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SEO Tip - Well Formed HTML
2007-06-19 04:57:00
Well formed HTML is easier for the crawlers to read. They are computer programs, after all, and expect HTML to be in a specific content. If the crawlers see no errors, your site is indexed more accurately. Well-formed HTML is HTML that conforms to a specific HTML standard Your code should be W3C compliant – go to http://validator.w3.org and verify that your HTML code is valid The most common standards for HTML are HTML 4.01 Transitional and XHTML 1.0 Transitional Verbose, duplicative, bloated, or error-prone HTML code makes it more difficult to get to the content, and decrease the content to code ratio Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site. Most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing the entire page content in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble indexing your site.
More About: Html

SEO Tip - Cascading Style Sheets
2007-06-15 04:53:00
Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS for short, are extremely powerful development tools. They allow you to define global styles for any page element. these styles are reusable, making the page more consistent looking and easier to maintain. CSS allows developers to manage not only font, color, and size, but also position and visibility. Here are some great SEO hints about CSS:Storing CSS in separate files keeps content closer to the top of the pageDevelopment techniques, like a table-less layout, that leverages CSS put all the CSS into an external file, will have many benefits:Make the pages load faster, since it does not need to draw tables, etc.Increase the content to code ratioPlace the content closer to the top of the pagePut the content closer togetherAnd thus make the content easier to be indexed by a spiderLowers code complexity, decreasing the chance of improperly formed HTM and other page errorsCSS will also g...

SEO Tip - JavaScript
2007-06-09 04:49:00
JavaScript is a very powerful tool for designers and developers alike. There is lots of functionality, and allows you to do a lot of great things within the browser on the client side. But if not used carefully and consciously, you can end up sacrificing your site’s search engine optimization.Storing JavaScript in separate files keeps content closer to the top of the pageJavaScript based links or navigation schemes cannot be followed by crawlers. Be sure all links are standard HREFs in anchor tagsIf JavaScript is used to show or hide different sections of content, there is a good chance that the crawlers may not be able to see it and index it properlyIf JavaScript navigation is absolutely required, noscript tags should be used to provide content both for users without JavaScript capability, and for the search engine crawlers. A good idea is to put a link to a static sitemap page into the noscript tag, e...
More About: Javascript

New Book - Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd Ed.
2007-06-07 04:19:00
The review from amazon.com looks like it would be a great read for an airplane ride: Peopleware asserts that most software development projects fail because of failures within the team running them. This strikingly clear, direct book is written for software development-team leaders and managers, but it's filled with enough commonsense wisdom to appeal to anyone working in technology. Authors Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister include plenty of illustrative, often amusing anecdotes; their writing is light, conversational, and filled with equal portions of humor and wisdom, and there is a refreshing absence of "new age" terms and multistep programs. The advice is presented straightforwardly and ranges from simple issues of prioritization to complex ways of engendering harmony and productivity in your team. Peopleware is a short read that delivers more than many books on the subject twice its size. Link to Amazon - Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams , 2nd Ed.
More About: Book

Great articles - In-House SEO for Large Companies
2007-06-05 04:15:00
This is a great two part series called Laying the Foundation for In-House SEO Success in Large Organizations. The simple answer is to create a matrix team across all the organizations involved. The complex answer is in these two articles.Laying the Foundation for In-House SEO Success in Large Organizations: Part I Laying the Foundation for In-House SEO Success in Large Organizations: Part II
More About: Companies , Articles , Great

Apple Invasion Continues - Safari On Windows
2007-06-02 04:14:00
Scott Hanselman has a review of a beta version of Safari on Windows . Just what we needed... another browser to test.
More About: Apple , Invasion

Mix 07 Session 9 & Session 10
2007-05-04 04:13:00
Session 9 was a WPF fundamentals section. Not very much to say about this. Good session, covered blend, XAML, and the API. I have a few ideas of some fun apps to try this out on... Session 10 was a preview of a new Commerce Foundation that is being developed. Microsoft is looking to develop a platform based approach to e-commerce sites, similar to storefronts offered by Amazon and Yahoo. It is obviously based on WPF and XAML for quick and easy customization. Looks really great, but it is too early to tell, and it will probably not be as industrial strength and as customizable as we will need.

Mix 07 Session 8
2007-05-04 04:10:00
Session 8 was all about search. There are a few things we can start to do on our side, like robot tags and sitemap files, that will help get us indexed. There is also a search provider bit that has come out on Monday that allows you to set up multiple search providers on the fly on the web config, and an API that will allow you to display the results however you like. Having the site indexed by a spider from a sitemap page gets around all the problems of being a data driven site instead of a file based site. The USB key drive we got in our registration pack has all the code samples. I talked to the two speakers after the session, and they both recommended using the search functionality for SharePoint, which can be used standalone. We could also use Google or Yahoo, but they limit search queries to 1000 and 5000 per day. Someone mentioned something called Google mini, which sounded like a hardware solution, and one of the slides mentioned index server. Windows Live has a limi...

Mix 07 Session 7 and Keynote 2
2007-05-04 04:08:00
So session 7 was supposed to be about Lessons Learned for WPF. There were two speakers, both from a small company in Tacoma WA called Identity Mine. The same company did the great comic book reader session, so I thought it would be really good. The first speaker did a conference 2 weeks ago, and referred us to the video of his session on a CD we got in our welcome kit. The second speaker did a lessons learned on another project, that used WPF 3D. He basically said that 3D is hard, and that was his lessons learned. =/ He gave a bit more information than that, but that was pretty close. Codeplex is a Microsoft project that has some solutions for WPF 3D to help bridge the gap. And standard controls like list boxes etc. are not available in 3D. Not sure when we will be doing a 3D WPF project, so I guess I will have to watch the video to get a better idea of lessons learned for 2D WPF projects. I am actually really interested in playing with WPF when I get back home. Keynote s...

Mix 07 Session 6
2007-05-03 04:06:00
The Emotion of Customer Experience seemed like a companion session to the futures of design session. The speaker was very dynamic. Its not about the brand, its not about the product, its about the Experience. Its not just about what the customer feels about us, but how we make the customer feel. Sensing and reacting, not making and selling is what wins. Efficiency versus effectiveness. The little things... The clues... Those are the things that change the experience. The experiences that our customers have can be architected by us. Dr. Jerry Zaltman wrote a book called "How Customers Think" that sounds like a great book. I will have to check it out on Amazon. The speaker, Lewis Carbone, has written a book called "Clued In". One of the other things I have noticed about the conference is that there are folks coming here from all over the world - England, France, Switzerland, China, Korea, and they add a whole new perspective on the topics, and by the questions they ask.

Mix 07 Session 5
2007-05-03 04:03:00
Well, session 5 was a pain for me. I wanted to attend the Futures in Design session... It wasn't quite what i expected.. It was kind of a design 101 combined with a design source revue. So i decided to go see the IE future session. When i got there it was in a smaller side, room and there were so many people, there was not even standing room available and a conference person was standing outside the closed doors turning people away. The design session was in the keynote room, and was practically empty. It was a bit aggravating that a small room was used for a huge interest topic, and a huge room was almost not used at all. So i went back to the design session. Some of the stuff was interesting and piqued my interest in my original background. I would have attended one of the other sessions, but they didn't look that good. That is one thing that I have found frustrating about this conference... I either wanted to attend 4 sessions all at the same time, or not attend any o...

Mix 07 Session 4
2007-05-03 04:00:00
So this session was about keyword services, which is a new service Microsoft is offering to its clients. This service allows you to analyze what keywords you should use based on site content, forecast what your success rate will be, and give keyword costs. There are three ways to use this new service - there is a web site - http://adlab.microsoft.com (soon to be part of http://adcenter.microsoft.com ) ,an API you can install, or you can use WCF. This is something that could be very powerful for us. We could build into the site to dynamically generate the appropriate keywords for each site page each day. This way as the market changes, and as the content changes, the keywords will change. I think it would be great to have Microsoft come in and demo this for EWD, Client Facing, and DMS.

Mix 07 Session 3
2007-05-02 03:58:00
Session 3 was a strange session... It was called "Getting Unstuck - Enhancing Designer and Developer Collaboration for mutual success." sounds exactly like the problems weare having. All we seem to do is bump heads with some of our agencies, and it is becoming more and more of a barrier to getting things done well. So i left the panel discussion with a few good points for us to keep in mind Keep in mind that we are good at hat we do, and they are good at they do. We are not designers, and they are not developers. But there needs to be mutual respect for each other.Do not lock yourself into a rigid process. Once you lock yourself in, you are already stuck.Agile and Scrum are great methodologies, and provide lots of flexibility, but are also not always the answerCommunication is usually part of the problem. Communicate more information, and sooner, and more often.Stay focused on solving the problem, and on the users, and you cant go wrongBreak the problem down into smaller part...

Mix 07 Session 2
2007-05-02 03:53:00
The second session I went to was about a digital comic reader similar to the NY Times Reader, but for comics. The reader was very, very slick. They talked about the requirements collection process, and their UI concerns. The reader was built with WPF, and can use JPGs, or XAML. We also got a demo of some of their user controls tha they used to build their comics and the reader. This was a really cool example of what WPF and XAML can do.

Mix 07 Session 1
2007-05-02 03:49:00
So the first session I went to was about identity cards. This is a really great idea. I was hoping to get more information on how Microsoft implements identity cards and how it would or could work with OpenID. There were 3 guys presenting - two from Microsoft, and one from Novell. Most of the session was about Bandit, which is a similar collaborative project to OpenID. When i asked them about OpenID, they said that they were collaborating with the OpenID folks fr some of their phishing issues, but that all the ideas were converging. I got all their business cards, so that if we go down the path of doing registration for users sometime in the near future, I have some folks to reach out to... But right now it seems like this space miht be a bit too scattered. Maybe when i get back I will do some research.

Mix '07 Keynote
2007-04-30 19:53:00
Well, Mix 07 has officially begun, and the keynote I have to say was quite good. It was all about Silverlight. Now WPF we all know is supposed to be a competitor of Macromedia Flash. And Expression is supposed to be the competitor to Flash Studio. Well, Microsoft has announced Silverlight as the Flash plugin that will work on PCs and Macs, in IE, Firefox, Netscape, and Safari. There were lots of demos, one from CBS News that allowed users to submit their own videos, one from MLB.com that allowed users to stream video and build overlay widgets for stats, and one called TopBanana that did movie editing... all were very slick. The Silverlight plugin will also have CLR built in, so you can build Silverlight apps in .Net using Expression and publish cross platform. This is particularly exciting for us in...
More About: Keynote

A Little Bit About Me
2007-04-02 07:24:00
Well, I suppose it's about time that I start blogging. I have been in the technology industry for ten years... I think it's about time I started using it. Anyways here is a bit of resume-writing. A little bit about me: I was born in New Jersey, but moved to Detroit, Michigan when I was one year old. I lived in Detroit until I turned 7. This was enough time to become a Tigers, Lions, Red Wings and Pistons fan. Then I moved back to New Brunswick, New Jersey. I went to New Brunswick public schools up to high school. Then I went to Rutgers Preparatory School from 1989 through 1991. In 1996 I got my bachelors of art with majors in Art and Art History from Rutgers College. It took me five years, but then again I paid for it. My first job out of college was with a small company in Edison called Nationwide Computers & Electronics. I worked on their full page newspaper advertisements selling computers, appliances, etc. By the end of the year I was there, I was a Quark Xpress and Ill...