Track Media Web Solutions Blog

New and Cool Web Tools

2005-11-20T22:49:00.000-08:00

New and Cool : Links to Selected Web Development Tools for Your Downloading Pleasure
source: Web Developers Journal

Photoshop 5.5 (our full review) - Latest version of the classic graphics program. It's a challenge for beginners, but once you've got your head around it you can do anything you like to an image.

Dreamweaver 3 (our full review) - Latest version of the most popular professional editor. Download a 30 day trial or go for some of Macromedia's recommended plug-ins.

1st Page 2000 - A free HTML editor including many JavaScript and Perl scripts. The interface is similar to HomeSite.

Adobe Golive - An excellent professional editor for Macs. There's a Windows version too.

Media Cleaner - If you want to mess about converting and compressing movies, you'll find it hard to beat Media Cleaner Pro. It accepts most formats and works on many platforms. It's probably the Web movie industry standard software. There are lots of other downloadable goodies on the Terran site too.

RealSystem G2 Beta Server - Streaming media from the experts. The RealSystem G2 Full Beta Server, which the company describes as open-standard, is available for evaluation.

Shoutcast server - Broadcast streaming MP3s from your server to Winamp users around the world. Runs on Windows, Unix, Linux and other platforms.

Flash 4 - If Macromedia gets its way, future developers won't even bother to learn HTML, because Web sites will be Flash from top to bottom. It's the Web animation standard. Here's your chance to get Flashed-up on a 30 day free trial.

Livestage - Makes the most of the QuickTime format. Other movie formats can be incorporated within a QuickTime video.

MovieWorks - Create QuickTime movies on a Mac. Trial software on 30 day approval.

Analog logfile analyser - Around 25% of the world's logfiles are analysed using Analog. It's not as sophisticated as some of the other logfile programs out there, but it compensates in one very special way - it's free.

Canoma - Take your regular photos of a building and glue them to a wireframe model. Hey Presto! A 3D graphic. The user interface is a joy.

FreeHand - Illustration program famed and revered for its WYSIWYG output. Now in version 8. The trial is 30 day and fully functional.

Image Optimizer - Excellent file size reduction system allows some parts of a graphic to be heavily compressed while other parts retain their detail.

Illustrator - Major-league illustration software from Adobe. Unfortunately the tryout version doesn’t allow saves, exports or printouts.

Topstyle - A popular CSS editor for simple creation of cross-browser style sheets.

Actinic Catalog - Well-known eCommerce software with over 1300 licensees - and that’s just in the UK!

WebSpeed Optimizer - A great little utility that throttles back the data transfer within your computer. Just set the controls for 56kbps and watch your site download from your hard drive to your screen at the same speed most of your visitors will receive it.

Drumbeat 2000 - Macromedia ASP software for sophisticated database management. The eCommerce edition goes all the way to the shopfront. A JSP (JavaServer Pages) edition is also available.

Homesite Homesite wins coveted Web Developer's Journal Product of the Year, 1998 award with a total of five propheads. Read the review or download the trial version. You can also get the 4.5 beta here.

Style Master 1.2 Style Master is just the thing for anyone unfamiliar with the syntax and rules of CSS and for anyone wanting to get CSS to really rock and roll.

WS_FTP Pro - New and Improved FTP Client. This is the one we've been waiting for!

Transit Central and HTML Transit - Template-based automated Web publishing.

CheckOut - Shopping cart with Java, enhanced CGI and simple browser modes, plus a variety of other eCommerce tools.

Spirit - "Spirit can build almost any kind of GUI and deal with interactions. You can build components, vector graphics, spinners, databases, etc."

Writing Proposals that Work - Combines instructions on Web proposal writing along with a template that the writer can use to develop the actual proposal.

Ozzino Studio - "Let your web pages come alive with exciting animated interactive java applets. Easy to use interface and no programming required.Tons of functionality:- instant animated 3D objects from static images; rotating applets in same location; add interactivity to animated objects and animated gifs; spectacular drop-down menu bars; and much more."

Texter - Create dazzling text animation Java applets in seconds with Ozzino's award winning Texter. Easy to use interface and no programming required.

Calendars for the Web - "The software creates HTML Table and/or Image Map calendars. I've downloaded many competing calendar programs and I think this software is much, much better."
Advanced Template Package - If you do CGI programming in Perl, then this is something you may have been waiting for -- using templates in Perl scripts.

Web Hotspots 4.0 - Imagemap editors for static and animated imagemaps.

Webber - A little known editor called Webber. It is simple to use, validates, and has an excellent help system. It is not a WYSISYG but you can type or import your text, mark and code that way.

ECware Pro Version 4.0 - Comprehensive eCommerce solution (registration required for download).

MODPlug Software - A different sort of program for background music and jukeboxes on Web pages.

Paint Shop Pro - Version 6.01 of this great value for money graphics program.

Hit List 4.0 - Features point and click DataLink for web mining.

Increase Your Google Page Rank!

2005-11-12T04:20:00.000-08:00

by Joe Balestrino
source:Design and Publishing Centre

This article will put a damper on web sites that sell information which will supposedly increase your page rank. I may make some enemies here, but this is already common knowledge. In fact, to make sure it worked, I designed a new site just for this purpose. Before you shell out money for an ebook, software, or CD telling you how to do this; read this article. If you achieve great results after following my advice and feel it was worth some money, feel free to write me a check for any amount you choose. I'll add my own zeros...

Page Rank

We all know what is. We all want to rank higher. Higher rankings mean a lot of things to a lot of people. To web masters it means achievement. They have accomplished a move in the right direction. A high page rank to a website owner is money in the bank. It is also an impressive accomplishment. To other website owners your page rank may be a source of envy.

To Google your page rank means quality, importance and relevancy. It lets Google know you are a viable resource and a valuable asset. Google takes your Page Rank and combines it with their text-matching techniques. This, combined with a page's content and the content of the pages linking to it, determines if your site is a good match. So, a higher Page Rank will certainly help you on Google.

As for surfers. Most of them could care less about your Page Rank. In fact, many of them don't even know what it is. However, those that do use it in a different way. Some use it as a way to unofficially gauge your credibility.

Ok, I am sure you've been wondering when I was going to tell you about how to achieve a ranking like I did. I went from a 0 Page Rank to a 5. Now, mind you, I did not purchase any links from high ranking sites, or any sites for that matter. I did not launch a link exchange program. I did exchange links with about five directories related to my site's topic, but that was it. Actually, 97% of my links are all one-way links (links pointing to my site).

So, how did I do it? Any ideas? If you know SEO you may already know the answer.
Link Farms? Of, course not. We know Google will frown on that method. Did I design or optimize sites and add my URL? Hmmm..Yes! However, that is a small percent of the success. SEO companies don't usually add their URL to sites they have optimized. Ok, so what else?
Content? Yes, content is king as always. Content is what was used to help boost my ranking. But how? I create articles. These are quality articles, just like the one you are reading now. These articles were not generated from any program. I authored the content from my own knowledge and researched over 100 web sites that accept articles in my area of expertise. SEO happens to be a very popular topic. These sites agree to post my articles on their site, along with my url(s). Many of these sites have a decent Page Rank of their own. Their rank will transfer over to my site.

Also, as time goes by, those articles will have a PR effect of their own which will transfer to my site(s). Don't forget, other people may pick these articles up and use them on their site as well. They will also include my URL(s) on their sites.

Now, if I do 100 sites a week times four articles a month, that's at least 400 articles a month. The last Google update was 86 days, the longest has been 111. That could lead to 1200 or more links between updates. What will Google think about all these links at once? They'll love it! Content, quality, one way links.

I also promoted my blogs and my website in some of my articles. This way, they too have their own PR generating effect. They also link to my site and my site to them. This, in turn, increased the PR to them as well. At the time of this article and the most recent Google update, one of my blogs went from 0 to 3 and the other 0 to 4 all in the same update.

These tips should help you increase your page rank. The hardest part will be creating content related to your field and finding sites that will post your work. You can always hire writers and/or article submission services.

Understanding Web Hosting

2005-11-09T21:31:00.000-08:00

by Afam Nnaji
source: CJ Website Hosting

Websites are made up of web pages that could contain text, graphics, audio or video. But these files that make up the website must be hosted or housed somewhere and that somewhere is a web server. It is from this web server that different computers from different parts of the world can access your web pages as long as both the web server and the clients (personal computers) are online.

Any arrangement that is made to provide features for your web pages on any web server is what s commonly known as web hosting.

A typical configuration for web hosting comes like this Disk space - 10MB Bandwidth - 5GB Email - 3 POP email accounts Then features like Support for php, mysql, access, asp, perl, python FTP, Shell, Frontpage server extension or dreamweaver.

Well, let us break these technical jargons down. The disk space simply tells you the amount of space that your website is allowed to make use of on any web server that it is hosted on. Generally, text take less disk space when compared to graphics or audio and video. So, depending on what you want to achieve with your website you select a web hosting package that will be enough for those files that will eventually make up your website.

The bandwidth takes care of the quantity of data that is allowed to move from your web server to all computers that may choose to visit your website. T s based on a monthly quota. An example will help explain this further let us say Mr A has a website with a lot of text and few graphics whereas Mr B as a website wt a lot of graphics and even video on his website. Let us also assume that the two websites are hosted on a web server with similar hosting features especially the bandwidth. Mr B's website is most likely to run out of bandwidth when compared to Mr A's website assuming the same number of people visit the two websites. Since bandwidths are based on monthly quotas, once you run out of bandwidth even if it is the first week of any month, your website will be shut down until the net month or until you upgrade to a higher web hosting plan with more bandwidth allocation.

The email is what almost everyone that has visited yahoo must have heard about. Our example web hosting plan simply tells you that you will have up to 5 email accounts attached to your domain like info@yourdomain.com, chairman@yourdomain.com etc. Even if a web hosting provider promises unlimited email addresses, just remember that on that particular server you have a stipulated disk space to make use of unless you are ok with say 300 email addresses with the quota large enough to handle just 2 or 3 email transactions and nothing more.

Php, Perl, Asp, Python are all programming languages that your web designer or better put your web programmer may make use of while putting your website together. Mysql or Access are simply databases your web developer may use in building a database driven website for your business. FTP is simply a protocol that allows you to remotely connect to your web server to transfers files to or from it. Frontpage and Dreamweaver are tools that are used to build websites very quickly and web hosting plans that support the extensions make life easy for you because you can have the software installed on your office or home pc and then design and transfer your web pages yourself to the web hosting server.

You may say all these features, acronyms and technical jargons do not concern you as a business owner. I won't advice you to think in that direction because sooner than later you will realize that you need to understand these things if you ever hope to negotiate favourably for your website project. In any case you are the one spending the money ands not the web developer, so naturally it should concern you.

Expensive versus cheap web hosting

Honestly what prompted me to write this piece is the constant question that all my prospective clients have asked me when discussing website development for their businesses. "Why are the web hosting plans on your website expensive?"

I will also provide the same response here and from now on refer such questions this article on the website instead of spending time answering the same questions over and over again.

A web server (software program like IIS or Apache) resides in a computer and serves web pages to client computers that request web pages from the web server (hence the name web server).

Any hard disk or group of hard disks could make up the total available disk space on that computer. The total disk space could be used solely for the web server or could be shared with other applications like a database server or email server.

For any disk space in question let us say for example we have 100GB disk space available for a web server. This web hosting arrangement could provide hosting for 200, 500, 10,000 or 50,000 websites.

Let us analyse the possblities

For 200 websites, each website could easily have 500MB disk space available to it. For 500 websites, each website could easily have 200MB disk space available to it. For 10,000 websites, each website could easily have 10MB disk space available to it. For 50,000 websites, each website could easily have 2MB disk space available to it.

Put differently, you could host any number of websites on any web serer configuration as a service provider but those that bear the brunt of such maximum carving out of disk space to maximize profits are the customers or the website owners. So, which do you prefer, to have your website comfortably hosting on a web server that will always have the resources available for your website or to allow your website fight for resources with about 50,000 websites.

If you have ever visited a website and instead of seeing the page you are looking for, you see "the website you are trying to reach cannot be found on the internet or is not available', then I have just told you why such messages come up.

Remember that each unique website will have its' own unique set of visitors and all these activities are on a single machine or web server. Properly set up web servers will simply stop and restart itself when all the resources are used or when the server is too busy to handle additional requests. This built in functionality (stopping and restarting) prevents the server from crashing and it is the period this stopping and restarting process takes place that the same website you visited just some couple of minutes ago could not be found on the internet.

So, it boils down to what you want as a business owner bearing in mind that you get what you pay for.

I hope this short piece has helped to arm you with relevant information that will guide you in making the best decision as far as web hosting is concerned for your website.

2005-11-09T01:29:00.000-08:00

Web Design for All the Senses

In: Columns > Innovating the Web Experience
By Dirk Knemeyer
Source: Digital Web magazine

Experience design requires that we design for all five senses. It is safe to say that over 99% of what is happening on the Web relates only to our sense of sight. On the surface, this might seem a logical and obvious state of affairs. In reality, it is a reflection of some mental laziness and of not thinking outside the computer screen. Let’s look at each of the other four senses and explore how we can integrate design for those senses into our Web experiences:

Hearing
Our sense of hearing is the only other primary sense regularly stimulated within the Web experience. This happens in three basic ways:

Business need
Hearing is essential to some businesses and products, and they have innovated on the Web to create opportunities for people to hear what they have to offer. Certainly, the meteoric rise of the original Napster, and more recent success of Apple’s iTunes and related products and peripherals, is a testament to auditory content on the Web.

Without the ability to listen on the Web in the first place, we would not have reached the point where people will not just buy downloadable music on the Web but even purchase it without having heard it first. It was the free and easy availability of real music and online content that enabled this industry to spark, sizzle, and finally burn. The iPod is the hottest consumer electronics product because of the evolution from early music availability into major pent-up market need. Markets find a way.

The music industry is one example of the business model and auditory nature of the product driving the integration of stimulating this human sense onto the Web.

Multimedia integration
ESPN, once the leading television sports channel, has become a Disney-owned multimedia superpower with significant content and reach across many cable channels, an international radio network, a major print publication, and one of the larger and more substantial news-related Web sites in the world. ESPN.com represents the fulcrum for integrating and leveraging the corporation’s entire media empire.

Over the last two years ESPN has quietly moved into making the Web a true extension of its traditional media base—television—by staying at the front edge of online video technology. One component of that is sound. Because of their business goals and the need to maximize the effectiveness of other media, espn.com has a deep integration of auditory opportunities on their site, ranging from radio feeds to television segment re-broadcasts to clips from sporting events and more.

Design sensibility
Some Web experiences prominently integrate sound for the purpose of defining the sensibility and aesthetic of the site owner, for the enjoyment of those interacting with the site, or both.

One of my favorite examples of this in practice is a little Web design company in the Washington, D.C., area: michelango.com. I first stumbled upon this site some five years ago, and it still represents to me what the best use of sound on the Web is all about: subtle, effective, integrated into the visual design and integrated into the vibe, identity, and brand of the company itself.

Another common way to integrate sound is through content sampling or sharing. Digital Web Magazine’s own D. Keith Robinson does this on his site Asterisk with Song of the Week. Keith has integrated a self-contained media player onto his site and regularly writes a review of different songs he’s listening to, making those songs available on the site. Particularly for a blog or other form of personal publishing, expression, and communication, this sort of content sharing and sensorial integration is natural, and weaves a tighter relationship between the site owner and the visitors they share the most in common with. As with michelangelo.com, Keith’s success is the product of strong and logical execution as much as simply making auditory content available.

I am not saying that integrating sound into your Web design is easy—on the contrary. One of the reasons we see so few examples of sound design on the Web is the large volume of spectacular failures we were saturated with during the Internet boom. Sites forced auditory content at us that was poorly conceived and executed, typically by people delighted with the powerful tools at their disposal, but without the design sensibility or capability to use them properly.

As the Web has become more refined, the reverse has become true. Sound is not being properly integrated to create better sensorial experiences. By thinking about the reasons sound has been aggressively integrated into Web experiences, and examining these and other examples of it being done successfully, we can rather easily bring the stimulation of this important sense into our own strategy and design.

Smell
There is so much the Web design industry can learn from the movie industry. Ever heard of Smell-O-Vision? Understanding the power of multi-sensorial experiences, the movie industry experimented—more than 40 years ago now—with integrating olfactory experiences into movie viewing. Unfortunately, the technology was not equal to the idea, and the experience was poor.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and a new and improved Smell-O-Vision. While the technology is still in the experimental stage—far from mainstream—it reflects an understanding of the untapped business potential available through an integration of the sense of smell. For some companies, this is a no-brainer. The fragrance industry would greatly benefit from this technology. Flowers and food are other products that lend themselves to aggressively exploring and making the most of this technology. But good experiences go much farther than business need. There are plenty of pleasant, mainstream, inoffensive smells that I would enjoy “sharing” with visitors to my own site—just very slightly, very lightly, the most brief and subtle of gentle whiffs, to evoke a smile or thoughtful tilt of the head.

This updated Smell-O-Vision holds great promise because of the deep understanding we now have of olfactory science. Organizations like the Sense of Smell Institute will be of increasing interest to business and, by extension, to Web and experience design.

Smells can be broken down into just a handful of component parts, and appropriate replication of smell through a digital device is a very real possibility. We’ll see what happens with Smell-O-Vision, but it is only a matter of time now before some technology enables us to easily indulge in integrating olfactory stimulation into our digital experiences.

Even now, there are other ways we can integrate the sense of smell into our design and development. Smell is particularly important in design, since it’s the sense most directly tied into our memory. Let’s look at the last two senses to better understand how we can integrate smell into our design today.

Touch
How can we design for touch on the Web? It seems impossible. But that barrier was imposed on us by old paradigms, and is no longer right or valid.

First, we need to remember that every single person interacting with our Web experiences is stimulating their sense of touch. They are typing on a keyboard, or moving and clicking a mouse, or using a stylus, or pushing buttons or... something. Touch already is a part of the experience, but it is one that is controlled by hardware manufacturers and not something that we consider within our provenance or sphere of control. But it can be within our control if we want it to be.

Second, we need to get our heads (not to mention our asses) out from behind our digital interfaces. Designing an experience is holistic. It is not limited to pictures or sounds or pixels or hardware. We need to assert ourselves into the environments of the people interacting with our Web experiences. The interaction does not need to end with the Web or interface, even if it is centered there.

This exercise is a little bit easier for me, because before I moved over to the creative and design side of the business I was a marketing strategist. One of my responsibilities was to innovate how we could best communicate to customers and the market. What media channels could we take advantage of? How could we best leverage those channels to have the biggest possible impact? Designers and developers should be thinking the same way.

Specific applications will depend on the company, product, or site goal we each have to deal with, but in any case it’s oh, so logical. For companies that rely on touch and feel for sales—the fashion industry for instance—it is essential to get materials in the hands of customers.

A common tactic is to drive people to the Web through traditional marketing, such as running a television commercial that also attempts to get people onto the site. But this can just as easily run in reverse. Instead of the traditional marketing channel being the driver, the Web can become the driver.

Direct mail is a great example. Why not send people a small piece of fabric that can attach to their mouse, monitor, or keyboard, specifically to influence their Web experience? This way, not only can they interact with and touch the product while on your site, they can do so when using other sites. And this area is ripe to be taken advantage of!

Sit back from your monitor a little bit. Stop clicking. Look around. What in your environment, while you are interacting with your computer, is designed to stimulate your sense of touch? I’m guessing that very few of us have anything like that available. Yet, if available, every single time I gently rubbed a piece of trademark Burberry or branded cashmere, the company or product that introduced that tactile interaction into my overall Web experience would benefit from it. I might be on the CNN site being bombarded by expensive ads from big companies, but I’ll be gently rubbing that little piece of fabric and warmly appreciating the company that was thoughtful enough to put it there, rather than the advertisers.

It is just basic experience design—think beyond the specific media and create a better overall experience.

Taste
This is the toughest of the five senses to design for. In approach, it is rather similar to touch or smell. Yet, unlike other senses, taste is not a continuous part of our everyday life. We access taste only at specific times—at meals or other ritualistic personal behaviors such as coffee drinking—and it is almost always a matter of our own control.

Sights and sounds and smell and even touches are more often than not imposed upon us from the outside. They are not invited in; we are presented with them and left to interpret, categorize, and respond to them in the way we best see fit. As such, the challenge of designing for taste requires subtle modifications to basic behavior, as well as basic ideation and implementation.

Chewing gum and mints are two examples of products that began to break the limited paradigm of taste. People will use these products all day long, stimulating their sense of taste in an ongoing way. In fact, this entire product category is ultimately ripe for buy-outs from and subordination by major brands that have nothing to do with the core products (Harley-Davidson gum, anyone?) but that is beyond the bounds of this article and publication.

People love to eat, and they enjoy having their sense of taste stimulated. I give a lot of presentations and seminars, and most of the time I make sure to hand out to the entire audience some sort of a small taste treat during the course of my talk. The effect of doing this is remarkable. People smile. Their body language changes. Their energy level changes. By providing just these little, inexpensive treats, it creates an entirely different moment and interaction. That is powerful!

Since very few non-food-related companies currently have any sort of a taste associated with them, the best way to design for taste is to design for the end user. What sort of things do people like? When and why do they like them? What connections can we draw between our company/products/selves and those particular tastes or items? How can we get those to the people?

These aren’t your typical development questions, and certainly not appropriate for all situations, but this is the way we need to be thinking. We are designing experiences, not just Web sites. Taste is an important part of experience. We need to think about that, even if we are only supposed to be thinking about boxes and buttons and pixels.

Ours to design
It certainly isn’t rocket science. It is just a matter of opening our minds up a little bit and taking a new look at our definitions and boundaries. After that, the only limitations are imposed by our creativity.

Technological and financial barriers are factors, not impediments. And the benefits of creating better experiences are virtually limitless. Just think to yourself: What are the things I am most passionate about or moved by? Most often, the answers lie in areas not currently being addressed within design solutions, yet well within our individual grasp to provide. The world is ours to design, and there is no reason to wait.