CopyBlogger has an interesting article, The Deceptively Simple Steps to
Persuasive Writing That Works by Sonia Simone that compares illustrates how useful it is to use subheads in your web copy: it is like adding steps to your page, helping the reader “walk” through the copy one step at a time.

This works for web pages and reports and will make your written communications much more readable and inviting.

And, if subheads are like steps, than graphic images are like light posts and neon signs along the way, catching the readers eye and giving context to the text.

Just scroll down this page and imagine if I listed all of these articles without subheads or graphics. Just one solid block of text screams “too much work!” to the user and I doubt if even you would have stayed on this site very long!

A student recently sent me an email asking some valuable career questions. Here is a summary of her questions as well as my responses:

I am having a hard time distinguishing the differences between:
-Web Designer
-Web Master
-Web Programmer and
-Web Developer

A web designer normally does the layout, color, font, graphic stuff of a web site.
A web programmer or web developer writes the code that makes a web page happen. For example, a designer might design how a form is laid out and then give this idea (often as a PhotoShop or Illustrator file) to the programmer. The programmer than writes the code to make the form work when the user clicks on the submit button: saving data to a table, sending information as an email, creating and displaying a web page telling the user that something happened. (The web designer will probably dictate what that user-feedback web page will look like).

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is used by web designers and PHP or ASP.NET (languages that run on a web server) are used by web programmers.

Based on these descriptions you can see that often a person can be both a web designer and web programmer. However, with larger web sites and organizations these two areas become more distinct and have people with different skills doing the particular jobs. Designers are usually more artistic and programmers are generally more technical and detail oriented. A designer’s work is seen and most often a programmers work is “behind the curtain”.

A Web Master is more of a job description. Most web masters design and programming the web site or manage the designers and programmers that do the work. Who ever is in charge of the web site is normally considered the web master.

Skill sets for web designers include PhotoShop, DreamWeaver, InDesign, and Illustrator. Also a good sense of layout and design, psychology, and a strong understanding of human interfaces are important.

Skill sets for web programmers include PHP, ASP.NET, XML, Java, XHTML/CSS, Flex, DreamWeaver, Eclipse and/or Visual Studio, Linux. Understanding programming logic, database design, programming frameworks like WordPress and/or Drupal, and client/server relationships are all important skill areas.

Whenever I look into getting an actual degree in this field, basically all I can find is a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, which seems to be more technically focused on the hard-core computer science than I am necessarily interested in. However, I would like to be as marketable as possible, so I would be willing to work toward such a degree if necessary.

For computer degrees there are general two main types. An Computer Systems (CS) degree focuses more on theory and how to design operating systems. How a computer work, how a chip parses through language statements, and how data can be stored as a structure. Some courses normally include things such as Finite Automata theory, Compiler design, and Computer architecture.

An Information System (IS) or Information Technology (IT) degree normally deals with more practical uses such as computer support, programming, and using operating systems (instead of writing them).

CS degrees generally require higher math skills such as calculus more math than an IS or IT degree.

It is my feeling in today’s market that employers just want folks that know how to design and code. You already have a bachelor’s degree so a programming diploma from SCC is more than enough credentials, especially with a good portfolio like you are working on. That experience is the valuable piece. I know of several people that are doing well after having completed the Web Programming Certificate although the Programming Degree will give you a better overall coverage in the industry. From an employer’s point-of-view it isn’t so much what degree you have. Instead they want to be certain that you have excellent problem solving skills (you do), excellent communication skills (you do), and a good basic knowledge of design and programming (you do).

Every semester I get frustrated emails from students containing the phrase, “I just spent ____ hours on this and couldn’t figure it out.” Here’s a short excerpt that I usually include with my reply:

---

I can sure understand how frustrating it is to do something without success for so many hours. But, next time something like this happens, and after the first half hour, stop and ask for help, do something different, or find another resource. It depends on the problem but, normally if you are spending more than a half hour trying to solve a problem than your problem-solving skills need some work.

Here’s a checklist that will help you build up your problem-solving skills and hopefully speed your way to solutions:

1. Stay focused. Don’t try to multi-task. Behavioral scientistists have proven that trying to do multiple things at once makes all of the tasks suffer.
2. Simplify the problem. Web page not changing? Try typing in some odd letters (XYZ) in the middle of the page to see if they display. If they don’t you might have been spending the last hour typing in one file and looking at another!
3. Keep track of what you have tried. Write it down so you aren’t repeating the same thing over and over and over. Be organized and consistent on how you look for a solution. Don’t just shotgun things over and over and over.
4. After each failure try something different. If one combination doesn’t work think of something different to do. (Use number keys instead of number pad, check caps lock, type out the password in a simple editor to see the results…)
5. Google is your friend Do a web search with the error message or a short phrase so you can see if others have had a similar problem.
6. Think about the problem differently. Maybe what is broken is something completely separate from what you are focused on! Think of what else might be causing the problem.
7. Go do something else or take a short nap After a set period of time, stop what you are doing and do something else. I usually give myself 1/2 hour to an hour depending on the problem.) Go take a shower, or sit down with a cup of tea, coffee, or pop and sit quietly, go take a 15 minute nap. Let other alternative solutions come to mind and then jot them down. Don’t force them, they will run away like minnows in a clear pool. Set a time limit for this activity. You should have 3 or 4 alternative things to do in 15 minutes of sitting quietly.

   No, playing video games does not count here. That just focuses you on other problems that may be more interesting (at the moment) to solve.

8. Imagine what the solution or success looks like. If you don’t believe something will work, it probably won’t.

Photo from iStockPhoto.com. I tell my Java students that this is what the Java compiler looks like :-)

One of my students sent me a link to an excellent article on things to be aware of when purchasing a web hosting server package. Here are some highlights from Jason Faulkner’s article:

• Be cautious on paying for your own dedicated server
• Be skeptical of the claim “Our Data Center Is Top Notch”
  • Cisco router and firewall (I have a Linksys – a division of Cisco – home router with a built in firewall).
  • 100 mb backbone (all my equipment and NICs are 100 mb capable), but you would probably see gigabit backbone instead.
  • Backup power supply (pick any consumer level battery backup).
  • Climate controlled environment (we have heating and air conditioning).
  • [insert a stock photo of row of server racks here which I paid $20 for the rights to use.]
    Granted this is a very absurd example, but you get the idea of how easy it is to stretch the truth.
• Avoid The “Free” Domain Registration With Hosting Package
  If there is nothing else you take from this article, remember this: Never let your hosting provider register your domain name for you as part of a hosting deal. Often times you can purchase a hosting package which includes free domain name registration and renewal as long as you remain a customer. While this may seem appealing, it is the worst thing you can do because your hosting provider, not you, owns the domain. This may not sound like a big deal, but as soon as you want to move hosting providers, guess who controls your domain? Not you. Worse yet, there is absolutely nothing you can do to get control over your domain unless the current owner (the hosting provider) transfers it to you.
• Be Aware of “Unlimited Bandwidth and Storage”
• Less Than $5 Per Month Hosting: As the adage goes… you always get what you pay for. Putting it bluntly, if you are paying $3 per month for hosting, you are only going to get $3 worth.
• Beware of the claim ” 99.99% Up-Time Guarantee”
  If you do the math, 99.99% up-time means the server is only unavailable 4 minutes and 22 seconds per month (53 minutes an entire year).
• Don’t trust the offer of “100% Free Hosting”
  bandwidth is not free. Make sure you read the fine print in any agreement claiming this as most likely there are ads embedded somewhere in your site, or the hosting package is so limited that it is virtually worthless.

Go out to Jason Faulkner’s article for all the details.

Thanks Pat for the great tip.

The best time to look for a job is while you are still employed Just ask anyone that has been unemployed for awhile.

To that end its always good to keep your resume up to date and this new service offers a great way to do that. You get a choice of resume designs, created by a top-notch designer as well as tools that allow you to track who is looking at your resume.

The interface is excellent. The site takes you through a step-by-step process in filling out your resume and offers excellent advice and tips include positive action words and spell checking. (How many great applicants have I ignored because of the typos on their resume? Far too many!)

Currently there is a 7-day free trial period and then a subscription fee but this business model may be changing with a multiple-tiered service. Hopefully a basic resume and one design will be free with the multiple resumes, cover letters, and tracking tools being available for a small subscription.

Google Alerts is a great tool to help you keep the pulse on specific topics being published to the Web.

Set up alerts for any topic you are interested in:

• sports team
• products or trademarks
• your domain name (who else is referring to it?)
• favorite topics or business names
• people, famous or otherwise

The service is free and whenever Google sees a phrase that matches your Alert it will send you an email with links to that page.

Here is an example: I work with Drupal, an open-source content managment system. By setting up an alert for “Drupal” I can find out about all the latest reference to this program including potential security holes someone has discovered, tutorials, and new books.

Howard Rosten from SMILES sent me this story:

The Technology Race

After having dug to a depth of 10 meters last year, Scottish scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 100 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 100 years ago.

Not to be outdone by the Scots, in the weeks that followed, British scientists dug to a depth of 20 meters, and shortly after, headlines in the UK newspapers read: “British archaeologists have found traces of 200 year old copper wire and have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech communications network a hundred years earlier than the Scots.”

One week later “The Nordic Klub,” a Minot, North Dakota newsletter, reported the following: “After digging as deep as 30 meters in corn fields near Velva, Ole Johnson, a self-taught archeologist, reported that he found absolutely nothing. Ole has therefore concluded that 300 years ago, North Dakota had already gone wireless.”

You can say you heard it here first.

Thanks Howard!
Photo from iStockPhoto.com

TechSmith has released Jing, a great screen/video capture tool that runs on both Macintosh and Windows. It has a great interface that is snappy and very intuitive. Just hover your mouse over the "sun" icon located in the corner of your screen and capture any screen shot or video to save on your computer or put out on their server. Right now the price is free although that may change in the future.

This is a great tool for those quick demonstration videos you want to include on your pages or just to get a screen shot of an error message to help solve a problem via email. Check out their own demonstration video.

When I tried out my first video capture it automatically picked up the sound from my computers mic; no preferences to set or settings to fiddle around with. It just did it. Did I mention what a great user interface Jing has! ;-)

Leo Baubuta on the FreeLanceSwitch blog writes about the 10 Essential Habits for FreeLancers:     

One of the things about being a freelance worker is that it is so free.

This can be a tremendously liberating thing — but it can also be intimidating, and confusing, and difficult. Without someone forcing you to work, why should you? It’s much easier to find distractions instead. And if everything’s up to you, that also means you’re responsible for everything — from start to finish. And that can be tough, especially when you’re just starting out.

The key, I’ve found, is to develop certain habits that will keep you not only disciplined but successful. Simple habits, to be sure, but ones that can go a long way towards taking you from a broke freelancer to a happy and productive one.

 

You don’t have to be a free-lancer to make these habits useful. Entreprenuers and students can use these as a guideline to become the person you want to be, to accomplish what you want to accomplish.

Here they are in summary with some of my own notes:

Market yourself.  Marketing is about connecting what people need with what you have. Advertising is part of marketing, and so is good customer relationships (word of mouth advertising and viral advertising). 

Be persistent. It is commonly said that a person needs to hear/see/experience the connection or message at least 7 times.

Be professional.

Set and meet deadlines.

Find focus. Concentrate on your current task or project, and eliminate distractions so that you can focus on this one task. Get everything else out of the way, and really focus. I use the David Allen’s principles outlined in his book Getting Things Done (GTD) and use Chandler and iGTD on my computers to help me focus, focus, focus.

Find time. Or, I think of it as "make the time"

Awesome quality. When you’re done with an assignment, go over it again, and look for mistakes, and ways you can improve. Sometimes you just need time to let a project "simmer" until it is ready for that professional garnish.

Follow up. This is how you build relationships.

Billing. This is another aspect of being professional. Be timely and consistent.

Building a rep.Your reputation is your best asset. In all areas of our lives.

 "It’s possible for a person to have an overwhelming number of things to do and still function productively with a clear head and a positive sense of relaxed control.", David Allen, Getting Things Done (GTD)

I’ve been running Chandler for several weeks now and am using it as a stand-alone application to help me get things done. The software is designed on the principles presented in the best-selling book "Getting Things Done" by David Allen.  David’s concept is to get everything out of your head into a system. After all, our short-term memory is only 3-5 things. With everything in a trusted system (like Chandler) all you have to do is scan through the lists for the "What’s next?" item.

Chandler was a little perplexing when I first installed it but then I picked up a copy of David’s book and everything fell into place. Its amazing how quickly the stress of getting things done disappears and how much better I can concentrate on a single task (like writing this blog!) without being sidetracked by so many different things.

Chandler also offers a free server so projects and to-do lists can be used collaboratively. I will be setting one up to work with my advisor as I finish my Master degree project. The program runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It is still in beta but it runs very quickly and smoothly. This is a nice piece of software and a great application based on solid principles.

Here’s a short tutorial that shows how to install and use Chandler.  Chapters 5, 6, and 7 have some great screen shots showing how the different aspects of the program work to help you organize your tasks and projects. After you play with the program for a few days, get the book and you’ll really be able to utilize the power of stress-free productivity.

TED does it again. Check out this amazing demo that was shown at the TED Conference (Technology, Entertainment, & Design) in Monterey, CA.

Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth (based on Seadragon technology) creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation. Its architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, shows it off in this standing-ovation demo. Curious about that speck in corner? Dive into a freefall and watch as the speck becomes a gargoyle. With an unpleasant grimace. And an ant-sized chip in its lower left molar. "Perhaps the most amazing demo I’ve seen this year," wrote Ethan Zuckerman, after TED2007. Indeed, Photosynth might utterly transform the way we manipulate and experience digital images.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas is an architect at Microsoft Live Labs, architect of Seadragon, and the co-creator of Photosynth, a monumental piece of software capable of assembling static photos into a synergy of zoomable, navigatable spaces.

One of the phrases that keeps resonating from Blaise’s presentation is how much your photo is enriched by being part of this collective memory. Your photo, when grouped with these others becomes an emergent entity which is greater than the sum of its parts. The last half of the presentation demonstrates this so well as Blaise shows individual photos working together to make an amazing image of Notre Dame. Cellphone photos, SLR photos, even a poster is all enriched with this collective memory of photos.

Thanks to Matt Potocnik for sending me the link on this one.

I was just asking about Jason Niebuhr a few weeks ago. Today I see there is an article in the local newspaper describing Jason’s success as a computer repair business person. (Part One of the article. Part Two of the article) Jason is a student I had the first year I began teaching. He is totally blind. Using headphones and a program named JAWS, he would listen to the computer and my lectures at the same time.  A common adage is that teachers learn more than their students and Jason taught me a lot!

He showed me how to use the resources you have no matter what. He made me very aware that there’s more to teaching than just showing a PowerPoint to a group of people. Even though I am a strong visual learner I understood that different people learn different ways. However, Jason made me really apply this concept showing me how we all learn through multiple channels. Whenever I presented something that was only visual Jason would immediately ask me what  was there. It didn’t take me long to figure out how important the multi-channel teaching is and to include an auditory channel in everything I presented. (Because of JAWS I could easily do this using text on a web page. It didn’t mean I had to be talking all the time.)

But, all of these are common lessons. I learned something even more important from Jason.  A lesson about judgment.  I remember a particular conversation when several teachers were talking together about Jason’s chances for success. "How will he be able to tell which wire is hot?"  one teacher asked.  (Being blind, Jason can’t discern the difference between a red, black, or white colored-coded wires.) "How will he keep from being electrocuted? What if he reaches in and touches one of those capacitors!" another exclaimed. I don’t remember my exact response but I vaguely remember either agreeing with the group or remaining silent. I know I did not speak up for Jason’s abilities.

A few years later I had another student. He had stopped taking his medications and had become very paranoid. His behavior toward faculty and other students became rude and aggressive. Again, we all agreed that even though he had extremely high grades, his behavior would exclude him from having any job that we could think of. After a few traumatic semesters (for the student as well as for faculty!) he got his medications in balance again, finished his degree with an A+ average, and is now working as a successful software engineer.

It’s difficult writing about our judgments as teachers. We aren’t supposed to do that. And it is the success of Jason Niebuhr as well as many other students who have taught me a very important lesson: I can never know when the passion and personal perseverance of a student will help him or her overcome all odds (and judgment calls). And, the next time I hear folks forecasting someone’s future as bleak and hopeless, I know I will speak up and offer these two very good examples of people who surprised us and created their own success.

Congratulations Jason and thanks for teaching me some very important lessons!

In 1984, John Gage, from Sun Microsystems, coined the phrase "The Network is the Computer" to describe the emerging world of distributed computing. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gage) This was only three years after the stand-alone, non-networked PC had been introduced to the workplace, and most people dismissed John’s idea. They couldn’t comprehend what he was talking about. To them the computer was the new beige 386 computer sitting on their desk running Windows.

Now, over twenty years later, we are starting to understand what these five words really mean.

A few years ago Tim O’Reilly the O’Reilly book publisher coined the term Web 2.0. Below is a memory map created during the first FOO camp describing this "new" approach to the Web that reflects John Gage’s statement from 1984. (The FOO Camps are invitation only, no plan, tents on the lawn, geek fest to help O’Reilly find out what’s on the radar. The name comes from the common use of the word "foo" and "bar" traditionally used by programmers to designate an example variable name.)
 

Figure 2 – "meme map" of Web 2.0 that was developed at a brainstorming session during FOO Camp, a conference at O’Reilly Media

(http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html#mememap)

Web 2.0 utilizes AJAX making the difference between client and server virtually transparent.  Instead of the old-fashioned click-and-wait as the client requested a web page from the server, mouse moves and clicks give immediate results and making the user think that everything is happening on his or her computer. (Google maps was the break through application of this type allowing people to "dragging" the map to see a new view instead of clicking on it and waiting for a new view to arrive from the server.)

Web 2.0 applications such as You Tube, MySpace, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, and Flickr encourage sharing and collaboration of all types of content. The user becomes king of the content. Instead of being fed pages, users create the content of a site. Instead of simply running programs or viewing web pages people are participating in a collective intelligence.
Instead of reading static pages we are interacting with each other on a global basis. Communications with people around the world are possible through IM (Instant Messaging), emails, postings, and web discussions. Instead of a private list of favorites you can now create a public list of annotated favorites with de.licio.us. Suddenly, a list of bookmarks becomes a fine-tuned search engine showing the best pages by keyword saved, shared, and annotated by everyone in the deli.cio.us world. 

Instead of a Word document held captive by your word processor, you can now write collaborative documents on line using Google Documents & Spreadsheets. For example, I use Google Docs for committee meetings giving everyone the chance to add to the agenda as well as to view minutes and efficiently create collaborative documents instead of clumsy email attachments.

In the last module of my Web III (XML) course I discuss the phenomenon of emergence, a part of System Theory. Emergence demonstrates how complicated systems can be created from a series of relatively simple interactions. Examples include ant colonies that change personalities over a thirty-year period even though none of the individual ants live more than a year and there is no central leader ant (the queen’s only purpose is to lay eggs, she does not direct the colony). Or slime mold made of millions of individual spores. This mold forms when conditions are conducive and can "crawl" through a maze to find food, yet none of the spores has any brains and none of the cells act as a leader or catalyst. (These and many other examples are highlighted in an excellent book named Emergence by Steven Johnson.)

Our networked world and the Web in particular demonstrates the concept of emergence. Millions of connections are making a new, emergent entity. We are no longer simply interacting with the computer sitting on our lap. Now we are responding to the Web itself, the result of millions of seemingly insignificant additions from people (and computers) around the globe. The Network is truly the computer just as every web page, blog entry, forum question and answer, and You Tube video (and resulting comments) makes us part of its existence. To represent this concept Dr. Mike Wesch, an anthropology professor at Kansas State University put together the video entitled: Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us. He posted it on You Tube where it became one of the most popular videos in 2007.

The network is the computer and the computer is Us.

I’m forever doing the USB dance. Each time I start to insert a USB device I flip it back and forth wondering which way is up. I was complaining out loud during a meeting the other day. "Why don’t USB manufacturers use two different colors of plastic or a large symbol that we can feel?" I asked everyone. Someone pointed out that there is the USB symbol, but it is so small and I shouldn’t have to put my glasses on to figure out which side of a plug goes up.

I got an idea later that day and went and got a bottle of my wife’s fingernail polish. Here’s a shot showing how I marked the "up side" of each of my USB plugs. And, now a week later I’m pleased to report that this has made my life just a little smoother.

Now, if we could only get architects to design doors so you could tell by looking if you should be pushing or pulling… Instead of fingernail polish everyone has to put up signs telling us to push or pull. That’s great until you are in a country where you don’t know the language. Why not just design things properly so their use is obvious? Push or Pull ?

We shouldn’t have to resort to fingernail polish and push/pull signs.

Data is money, and probably the most important data you can maintain is your customer list.

In an earlier posting I had mentioned Kurlo which I have been using for several months now. But, I hit a few bugs and it just didn’t have the power that I needed.

Earlier I had looked at Sugar CRM but it was too much and very cumbersome to work with. I also couldn’t figure out how to set up categories for each contact and suspect that that is a feature that is only available in the commercial version.

This weekend I finished an install of XRMS, an Open Source CRM (Customer Relationship Management) program located out on SourceForge.  Installation only took about 30 minutes, but I’ve been fiddling around for several weeks converting my Kurlo data into the XRMS tables. (XRMS has import templates for most popular software such as Outlook, Act2000, Goldmine, and SalesForce if you already have a customer list in one of those).

I now have the ability to keep track of meetings with all of my students as well as my business network, and clients. Like most CRM packages there are tables to keep track of companies as well as individuals. I can also track Activities, Opportunities, Cases, and Campaigns.

Activities are used to maintain contact with a client and to increase business. For most businesses this would be a follow up sales call. For me it is usually my student advising or the  committee work I have set up for the high school Career Expo each May.

Opportunities are sales opportunities. For example, a business may find out that one of their customers will be changing their name in the next few months and will want their entire web site rebuilt. The follow up on this opportunity for that company or individual could be easily tracked using XRMS.

Cases are used to support client issues, like help desk activities and bug reports. A case is set up for an individual contact or a company.

Campaigns are primarily marketing-related. They take the form of direct mailings and similar efforts and are directed towards companies and contacts. Campaigns have a fixed budget and take place over a fixed duration. I might do an email campaign in a few weeks to all the people that have inquired about our program, telling them about the Registration Dates and our new online Orientation.

Right now I am running the program on my laptop but it would be an easy transfer to move it out to one of my web servers so the other faculty members in Computer Careers can access the data. XRMS is PHP/MySQL based so it will run on either a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server or Microsoft’s IIS.  I’m using MAMP on my Mac. Or, you could use EasyPHP to set up a local LAMP environment on your Windows machine.

For my convenience, I also added a link on my FireFox favorites bar so the program is just a click away whenever my browser is open.

As part of the open source movement I will be writing a tutorial on how to transfer data from other programs into XRMS.

Follow up (June 8th, 2008)

I have quite using XRMS due to its limitations. I found the table setup to be very bulky and the input very cumbersome. Also, the online community support has virtually died out and it seems that no new development is being put into this application.

I’ve since migrated to address book on my Macintosh. It easily syncs with my iPod Touch. It also keeps track of the groups I need, and is very fast and easy to access. I found that I can also click and drag information from Entourage (the Mac version of Outlook) into Address book. If I need to follow-up on a call I just drag it over to my Mac calendar.

Matt Potochnik, the webmaster for the City of Mankato and a graduate of South Central College Computer Careers , has recommended Aptana . This is an excellent, open-source text editor that can be installed as a stand-alone editor or as a plug-in to Eclipse, the popular GUI programming environment that IBM wrote and later made open-source.

I’ve been using Aptana to edit my XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript files for several weeks now and really like it. It has an excellent debugger, plays well with FireFox, and allows me to code very quickly with its excellent syntax popups and DOM tree display. Errors are flagged immediately so I can fix things before things get all snarfled in a ball of goop.

Jesse Daniels , a software engineer from DayPort , and also a graduate from the Computer Careers program, pointed out how cool the DOM Display is. It allows a programmer to see the entire structure of the page and then jump to any specific element in the code window by simply clicking on the element in the DOM map.

I highly recommend this editor to anyone that spends time writing XHTML, JavaScript, PHP, or other scripting languages.

Here’s a link to a series of videos showing Aptana in action .

Every once in awhile the power of the Web still surprises me. Recently, reading David Pogue’s blog from the New York Times,  I discovered a real gold mine: The TED Conference. Technology, Entertainment, and Design.

Every year some of the brightest people in the world meet in Monterey, CA for a few days to talk about what they are doing. It costs $4,400 to attend a conference and the 2008 conference is already sold out. Speakers are not paid but get to attend the conference for free. (You can also request an invitation from their website based on your enthusiasm, ideas, and success in your field.)

A little pricey you say? But wait, they’ve put some of the presentations on line. You can watch the videos of some very amazing presentations . Each is about 20 minutes (although there are a few three minute specials), and you will be thinking about them for days. The TED videos are especially effective if you watch two or three in one setting. I usually catch a couple before I go to sleep at night, just to give my brain something to think about in my dreams.

Here’s a quote for the upcoming 2008 conference, The Big Questions:

"Many people come to TED seeking something out of the ordinary. A chance to mentally recharge. A chance to step back and consider the really big stuff that’s happening. A chance to understand life in a richer way. "

Check out these videos and you’ll see what they mean.

Aaron Bartell from RPG-XML Suite presented during my Web III (XML) course last week. Joining him was Matt Potocnik, the webmaster with the City of Mankato and Jesse Daniels, a software engineer at DayPort, a streaming video company. All three have successfully finished our Computer Careers program here at South Central College.

Aaron covered a lot of the alphabet soup that comes with XML discussions and demonstrated actual code that utilizes web services, both in a simple, easy-to-see manner and using a real-life example. He also recounted his experiences as a student, learning about the iSeries midrange computers from IBM. As an employee of Krengle Technology, Inc., Aaron wrote some code that allowed a client to access XML documents with their IBM iSeries (AS/400). This was an area where IBM didn’t have a lot of tools so they decided to repackage their work and sell it as a product. RPG XML Suite was born and the company now has six employees. The software Aaron wrote fills a distinct need in the industry that it doesn’t look like IBM will be filling any time soon.

Along the way Aaron has published several articles in technical trade journals and he told the class how to go about this and how satisfying it is. Aaron told my students, "When you learn something new, just write about what you know. You don’t have to be an expert and know everything about the topic." Here’s a copy of Aaron’s PowerPoint presentation. Check out the list of skills employers look for on slide #6.

Aaron also spoke about what organizations are looking for in employees now days and listed several important traits.

Matt and Jesse joined in talking with Aaron about how they use XML in the "real world" Matt talked about being able to update the Civic Center web page using RSS feeds which are XML based. It is an elegant fix that allows updates without a whole lot of extra web coding and minimal support. Matt also told the class about his firm belief in the Java platform when he was in school. Ironically, once he evaluated the needs and basic assumptions of the city, he made the decision in making the shift from Java to the Microsoft Dot Net platform. It just shows how important it is to evaluate all of the tools that are available. Matt also talked about developing your own position in the IT world. He was an intern at the city for over a year before they created the web master position. During that year he worked hard to help develop many changes that made the position possible.

Jesse talked about the video streaming they do at DayPort and how he is working on a project that will incorporate XML with Flash. Jesse also does web page design and has developed a complete PHP framework that allows him to build very complete web sites in minutes. Check out his web design portfolio at http://www.longloft.com/.

Afterwards several of the students mentioned how interesting it was listening to the three developers exchanging ideas and offering each other solutions for solving various projects each of them are working on.

Thanks for coming in and sharing your experiences with the class Aaron, Matt, and Jesse!

The cache (pronounced "cash") is a storage space on your hard drive that holds all the files that the browser receives from web servers. This includes html files as well as graphics, sounds clips, and movies.

In order to display things as fast as possible the browser checks the cache first and if it finds the pages you are requesting it uses the files on your hard drive instead of waiting for new ones to be downloaded from the Web.

If you are a web developer this can be trouble because the browser will keep showing you the old version and not the file with the changes you have just made.

A common trick is to hold down the CTRL key when requesting a new web page. This tells the browser to bypass the cache and to get the files once again from the source. This works with IE6, IE7, FireFox and other Mozilla-based browsers.

Using FireFox about:config settings

In FireFox you can disable the cache by using the about:config page. Type about:config in the address field of Firefox.

Do a search for browser.cache and set the line set browser.cache.disk.enable to false.
Restart FireFox to apply this setting.

There are many other settings you can make to FireFox in the about:config page. Here is an excellent page that highlights some popular ones. Proceed with caution however. You can really ruin things if you mess around too much and don’t know what you are doing. Make one change at a time and test it. Also, I would recommend backing up the prefs.js file if you plan to do extensive configuration changes.  On XP it is located in the C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR-USER-NAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\YOUR-CONFIG-FOLDER.default. (If everything fails just delete the prefs.js file and FireFox will create a new one with default values.)

Writing a Business Plan

Five Easy Pieces

Your business plan is one of the best tools you have to communicate your vision and excitement to a lot of different people. It doesn’t have to be a dry, boring document. Here are some ways you can make it into a document that reflects all the critical areas that people in the business world are interested in.

There’s five easy pieces:

1. Executive Summary
2. Describe the products/services (buildings, inventory, technology, manufacturing)
3. People and Stakeholders
4. Marketing
5. Dollars and Sense

Each of these is like a puzzle piece that affects the other pieces.

Writing a business plan involves writing each of these once, and then going back in and reworking them as new ideas and relationships surface as other sections are completed. By breaking the business plan into these five steps it becomes much easier to write and refine.

A business plan should be viewed as a working document. It helps to think of it as software that changes with different revisions. Each revision can be released and utilized, but the software is always being improved and extended into new areas. As your business grows it will need other, more detailed solutions. Your business plan documents this so others know and can realize what version you are currently using to run and operate your business.

The following highlights some common questions that may help you finalize each piece.

Executive Summary

People that read business plans for a living have very little time. The Executive Summary is written to make their job easier and more interesting.
In just a few paragraphs you not only want to capture the essence of your company, but catch the reader’s interest as well. Write this once and then revisit it each time you’ve finished working on one of the other sections. Then, weeks later, revisit this summary again and read it with more objective eyes.

Don’t labor too long over the Executive Summary. But reread it, rewrite it, and refine it often.

A good way to start is by writing five bullet points answering who, what, when, where, and why.

Frost your executive summary by adding a catchy headline. Not too cutesy, but something that will pique everyone’s interest. Keep in mind the old newspaper example for catchy headlines: Dog Bites Man vs. Man Bites Dog

Products/Services

Describing the products/services you are offering describes the what of the business plan. A simply as possible describe the products and services that the company will be offering. If you have multiple products/services give each one its own section.

For now just write a paragraph describing the product or service. Don’t add any fluff, or if you do, edit it out later.

Writing this section may trigger lots other ideas for marketing, and people, and money. First of all, try to stay focused on describing your product/service. But, if you are worried you might forget your ideas, go ahead and jot them down as a footnote. That way you can grab them and include them later with more details as you work on the other pieces.

People

The people piece is the who of your business plan. You will want to describe the owners of the company and list your board members. In addition, include the different types of employees (job descriptions) that are necessary to offer the products/services you’ve already described.

Being a small business it is necessary that several people may do many different tasks. It’s not unheard of for the President to also be in charge of sales as well as head janitor, especially during the start-up phase of a company.

You’ll want to demonstrate the team of experts that you are using to make the company successful. Depending on the business you will most likely be using an outside accountant, legal counsel, technology expert, and marketing consultant. Listing each of these professionals shows you know how to build a strong management resource team.

You probably have other stakeholders as well. Include them as part of this section, describing what their involvement is in the business.

You can mention the customer as one of your stakeholders, but the customer is so important that they get their very own piece. It’s called Marketing.

Marketing

Marketing is best summarized by the two questions: Who is the customer and what does he or she need?
Marketing includes all the activities that involve determining who the customer is and making a connection between them and the product/service being offered.

This section can get fairly involved. You may want to set up several subtopics describing the following:

• Who is the customer? If you have different target customers describe each one.
• What needs does the product/service meet? It is often helpful to envision a particular person that you know that fits the customer profile being targeted. Simply describe the traits this person has and how the product/service will meet his or her needs.
• How will we tell the customer about the product/service?
  
  • How will we inform people about the company? (goodwill, publicity, community service)
  • How will we inform people about specific products?
  • Different types of media to be used (web site, email campaigns, brochures, magazines, trade shows, articles and white papers)
• Where is the target market located?
• Describe the sales process (handling leads, closing the sale, customer service and follow-up after the sale)
• Who is the competition and why are you different?
• Marketing calendar

• List the marketing activities will you be doing each month for the next twelve months.

• What were the actual results of each of these activities
• What should be done differently next time? (discard the activity, modify the activity, combine it with another activity)

This section will probably have the most information and be changed frequently. It is recommended that the marketing calendar be made an active part of your business activities and be updated often.

Dollars and Sense

This piece describes the why of the business plan. You might be in business for several reasons, but most likely it is to make a profit. This piece shows what things will cost, what your margins of profit are, and how much profit you plan to make.

As the company becomes older it is very helpful to include past history as well as projections. Don’t go into vast details here. Just give monthly or quarterly sales as well as fixed costs (salaries, rent/utilities, supplies) and variable costs (production materials, research & development, taxes).

Two important items to include in this piece:

• Margin of Profit (MOP) – This is a percentage showing how profitable an item is or a product line, or sales in general.
• Return on Investment (ROI) – Compares how much money is made when compared to how much was spent. If you invest 1,000 dollars for a new web site that brings in only 500 dollars for the year, than the ROI is very poor. However, if you can show that the web site will probably increase sales way beyond the 1,000 dollar investment, than the ROI is very good. MOP and ROI work closely together. If you are working with a very low margin, you will need much more sales before you can see a return on your money. On the other hand if you have a high margin you can see immediate ROI. But, a higher MOP may increase the sales price too high, resulting in loss of sales and a smaller return on the investment.

Summary

Your business plan is probably the best way you can communicate your vision and excitement to a lot of different people. These five steps will help you write a business plan that is effective and helpful. You may use it to help secure a business loan, to determine what and how you are going to proceed in business, as well to get others excited about your ideas and the potential of the company’s future. Don’t forget to smile as you write it. After all, it is your future!