Recent Blog Posts
Blogs ยป Archive for June, 2004
Visual Studio 2005 Beta Ready To Roll
eWeek: “At its TechEd Europe conference in Amsterdam next week, Microsoft Corp. will announce the first official beta release of Visual Studio 2005, which will include the Team Architect version of the Visual Studio Team System technology Microsoft announced last month at its TechEd conference in San Diego.
Sources close to the company said the beta software should be available for download by the end of next week. More and more of the Visual Studio Team System will find its way into Visual Studio 2005 in future releases, sources said.”
Time to get those broadband connections warmed up ;)
Generating PHP with Ruby
Ran into an interesting article recently on PHP Web Site Generation using Ruby, over at codegeneration.net (the site runs a PHP section here). The article makes a good starting point for exploring what works and what doesn’t.
Think PHP is underestimated where code generation is concerned, given how easy it is to generate and dynamically execute code e.g.;
< ?php
// Some code
$code = ‘
‘;
// Write code to file
file_put_contents(’generated.php’,$code); # PHP5 function!
// Include the generated code for execution
include ‘generated.php’;
?>
Also interesting that Ruby (a dynamic language in more or less the same category as Python and Perl) was used as the generator.
The Stickiest Situations
Three items in today’s blog:
1. Vacation. I’m going on a much needed vacation until July 5. No Internet, no voice mail, no email. Just time to relax and recharge. Part one of today’s blog is a reminder to any of you who are stressed out and feeling unbalanced to do something to recharge. Vacation? New hobby? Long walks? Serious exercise? Meditation? Whatever works for you. It pays off ten fold.
2. Reading material. If you want some good reading material during the week, there are plenty of free, no-registration articles about marketing IT services that you can access at http://www.itprosuccess.com/free_resources.shtml
The five most popular include:
http://www.itprosuccess.com/articles_new_research.shtml
http://www.itprosuccess.com/articles_free_development_plan.shtml
http://www.itprosuccess.com/articles_seven_ways_to_differentiate.shtml
http://www.itprosuccess.com/articles_competitive_bidding.shtml
http://www.itprosuccess.com/articles_nineteen_errors.shtml
3. When I get back, I’d sure be grateful if this post were loaded with comments from you about the following:
What has been (or is) your toughest business development situation? Maybe it was difficulty closing a client, or reaching prospects, or keeping a client, or asking for referrals.
Whatever it was/is, post it. You have nothing to lose and we will all learn something from your experience.
The week of July 5, the blog will focus on how to handle those sticky situations.
Best case study posted gets a free (normally $195) manual, so don’t hold back.
Have a great week!
The Skeleton in My Closet
First, thanks for all the friendly, welcoming comments to my previous blog! As I looked at some of the initial questions posted, I thought I should start out sharing a deep, dark personal secret. I’m going to confess that, despite the plethora of great articles on CSS (even a book!) on SitePoint… lean closer… I still use tables for layout. (Gasp!)
As soon as you’ve collectively collected yourselves, I’ll explain further:
In the real-life arena of pleasing clients, I’ve found that most clients, when presented with a choice, aren’t willing to sacrifice the low-end of their user/customer base for the sake of being able to say “our site meets all current web standards!” (And when I say “low-end,” I mean low — some of the logs show people using Netscape 3.) Even a gracefully-degrading web site, which can at least still be read, isn’t enough for companies who are aggressively pursuing ecommerce sales and want to have their sites “look good” for 95% of their customers. On the other end, for cheap clients who don’t want to pay me to make x number of style sheets and y lines of JavaSCript, the only real recourse I have is to design the basic …
Open Source and Commercialization
I recently spent some time speaking with a popular Yankee Group analyst who covers the enterprise sector in the US, focusing in on open source and where the movement may go in the next few years.
Just to be clear, I differentiate, as most industry watchers do, between Linux and open source. While Linux is open source, the primary Linux distributors have caught on to how they need to position themselves for success and are starting to run their businesses just as any proprietary software company does.
Red Hat and SUSE make prime examples, realizing the path to long term success and revenue streams resided in proving themselves enterprise worthy to larger businesses and institutions, have shifted business models or been acquired by organizations with roots in the enterprise.
Her views, while not always popular in the open source community. are right on point if open source seeks widespread adoption and a permanent seat at the table for longer term financial success.
There are a few obstacles open source proponents need to accept and move forward on:
1) It will be more costly for a company to migrate away from Windows to Linux, even in light of slightly reduced ongoing maintenance and improved security and …
[Quickie] Macromedia Studio MX 2004 Price Cut
Macromedia have announced a limited offer of a reduction on the price of Studio MX 2004 Upgrade and Full versions with Flash MX 2004 Pro.
The offer also extends to DevNet Pro Subscribers and runs until June 30th
More information and pricing here
phpFS: Firefox Plugin for the Manual
Thanks to David: phpFS (php Function Search) - adds a search “drop down” for finding functions in the PHP manual. Where I bungled, David gets it right…
ASP users flock to PHP in droves!
The strange thing the PHP success story is it’s had, more of less, $0 spent on on advertising / marketing. So when I post a blog with a cheeky title like this one, it sticks out…
Anyway, real reason for this is just following on from here to point out that John Lim, at his new location - http://phplens.com/phpeverywhere/, has updated his ASP to PHP migration guide (a syntax cross reference with insights).
A Key Metric Every Web Designer/Developer Needs to Track
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=175004
If you haven’t already, please take a look at the above forum thread. It’s a great one about conversion rates.
I know that the author of the thread wanted to know specifically about conversion rates. Still, let’s start with that thread and use it to get to the big picture for a moment.
The bottom line metric in any direct marketing (web-based or offline) is cost per order. If you spend $1,000 in marketing and get 10 orders, your cost per order is $100. It costs you that amount to get one paying customer.
If you are selling a product with a gross margin that exceeds $100, you have made money with your marketing campaign. If you are selling a product with a gross margin below $100, you are losing money on your marketing campaign.
Some people use cost per lifetime-customer-value, which can justify losing money on the first order to gain a loyal customer over time. For instance, you might pay $100 for a customer who buys a $50 product, in the expectation that they will buy at least 2 more $50 products so that you end up ahead of the game.
However, the most profitable companies I know never fall for this trap. …
Seperating Browser from Resource
Disclaimer: this has been said before in different ways - e.g. search for separating navigation from structure or separating behaviour from structure - just adding my spin.
The notion of separating content from style, pretty much, become the accepted norm of web design, the benefits well known
What’s been on my mind recently is the notion of separating browser from resource. By “browser”, in this context, I mean the user interface elements in a web application that allow users to get around (navigate), modify content (forms) etc. while “resource” means documents / content published on a web site.
There are multiple prompts for this line of thinking;
- A personal grievance: I hate writing admin interfaces for web applications. The “front end” - what a site’s visitors see - no problem but the admin interface, which is typically both more complex and at the same time, visible only to a limited use group, drives me nuts - lots of work for people who tend to have very evolved opinions.
- Another personal grievance: I (generally) hate using admin interfaces. Browsing / managing a list of users, for example, tends to be painful. The same admin tools being reloaded on every page request (slowing things down). …
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