Web Designers, graphic designers, and all designers are face with Design Challenges. Let's dive into the world of web design, graphic design, usability, information technology, and look at life and the work place. Come back often to see what I see. View my world and the Design Challenges that I'm face with
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Competition is the basis of capitalism
Microsoft announce a new site, named origami. This site announces that on March 2nd we will be previewed to a brand new gadget that promises to deliver gaming, music, video, and blackberry like capabilities.
It appears that Microsoft finally has decided to tackle its competitor, apple, and come up with a way to bring down the very popular iPod. They have gone one up on apple, but will they succeed? Despite its big buzz the pocketPC became a large failure. Mine sits plug in to its USB cradle now simply collecting dust.
The bottom line is that it doesn't hurt to have competition. Competition leads to better products at better prices, maybe this will finally scare apple enough forcing them to lower their prices on their cash cow. I find iPods and all of apple products to be hugely overpriced. They introduce the iPod Video late last year and I didn't even bother to check it out since I knew its price point would be untouchable for someone like myself. Stay tuned, time will tell...
Today you might have seen a big change, if you are an ask jeeves frequent visitor that is. It seems that with the introduction of a recently new CEO, the friendly butler was given the boot. Though many felt the butler served as a traditional representation of service, the folks at the now Ask.com viewed it as an evolution from simply asking questions to a new level of Web searching.
When you are trying to bring a company out of the ground, sometimes drastic measure must be taken, that is what the upper management at Askjeeves.com did, they got rid of their old image and now have taken a simpler approach, comparable to that of Google. Though not necessarily a bad thing to emulate your competition, especially one as successful as Google, I think one needs to follow a path of caution in order not to be labeled as a copy cat.
The bottom line is that one must be able to recognize when an image no longer follows the brand or truly represents the mission statement of a company. Just like we change our look to keep up with the times, the same has to be done by corporations,
Google release its beta version of click to call today. This new service by the Search Engine giant allows users to click on the famous ad-words to have a business contact them immediately. Basically, every time you click on an ad, the user is put in touch with the merchant either via google talk or via a land line.
The google gurus just keep getting better at producing common sense ideas. It is hard to come up with an original idea, but these guys just keep pumping them out like they're going out of style. The convergence of technology is unreal.
The bottom line is that you not only need to be #1, but you need to fight to stay there. Through innovation and technological advances, the google folks have been able to accurately and properly do just that. To find out more about this service read more at TMCnet.
Not everyone can and know the difference between designing for the Web and for print. There's the obvious resolution difference, when doing print work you want to design at a minimum of 150 dpi while on the web you want to optimize for faster downloads and smaller file size.
Color was an issue of the past, now a days you no longer need to follow a web safe palette unless you are creating gif files which have a max limit of 256 colors with a palette of 216 colors. 99% of monitors read millions of colors, so most likely your core audience falls within this limits so why not use the colors while optimizing file size.
But most important of it all, is what most designers overlook, the page fold. In print, the viewer sees the whole page at once, on the Web, however, the viewer is limited to their screen resolution and yet so many designers create headers that occupy the top half of the page. Folks a 90 to 100 pixel header will more than suffice and give you enough room to display a nice eye-catching graphic that showcases the title.
The bottom line is that as a designer, you must know and be aware of all aspects of the medium you are designing for and maximize the space you are given. Keep in mind the advantages and disadvantages of this medium and work towards a good compromise.
No, we are not in danger, no, we still have an atmosphere, and yes there is life left within us. If this is so, then why is everyone making such a big deal about blackberry and their patent case. They stole technology, they should be shut down, regardless of how many subscribers they have or how much revenue the company is making, or how many will become unemployed. This is something they should have thought off before they decided to infringe in other people's ideas and technologies.
While RIM was growing a poor company was been left behind. The company that came up with the technology to provide so many access to email anywhere they go. Am I the only one that see this as a problem?
The bottom line is that patents, copyrights, and trademarks exist for a reason, to prevent other from becoming wealthy at the expense of others. Maybe RIM had the capital to promote themselves and build a successful brand, but is time to cough up some cash to the real brain behind the powerful gadget. There are more important things in life than worrying if you are going to have to switch providers for your mobile service. There are countless other services that offer what blackberry have, some do it better. Stop supporting these people and let the law run its course, if what they did is legit then they and you have nothing to worry about.
I recently read an article regarding a new site, www.Zillow.com This site is designed to provide information regarding appraisals of houses across the US.
Funny thing is, that it is inaccurate at best. I ran the tool for several house for which I happened to know the listing price and found that the site is anywhere from 20 to 50% off depending on the area where I conducted the search.
This site is a brilliant idea as it will give current homeowners and idea of what their houses are worth, and further it will give potential buyers a clue what houses in a neighborhood should be going for. This tool will give buyer's the power to negotiate better when it comes time to make an offer.
The bottom line is that an idea has to start been developed somewhere. This site is a good start, but they have a lot of room for improvement. A site that takes this to the next level can be found by clicking here. This folks really have this down, unfortunately for some of you, it is only good for CT and Mass.
The truth is that we have become so dependent on computers that the slightest downtime, we can think of no other thing but to check email or go online to find more information. Are we truly informing ourselves to death?
I receive over 100 emails a day, that's not counting the other 300 spam emails. With all this information and communication why is it then that many companies fail die to lack of communication between departments or other sister companies?
The bottom line is that we continue to have a thirst for information. A thirst that is never satisfying and that is because human nature is to seek and absorb as much knowledge as we possibly can.
This holiday is the biggest scam of the year. So you need to buy a threat for your significant other, then probably run off to some restaurant to celebrate the occasion, and lastly you get to complain about the service or lack thereof and if you are lucky you get to go home and smooch with the one you love.
To me, everyday is Valentine's day, you love this person every day and you should demonstrate it each and every single day as if it was your last. If you truly love this person, there is no doubt in your that what I point out here is true. Back in the day, this day marked the event at which time birds would go off to mate. This let to the rituals of humans emulating nature, and the sentiment was exchange with love notes, often referred to as valentines. During British colonization, the tradition was imported as one business man had settle in Massachusetts and had open a card and stationery store. In order to develop new ideas and commercialize on this day, the business man daughter borrowed from the idea of receiving a "valentine" to create the know multi-billion dollar industry.
The bottom line is that this young lady was able to creatively generate more revenue for her father's store. In the process, she started a new tradition of commercializing this holiday, which later led to commercialiation of every holiday we celebrate today. We are a materialistic society, and it is up to each and every one of you to creatively develop new ideas to further your economic future and established new traditions for the masses to follow.
Remember when you were a little kid and you would get a small blank notebook and make a series of similar drawings to then flip the pages at a rapid rate and make it seem as if you just drew a cartoon. Well, you no longer need a pencil to do so. FlipClip allows you to create a short 30 second video, upload it to their site and for a nominal fee, they will send you a book with each page representing a frame of your video.
This is revolutionary as it allows you to design any kind of video, be it something you record or something you draw in a computer. The limitations are the 30 seconds. You can now illustrate and animate in flash, send out your movie to this folks and have that converted to a flip book for you to entertain your kids and family.
The bottom line is that these folks are capitalizing on an old idea by using the power of the computer. It is amazing the ideas that some come up with, I can only wish I was this creative. To find out more about flip book and flip clip, visit www.flipclips.com
So many feel like their companies are spying on them, yet they fail to see what their employers are doing. It seems that 80 to 85 percent of employees use their work computers to perform personal tasks with them. From Presidents and CEO's to entry level personnel all seem to get stricken by boredom at some point during the work day, leaving them no choice, but to turn to their PC and perform tasks ranging from online shopping, looking for another job, to viewing pornographic materials.
Problems arise when personal activity on the work computer affects employee productivity. Websense, a popular Internet blocking tool, estimates that US companies loose more than $178 billion annually in productivity.
Another problem is that Web sites and pop-up ads may have spyware that can make their way through a company's network, leading to espionage and network damage. Spam, or unsolicited e-mails, can carry computer viruses or worms that also paralyze networks.
The bottom line is that if you get bore, you should find a better way to entertain yourself than to turn to the internet at your employers expense. Think about how to better perform your daily tasks, or get up and walk around to clear your mind. It is perfectly fine to check a stock quote or a sport score, but when you are performing these tasks for a period longer than that of which you are devoting to your work, you must admit that there is a problem. Although this kind of abuse of computer privileges at work, including criminal activity, is not the norm, this is the cause for regulating software that ruin the situation for everyone else.
Many out there pay thousands of dollars to get their pages optimized for search engines, but do they bother to check on what they have purchased. Today, it was announced that the Germany division of BMW has been banned from google for gaming the search engine.
I can't say it enough, SEO is great, it helps you get your Web site on the space, but it is one thing to optimize and it is another to deceit. If you are going to scam and deceit, you will be discovered and booted. What so many people don't realize is that Google does have humans checking and verifying complaints about Web sites scamming, specially if you are a high profile site like BMW.
The bottom line is that if your going to hire someone to SEO your site, you better be sure to research their credentials, ask for samples of sites they have SEOed, and lastly check with other companies to compare your company of choice against others. After your project has been completed, visit the search engines for which you been told your site has been optimized for and look for your site, if you don't have the time to check use a tool like this one.
If you are in the Web business, then most likely you must have designed an HTML email at some point in your career. A few years back, it was the rave to send out Web pages in an email. It made marketing a product so much easier.
Now, 2006 is here and with it some of the toughest spam filters to defeat. I, for one, recommend text only emails to all my clients. The ROI on these is far better than any HTML email I have send in the past year. Out of a list of 30K, I will be lucky if 1K make it and 300 actually get opened. With text only emails, I get a 45% delivery rate and 5 to 6 % open rate, that's 3 to 4 percent better than the national average.
Well, if you still insist in sending out HTML emails, yahoo and AOL just made your day. Today the companies announce a partnership with Goodmail which will certify your email and make sure that it gets deliver to the intended recipient provided that they opt-in to your list. The price a fraction of a penny per email address. Is it worth the price?
The bottom line is that with text only emails you are guaranteed a better delivery and open rate, so why bother, if you really want to show HTML, make a landing page and make it the first line of your text only emails. You are surely to get better delivery and the fraction of the penny, well, multiply a half a penny times 30k, and you are looking at over 150 dollars. This is a small blast considering most companies blast to quantities in the hundreds of thousands, you do the math.
Are you a parent that may have concerns about the content your children encounter as they surf the Web? Are you yourself prone to over-react when you encounter smut on the Web? Do you simply want to limit access to certain sites?
If you answer yes to any of the above questions, then you will be happy to know that Microsoft has listened. The software giant release a tool that allows you to limit access to only sites you specify. For instructions on how to setup the already build in feature that most aren't aware of click onto Microsoft site.
The bottom line is that in this day and age of free speech, you are bound to come across content that you might not approve of, and although you have the choice to simply move on, many find that this is less of an option. I understand if the intend is to prevent youngsters from seeing things they shouldn't, but for the most part speech or any part thereof should never be stopped. If we stop communication, basically you are stopping knowledge.
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