Archive for May 2009

Managing Sessions accross multiple domains, securely – Part 1

Thursday, May 28th, 2009
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A secure e-commerce store can only really be secure if transactions occur over a secure connection, such as SSL (HTTPS). Since SSL Security Certificates can be quite costly to purchase and time consuming to setup, sometimes it makes sense to “share” them across multiple solutions. But there’s a problem there: an SSL Cert will only work at the domain for which it was registered. So how do you get around that little issue if you still want to have a fully SEO friendly website, with it’s own unique domain name, where visitors can read your content, add products to their carts, post comments, but also perform secure actions like making purchases, saving personal data, ect.?

Developers! Developers! Developers! There’s a new Google Gadgets API for communication

Thursday, May 28th, 2009
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What is it?
gadgets.realtime and the APIs built on top of it allow gadget developers to write applications that communicate asynchronously with another endpoint, whether that endpoint is another instance of the application (on another machine, or in another browser, for example), the container hosting the gadget, or an application hosted in the cloud.

talk-realtime-gadget

“With this API, you can share an object between instances of a gadget, and be notified in realtime when the other instance modifies it. More APIs and UI improvements to allow gadgets.realtime gadgets to be used on orkut and iGoogle are in the works and coming soon.”

What email would look like today – Google Wave

Thursday, May 28th, 2009
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Google Wave

Yesterday Google announced a new product at it’s I/O conference - Google Wave.

What is Google Wave?  As developer Lars Rasmussen says, it’s “what email would look like if it were invented today.”

That’s the short answer. The long answer is really really long and I’m told barely makes a dent in what Wave will eventually be offering.

The idea is to take your email and instant messaging providers and put it into one place. This may sound familiar, as apps like Digsby and the new Trillian Astra and even FriendFeed provide services like this. What sets Wave appart from the rest is online collaboration.

How to lay out the site map for your website

Monday, May 25th, 2009
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I often ask clients if they have a site map in mind for their website.  Most of the time the answer is I know what I want to include but I do not know how to organize the information.  Our goal is always to create websites that look aesthetically appealing, are easy to update and most importantly are very easy to navigate.

Texture is the New Gloss

Monday, May 25th, 2009
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texture-n-designApparently Gloss is dead. Texture is here to rip up the corners, splash paint around, burn and char everything above the fold, and get iStocked up. Jacob Nielsen does not like these sites – but you might.

These designs are wide and very modern looking. They jump off the page and offer great colour and depth. Original art, often with vectored sketch, is a cornerstone of this class. Notice how masthead art is integrated with page backgrounds in these designs.

Dilbert and the Google Doodle

Friday, May 22nd, 2009
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dilbert1

I’m pretty sure it’s old. But for some of you who haven’t seen it, here’s the “Dilbert and the Google Doodle” by Scott Adams. Besides, it’s Friday.

Have a good weekend.

Choosing the Right Keywords

Friday, May 22nd, 2009
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Online advertising is a completely different game from traditional offline media. You have a far greater ability to target and segment beyond geographic (newspapers), demographic (magazines) and time (TV/radio). What really distinguishes online advertising is the ability to target keywords.

Keywords come in different shapes and sizes but are vital to any type of web marketing campaign. When compiling a list of keywords and keyphrases, here are some things to keep in mind:

  • Misspellings
  • Plurals, synonyms
  • Adding locations to words and phrases (for geotargeting and local search)

Go in with your best team

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
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In sales you have your large opportunities and you have your smaller opportunities.  Good sales people take them both very serious and do their homework and prep work etc.  One thing to remember when you are going into the large opportunity sales meetings is “go in with your best team”.  This is the not the meeting where you want to say “can I get back to you on that”, have the person that can answer that question in a sales call sitting right beside you.  Never think back and say, man I should have had Jill at the meeting that would have given us a better chance.  Bring Jill.  Big opportunity players like to know who they are going to be dealing with as well so you can impress them with your savvy technical or marketing team.

Facebook Advertising and Demographics in Canada

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
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Facebook is big huge in Canada. Just how big? As of today (May 13, 2009), there are more than 11,788,000 active members. This number has been growing exponentially significantly every month and is expected to double next year.

Below is the breakdown of member population by province:

  • Alberta - 1,496,580
  • British Columbia - 1,636,800
  • Manitoba - 384,580
  • New Brunswick - 399,200
  • Newfoundland - 154,220
  • Northwest Territories - 14,600
  • Nova Scotia - 430,040
  • Nunavut – 940
  • Ontario - 4,870,020
  • Prince Edward Island - 53,240
  • Quebec - 1,971,520
  • Saskatchewan - 351,780
  • Yukon - 24,480

Is my backup complete?

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
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Many server administrators use rsync to synronize files between local as well as offsite media. Often it’s used within a scheduled backup script. But how can you tell if rsync was successful or not without looking through the output of the command in detail? If it wasn’t successful, how can you tell if it was an error or warning that you would normally ignore (for example, the “Partial transfer due to vanished source files” error that happens in  maildir files that come and go normally during the backup and don’t need to be backed up)? Here’s an example script that can help.