simply didn’t offer any of those opportunities, I couldn’t create anything new.

Early computers where certainly very capable of providing a creative platform; but they lacked the reusable bricks, it was more like being given an infinite supply of clay. And clay is harder to reuse than bricks.

Today, with the online world we are in a similar place but with digital bits and bytes rather than moulded plastic bits and bricks.

The Web allows people to create their own stories – it allows people to follow their nose to create threads through the information about the things that interest them, commenting, and discussing it on the way. But the Web also allows developers to reuse previously published information within new, different context to tell new stories.

But only if we build it right.

Most Lego bricks are designed to allow you to stick one brick to another. But not all bricks can be stuck to all others. Some can only be put at the top – these are the tiles and pointy bricks to build your spires, turrets and roofs. These bricks are important, but they can only be used at the end because you can’t build on top of them.

The same is true of the Web – we need to start by building the reusable bits, then the walls and only then the towers and spires and twiddly bits.

But this can be difficult – the shinny towers are seductive and the draw to start with the shiny towers can be strong; only to find out that you then need to knock it down and start again when you want to reuse the bits inside.

We often don’t give ourselves the best opportunity to womble with what we’ve got – to reuse what others make, to reuse what we make ourselves. Or to let others outside our organisations build with our stuff. If you want to take these opportunities then publish your data the webby way.

Add inventors to our resume

randrdesign — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:13:03 +0000

Here at Rhyme & Reason Design, we don’t like to box ourselves into any one thing. Yes, we love building websites and thrive on creating cohesive brands, but at the end of the day we embrace the idea that variety is truly the spice of life. With an affinity for variety and my over eager approach at selling Rhyme & Reason’s services to anyone who even looks in my direction, I managed to wrangle us an inventor with a request that had us thinking far outside the box.

Our inventor needed an animated video of his invention that could be presented to the patent office and emailed to potential buyers. Now mind you, I know Karen can make images dance with Flash and Erin can program just about anything we put in front of her, so I of course said an animated video was practically a piece of cake. Well, in my enthusiastic haze, that often clouds my initial thought patterns, I didn’t think about the entire process of creating an animated video of something that doesn’t even exist. Boy was that a learning curve I didn’t see coming.

You see an animated video is a beast, barely related to that of website design and development. It takes skills and knowledge that go so far over my head that I think they may have landed somewhere out in the Adriatic Sea. Luckily, our partner in digital animation was not only brilliant with his work but, amazingly patient in breaking down the process to a level that didn’t require a decoding manual.

All right, so we have a talented digital video designer – check. Next, add audio to the video, again, I think no problem. Again, I learn to keep a lid on my enthusiasm. However, I do have a new, found respect for men and women who do voiceovers for cartoons, infomercials and radio ads. Well actually, I didn’t have to try my hand at voice work, instead we enlisted the help of Erin’s boyfriend – he has a way better voice than all of us and was a willing volunteer. I don’t think he will be volunteering for R&R projects anytime soon. No but, seriously he has quite the voice and when you listen to the 20 cuts he made for the first 30 seconds of audio it becomes quite melodic, oh wait that was the music I had on to tune it out – just kidding. I did in fact listen very closely to all the cuts and it’s a good thing because a few Barry White renditions were thrown into the mix that I don’t think would have caused the same uproarious laughter from our inventor.

After reading through this entire blog, I bet you are dying to know what our inventor invented, well, we are still awaiting final approval from the patent office, but when the good word comes in, we will break out the cigars, pop the champagne and post the video. Until then keep your fingers crossed.

Web Design and Development

igrafix — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:45:56 +0000

Rhondas Manor Guest House

Rhonda’s Manor Guest House welcomes you to experience a touch of Africa and luxury accommodation in a gracious colonial mansion framed against the backdrop of Lions Head and Table Mountain in Fresnaye, a select corner on Cape Town’s Atlantic Seaboard.

View website: www.rhondasmanor.co.za

Dreamshop

This is the virtual home of Pierre and Osnat’s creative factory. Pierre with his custom-made surfboards and Osnat with her amazing artistry.

Living, playing and working on the breathtaking Peninsula of the far south.

View website: www.dreamshop.co.za

Angelworx

AngelworX aspire’s to networking people with companies through ground-breaking ideas and deep knowledge of their client’s core business, customers needs and the broader marketplace in which it functions. Trust is built on character and what others are saying about you.
Companies look to AngelworX for insight and vision, journalists & designers join us, analysts call us and websites are branded by us.

View website: www.angelworx.co.za

Browsers’ developer tools evolution

sharovatov — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:52:07 +0000

It’s great to see that better tools for developer start to appear.

As in many other cases, the race started IE5.01 with support for script debugging in an external Script Debugger app. And now the race takes us to the new level with awesome tools built into browsers (like Firebug in Fx or Devtools in IE8) or even better external – let’s welcome dynaTrace Ajax!

dynaTrace Ajax supports IE6, IE7 and IE8, and will soon support Firefox. It’s basically the best tool out there for profiling and debugging javascript and CSS. Here’s what John Resig, creator of JQuery library says about the tool:

I’m very impressed with dynaTrace AJAX Edition’s ability to get at the underlying “magic” that happens inside a browser: page rendering, DOM method execution, browser events, and page layout calculation. Much of this information is completely hidden from developers and I’ve never seen it so easily collected into a single tool. Huge kudos to dynaTrace for revealing this information and especially so for making it happen in Internet Explorer.

And here’s Steve Souders, web perfomance guru, says:

When it comes to analyzing your JavaScript code to find what’s causing performance issues, dynaTrace Ajax Edition has the information to pinpoint the high-level area all the way down to the actual line of code that needs to be improved. I recommend you give it a test run and add it to your performance tool kit.

Must-have for any web-developer, seriously.

It’s interesting to see that Google and Apple play a good catch-up – both Chromium 4 and Apple Safari teams invest significant resources in building devtools, Chromium 4 finally has its own CPU & heap profilers now on top of V8. So bearing in mind that Firefox profiling will be supported by dynaTrace Ajax, it’s only Opera that’s left behind the game at the moment.

Come on, Opera team!

P.S. and by the way, Opera, can we get inPrivate browsing mode please?