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GeekTopia AKA MacBookGeek 2.0 or How I Created a website with Joomla!!!

Filed Under: Web Dev Project by tduck0612 — Leave a comment
August 30, 2010

Joomla!

Joomla! CMS is a multi functional Open Source application for creating websites. It is free to use and has a great community support.

The Joomla tutorials collection is dedicated to showing you the basics of the Joomla 1.5 and the older Joomla 1.0 CMS. After reading it, you will be able to create a fully-functional website with Joomla in just a few minutes. If you don’t have a Joomla website yet, you can sign up here for a Joomla hosting account and get a free Joomla installation.  On this page you will find listed all topics from the Joomla 1.0 Tutorial and the Joomla 1.5 Tutorial.

Joomla! main benefits:

  • Multiuser and Multilevel environment – many users can interact and contribute to the development of a Joomla-based site. Users can be assigned to different groups with different privileges;
  • WYSIWYG editor – the intuitive What You See Is What You Get editor allows for easy editing of the content online;
  • Additional components / modules – the Joomla system can be easily enhanced with additional functionalities from integrating a forum to installing an E-commerce solution;
  • Templates – there are numerous free Joomla templates on the net and Siteground is proud to offer some of the best ones!
Build your Social Network web design using Joomla

Social network implementation has become a necessity for successful websites. Joomla!, the popular Open-Source CMS, has some great and affordable ways to bring your site to the social networking level.  Let’s review how one can develop a social networking website:
Joomla! shouldn’t just be looked at as a CMS but a framework from which to build your applications and accomplish your dreams. Before you jump in and start lacing together extensions to build your site, proper planning and a roadmap is essential.
Site Strategy
So you want to start a social network with Joomla! you say? First you need a purpose statement. In our sample, this is our purpose:
To create and nurture business relationships by offering free network and support opportunities.
After establishing the site purpose we need to know the site requirements. Start by asking questions:
How will people use my site?
Users will create custom content and events. They will also comment and review past events and content.
How will they interact with others?
Interaction will come by having user created groups, messaging, blogs / articles and helps, etc.
How much control do I want to give them?
Users will have unrestricted access to create content, events, comments, etc. Moderators will monitor the activity.
Are there features I can offer users to generate site income?
Users may purchase banner ad spots on the different pages.
Once we obtain answers to our questions, we need to create requirement guidelines to help us find the right Joomla plugins to use.
Some basic things that I will be needing are:

Email/ InstantMessaging /commenting system for user interaction towards custom created content.
Event creation, registration, etc.
Blogging
Groups
Banner system
A Forum for helpful discussion threads
Photo Galleries
Social Gaming
Whatever else comes to mind……
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Twitter’s “Who to follow” Feature, aka WTF

Filed Under: General Stupidity, Tech Trash Talk by tduck0612 — Leave a comment
August 26, 2010
WTF is Twitter?

WTF is Twitter?

Twitter is currently testing a new feature with about 25% of its members called “Who to follow” (henceforth referred by its unfortunate acronym, WTF). One of those 25% is, apparently, me. When I log in there’s a box on the main page that suggests two users for me to follow. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s exactly what Facebook does.

The purpose of a test like this is to gather feedback, so here’s some feedback. (The usual caveats apply: I don’t work at Twitter, I don’t know the specifics of their technology or the requirements for this project, and I may be grumpy from the cold I’ve had all week.)

I hate it. It’s poorly named, poorly placed, and poorly implemented.

  • Poorly Named“Who to follow” is a command. It’s like saying “Do This Now.” People don’t like suggestions phrased as commands. So why not call it something like: “Suggested Twitterers” or “You Might Like”?

    It’s important to understand the emotions you’re triggering in the user. Human brains have evolved to recognize and react to faces. Showing the faces of people you know, along with command language, can create dissonance. It’s as if the person is giving you the command. That’s one of the reasons people are reacting so strongly.

  • Poorly PlacedThe location of information on a page offers insight into the company’s priorities. In this case, WTF appears on the right side of the page, above the main Twitter navigation (@replies, Direct Messages, Favorites, Retweets, and Search). This location implies that WTF is more important than the rest of those things. I disagree. It should be below the main navigation, with the rest of the optional items (Saved Searches, Lists, Trending, and Following).

    Speaking of those optional items, all of them can be toggled into a closed/minimized state that shows only the title of the section and not the content. But WTF does not get this toggle. Why? Adding the toggle would provide a pressure-release valve for members like me who don’t like it, while still making it available for those who do. Twitter’s designers clearly know this – a toggle is available for every other sidebar item outside of the main navigation – so the fact that it’s not implemented for WTF is perplexing.

    The only rationale for its placement, as far as I can tell, is that the top right corner is where it’s implemented on Facebook. But that’s not a good reason.

  • Poorly ImplementedWTF routinely recommends people I’ve blocked, and as you know, I block liberally. It also suggests people I’d followed for a while and consciously decided to stop following (sometimes you can like a person and not like their tweets). So suggesting these people is unhelpful at best, aggravating at worst.

    Finally, it’s aimed at the wrong audience. I can see how a feature like this would be very helpful to new members, but I am not a new member. My first public tweet was four years ago (my account was private before that). Twitter knows this about me. A more elegant interface would be active in making suggestions to new users, but more passive with active users like me, who’ve shown they already know how to find and follow people.

All in all, Twitter’s WTF is a great case study on why a feature that works well on Facebook cannot simply be copied and placed into another social context. Facebook is all about fastidious friend list maintenance – that’s the basic element there. Twitter is about … something else. The relationships are part of it, sure, but there’s more afoot. That’s why I like it.

Just to be clear, I’m not arguing against the existence of the feature, I’m just critiquing its implementation. Having a steady stream of new inputs is how community systems avoid groupthink. So the system should encourage users to follow more/different people. It should just be done as an optional suggestion, with more smarts behind it, in a place that’s equivalent to its value to the user. In other words, it should be designed to feel like Twitter. As it stands now, it feels like a piece of Facebook, grafted on to Twitter.

I should also say, I feel for the Twitter design team. They’re tinkering with a speeding train with a billion passengers that’s laying track as it goes. And all the passengers have bullhorns. It’s a tough gig and I want to see them succeed. I hope this post is taken as just a little piece of feedback from a longterm member with a pounding headache.

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How To Build a Social Networking Site using WordPress

Filed Under: Web Dev Project by tduck0612 — Leave a comment
August 23, 2010

buddypress_logo

To create a social networking site, you can either register a free account with a third party social networks provider or install open source software on your server and be your own administrator. There are pros and cons in these two methods. The first method allows you to handle your social networks without any technical knowledge, but you risk losing all your data when the third party site close down. The latter requires you to have certain technical knowledge, but you get full control over every single detail in your site.

With the release of BuddyPress, there is now a third way that is both easy to handle and allows you to have full control: turn your WordPress site into a social networking site.

BuddyPress is not a standalone social networking software. It is in fact a set of WordPress plugins and themes that enables the users to add social networking modules to their sites. You can either use it as an addon service to your existing blog, or convert your domain to a full fledge social networking site.

buddypress-screenshot

In case you are rushing off to grab the software and install on your site, here is the warning: BuddyPress doesn’t work on just any version of WordPress. You have to install (or upgrade if you are already running WordPress) WordPress MU before you can run BuddyPress. WordPress MU is an extension of WordPress that allows the users to easily create multiple blogs in one domain. BuddyPress requires this multiple blogs creation capability of WordPress MU to allow the users to register, set up and create their user profile

Installation

Since BuddyPress is essentially a series of WordPress plugins, installing BuddyPress is as easy as activating the plugins in the Plugins page. To fully integrate BuddyPress into your site, you’ll have to first change your WordPress theme to a BuddyPress-capable theme, then add the respective modules (widgets) via the Appearance -> Widgets section. Unlike WordPress, there are only few BuddyPress themes available for download. However, if you have experience with creating/modifying a WordPress theme, you shouldn’t have any problem in creating your own BuddyPress theme.

Activating BuddyPress in the Plugins page

activating-buddypress

Adding social networking widgets to the site

buddypress-widges

Features

Some of the features that you find in BuddyPress include extended profile, private messaging, adding of friends, forming of groups, activity streams, own blog etc.

BuddyPress is also able to integrate with bbPress, the WordPress-style forums. In future release, other features such as status update and photo album upload will also be included.

Back when BuddyPress is still in development stage, there has already been plenty of plugins available to enhance its functionality. These plugins are usual WordPress plugins and you can easily install/activate them in the Plugins page.

Useful Links

Here are some of the links that would be useful to you when you are integrating BuddyPress to your site.

Have you tried BuddyPress? How do you find its functionality compared to other social networking software?

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Do-It-Yourself Smart Radio Station With I-Tunes

Filed Under: Tech Trash Talk by tduck0612 — Leave a comment
August 19, 2010

A while ago I read a tip somewhere about how to make a few smart playlists work with each other to make a mix of music for a smaller iPod. After thinking for a short time I realized I could make a perfect little ever-changing radio station out of iTunes with a similar methodology. Start by considering what makes a good radio station (I know, it’s been a while…):

  • Your favorite music.
  • A balance of new and old music.
  • A moderate variety. You want to hear some songs repeatedly, but not at close intervals.
  • New old music. Don’t just play the same old songs, cycle them in and out.
  • Old new music. If a newer song is really good, keep it in rotation as an old song.

iTunes has a way to handle all of this. The core here is that you’re going to have to rate all of your music for this to work. Unrated music will not make it into rotation. It doesn’t have to be accurate right now. You can go find a favorite artist and mark all the tracks as fives or find all your audio books and mark them twos or something. Just get some ratings in. As your ratings change, so will the station.

The station consists of four main playlists:

  • Core – The complete list of music that is available to the station.
  • Infuser – New music that doesn’t suck.
  • Sprinkler – Old music that is rated highly.
  • The Station – Infuser + Sprinkler = The Station

Core

In Core you set criteria for what music you want on the station at all. Generally, I create an inclusive list of genres. For instance, the first five rules of my Core list are:

  • Genre contains Pop
  • Genre contains Rock
  • Genre contains Punk
  • Genre contains Alt
  • Genre contains Metal

Don’t forget that this is a substring match. Putting in “Alt” matches “Alternative” as well as “AltRock” and similar. Use the genre browser to see which groups will get matched.

Infuser

The Infuser playlist takes music from the Core playlist and picks unplayed music and brings it to the forefront. This does not mean it’s actually new music, just “new to you” music because you haven’t played it before. As this is a cyclical playlist due to it’s constraints, it will eventually play all the music in your Core playlist. At that point you will need to edit the criteria to open it up more.

  • Match all of the following conditions:
  • Play Count is less than 5
  • My Rating is greater than 2
  • Playlist is Core
  • Limit to 300 songs selected by random

Sprinkler

Infuser will give us new music and Sprinkler will sprinkle in some old classics for us. Sprinkler goes through the Core list and finds old music that we’ve played a lot, rated highly, and haven’t heard in a while.

  • Match all of the following conditions:
  • Last Played is not in the last 1 weeks
  • My Rating is greater than 3
  • Play Count is greater than 3
  • Playlist is Core
  • Limit to 200 songs selected by least recently played

The Station

  • Match any of the following conditions:
  • Playlist is Infuser
  • Playlist is Sprinkler

What Happens

Song A is a new song you just bought. It matches the list for Core, so it lands in there. Eventually, Infuser picks it and adds it to the list. It gets played five times, during which time you rate it five stars. It goes away after five plays. A week later Sprinkler sees that you haven’t played it in a while and adds it back in. You hear it once and then it goes away for a while. The cycle repeats for all of your music. Hear it a lot, it goes away and finds its way back to your ears every once in a while if it’s something you liked. If it wasn’t something you really liked then it gets rolled off the list for good. You might make a playlist to watch for unplayed music to catch those and delete them after a while.

Things to Tinker With

Now that you know how it works, obviously you’re thinking on how to improve it. What I listed is what I arrived at as a good solution for 60GB of music that I like to hear, but never get around to adding to playlists. For other situations…

  • Sprinkler: Adjust the Last Played criterion to a lower number for smaller collections. If you’re using this to fill an iPod (5-10GB), iPod mini, or iPod shuffle, then you might want to go as low as one day. (iPods will only update this on sync, by the way.)
  • Infuser: Tweaking the Play Count will keep a song around longer. You can also make it not choose songs by random but by some other criterion. This would make the list more predictable and more stable, if that’s what you’re after.
  • Limit: Bring the song counts down to 20-50 or so to make it sound more like a radio station you might actually hear rather than my dream station that never repeats. Smiling

Have any other suggestions?

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Higher Education Is Overrated; Skills Aren’t

Filed Under: General Stupidity by tduck0612 — Leave a comment
August 16, 2010
College Overrated?

College Overrated?

With innovation, entrepreneurship and significantly smarter fiscal policies, America should eventually escape its “hireless recovery.” But what won’t hasten new hiring — and might even dampen job prospects — is the mythical belief that higher education invariably leads to higher employment and better jobs. It doesn’t. Foolish New York Times stories notwithstanding, education is a misleading-to-malignant proxy for economic productivity or performance. Knowledge may be power, but “knowledge from college” is neither predictor nor guarantor of success. Growing numbers of informed observers increasingly describe a higher education “bubble” that makes a college and/or university education a subprime investment for too many attendees.

Are they right? I don’t know. But painfully clear to many employers are serious gaps between elite educational credentials and actual individual competence. College transcripts spackled with As and Bs — particularly from liberal arts and humanities programs — reveal less about a candidate’s capabilities than most serious employers need to know. Even top-tier MBA degrees often say more about the desire to have an important credential than about any greater capacity to be a good leader or manager. The curricular formalities of higher education — as opposed to its informal networks of friends and connections — may be less valuable now than they were a decade ago. In other words, alumni networks may be more economically valuable than whatever one studied in class. “Where you went” may prove professionally more helpful than “what you know.” That certainly undermines “value of education” arguments. While higher education itself isn’t marginal or unimportant, its actual market impact on employment prospects may be wildly misunderstood. In “Econ 101″ terms for job-hunters: time spent cultivating your Facebook/Linked-In network(s) may be a better investment than taking that Finance elective.

Eduzealots have done a truly awful thing to serious human capital conversations and analyses around employment. By vociferously championing higher education as key to economic success, they’ve distorted important public policy debates about how and why people get hired and paid well. They’ve undermined useful arguments about “street smarts” versus “book smarts.” Treating education as the best proxy for human capital is like using patents as your proxy for measuring innovation — its underlying logic shouldn’t obscure the fact that you’ll underweigh market leaders like WalMart, Google, Tata and Toyota. Dare I point out that Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Dell’s Michael Dell, Apple’s Steve Jobs, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg are all college drop-outs? The point isn’t to declare a college degree antithetical to launching a high-tech juggernaut but to observe that, perhaps, higher education isn’t essential to effective entrepreneurship.

We have a huge branding issue. Pundits and policy-makers jabber about the need to educate people to compete in knowledge-intensive industries. But knowledge doesn’t represent even half the intensity of this industrial challenge. What really matters are skills. The grievously undervalued human capital issue here isn’t quality education in school but quality of skills in markets. Establishing correlations, let alone causality, between them is hard. (Michael Polanyi’s classic “Personal Knowledge” brilliantly articulates this.) A computer science PhD doesn’t make one a good programmer. There is a world of difference between getting an “A” in robotics class and winning a “bot” competition. MIT’s motto isn’t Mens et Manus (Latin for Mind and Hand) by accident. Great knowledge is not the same as great skill. Worse yet, decent knowledge doesn’t guarantee even decent skills. Unfortunately, educrats and eduzealots behave as if college English degrees mean their recipients can write and that philosophy degrees mean their holders can rigorously think. That’s not true. Feel free to comment below if you disagree….

As Atkinson’s anecdotes affirm, there’s no shortage of “well- educated” college graduates who can’t write intelligible synopses or manage simple spreadsheets. I know doctoral candidates in statistics and operations research who find adapting their superb technical expertise to messy, real-world problem solving extraordinarily difficult. Their great knowledge doesn’t confer great skill. Nevertheless, you would find their research and their resumes impressive. You should. But focusing on their formal educational accomplishments misrepresents their skill set outside the academy. Academic and classroom markets are profoundly different than business and workplace markets. Why should anyone be surprised that serious knowledge/skill gaps dominate those differences?

Higher education institutions do decently with knowledge transmission. Unfortunately, they do dismally transmitting skills. Pun intended, that’s — apparently — not their job. That’s also why “human capital” debates and investment policies going forward should weight skills over knowledge. When I look at who is getting hired, purported knowledge almost always matters less than demonstrable skills. The distinctions aren’t subtle; they’re immense. How do they manifest themselves? These hires don’t have resumes highlighting educational pedigrees and accomplishments; their resumes emphasize their skill sets. Instead of listing aspirations and achievements, these resumes present portfolios around performance. They link to blogs, published articles, PowerPoint presentations, podcasts and webinars the candidates produced. The traditional two-page resume has been turned into a “personal productivity portal” that empowers prospective employers to quite literally interact with their candidate’s work.

Unsurprisingly, this simultaneously complements and reinforces the employer-side due diligence that’s emerged during this recession: firms have both the luxury and necessity to find the best possible candidates for open positions. Yes, they’re looking for appropriate levels of educational accomplishment but, really, what they most want are people who have the skills they need. More importantly, they want to actually see those skills — be they written, computed, designed and/or presented. Professional services firms I know now don’t hesitate to ask a serious candidate to demonstrate their sincerity and skills by asking them to show how they might “adapt” a presentation for one of the company’s own clients. Verbal fluency and presence impresses headhunters and interviewers. But the ability to virtually demonstrate one’s professional skills increasingly matters more.

This is part of the vast structural shift in the human capital marketplace worldwide. Firms have the ability and incentive to be far more selective in their hires. But project managers and professionals also have the bandwidth and desire to showcase their skills. The resume is rapidly mutating away from a documentary string of alphanumeric text into a multimedia platform that projects precisely the brand image and substance a job candidate seeks to convey. Did they teach you that in college or grad school? Of course not. Will you learn that by hanging around LinkedIn or Facebook? Probably not.

Is this how human capital markets will become more efficient and effective tomorrow? Absolutely. You’ve got to have skill to show off your knowledge.

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Setting Goals and Objectives: 5 Myths

Filed Under: General Stupidity by tduck0612 — Leave a comment
August 11, 2010

goalsettinglogo-web-big

Only 3% of adults have clear, written, specific, measurable, time-bounded goals, and by every statistic, they accomplish ten times as much as people with no goals at all. Why is it then that most people have no goals?

Myth One: “I already have goals; I don’t need to set any.” People who say this also say that their goals are to be rich, thin, happy, successful, and live their dreams. Buy these are not goals, they are wishes and fantasies common to all mankind. A goal is like a beautiful home, carefully designed, revised continually, upgraded regularly, and worked on constantly. If it is not in writing, it is merely a dream or a wish, a vague objective with no energy behind it.

Myth Two: “I don’t need goals; I’m doing fine.” Living your life without goals and objectives is setting off across unknown territory with no road signs and no road map. You have no choice but to make it up as you go along, reacting and responding to whatever happens, and hoping for the best. If you are doing well today without written goals and plans, you could probably be doing many times better in the future if you had clear targets to aim at and the ability to measure your progress as you go along. It is vital to have goal setting objectives.

Myth Three: “I don’t need written goals; I have them all in my mind.” The average stream of consciousness includes about 1,500 thoughts a minute. If your goals are only in your mind, they are invariably jumbled up, vague, confused, contradictory and deficient in many ways. They offer no clarity and give you no motive power. You become like a ship without a rudder, drifting with the tides, crashing into the rocks inevitably and never really fulfilling your true potential.

Myth Four: “I don’t know how to set goals.” No wonder. You can take a Masters degree at a leading university and never receive a single hour of instruction on goal setting and achieving. Fortunately, setting a goal is a skill, like time management, teaching, selling, managing, or anything else that you need to become a highly productive and effective person. And all skills are learnable. You can learn the skill of goal-setting by practice and repetition until it becomes as easy and as automatic as breathing. And from the very first day that you begin setting goals, the progress you will make and the successes you will enjoy will astonish you.

Myth Five: “Goals don’t work; life is too unpredictable.” When a plane takes off for a distant city, it will be off course 99% of the time. The complexity of the avionics and the skill of the pilots are focused on continual course corrections. It is the same in life. But when you have a clear, long-term goal, with specific plans to achieve it, you may have to change course many times, but you will eventually arrive at your destination of health, wealth and great success.

One last point. Goal setting has been called the master skill of success. You have two choices in life: You can either work on your own goals, or you can work for someone else, and work on achieving their goals. When you learn the master skill, you take complete control of your life and jump to the front of the line in your potential for great achievement.

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How to work with “stupid” people

Filed Under: General Stupidity by tduck0612 — Leave a comment
August 10, 2010
Stupid People

Stupid People

On Quora today I saw a question to the effect of: How do I put up with the stupid people I inevitably find myself working with? Here’s my answer:

I consider myself reasonably intelligent, yet I have had no problem surrounding myself with people at or above my intellectual level. I’ve also had good relationships with co-workers at all levels of intelligence. Unless you’re a world-class genius (statistically unlikely), you are probably mis-diagnosing people as stupid.

I’ll assume that you’re not just lashing out at others as a defense mechanism against your own insecurities (although you need honestly ask yourself that). I’ll assume that you sincerely believe that other people are stupid, probably based on finding it difficult to discuss things and agree with them.

But what you’re really evaluating is their judgment. Differences in judgment are rarely due to stupidity—in work, in friendships or in politics. You can’t address the problem until you identify the real cause. Calling everyone “stupid” leaves you with no next steps.

Here’s a guide for what to do instead:

Before you even decide that you disagree with someone, work to understand their judgment. You may not disagree at all. For instance:

  • Do you fully understand what they’re saying? Or are you talking past each other?
  • Are you answering the same question? Maybe each of you is answering a different angle on the question (e.g., “what’s our next step?” vs. “what’s the long-term solution?”)
  • Are you using terms in the same way? Sometimes disagreements come from differing definitions and terminology.
  • Are you talking completely in abstractions? Give examples, and ask them for examples, to get clear and concrete.
  • Are you both being clear and precise in your formulations? Sometimes people phrase things loosely or talk in metaphors that aren’t meant to be taken literally.

Ask questions, make sure you understand them fully.

If you decide that you disagree, work to understand their thinking process:

  • What are the reasons for their conclusion?
  • What is their evidence? What observations or data points are they relying on?
  • What general premises or lessons do they take to be relevant? What principles, frameworks, or theories are they applying?
  • What goals and values are conditioning their approach?

Ask them (and learn to do it without threatening or intimidating them). You may change your mind through the process.

If not, at least you will understand better how to reason with them:

  • Have you seen important data that they haven’t? Maybe they missed a key fact, or they just haven’t seen the breadth or depth of data that you have. Inform them and see if they come around.
  • Do you have relevant experience that they don’t? Tell them the observations or lessons learned that lead you to your conclusion (without being didactic or condescending).
  • Are you bringing different lessons learned from different backgrounds? If so, which context applies, if either? Maybe one of you has mostly worked at startups and the other mostly at big companies. Which context is relevant here?
  • Is either of you making an unwarranted assumption? There are lessons learned and then there are “lessons” that you guessed about and forgot to validate through experience or research. If you disagree with their premises, address that directly.
  • Are you guided by different goals and values? If so, you’ll reach different solutions to a problem. Get aligned on goals before arguing about problems and solutions.
  • Do you subscribe to different relevant theories? If so, you may not be able to resolve the disagreement quickly, and may need to take another approach (e.g., pick anything reasonable and measure the outcome, or let a third party make the decision).

Throughout all of this reasoning, be aware of the emotional context:

  • Are they afraid of the conclusion? Maybe it threatens their work, their reputation, or their self-esteem. There’s no excuse for this, but it happens to everyone sometimes. Good people recognize it sooner or later and let their emotions go. Sometimes a close friend or co-worker can get them to see what’s going on by asking sympathetic questions. (Be sure to ask this question of yourself as well.)
  • Are environmental stresses degrading their judgment? Time pressure or having your career on the line can make it hard to do your best work.
  • Are they intimidated by you? If you really are smarter or better-spoken, they may be swamped by emotions of insecurity that make it hard to think. You may be unwittingly shutting them down, which begins a vicious cycle. Tone it down.

If you disagree with someone consistently over time, consider these potential cognitive and psychological problems:

  • They may have good judgment but poor communication skills. If you repeatedly find that you agree after clearing up initial miscommunication, keep this in mind and account for it. It can be frustrating and it takes patience, but it’s better than arguing and they may even appreciate it.
  • They may have raw intelligence, but poor thinking habits—patterns of absorbing, processing, and filing information. Cognitively, they aren’t set up to get to the heart of a matter, to distinguish between essential and accidental details, to form and apply valid generalizations. This too may require patience. It isn’t good, but it isn’t willful, irrational, or stupid. Concentrate on what other virtues and talents they bring to the table, such as creativity, diligence, or relationship-building.
  • They may have general insecurities that make them afraid of looking stupid or give them a psychological need to win arguments. There’s no excuse for this either, but you can sometimes work with people anyway if they don’t do this too much or too often, or hold onto it for too long.
  • They may have a problem with you personally. Maybe they’ve decided that you’re “arrogant” or obstinate. Maybe they know that you think they’re stupid and resent it. In any case, this will make them less likely to listen to you and more likely to argue with you. They may dig in their heels on a particular issue, or just discount your judgment generally. Admit that you’re part of the problem and work to change.

Bottom line: Stupidity explains only a small percentage of people’s disagreements. Calling someone “stupid” is a dead end—you can’t fix it. Instead, figure out what’s really going on.

Some final advice for the workplace:

  • Make sure you’re working in an environment that promotes objective decisions. If decisions are made based on personality and emotions instead of data and discussion, it will make everyone “stupid”. Go somewhere else.
  • Choose your battles. You don’t have to get your way in every disagreement. Let other people own their work. Fight only on the decisions that are important and hard to reverse.
  • Earn a reputation over time through excellent work. This is much more powerful in commanding attention than intellectual prowess.
I didn’t realize I had so much to say on this topic until I started writing the answer. Quora is doing a great job at getting people to write on topics they never would have otherwise—even folks like me who keep blogs.

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6 Website Redesign Mistakes To Avoid

Filed Under: Uncategorized by tduck0612 — Leave a comment
August 7, 2010
Website Redesign

Website Redesign

A website redesign can be a complex project with many moving parts. Every department of an organization has an opinion on how the website should look and feel. In today’s post we will look at six common redesign mistakes and why you should work with your team to avoid them at all costs.

Flash – Google’s ability to crawl Flash has improved, but your redesign should still use Flash sparingly. Beyond limiting the effectiveness of your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Flash can make it difficult for users to navigate your site. Focus your attention on using white-space and adding remarkable content. Visitors will be able to self-select the content that fits them best and this will lead to increased conversion rates for your website. For an example of how Flash can ruin the user experience before it ever begins, check out this site.

Too Many Images – If you run a small business website, your goal should be a redesigned website that promotes conversion. Adding too many images to your design can take away from the content and make it difficult for the user to find the compelling offers that you worked hard to create. When you do use an image, be sure to add an image Alt Tag, which helps Google associate a keyword with your image.

Load Time - Slow loading pages are less likely to be crawled or visited frequently by users and search engines alike. Google has made it clear that they are taking load times into consideration with the launch of Site Performance in Webmaster Tools, which you can see a screen shot of below.Google Site Performance

The goal of any search engine is to return the most accurate search results in the least amount of time. You can analyze the speed of your website here.

Lack of Compelling Offers – Redesign projects can get bogged down in the nitty gritty details of SEO. While it’s important to follow SEO best practices, it’s also important to think about the true goal of your site – generating leads. At the beginning of your redesign process gather your team together and determine the offers you want to include on the home page of the new site. Ideally, you will have various offers that speak to visitors in different stages of the sales funnel.

Complicated Navigation - Complicated navigation makes it difficult for Google and your visitors to find information. The screen shot below shows a site with two navigation bars, this type of setup makes it difficult for users and search engines to browse and consume the content within the site.navigation resized 600

Search engine spiders spend a limited amount of time crawling your website, make that time count by placing all of your content near the top of your navigation where it can be found quickly.

Dyanmic URLs - Dynamic URLs are less SEO friendly than static because they do not include targeted keywords but instead include characters such as: ? = &. While Google can crawl dynamic URLs, static URLs give you control over the keywords that appear in the URL structure. Static URLs can also lead to increased click-throughs from search results because users can read the URL and know what the page is about before clicking.

Let’s look at an example of a Dynamic URL: http://www.example.com/index.php?id_sezione=360&sid=3a5ebc944f41daa6f849f730f1.

Here is a static URL: http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/what-is/ipod.html.

The dynamic URL is less appealing to users and to Google. Here is a blog post regarding the differences between Dyamic and Static URLs from Google’s perspective.

In your experience what are some other website redesign tactics that should be avoided?

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Geek Project: ShoutCast Radio Flash Application

Filed Under: Web Dev Project by tduck0612 — Leave a comment
July 31, 2010
ShoutCast Flash Player

ShoutCast Flash Player

Just like my older post about a “./jamendo-player”, this time I am definitely more interested into good online radio stations. And SHOUTcast is the best that comes to my mind! It’s been there for years, Winamp is the best music experience ever, and both have been promoting each other even though I don’t know/remember what their relation are.

The good things about their widget is that it saves the recent radios and it also has a list of favorites but this one isn’t working as-is with the code. It is possible to search for radios and to browse by genre. All of this stuff is saved under~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects/<random>/ct.yourminis.com/

So of course I couldn’t resist but embed their available Flash widget inside a window :-) Again the code is very short, it’s just about loading — well not a URL this time — an HTML string cause the Flash application all alone doesn’t work out, it needs parameters passed outside. I didn’t include the callbacks to handle “_blank” links, which means it is not possible to open any links, but this is useless as the widget is fully functionnal.

You can download the source code here.

Here are some installation instructions:

  1. Look into main.c
  2. The first line of main.c is a comment with a command to compile
  3. If you want a menu item in you desktop menu:
    1. Edit the Exec keys in shoutcast-radio.desktop
    2. Copy the desktop file to ${XDG_DATA_HOME:-~/.local/share}/applications
  4. If you don’t have a gnome-radio icon, copy gnome-radio.png to~/.icons/

By the way, I’m linking on the Xfce blog. Why? Cause there might be Xfce users interested into a simple to compile radio application. At least I hope some of you will enjoy it, more than the jamendo thingy :)

Update: The favorites actually do work, it just that the favorite button isn’t always clickable.

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Internet Marketing Basics

Filed Under: Web Dev Project by tduck0612 — Leave a comment
July 27, 2010
Internet Marketing 101

Internet Marketing 101

There are a lot of diverse systems of making an income online. As a matter of fact, they are all incredibly comparable to the Business models you see in the offline world. You can put on the market your goods , or you can create products for wholesale distribution, you can also sell information, or you can sell tools to assist people in their own business model. Or else, you can sell advertising, or provide consulting services.
So, to generate an returns online, you must meet a certain need, just like you would in the offline world. You satisfy that need by developing,  producing,  distributing, or brokering a product or service. That is just about it. Most likely, you will never earn lasting practical income from schemes and scams, no more than a robber will earn a long-standing viable income robbing banks.
Listed below are some of the basic business models you can find on the web:

1) Production model. This is a business that produces value by transforming one piece of material into another for online use. Its offline equivalent might be a shoemaker or a gold mining firm. Its corresponding online equivalent can be the development of new software or some new technology, or the development of online technology that aids in the execution of some of the other online business models.

2) Advertising model. This is a company that specializes in providing the advertising or promotion services to other online firms. For example, those firms that operate using the production or merchant model. This model charges these companies a fee to advertise the goods and services provided by the other online business models.

3) Merchant model. This would a company that specializes in sales, and organizes the delivery of goods and services to an online market. This might be matched up to the offline equivalent of a merchant. Some online examples are bookstores, food stores, or other goods and services sales organizations.

4) Brokerage model. This model is one that compensates the broker for bringing together buyer and seller, typically in the form of a personal, one-on-one introduction. An example of this would  be an online auction or a processor of online payments.

5) Affiliate model. This is a model that is similar to the advertising model, but is different in that it focuses on recruiting many individual companies or individuals to do the advertising in a methodical and gradual way. In the advertising model, the advertiser is paid based on the amount of advertising distributed, the affiliate model pays theaffiliate marketer when a sale or step in a sales process is completed. This step may be an online visit, a request for more information, or the actual sale itself.

6) Utility model. This model operates in much the same way as an offline utility might operate, offering a product that has, through its use, become a necessity and is often tightly controlled. An example of an online utility model would be that of internet access or telephone service via an online network.

7) Information model. The information business model is one in which the company provides information to a specific field or niche market. This information would typically coach another company or individual on an easier or more proficient method of performing a task, or actually teach the task or the implementation of the task.

8 ) Community model. This is a business model that focuses on bringing together individuals or companies of similar interest for the purpose of developing relationships and sharing information. Two examples of the community web phenomenon are the recently created my space and the older online forum.

9) Subscription model. This is an overlay model, one which is generally incorporated into one of the other models. This model would provide goods or services over a extended period of time, and supply a guaranteed and generally consistent level of that service for a period of time. For example, over the course of several months. Two products that fit into this subscription model might be that of online monthly video rentals or services like food or medicines which are delivered on a regular basis by commitment.

When deciding to go into business online, it is important to determine which of these business models most interest you. To which of these models are you best suited? In which of these models are you most likely to be considered an expert, or in which would you have the
If you are looking how to make some extramoney or start a new career, then Internetmarketing might be just what you want. Depending on how much time you dedicate to internet marketing, the sky is the limit. There are specific internet marketing basics that must be in place before you can start on making anymoney online.

The first thing you will need is a niche. A niche is basically a product or service that is in
demand with slight to no supply or support. The more specific the niche, then the better opportunity you have to get buyers to your website. You do not want your niche market to be too broad. For example, just saying “cooking” would be too general. You should dig deeper and be more focused, and choose something like “low fat cooking for diabetics”. By getting more specific, you will attract traffic that is very interested in your niche and potentially will become your buyers. If you are brand new to internet marketing, I recommend you uncover a niche in something you are fanatical about. Provided that you already have a lot of information of a specific niche market, that will be a benefit as well.

Once you have decided on a big niche, the next step is to put together your web presence. This means setting up hosting account for your web pageon one of the various host providers and getting your own domain name. You might also opt out to go with a free blogging platform, posting quality content to promote your web page. Throwing up a quick site nowadays does not do the trick. You need to optimize your site for thesearch engines, write quality and original content, and update your site or blog on a regular basis.
You can have an awesome looking web site, even the greatest niche, but without traffic, you get nothing. Clearly the more traffic you are able drive to your website, the greater chance you can get the buyers. There are very many ways to promote your web site, with new techniques coming up all the time. You can build free traffic as well as paid in a variety of ways. Here’s how you can promote your website:

• Submit your web site to major search directories
• Post press releases
• Do Article marketing
• Create links and banner exchanges
• Use Pay-per-click campaigns
• Submit comments to forums, chat rooms and discussion boards
• Submit to social bookmarking and social networking sites
Completing these internet marketing basic steps will get you on your way to developing an online business that with time and effort will bring you financial success. There is a lot of satisfaction that comes with internet marketing.
At Internet Marketing Basics you’ll find guidance for beginners across a range of disciplines such as blogging, internet marketing, marketinggurus, marketing product reviews, Training Courses, making moneyonline, internet marketing basics, Affiliate Marketing, seo, ppc, andmarketing development, all in one place, something that’s generally hard to find. The idea is to help you get the basics down as you build your online business.

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