Archive for July 2009

Nice to meet you Microsoft Bing. BING!

Thursday, July 9th, 2009
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bing-logoAbout six weeks ago, Microsoft launched their new search engine – Bing. Well, okay, I don’t know if I can really say NEW. It’s actually Microsoft’s third attempt at a search engine.

Bing will be replacing Live search, and that process is almost complete. So far the reviews have been very positive. Less spam, more targeted results, great universal search options.

If you haven’t had a chance to try Bing, I highly suggest you do so. It will definitely be interesting to watch how Bing’s market share will inevitably grow.

Get your family’s domain name and free email addresses

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
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What’s better? john_naismith@hotmail.com or john@naismith.com? Obviously the latter, right? Getting your family’s domain name just makes sense. It’s cheap and domains nowadays go really fast. You definitely wouldn’t want your domain name taken by a domain squatter and pointing to a obscene site, do you?

Ok. Now I got my domain, what’s next? Well, not everybody is a web designer so let the web design experts handle that for you. What you can do is use that domain name as your main email address right away. You can use Google Apps.

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Twitter Trends

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
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twitter-trending-topicsTwitter is such a fantastic tool for a wide variety of reasons. Today I want to focus on trending topics.

On the right side bar of Twitter, Trending Topics list ten words or phrases that are currently the most commonly mentioned on Twitter.  The image to the right is a screen cap I took of the Trending Topics around 11:00 am CDT today, Tuesday, July 7 2009. As you can see, five of the ten topics that are trending are related to Michael Jackson’s memorial that is taking place today.

News Sites Design Roundup

Monday, July 6th, 2009
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Online News Sites and First Impressions

As papers disappear, we’re going online for news. There was a first step though; cable news. Cable’s used to looking in the mirror and dressing up nice. And it seems the old outlets, print and otherwise, are taking themselves more seriously online. I’ve found the more established the outlet’s reputation for real news, the better they perform aesthetically on the web. Understanding how news sites are used, their huge repeat visitation, they stand to remain the most profitable sites on the web. We should expect the utmost in design.

Take advantage of every minute…leads to maximum productivity

Sunday, July 5th, 2009
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Its often called work ethic.  A good work ethic leads to getting more done in a work day and being more productive.  Sounds easy right, ensure that as may minutes in your work day are productive and you are there.  Unfortunately, not everyone thinks this way, but if you want to get ahead, grow your business, get a promotion, get noticed, take advantage of every minute in your work day and it will happen.  Its a mind set and you see it all the time, the employee who is in early, takes minimal breaks, is never caught surfing the Internet or chatting to his friends, these are the people that are productive in an organization and get things done.   They are task oriented and use every minute in their work day to accomplish as many tasks as possible. 

Back to the basics, part 2: tar

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
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One of the most common problems with tar is ending up with unexpected contents of directory structures in your tar archive (sometimes called a tarball).  I’ll show you how to create those nice, neat tarballs containing just the directory you wanted without the unnecessary preceding directory structure.

How to organize your site map?

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
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This sounds like an easy question but its amazing how many websites miss the mark on organizing their site map.  First lets define a site map.  Our definition of a site map is simply the main sections of your website and what sub-pages will go underneath each of these sections.  The first item you have to cover is thinking from a visitor point of view what are they going to be interested in first.  Are they going to be interested in company information first, likely not.  The most likely question they will have is am I on the right website to help me with what I am looking for.   For this reason I like to have a “What we do” section as the first section on your site map.  I also like to have this information prominent on your home page to ensure they will not miss it.  The most frustrating experience I have is when I am on a site for 5 minutes and I cannot figure out what this company does.  That is when you know a company has not organized their site map and home page properly.  So after a “What we do” section and ideally a page underneath describing how you are different in what you do, I suggest you get into your products or services.  If you grabbed their attention with “What we do” then the natural progression is to dig deeper and see what products or services you use to satisfy customers.