Owner: topLingo Web Design bLog URL:http://toplingo.com/blog.aspx Join Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 12:03:47 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: A blog written by the experts at website design firm topLingo who provide focused information, resources, services and advice as they pertain to website and web application development. Site statistics:Click here
Free Screencast to Download: To RSS or Not to RSS! 0000-00-00 00:00:00 With a good turnout and great audience, yesterday we launched our monthly webinar series called "dotcomGood" This 10 minute technical presentation was on the subject of RSS and how it's utilized by website owners and web users. Read more:Screencast
, Download
topLingo’s dotcomGood Webinar Recording: Web Software That Will Change the Way You Do Business! 2007-06-13 17:39:29 Online applications are slowly replacing traditional software and it’s important to know what your options are. Today, in our 3rd online webinar topLingo addressed the benefits of using web software and demo’d 17 cool apps that can help your business in the areas of IT, communications, marketing, sales, workflow and project management.You can view the presentation online here:
CLICK HERE TO VIEW ONLINE
(5.7MB Flash)
Or for your iPod:
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD
(22MB M4V)
Read more:Recording
, Software
, Change
, Business
Radio Killed the Video Star – Google Radio Advertising 2007-06-01 16:48:32 Recently beta launched Google
Audio Ads allows you to create radio advertising campaigns by producing high quality radio ads and allowing you to set your own budget and decide when and where your ads air. And for a little as $400 … I can hear that!
Google Audio Ads
Read more:Radio
, Killed
, Advertising
Testing Webpage Message Variations - Google Website Optimizer 2007-05-11 16:47:54 According to Google
“Website Optimizer
, Google’s free multivariate testing application, helps online marketers increase visitor conversion rates and overall visitor satisfaction by continually testing different combinations of site content (text and images).”
So, after I looked up what the word multivariate meant I then checked out the demo.
This free new tool comes with a Google AdWords account and lets you rotate and track ROI on webpage variations. The example they present is scenario with three different homepages that only differ by a unique headline, photo and paragraph of copy. These pages are then auto rotated and tracked by Google whose analytics reveal which message is the most effective. Try it out.
Google Website Optimizer
Read more:Testing
, Message
, Variations
Contract Out On Ya! Word! 2007-05-04 16:46:54 I have an art degree. I know hundreds of Photoshop tips and tricks. My spare time is spent video editing in Final Cut. So with that in mind guess what application I use the most? Microsoft Friggin Word!
Welcome to business 101.
If you do any client development, and do it well, the necessary evil of any web shop sales professional is to spend a massive amount of time typing client proposals and contracts. Why? Here’s a good article with reasons …
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/web_design_contracts/
Ask a Question Get an Answer. Answer a Question Get a Sales Lead. 2007-04-26 16:46:15 An avid user of LinkedIn, the MySpace for business professionals, I’ve been playing around with their new Answers section.
Similar to the popular Yahoo! Answers the concept is social networking based and allows professionals to quickly post a question based on specific subject matter and receive responses from professionals who either know the answer or connect you with someone who does. I.E. sales networking.
www.LinkedIn.com
Read more:Question
, Sales
Budget to Small? Try Freelance, Craigs List or Overseas. 2007-04-12 16:45:30 Like any web development company in the U.S. topLingo has a minimum development cost to take on any new project. Our threshold is $5000 for new clients.
Can we do it for $500? Sorry, no. But we offer three alternatives to prospects
Freelance
r. We have a good network of professionals who have full time jobs and are willing to work after hours and on weekends.
CraigsList. Post an ad for your project and pros will answer.
Outsource overseas. India is the most prominent country in the list and there are services that exist like oDesk which allow you to post a project then monitor it using webcams, activity level recording and screen-capturing technology. That’s some serious big brother stuff! And although very few Americans would work daily under those conditions and I sympathize with the developer on the other side … your project can get completed on the cheap.
Read more:Small
Press Releases Get You Press: topLingo Featured on DSNews.com. 2007-04-10 16:44:47 On March 23 we announced the launch of an online mortgage marketing toolkit portal for Silver Hill Financial and three days later were featured on DSNews.com.
Proof that press releases can get really you press!
http://dsnews.com/broadcasts_archive.cfm?streamid=285
Read more:Press
, Featured
, Press Releases
Budget for Marketing … Or Die Tryin’! 2007-04-05 16:43:45 Recently a friend of mine ramped up to invest in a new website application. However, it wasn’t really a new project rather one with dozens of major competitors.
His development budget was realistic, his drive was impressive, his operation plan was on par for success and his marketing dollars seemed enough. $40k sounded like it would do the job.
Then he did something very smart.
He dug deep into his competition and discovered that their marketing budgets ranged from $500k to $1mil a year. So, in order for him to realistically compete in the same space $40k was only a drop in the bucket. $40k would get him going but he’d struggle massively to launch.
Lesson learned … Digest (info) before you invest (cha-ching$$).
Read more:Marketing
topLingo Represents at the 2007 MBA Technology Conference in Tampa 2007-03-30 16:42:50 2700 miles flying, 483 miles driving and 7 days later I’ve returned from my “Attack Florida” business trip completing our first ever trade show event.
From Sunday, March 25th to Tuesday, March 27th we set up and operated a booth at the Mortgage Bankers Association Annual Technolgy tradeshow in Tampa
, FL where we officially announced to the mortgage banking world that topLingo exists. 100 projects and 30 mortgage clients later … we figured it was time.
Overall, the show attendance sucked, but the potential clients showing interest in us rocked!
topLingo Tradeshow Photos
Read more:Technology
Create Your Own WIRED Cover 2007-03-30 16:42:06 Kinda cheesy but this flash based Wired Cover
-O-Matic will kill 5 minutes out of your boring day.
http://www.condenet.com/promo/xerox/
Society is Stoopid, High Society is Highly Stoopider 2007-03-29 16:41:21 So … ummm … Bono got knighted.
In a previous blog entry, I discussed how certain icons are above criticism. I think my examples were the VW bug and the iPod. Bono fits into that category. Why does everybody think this nebbish fool is a hero? He sings songs. He doesn’t even write them anymore. He simply sings them. And they are bad. The first time you listen, you think, oh, this is a snazzy tune. But after you listen a second time, you realize just how much the current U2 sucks compared to the Joshua Tree era. They’ve become a formula-based stadium band like the Rolling Stones in the 80s.
Back to Bono. I guess maybe he’s cool also because he whined incessantly about George Bush before that became a national pastime. Also, he was one of the first guys that wore sunglasses ALWAYS. Other than Puffy and Stevie Wonder, of course. Puffy looks like a goofball without sunglasses, Read more:Society
Is Your “Online Rep” Cooler than In Real Life? 2007-03-14 16:40:40 eBay’s feedback system is really the only solution online to reach true success in having consumers respect and base decisions on another users “Online Reputation.” The Gorb is one of a few startups whose trying to capilize on that.
The Gorb has anonymous comments and ratings about an individual so whether you love them or hate them you place a rating on their personal and professional lives. Scale is from 1 to 10, with total averages and comments.
Sound scary? Maybe not. Experts believe the future of the web (3.0, 4.0 whatever) relies solely on accountability and identity. I’m just hoping someone doesn’t give me a zero and say I smell like Greek goat cheese!
www.TheGorb.com
Read more:Real Life
FeedMiner: Search Engine for RSS Feeds. 2007-03-12 16:39:53 Are you an RSS fan and need help finding something interesting to subscribe to? Try FeedMiner. They stole Google’s interface but have fast results and can help you find random crap like “Patently Silly: The Humor of Invention.”
www.FeedMiner.com
Read more:Search
, Engine
, Search Engine
Bald Marketing Genius Speaks at Google 2007-03-08 15:38:12 Want a better alternative to taking a marketing class at your local college? Then pay attention marketing guru Seth Godin. Here’s a 48 minute online video of him speaking to the people at Google
about why they rock and what marketing means in web 2.0.
Seth recaps his permission marketing, purple cow, idea virus and all marketers are liars concepts with remarks like “Tiffany’s doesn’t sell necklaces. They sell blue boxes with the Tiffany’s logo on it. They charge you $1000’s of dollars for the box and then give the necklace away free inside!”
“All Marketers are Liars” - Seth Godin speaks at Google
Read more:Marketing
PHP sucks, too 2007-03-07 15:34:17 Recent security holes with PHP will be undoubtedly under-reported. Why? Because it’s no fun to pick on Open Source code … there’s no Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Open Source has no figurehead that the contrarians can throw rotten tomatoes at. Weak.
Funny how MS Office can have some obscure issue with email attachments and the ill-informed press (both tech & mainstream) loudly compose the epitaph for MS’s corporate tombstone. Less often, Jobs announces the latest iGadget and those same reporters predict with unflinching certainty that Apple is overextending and won’t be around in 2 quarters. But PHP has several major security holes that affect half the world’s servers and I’ve seen one tech notice in a small (but reliable) security newsletter. Guess what? I tested out the holes, since they are so easy to replicate, and they do exist.
So what gives? I think it boils down to the simple concep Read more:sucks
Start Menu > Search > Sucks 2007-03-07 15:33:32 If you’re still using the painfully slow built in Windows search function to look for documents on your personal computer consider upgrading to Google desktop. Search
ing is as easy as searching on Google.com and also includes:
Smart one time indexing when your machine is idle
Searches all regular files as well as email and web history
Google.com integration
View news, photos and more anywhere on your desktop
Outlook integration
Add Google Gadgets to customize your desktop and sidebar
Lock Search to prevent anyone else from doing a Google Desktop Search
Google Desktop
Read more:Start
Family Trees Web 2.0 Style 2007-03-06 15:32:41 A fast way to create your family tree online and stay in touch this web applicaiton is so web 2.0.
www.geni.com/tree/start
Read more:Family
, Trees
, Style
topLingo’s dotcomGood Webinar Recording: Pay Per Click E-Marketing 2007-03-05 15:29:36 With great success last week topLingo executed our second dotcomGood webinar titled “Pay Per Click
E-Marketing
: Why it’s OK to Buy Your Way to the Top!” This 15 minute webinar showcased everything you need to know about search engine Pay Per Click
advertising. The players, the costs, the strategies and the do’s and don’ts. But don’t worry if you missed it, you can view the presentation online here:
CLICK HERE TO VIEW ONLINE(12.7MB Flash)
Or for your iPod: CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD(22MB M4V)
Read more:Recording
Adobe Taking Photoshop Online! 2007-03-02 15:28:37 A few days after I posted a blog about Google’s online apps waging war on Microsoft more big news comes from a major player in our field. Adobe
is taking it’s flagship product Photoshop
online.
Adobe recognizes that the future of software is to be a hybrid offering both online and installed versions. They’re also following the lead of companies like Google who benefit from ad supported online services and subsequently are bringing both Photoshop and the new Adobe Remix (a web based video editing tool) to the internet. Released dates are scheduled within next 6 months.
To quote Borat “NIIIIIIIICCCCCCEEE!”
Full story from CNN
Read more:Taking
, Photoshop Online
Are You Linked In? 2007-02-27 15:27:39 Considered a MySpace for business professionals this web 2.0 networking site is awesome for keeping in touch with your contacts. Free to join it’s features include:
Find potential clients, service providers, subject experts, and partners who come recommended
Be found for business opportunities
Search for great jobs
Discover inside connections that can help you land jobs and close deals
Post and distribute job listings
Find high-quality passive candidates
Get introduced to other professionals through the people you know
www.LinkedIn.com
And you can add me: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/338/b05
24-7 Web Site Support and Being Responsive. 2007-02-26 15:26:58 It’s rare but at least once a year we get woken up because a web site or web server is down. That was early this morning and proof that you can have redundancy, monitoring and other fail safes but just like in life things happen beyond your control. Life will always throw you a curveball but as long as you react responsively and intelligently you’ll be just fine. We did, and everything’s cool.
The events went like this … Client called my cell to wake me up, I researched the issue and then called IT. IT in this case was my business partner Jason who I woke up and then drove to co-location facility. He quickly diagnosed the issue to be a failed UPC unit and within 15 minutes from the initial client call the system was back online. That’s being responsive.
Read more:Support
, Web Site
The Blog Maverick – Mark Cuban 2007-02-23 15:24:35 Mark Cuban
is a nut case. He sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo! right before the bubble burst for $5.7 billion keeping $1.9 billion himself. He then bought the Dallas Maverick
s for $280 million, which at the time was the highest price ever paid for a basketball team and now he holds the record for largest NBA fine ever when he complained about an official saying, “I wouldn’t hire him to manage a Dairy Queen.” Dairy Queen in turn invited Cuban to run a Dairy Queen for a day. So Mark did.
This dude is outspoken, intelligent and has his pulse on technology which is all evident in his blog. Like tech and basketball? Check it out.
www.blogmaverick.com
Read more:Mark Cuban
DVDs and CDs won’t last forever 2007-02-20 15:24:00 You know all those DVDs and CDs that you burnt to “permanently” archive all your Dave Matthews mp3s or Hawaii pictures? People are finding that the data on them can begin to disappear after as little as 3 years. I think that short of a time period is a bit alarmist. But the whole situation should have you thinking.
First off, for all you speedreaders that just slowed down, this does not apply to commercial-grade DVDs like your daughter’s boxed set of Dora The Exploder DVDs. This applies to the media that you burn on your home PC. Certain kinds of adhesive and, much more rarely, inks from pens can leech into the delicate dye layer that all your data is written to. But even if you keep your discs pristine, the media is subject to data fading. Yikes, huh?
Time for the real world example so you know that I ain’t pullling this out of thin air. I have some data CDs that I used under 10 times about 6 to 7 years ago
Host a Webinar – Tips & Tools 2007-02-20 15:23:17 If you’ve ever looked into hosting your own webinar at first glance they may seem difficult and expensive to produce but with products like GoToWebinar and Simple Event keeping in touch with your customers is easier than ever.
Here are some tips:
Choose a stable software that has just the right amount of features. No need to have all the bells and whistles you’ll spend weeks trying to learn it and GoToWebinar is good starting application at only $500/yr.
Plan it. But don’t read it.
Practice! Practice! Practice!
Get help. Have someone in your office attend it and monitor your presentation for errors.
Forget online audio, way too many problems.
Use a free dial in service like Simple Event.
Test the audio. The easiest way to lose an audience is if they can’t hear it.
Keep it short and to the point. Remember you’re on the internet, one of the most impatient places on earth.
Have fun! No need to bust out knock knock jokes but making Read more:Tools
The Database Smackdown 2007-02-19 15:22:32 When discuss web dev projects, people frequently ask me which database is “the best”. Do you want to know the deep, dark secret? Shhhh … do not tell anybody this … but it doesn’t really matter because they are all pretty much (very quiet now) the same. OH MY GOD! Yes.
When deciding which database cornerstone to base the foundation of your site upon, it actually doesn’t make that much difference. You don’t want to use Access or any consumer-level database. For the more techie among you, that means don’t use any file system-structured database. Speed will destroy you there and you’ll lose data under load. But among the server products, i.e. MySQL, SQL 2000, SQL 2005, Oracle, or PostGreSQL, the level of performance is about the same.
So then it boils down to an issue of maintenance. The key is making sure you have one or more reliable developers that can support that flavor of dat Read more:Database
, Smackdown
Free Webinar this Week: Pay Per Click E-Marketing 2007-02-19 15:21:53 This Wednesday February 21 join us for a free online webinar titled “Pay Per Click
E-Marketing
: Why it’s OK to Buy Your Way to the Top.”
In 10 minutes or less the discussion will focus on the Pay Per Click
providers, their costs, marketing strategies, tips and techniques.
Join here: http://toplingo.com/webinars.aspx
Offline Advertising for Your Online Website (even for your Poop Business) 2007-02-15 15:21:07 The power of the ink on paper is still king and moving around in the real world we’re fully surrounded by ads that are effective. Yellow pages, billboards, newspapers, mailers, business cards, bus benches, coupons and what caught my eye this morning … a vehicle wrap.
Driving to work I passed by a truck with big picture of a dog cleaning up his own poop. Braking hard in laughter I slowed down to read “Doody Dude Pet Poop Removal – We’re #1 in the #2 Business
!” HAHA! How rad is that? And even cooler and appropriately placed below the tagline in big, bold, readable letters was their website address.
Minutes later I arrived to the office and you can guess what I did first? The same thing you’re gonna do … hit up DoodyDude.com.
Offline
ads work.
Read more:Advertising
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