Categories
blog

Fall-Back

After taking a rather long vacation from this blog I am back. This fall is promising to be rather interesting as during summer I have picked up a few new business engagements. All in due time, of course, but this is a brief update of all things.

Informal Project Management is always around us – interesting thing, I thought about it exactly 3 years ago, in September 2007. This time, however, it wasn’t a home project, it was a photo shoot, and it had more to do with actually organizing things rather than building (although going from mock-up to beta to release is there undeniably). What has caught my attention this time was how administrative flow of things tend to greatly influence the outcome of the process. You have to gather resources, make sure they present on time and at the place to complete the project, then you get your project going and at the end you have your lessons learned thing, if you are lucky.

Small Business owners still need to be educated – you thought they would know by now everything about Facebook, Twitter and search engine optimization? Wrong! Your average small business owner is having a hard time getting the idea of how these things work. Latest quote: “But I have these 5 domain names, if I point them all to my web site I should be on top of Google, no?”. Yeah, how, exactly?

It’s Upgrade Time – PHP4 is almost dead of old age. How do you make your clients switch on the basis that the technology you have used to build their web sites 3 – 4 years ago is already obsolete and they need to upgrade. Not all of them lease cars, so idea of “new every two” (or three or four) isn’t entirely their motto. And they don’t buy into all this technology talk either. However, what they do buy into are security concerns. Old technology equals less secure environment.

Stop That Gadget Rainfall – personally I am hair away from being fed up with all the new gadgets that revolve around same decade old concept of a shiny thing that you poke with your fingers to watch a tiny little screen show you something. Whether you take iPhone 4, HTC Evo or whatever else will be running Windows Mobile 7 – it’s same old thing nonetheless, limited by “revolutionary” 3G technology. Reminds me of an old game of Civilization I used to spend hours playing. The funniest scenario was when you thought you’re on top of the chain, you have just invented Gunpowder and two turns later you get a visit from some other nation with battleships, carriers and tanks. Same seems to be the case with our wireless technology in US.

Categories
internet

Google Might Serve Up Wi-Fi to Rural Areas With Ballons

Google Might Serve WiFi With Balloon - iStudioWeb.com

The Internet giant – which is now pushing into wireless services, has considered contracting with Space Data or even buying the firm, according to one person
…Google believes balloons like these could radically change the economics of offering cellphone and Internet services in out-of-the-way areas, according to people familiar with its thinking.

Right. Aside from numerous humorous comments on Digg (“Your internet has exploded”) there is a technical issue of signal strength. I just can’t imagine a balloon hanging low enough for regular WiFi to work. Unless it’s a airborne replacement for regular 3G/HSDPA towers – I don’t see that happening. If it is – I can’t even imagine how expensive it may be. Even for rural areas costs may still be prohibitive.

Categories
technology web

RSS Is Your Key To Success

Couple of months ago I did a little “research” – I asked people around to find out if they know anything about RSS. Turns out – none of my business-oriented colleagues knows that term. Even more – they have no idea what news aggregator/reader is and actually read news from all the web sites they are interested in by actually visiting those web sites.

Here is your chance to shine. Offer your clients/dealers/affiliates an RSS stream of company news, price updates, discounts. Make sure they know what it is. Make sure they know how to use it. Stress that RSS, unlike e-mail, will not be a stream of spam, so they can read your content free of spam and annoying ads. Customize RSS feeds so that it will supply different information to different groups – customers, dealers and affiliates.

Next thing you know – RSS may have a chance to replace e-mail in your company altogether. It’s cheaper, faster and more reliable. Too bad no one notices.