Web Consulting Washington DC

Picture having a running grocery list at work. As you happen to think about things you need to pick up at the store, you quickly scribble things down on a piece of paper. On the way home from work, you realize you have an hour to kill and you decide to stop by the supermarket to knock it out. As you walk into the store, you realize, darn you forgot your list.

Has that happen to you?

I signed up with Gubb to manage my grocery list and now there’s no more missing gorcery list problems. There’s no more list problems, period.

Yeah, but I have room for one more overly feature rich, complex program to help manage my life and business like I have room for another set of in-laws, why should I use this thing?

I found this little “web 2″ gem to be just about perfect. You can definitely squeeze this one in. Gubb.net lets you make, lists, that’s it. Simple. And you can access them through your web enabled cell phone. The sign up, setup, all of it, was a breeze and I got right into using it in about 10 seconds. They strictly follow the “don’t make me think” rules of engagement. It’s just absolutely useful.

Great, now the in-laws want us to vacation with them. They’re talking about camping and they want my wife and I to bring… everything. I don’t want to get swamped with email requests for BBQ chips, how do I get this organized between us all without losing it?

First take a deep breath. No worries, mate. Just share your list with your in-laws, or whoever you want to help your get organized. You just add their email address and your off to the races, or camping, or whatever you do with your in-laws. Its one of the best list sharing tools I have come across.

Wow. Well, the in-laws just called and they said they liked this thing so much that they were wondering if they can post the list to their blog. Yes, they’re bloggers, and apparently somewhat famous, probably writing about how much they enjoy bugging me.

Common, this is web 2.0 stuff. There’s always an RSS feed. Simply click under options and find the Feed that’s associated with with the list, copy, paste into your favorite news reader or blog tool, and that’s it! You can attach your list anywhere frankly, with anything that understands RSS technology. For your privacy, your feed reader should support “authenticated feeds”, which simply means you need to enter a username and password to access the feed the first time. You can turn this authentication off if need be.

What else can this baby do?

Check out iCal. If you have Outlook 2007, this feed type integrates with your Outlook Calendar really well. So for example, you can track a list of appointments on Gubb that will appear as a calendar in your Outlook and you’ll be able to identify any conflicts that you may come across your other calendars (use Outlooks Overlay feature). Very easy to use together.

I love it and I love you.

I know bro. I know.

We are fast approaching the end of the year and for some of you, you only have a few days before you leave for the holidays. Before you rush off to gift giving and eggnogs, here are 5 things to do right now to make sure your web site is in good shape for 2008.

1) At the top of the list, check that darn copyright date! Nothing is more glaring than reading about all the rights you’ve reserved, last year. Make sure that the date either automatically updates itself (dynamically generated) or that someone in your organization adds 2008 to the date range the minute they get back into the office January 1st (yeah right). Yes, it may be a mere formality in most cases, but search engines do look for incongruent elements like these and factor them into their algorithms to determine your page rank and ultimately your search engine results placement. If they see your site is still claiming rights for 2007, they may penalize you over your competitor who’s got a brand new 2008 copyright declared.

2) While your you’re at it, check that privacy statement and terms of service. A year has passed and can you remember the last time you looked at the privacy statement? Probably not. Is it still congruent with your company policies? Does it reference services or products you no longer support or provide service for? Privacy statements and TOS’ seem to fall into the “create and forget” types of pages. However, considering that in the even of a dispute or issue, they may save you or your customers some heartache, you should really be periodically reviewing them. Every 6 months for information web sites (corporate web site), quarterly for ecommerce sites, and monthly for any innovative, user content generated web sites. Yes, that means reviewing them with your attorney if your fortunate enough to afford one.

3) Do you need update pricing? Now is as good as any to decide if you need to update your pricing or inventory. Look and see if there will be any increase in shipping costs in particular. 2008 is already shaping out to be a sketchy year so you might as well get ready now.

4) Look for any outdated or soon-to-be-dated content. Do you need to move anything into those “archives” like you did the year before? Do you need to setup any new 2008 areas of your web site? It is better to avoid creating directories with the date as part of the URI. Yes, my blog does say 2007 in each of the top posts. And yes, in this particular case, do as I say, not as I do. Again, search engines will automatically start to defer down dated content, particularly last year’s content. Don’t be surprised to see drop in your web stats, it’s part of the search engine year end clean up that happens. That leads us to #5.

5) Create and stage any new content for early 2008! After a week or two off for the holidays, you will likely have to take a little time to get back into the routine of updating your web sites. So get started now! Create a few draft articles for your blog and try to get the bulk of it done before you leave. Sure, you may want to write the proverbial “look back to 2007″ article, but its far more important to talk about what’s coming ahead in early 2008 than what happened in 2007. As far as SEO goes, nostalgia is always out, “new and improved” is always, always going to be in.

Happy holidays everyone! Thanks for making 2007 fantastic.

Ernesto Gluecksmann

How many of you out there have registered more than a few domain names? Considering how hard it is to simply find an available “.com” domain name, I would venture to say there’s a lot of you that have more than one. It make sense, you want to sure they’re available to you when someday in the future when you’re ready to do something with them, they’ll be there. And, if you like some of my more entrepreneurial clients, a few domain names can sometimes be a lot of domain names.

As much as I deplore the illegal practice of domain squatting (aka cybersquatting), it is certainly legal to register domain name for a future use. If you’re lucky enough to even find a decent domain name that isn’t already held by someone else, you should consider registering today, because really may not be there for you tomorrow.

That being said, NameDrive is a great service to park your domain names with them and here’s why:

If you use Register.com or GoDaddy as your registrar, you duly pay your annual registration fee to keep the domain under your ownership and control. Then, like most of us, we get to work on creating a masterpiece of a website, which of course takes time.

Until the website is complete, what is actually running under your shiny new domain name? Advertisements. And guess who’s profiting from them? Surprise! Not you. Your beloved registrar, yes, the company you just seemingly paid for the privilege for them to advertise on your domain name.

Argh, ok, so why not you? I agree, why not you!? It’s your domain name right?

Ok, queue in NameDrive. They help you sort this mess out. You sign up with them, they run ads on you domain name… and generously split the ad proceeds with you. Far better deal if you ask me.

How?

You simply point your domain name’s DNS to their servers, and they handle the rest. You can pick from a variety of templates. You can select what types of ads are suitable to run under you domain name (you wouldn’t run football ads under a “KittensNPuppiesForMe.com” would you? No of course not.) Or you can just let NameDrive put up a generic template and forget about it.

They’ll manage the ads, rotate out lower performing ads out, rotating better performing ads in, and provide you with statistics of how many visitors and click-throughs your domain names have attracted on their very own.

There are several other companies that compete against NameDrive, but most of them are for professional domain name… hogs. They offer services to questionable practice of bulk domain name buying and dumping. It’s not quiet illegal but not exactly nice either. These competitors want the big fish, and they set a minimum number of domain names you should have in tote. Usually anyone with less than 100 domains they’re not interested.

But you can place your one domain name if you like with NameDrive, they’re happy to have you no matter what. There’s no minimum stay, no contract, no setup fees, nothing. You put your domains in, and keep them there until your ready to do something else with them.

How much can I make with them and how do I know what they’re earning?

From NameDrive’s reports, you’ll easily see what kind of traffic they get without any heavy lifting. But before you get too excited with delusions of easy money, its not exactly easy.

In fact most of your domain names will likely not earn a dime. But don’t throw in the towel, it just means these domain names need to be developed into a full fledge website before traffic starts to generate. It’s a rare gem, that you domain name alone, has enough typed-in and residual traffic to make cash.

Regardless of your luck, NameDrive can still help you. Apart from identifying if your domain name is a diamond or dud, they have additional services available to you that can still help you make some cash. For example, if you want to sell your domain name, you can put it on the chopping block with them. They’ll help you find a buyer and broker a sale for you.

Or more interesting, NameDrive’s latest service called BuildingBlocks helps domain name owners find interested professional web developers, to help you develop your website concepts as part of a revenue sharing approach.

Whatever you end up doing, if you have a few domain names just sitting there collecting ad revenue for your registrar, I would consider parking them with NameDrive and make sure that revenue goes into your pocket, not the registrar. Good luck!

You found an interesting Web 2.0 looking website that promises you hours amusing entertainment but before you can go any further, you have to sign up for an account. You know the routine, and by now you have it down to mere clicks of your tab key thanks to AutoComplete that practically fills these suckers out for you. You click submit and just when you expect the doors to open, you get the following message…

You verification code has been sent to your email address. Please check your email and copy the verification number exactly a you see it. If it doesn’t arrive within a few minutes, check your junkmail folder… then bother us if its not there either, we’ll resend you another one.

What? Great, already your starting to have doubts about this website… its bad enough they don’t trust new users, they can’t even email you a link based verification, you actually have to TYPE the code in by hand? Groan. But you’ve too vested in the process, all those Tabs and AutoCompletes are going to be good for nothing if you don’t go through this right of passage.

So you open Outlook, your hand already on the mouse, and Outlook already downloading your new messages, bam, there it is, the verification code containing email. You open the email, you see the code, it’s a long ugly one with numbers, characters, mixed case. No worries. You double left click on it, and with your left hand you do a stealthy CNTRL-C to copy (you’re not some newbie, you know how to roll with the Cut ‘n’ Paste) and move the mouse back to the browser over the verification input bar… CNTRL-V to paste your left hand and last you click submit.

Your verification code you entered does not match the one we have recently sent you. Please try again.

What?! What is it talking about? You just did it perfectly. Your not wrong, it’s wrong! Ok, calm down. You do it again, double left click with the mouse, left hand CNTRL-C to copy, you move the point over, select the verification input field, CNTRL-P to paste, and this time RETURN for good measure.

Your verification code you entered does not match the one we have recently sent you. Too many attempts have been made, you may contact support and we may response at our earliest convenience.

Great. What happened?

Well… looks like your Outlook 2007 is picking up a trailing space. When double clicking, the highlight surrounds not just the word, but an extra trailing space. The reason for is that Word or Outlook is trying to help you by not leaving a space when editing text. But if you do a lot of single word copying from Outlook to your browser (in the case of verification codes or forgotten passwords), it can be a pain because it means you have to remember to remove the trailing space.

To change this quirky behavior, it’s very easy to do:

Step 1
Click Tools and select Options

Step 2
Select Mail Format tab

Step 3
Click on Editor Options

Step 4
Select Advanced

Step 5
Near the bottom of the page, next to “Use smart cut and paste” click on Settings

Step 6
Uncheck Adjust paragraph space on paste

Why this works?

Most verification codes come in their own line without anything else after it. So by disabling paragraph space, it doesn’t grab the last space into your browser. You can still edit your emails just fine, using “smart” cut and paste, your just make sure it doesn’t try anything too smart ass.

There’s 97 checkbox options in Outlook that you have to go through with until you found how disable this, but aren’t you glad I just told you? Your welcome.

Callwave.com

On average, studies are indicating that the average professional is interrupted every three minutes with email, answering calls, chat requests, etc. This apparently is costing us all about 2 hours out of each day, just trying to get back to completing our primary work.

How does anyone is actually anything done?
When I consult professionals about their communications, one of the usual “ah ha!” moments I get is when we get around to talking about it means to be mobile, starting with their cell phones.

I usually ask a few questions:

at your office
Do you get a lot of calls during the day?
Do you have to stop your work to answer them?
Have you ever considered using an office assistant to handle your calls?

outside of your office
Do you have to call your office voicemail to check your voice messages?
If you are able to forward office calls to your cell phone, do you often forget to do so?
Do you use your voicemail to screen your calls?

If you answered “Yes” to any of these, read on.

Setting up your cell phone as your single source of voice communications is the one the first basic steps to going fully mobile as well as maintaining your sanity.

I tried that already, but I couldn’t screen my calls on my cell phone like I can with my office line.

With Callwave, now you can, and far better than what your office line could ever do.

Callwave is another free service that I consider a must-have for professional or small business. At its core service, it is a Voicemail-to-Text transcription service* (a-la-Jott.com’s voice-to-text transcription service). By enabling certain Callwave features, it can help you gain serious productivity and allow you to be completely mobile.

If you’re like me, most of your calls tend to be urgent but very few of them are not drop-everything-right-now type of emergencies. So, I have to be able to screen these calls, at the same time I have to maintain my interruptions to a minimum if I’m expected to get anything done.

Here’s how I recommend setting things up

Step 1
Forward all calls to Callwave’s voicemail.Whenever I don’t pick a call or I have my cell phone turned off, all my callers are sent to voicemail on Callwave’s service. In order to make that work, you have to use what most major cell phone carriers call Busy Call Forwarding (Verizon is *71). What this does is send the caller to Callwave’s Vtxt enabled voicemail instead of your carrier’s default voicemail.

Step 2
Have Callwave send voicemail transcriptions to your cell phone’s SMS. As soon as my callers are done leaving a voicemail, Callwave sends a txt message to my cell phone with the transcribed voicemail. This feature comes in very handy whenever I happen to be somewhere that I can’t take calls but I can read txt messages.

Step 3
Make sure Callwave sends an email message with the full audio to your email account. Callwave then sends an email of this message to my Outlook Hosted Exchange service. I filter them into an Outlook folder that archives them. This enables me to store the audio of every message I ever received, with searchable transcribed text as record of my messages. No more full voicemail boxes or lost messages.

Step 4
Install Callwave’s Internet Answering Machine to screen your calls at your office (or laptop). Last but not least, when I am my office, it plays voicemail audio through my speakers with the use of Callwave’s Internet Answering Machine. This lets me screen the calls for emergencies, without having to stop whatever it is that I’m doing.

The last tip I recommend is setting up twice day to return calls, once in the morning, and once before COB. With Callwave, you definitely rely on your cell phone as the single communications point, while keeping the interruptions to a minimum, but allow for truly important emergencies to get through.

This agrees entirely with the principal of centralizing your information storage, while distributing access across various mediums. A topic I will be coming back to from time to time.

*These transcriptions are sophisticated automated transcribers. While not entirely accurate, it helps you get to the gist of the call without having to pay for expensive human transcribers. But trust me, it’s pretty darn good.

BTW, this post falls under a new category, Total Mobility. This is category will cover services and gear that I use that keep things going smooth, wherever I happen to be.

Jott.com is one of the best new services I have come across recently. If you’re a web marketing or technology consultant like me, you probably find yourself driving to and from client locations a good deal part of your working week. The time I have then lets me collect my thoughts about the meeting I just had or the next steps on a project that I am working on. For whatever reason, it tends to be a particularly productive time to brainstorm for SEO phrases and content ideas.

Unfortunately, these productive brainstorming sessions leave me with thoughts that I need to annotate somewhere, but wait a second, what am I crazy, I’m driving! I need to keep both hands on the wheel. Oh and how temping it is to grab my Moto Q, usually charging in the seat over. It almost seems too easy to just pick it up and attempt to type a note to myself.

Yeah, I know, bad idea.

Thankfully, Jott can save my ideas and my life, by transcribing my voice instructs into my email, while I keep my hands on the wheel.

What’s Jott about?

“Jott™ is a revolutionary new service that automatically converts your voice into e-mail and text messages—anytime, anywhere, with any cell phone. Jott™ makes you more productive and efficient by capturing your ideas, notes to self, tasks, and more without using your keypad.”

- Jott.com

For road warriors, here’s four easy steps to setup Jott on your phone.

Step 1
First, sign up with an account on Jott.com. They will send you a typical email with a link to verify your account. Then fill out a couple of questions to let them know what type of cell phone service you have and whether or not you want Jott to email you, text message you, or both.

Step 2
What you to do next is add 1866-Jott-123 in your contacts list and then save it as one of your quick dial numbers. Mine is #5. If I press and hold 5 on my cell phone, it automatically dials and connects to Jott’s service. By reading the caller id, Jott knows I’m the one calling, and presto, you get the pleasant,”Who do you want to jott?” question. Setting up quick dial depends what type of phone you have, but most modern cell phones work roughly the same.

“Ok, but your still picking up your cell phone while your driving to press 5, that’s not quiet safe is it?”

Step 3
The next step is to get familiarize yourself with your voice-activation services. Again, this depends in large part to the type of phone and/or type of service you may have. Moto Q’s have built in voice-activation in the phone itself. My hands free device allows me to voice-activate Jott’s service with a quick press of button, nothing more complicated than turning the radio in your car.

Step 4
Use it. I have all my voice notes sent to my inbox for future reference and processing. But I also like getting them sent to my cell phone via SMS. By asking Jott for a “Reminder”, I can set Jott to send me a note at a future time and date. If I happen to be in a meeting or in an environment where I can’t leave my cell phone ringer on, I will be get a transcribed version of my note via SMS Text*.

There are a number of uses for Jott but collecting my thoughts on the go and sending myself reminders, I have found to be what I use it for most frequently. It’s quiet remarkable how easy it is to use and how sophisticated it’s transcribing technology has to be to make this magic happen so accurately. I haven’t tried blogging with it, but I am told it does a pretty good job as well. I will have to try that sometime soon.

Right now Jott.com is free, in beta, I suspect it will have some nominal fee associated with it when it’s ready for primetime.

*Note: Make sure you have an adequate plan for SMS. Overage charges are very expansive so keep an eye on your phone bill and make sure you have enough service cover your typical usage.

LogoLounge.com

This is probably one of the best sites I know to keep up with the world of logo design. Bill Gardner of LogoLounge puts together an annual Logo Trends report is just fantastic.

Logo Design
Creating new websites or blogs from scratch can be an overwhelming process, particularly for new businesses or clients whereby this is their first foray into the online world as content providers. There are just so many possibilities and decisions to make.

Let The Pros Do It
Occasionally, a client asks me to get involved with a logo creation and selection process. You should always hire a professional or a agency to develop the creative materials. My professional web consulting background stems from years of web programming and development. While I can definitely tell you how the aesthetics of your website/logo are impacting your business, I am not going to be the guy to design your logo. And unless you are a graphic design, you need to hire a professional. Creating art and discerning the quality of art in a market, are entirely separate skills.

Function And Form, Always!
I have long since learned (as well as the entire web industry) that function and form must go hand in hand. Consider it an absolute.

The example, is this blog I have started. We have all the sophisticated functionality of a WordPress blog in place, what are we missing? We’re missing a compelling ‘look’. Something that signals to visitors that this is a substantive site with valuable information.

“But I like this template, what’s wrong with just using the WordPress basic template?”

A visitor coming to this site is less likely to come back. It has a “template” like feel to it. The message a template site delivers is that the author doesn’t care enough or isn’t capable to provided a unique site design that represents itself as ready to serious business. And the more experienced the visitor is with the web, more likely they have been exposed to default templates that come built in.

I do care, by the way.

The Making of WCDC
One of the goals of WCDC is to implement many of the techniques and concepts of developing websites by not just talking about it, but by developing this blog and reflecting on it. So trust that, a logo and design template are on my list of To-Do’s for WCDC.

It should not go unnoticed the order I recommend when creating a website from scratch is how I am writing these posts. Its my hopes that I can chronicle its growth and share with you the many things that go into developing a great website.

Step 1
Find an available and suitable domain name by stopping BustAName.com.

Step 2
Get creative and put together a logo. Stop by LoungeLogo.com for ideas concepts.

Step 3
Develop your site design (I’ll come back to this).

Of course this a grand over simplification, but it is the initial first steps.

BustAName.com

When starting a business, coming up with a name for you business, to me, is probably one of the tougher things one has to do. It seems easy, it should take a lot of thought, some trial and error and some research. It use to be you could simply come up with name, check to see if it was trademarked, and if wasn’t previously held by someone else, all you had to do is write it into your articles of incorporation and “tad-da”, you’re in business with a brand new shiny name.

Now-a-days, you can not brainstorm a name of a new business without taking into account whether or not there was a suitable and available domain name for it. I would venture to say that you’re more likely to find someone squatting on a good domain name, than you are finding it already as a registered as trademark by a competitor in your industry.

The reason is thanks to cybersquatters, these guys are out to make bunk by registering all the common domain names that anyone could want, sitting on them until they find someone to resell them to you at a marked up price. It’s a bit like scalping tickets for a popular concert. These folks have no intention to do anything domain name, other than selling it to you at a premium.

So, thanks to these guys, many times finding a domain name and thus a name for your new company, is a little more about compromise. Someone may very well have your first pick of a domain name, but by playing around a little with some variations, you can find a great alternative domain name without having to dole out hard cash or go to battle with a cybersquatter over it.

Fortunately, there’s a easy tool to help you come up with variations. Bustaname.com is simple ajax based site allows you enter various keywords or phrases and it displays which combinations are available.

Three Simple Steps
1) First add keywords and synonyms that relate to your business name that you’re hoping find a good domain for, then click add.

2) This is where they appear and you can get further suggested words by placing your mouse over the blue arrow.

You can remove any them simply by clicking on the red icon.

3) Anything that appears under Available Domains is yours for the taking, if you want them. They even connect directly to popular domain name registrars (yes, inexpensive ones!).

TIP: Exclude some variations with the use of Groups

If you play around with it, you’ll realize that you may want to try various combinations of some keywords and at the same time excluding others. For example, try combinations with the words “frames” and “framing”, but do not want available domains showing both such as framesframingart.com, all you need is click on Add Group and drag both those keywords into the group.

Good domains are easy to say and easy to spell. Just remember, you’ll be saying it a lot so make it easy on yourself.

Start with Bustaname.com to help you find a good one for you. Good luck!

As a web technology consultant, I am constantly on the prowl for simple tools that one can use to improve the way we work with information. Some tools are quiet simple (and free) to use. A recent one I found was iColorFolder is free to download and use.

iColorFolder brings you an extra set of folder images that allows you quickly colorize some of the desktop mess you may have. If you have more than 10 folder items on your desktop or in your My Documents folder, they can all start to look the same. You end up straining your eyes looking at each label until you find that important folder your looking for.

This little tool helps you distinguish them by quickly letting you select a color with use of a right-click of your mouse.

The first thing it does is replace your standard windows folder with one of their base folders. As with most software in general, that comes with a quirk. The first time you do this, your desktop icons are likely to get moved around. But this affect should go away (once you reorganize your desktop like you had before) and that’s about the worst of it.

You can select several folder skins, so you can make you base folders look different from your standard system if you care to “individualize” your desktop, or you stick to your XP or Vista style folders, they provide both.

Note: Make sure to check off “Use generic folder icon defined in the skin”. Not sure why this isn’t checked off as the default but it should be unless you plan on create a custom set of folders icons yourself. I suspect we all have better things to do with our time, don’t we?

After this initial setup, the rest is cake. When you create a new folder, that you prefer to colorize to distinguish it from the rest, just right-click and select Color Label. You’ll get get pull down menu of your available color options. You even get some extra folder images (click on Custom) that you can use to define folder that contain videos, pictures and other miscellaneous ones.

Now you’ll be able to identify and find important directories quickly and with less strain on your eyes. You’ll be glad to be using this little application.

BTW, you can download extra skins from their site as well. I found the base set of skins was sufficient enough for me.

Younger Workers Demanding Web 2.0 Tech On The Job — Enterprise 2.0 — InformationWeek

Moore then put up some IDC research numbers showing that 45% of companies have workers blogging, 43% use RSS feeds, and 35% of companies have employees using wikis.

That’s a significant numbers using RSS and and wikis such as Microsoft’s Sharepoint that we offer at IGT. It’s quiet astounding to see the rate of adoption of these technologies, particularly RSS feeds. Google, Microsoft, Apple have brough RSS into the mainstream fold. My Outlook 2007, which comes included with IGT’s email service, allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds of your favorite weblogs and websites.

Its an option located between your Outbox and your Sent Items. Look for the orange RSS logo. From here you can some of the blogs I subscribe to. Any ones in bold means there are new published entries for me to read.

This also synches with my Moto Q, through our new wireless synching service. What’s so great about RSS is that I do not have to remember to go visit some of the weblogs to see if there’s anything new, this system keeps track and notifies of new enteries.

Most of the time I don’t even go to the website to view the entry, I can read it right in my Outlook (or PDA).

Once you click on article it, unbolds it to marking it as having read it. Just like an email message only it’s syndicated feed and the best part, you don’t have to subscribe by giving email address. You just need to come a webpage that has the RSS logo on it.

This URL (page) has an RSS feed attached to it. To subscribe to our weblog, it’s really simple.

All you need to do is copy the URL, right click on “RSS Feeds” folder your Outlook 2007.

Copy and Paste and your done! You’re a new subscriber.

Its that easy and that’s why RSS is fast become mainstream and why every business must get into the business of publishing news.