Web Technologys Explained

I just read the following article title "Advanced Web Design: A Primer" over at Sitepoint, its offers a pretty comprehensive breakdown and explanation of all the current web technologys including:

• Clients and Servers
• Client-side Technologies: JavaScript, VBScript
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) & Dynamic HTML (DHTML)
• Java
• Server-side Technologies
• Common Gateway Interface (CGI)
• Server-Side Scripting Languages
• Perl, PHP, ASP
• Cold Fusion, Server-Side Java (Servlets, JavaServer Pages, etc.)
• Database Servers, MySQL

Interestingly Flash, Silverlight, .NET and Ruby on Rails where left out of the list, but apart from that its a good overview and read. So if you need to brush up on the state of web development technologies out there I suggest reading it. If you want to learn even more about building web applications check out 37Signals online book.

Groundbreaking new products: Apple iPhone and Microsoft Surface

This year we will see two groundbreaking products released from Apple and Microsoft that make the web more accessible and easy to use:

• iPhone
• Surface

If you haven't heard about these products, then i suggest you view the above linked sites...

Education And The Future of Technology

Today it seems to becoming increasingly challenging to hire and find qualified workers in the web and new media field a co-worker sent me a link to the following video. Some interesting facts I extracted from it were:

"... the top 10 jobs that will be in demand in 2010 didn't exist in 2004.We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist... using technologies that haven't yet been invented... in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet."

Definitely some interesting statistics on the future of education and technology! One thing I’ve learnt about one of the webs leading company's Google recruitment doctrine is that they hire their programmers and engineers to be agile. For instance you may be hired to work on Gmail, but could also be tasked to work on Google Maps. They believe in hiring workers with skills and aptitude that don't pigeon hole them into a specific job or career path. Add to that the 20% time they give you to work on R&D which has given birth to Google Transit among other amazing projects and you can see why they are the leader. So maybe Google is ahead of the curve here! They realize that hiring people with a broad base of skills and the ability to learn quickly and multi-task is an asset to their organization.

Steve Job's 2005 Stanford commencement speech still an inspiration

When ever i'm in need of inspiration or feeling a little down I can always listen to Steve Job's 2005 Stanford commencement speech.



Download:

• Video - Itunes
• Audio - Itunes

Yep i'm a fan of Microsoft and Bill Gates, but Job's is the man. So next time you need a lift, take a listen... I recommend putting this on your Ipod. And remember "stay hungry, stay foolish"!

Buzzillions the ultimate in site taxonomy & user generated content!

Yesterday I met with Jeff and Arun from Powereviews about their consumer product portal Buzzillions. This website is a great example of the use of taxonomy and user generated content to create a website with a wealth of content and an intuitive user experience.

They've used their rich database of tags and their search/taxonomy engine to provide a fresh way to drilldown and find the right customer reviews with their "Consumers Speak" navigation, see below:



Fresh approaches to navigation like this are exactly whats needed with modern websites with content that is so deep and often hard to find (requiring to many clicks to drill down). I encourage you take a look at Buzzillions it's a well designed site, and just might help with your decision next time you want to buy any type of product.

Product Information Management ... beyond traditional CMS/DMS

I saw a lot of cool products at the Internet Retailer Conference (IRCE 2007) in San Jose. However the one technology that resonated with me the most was Production Information Management (PIM). In this modern day and age when building a website generally it’s generally always on a Content Management Systems (CMS) platform which enables you to truly split content from the design of the site.

The one limitation of traditional CMS is that they are generally focused on doing page level copy very well, but don't offer enough flexibility and scalability when it comes to warehousing large amounts of product specification and data. Enter PIM.

PIM enables you to create your central data store or content warehouse where web copy, product information and specifications, files and assets are all housed in one place and are truly versioned. Depending on the package the technology lets you create structured or un-structured relationships with the content that is housed in the system via taxonomy. Adding targeted or personalized content to users becomes a much easier prospect with a PIM engine behind the scenes.

This of a system where every content item or asset is housed in a data warehouse that is truly version and can be shared with any number of platforms (web, print etc) via XML, Web Services or through an API and you have one very useful tool.

The two vendors I met at IRCE 2007 where Stibo and Catapult. The following diagram is an excerpt from Stibo's sales presentation of its STEP product. It really helps to show how a PIM software solution can be implemented and used to its full effect:

You can centralize it all in one place and provide a system to divide labour to keep things up to date and fresh in one place as well as enforce workflow. It also provides a framework to allow true de-centralized content, so you can offer direct feeds to suppliers, partners, dealers or other 3rd partys.

By truly embracing a PIM system you can throw away your old offline spreadsheet or Access / Filemaker database. And Forget dated versions of Quark, Word or other electronic documents that store product data. Breathe a sigh of relief! :)

Internet Retailer 2007... Community is King!

Last week I visited in the Internet Retailer 2007 conference in San Jose, California with a co-worker Chris Larson an Interactive Strategist at my employer Hanson Dodge Creative. It was an amazing trip to the Silicon Valley, my first time and I've returned with plenty of new information and ideas on how the web is breakdown down the barriers of traditional bricks and mortar establishments.

We started a blog while we were out there for 5 days to record some of our learning and our antics.

My three major takeaways from this conference were:

1. Community driven websites, sites that give users a sense of ownership and contribution are the way of the future. Community is King!
2. Buy versus Build. ASP or Hosted web software solutions with solid API's and support for Web Services and syndication are replacing the need to build it from scratch. They are cheaper, turnkey and will offer a greater ROI.
3. Big company’s do their research and development by merger and acquisition.

I have much more to share, but wanted to get these high level idea's down and expand on them at a later date.

Create Gadgets another way to build web traffic!

I'm amazed at the number of Gadgets that are being created for Window Vista sidebar and personal portal sites like Igoogle.com. This seems like a no brainer way of driving more traffic to your website, by offering users a way to syndicate certain portions of your sites content.

For developers check out Codeproject who offer some great insight on how to develop them for Windows Vista, or Googles developer site.

Powerpoint meets Youtube = Slideshare

A co-worker shared this new web start-up with me called Slideshare. It basically offers the same feature set as Youtube but with Powerpoint. Once you upload your presentation you can share it with others, embed it in a blog etc. I found this article that explains it in a little more detail.

This comes after a recent project where we reviewed a number of Powerpoint to Flash tools on the web, I was amazed at how many exist.

Kudo's to Slideshare, this is a really great tool!

Content is part of design to!

It seems so many websites really don't get it when it comes to content. I can't even count how many websites I’ve viewed where they have a killer header graphic, nice navigation and overall good looking page template and then when you look at the content it’s sad. There is no consideration given to how it flows, or make it enticing enough for the user to actually read it. There are just paragraphs stacked on top of paragraphs, generally at 8 point making it impossible to read!

In this era of everything being on demand and with the popularity of services like Youtube with its rich media, chances are if you haven’t made you content engaging users won't read it.
It’s easy to dress up page content to make it more appealing.

Here are some ideas:

• For one break up your content, no one will read a big blog of text! See BBC website for a good example
• Use call outs – Use CSS or graphical items to show excerpts of quotes from text
• Use underline, and background color to jazz up content, 37signals have perfected this technique
• Have a linking strategy, it helps people to deep dive and view other content on your site
• Provide content intelligence – Show a list of related content (see my taxonomy blog)
• Embed stuff… take a look at any blog: video, flash, images, audio are all ways to keep people interested and enhance the content
• De-centralized your content by providing a feed in RSS, getting people to read it in any form is still good!
• Add tools like text size, search, email, embed (digg etc) and print so people can interactive with it

So there you have it, hopefully some of these idea’s are helpful. I’ll leave you with some recent sites I visited that have done this well:

• http://www.articulate.com/
• http://meetmenow.webex.com/
• http://adage.com/

Cool uses of Flash video.. a trip down memory lane

I first discovered Flash video for a project at my former employer, and blogged about it. Nowadays whether its Youtube, video blogs, Presidential Campaign or just a regular website it seems like you can't visit a site without seeing embedded web video. 99% of the time it's done using Flash Video - FLV format.

Overtime i've collected some links to a list of cool uses of Flash video. Below are some highlights and descriptions of stuff that’s been created with Flash video especially using the chroma key/green screen technique.

Some of these are a little dated, but I still like them all the same:

• Imagine this kind of demo as another helpful layer of navigation for client websites:
• Investment firm Janus has some great home page Flash video and a nice multi-video interface in their page headers
• Ektron’s CMS demo, a little cheesy but the zooming is cool
• Geico Caveman - I love these commericals, imagine this concept for virtual tour:
• Nice video console
• I don't know if you watch MythBusters, but Discovery Channel has a nice video gallery done with Flash
• This is an awesome Flash video example for a popular European deodorant brand, a little raunchy:
• I like how they customized the interface and link to different movies from within it
• Clean interface
• Elmbrook Church
• World Trade Center - Build the Memorial
• Original Macromedia Studio 8 demo (now Adobe overview of Flash video):

Taxonomy Strategy Part 1

It seems that when most websites are built these days at least some consideration is given to traffic building by using any number of strategy’s: SEO, SEM and Online PR / Seeding. However that is all about getting users to your website.

So what consideration is being given to keep users their once they arrive? It would appear that if Web 2.0 is all about creating a more interactive user experience. Web 3.0 is all about providing users the right information they want on-demand. The answer? A Taxonomy strategy.

So what is Taxonomy? Simply put taxonomy is categorization of content that doesn't suffer the traditional limitations of content tagging such as metadata. It allows you to create simply or complex content relationships that grow with your website as content is added and categorized with multiple categories.

Why is this useful? With the amount of data being added to a modern dynamic website via a Content Management System, E-commerce engine, Blog or any number of tools we are seeing traditional website navigation has hit the limits of its effectiveness. The simplest example I can offer is when you buy an item on Amazon.com you are told "Customer who bought this also bought this". Behind this kind of web application intelligence is taxonomy creating those content relationships.

It provides developers another way to interact with site content and provide more intuitive and intelligent navigation that allows refinement and drilldown to the nth degree if needed.

Creating a sound Taxonomy strategy is not an easy task. First you need to make sure you select software for your web application that includes this as a feature, most don't. To learn more about taxonomy check out the following link on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy#Applications

More to come on taxonomy strategy at a later date! :)

Googles answer to directory assistance - voice local search

My wife used to call me all the time, as i'm in front of a computer most of the day I used to be her personal assistant and 411 operator, running searches on Google for a phone number or address depending on her request. You would be suprised how vague some of her details where! It seems finally relief is at hand.

Google have chalked up another first with the Google Voice Local Search. My wife and I have been using this service for more than 2 months now and i'm impressed. Simply dial 1-800-466-4411 (1-800-GOOG-411) and your asked by an automated voice "City and State", it verifies what you said then asks your business name or category, say that and you are presented with a list of results that match your description, it will then read you the address and either directly connect you via phone to the business or send you the results of your voice search via text SMS message to your cell phone.

Since giving my wife this number it has reduced 99.1% of her calls to me about running searches for businesses! So if you have a co-worker, significant other or even a mother that needs help tell them to give 1-800-GOOG-411 a try! I end this blog with a sigh of relief.

Loving Google Analytics

I just got notified of the upgrade to the new and improved version of Google Analytics. After logging in and checking it out I've got to say i'm impressed. The new version has some killer features, and a bold new interface that uses a line graph for most overviews in favor of the old 3D horizontal bar graphs.

Having worked with a number of analytics packages and vendors over the years including Deepmetrix, Urchin (before Google bought them), Webtrends and Omniture i'm amazed at features in Google Analytics. Granted everything ties back to their ad network but name another analytic provider that current offers so much for free?

I recently attending a Webex demo with an Omniture sales rep and has show their stat's system. They definately have an amazing interface, and some great feature including the ability to customize your stats to the nth degree. However their package is not cheap.

At my former employer I was looking at upgrading from our hosted web analytics package Urchin 5.7 (after Google bought them). I really liked Deepmetrix from my experience with version 6 of their Livestats product. It was funny to see then (in May 2006) that Microsoft acquired them. Now it seems we are only months away from seeing the release of "Code Name Gatineau" a similar offering in the free analytics space from Microsoft. It's a little bit of history repeating!

Web 2.0 design

I read an article this week on BBC's site titled "Web 2.0 'neglecting good design'". The article describes web usability guru Jakob Nielsen assessment of a sloppy approach by a lot of design firms to include dynamic web 2.0 functionality without a lot of thought, the term "glossy but useless". I have tend to agree with some of his comments, but I think it all depends on the user.

As a more savvy web user I'm often frustrated by flat boring sites that don't offer a fluid interface and access to the information I want on demand. With advancements that have been made with AJAX, DHTML, Flash and mashups of those technologies I think it offers users an array of great functionality if the Information Architecture has been thought out correctly.

It's true you can create a site and load it full of crazy features no one will use and seem some developers of company's do it just for notoriety.

However their is another element to Web 2.0 that the article doesn't address which is cleaner design. Thank god the days of sites oozing of tiled backgrounds, heavily bitmapped graphics and excessive use of animated gifs and flash are over. Google, 37Signals and others have really been innovators in this space providing us a new cleaner way to approach design in their applications. On that note, here are some great articles on Web 2.0 design I reviewed recently:

• Design style guide (great overview)
• Simple clean designs
• The Principles of Beautiful Web Design
• Keep it Simple Stupid (more high level)

To end this blog I will leave you with a cool video on I found on Youtube that shows the evolution of the Web from 1.0 to 2.0! :)