I’ve heard it said that 1 hour of planning saves 3 hours of execution. With regards to web development, I would suggest that the savings of planning is closer to a 1:30 ratio. Building a website is alot like building a home. It’s rather difficult to add a basement to a home, after the fact. The same goes for web development. Adding features and content, which was not planned for prior to project inception can be time consuming and costly.

As more and more companies go offshore for their development needs, it is important to understand how that effects the communication and execution of a project. I’ve had the opportunity to work with staff from India, the Philippines, the Ukraine, Russia and Estonia. While there are cultural differences, which need to be addressed there are things that can be done to grease the wheels of communication and turn out successful projects when going offshore. Read the rest of this entry »

As of July, 2006, browser usage is following the same trend it has been for the past year*. With the entrance of Firefox to the market in late 2004, Internet Explorer is still loosing market share, although at a slower rate than in 2005. In addition, the average user is viewing at a higher screen resolution than in years past (1024×798 pixels) and a color depth of 65k colors or higher. Added to this, consider that broadband usage by US households jumped 36 percent in 2004, increasing to an estimated 70 percent of US home users. The news offshore is even more promising, given that broadband proliferation worldwide increased approximately 50 percent between 2004 and 2005. Read the rest of this entry »

Online Advertising sales saw another year of solid growth in 2005, and for good reason: it works.

Why buy contextual online advertising?
As with all advertising, your dollars need to be focused on a clearly defined and targeted market. The world of Internet advertising is getting to this point now, where marketers are starting to wake up and understand that a subtle text message, within the right context, can provide better ROI than a banner that blinks enough to set off a seizure.

What this means is that both the traffic (or distribution) of the website you are advertising on and the site itself need to be considered. Say for example, your product is women’s apparel. Simple logic dictates that your money is better spent adverising on a site like the female targeted oxygen.com than on something unrelated such as ESPN.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Making the leap from a brick and mortar business to an online business requires a shift in perception and understanding of the essentials. Many business owners and managers have become rooted in the fundamentals of operating a traditional business and have a difficult time initially understanding what it takes to sell online. We’ll cover the 5 basic ingredients for Ecommerce Success in this article. Read the rest of this entry »

The proliferation of P2P (Peer-to-Peer) file sharing networks and increased acceptance of home broadband Internet connections has brought the sharing of Digital Content (audio and video) into the mainstream. In fact, the traffic generated by P2P during the evening accounts for nearly double the traffic produced for normal HTTP (Web) requests.

The State of Digital Content Delivery
Until recently, the mechanisms to deliver digital content were largely based on the “honor system”. Users purchase a file license or subscribe to a provider’s site, agree to membership or license conditions which require that the user not redistribute the content, and download any or all files on the site.

However, there are no controls, which enforce the license agreement. The user will in most cases, freely and intentionally distribute the downloaded audio/video on a P2P network or simply store the file on their computer in a folder that is shared with their P2P network. Read the rest of this entry »

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The page cannot be displayed
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings.

As a webmaster, the above message should bring a chill to your bones, and have you reaching for your security blanket. Yet, on August 28th, 2004, thousands of webmasters woke to find this message glaring back at them from their computer screens. Read the rest of this entry »