lab188

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Internet Marketing class, November 18 and 19, at JCCC

These links to web resources may be helpful to you after the class is completed.

Google webmaster tools:
Tools for site status, statistics, diagnostics, content submission, and sitemaps, among other worthwhile tools.

Domain name registration at GoDaddy
Thousands of registrars will help you register a domain name. GoDaddy has the mind share right now.

Thousands of hosting companies will host your site and your email address. Here’s three hosting the sites of my customers.
Web hosting by Dreamhost
Web hosting by media temple
Web hosting by 1and1

Build your own 404 error pages to replace the browser defaults. Friendly 404 pages keep the visitor around, and may help you, the web editor, to find problems missed by other link checking tools.
Custom 404 building at Plinko

Keyword development tools will help determine the unique sets of terms site visitors might use to find your site.
Keyword development with Wordtracker Wordtracker is a paid service, but offers a free trial with limited scope.
Keyword research using AdWords
Keyword density is calcluated in a formula:
Density=keyword frequency divided by total words on the page
Density of 7% is appropriate, while density of 10% and above results in stilted language and possible penalties by the search engines. You’ll need a worthwhile Keyword density checker

Adding search capability to your site helps visitors locate the information they desire more quickly. You can find and configure search for your site from
Custom Google search engine
Roll your own site search
Free site search from Atomz
Search Builder at Yahoo!

Usability and findability is critical for any site. Jakob Nielsen’s site, Jakob Nielsen’s Useit.com

Social networking tools can complement existing sites. Depending on the need, you might consider using:
My Facebook profile
Twitter
And you’ll want to find people using Twitter, so you’ll likely want to use Twitdir
Watching trends and looking for blog mentions can be done at Technrati
For a corporate approach to social software, you might take a look at LinkedIn
For sharing bookmarks (or Favorites in Internet Explorer speak), ma.gnolia

Books with companion web sites that cover the range of web work include:
Web Redesign 2.0. Kelly Goto, one of the co-authors, runs a web consulting company. The company’s site has content worth spending time reviewing.
Web Style Guide, now in a third edition, is an exceptional book, condensing a great deal of web design content into a short book.
Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think is another well done and short book on usability.

Email marketing covers a wide range of topics and skills. Here’s a few companies that will help shoulder the load.
Mail Chimp has moved into my top spot. Their preview package, showing how the email will be handled by various platforms and email clients is invaluable.
iContact does a very good of making it easy to send and track email campaigns.
Campaign Monitor, like the others, offers a trial period to evaluate their product.
Constant Contact is a fourth email product offering similar features to the other packages. Using the trial period to evaluate each package is worth the time.

Blogging tools include:
Blogger, from Google is a free blogging service that can have you up and running in a few minutes.
WordPress is extensible and a large number of developers build plug-ins and customized content management tools for WordPress users.
Movable Type offers a mature platform for blogging.
This blog runs on Expression Engine

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Safe Connections: Anti-virus and anti-malware tools

Viruses have become less of a threat to personal computing, and exploits that rely on social engineering techniques are rising. It is possible to avoid them, but the sophistication of the attacks needs more sophisticated tools to remove the infection.

Most anti-virus packages contain anti-malware components. No-cost and low-cost tools include:
AVG
Avast
Eset
Clamwin

The threats now arise not from email, but from other vectors. These include plugins to web browsers, such as Flash or Adobe/Acrobat Reader. What’s needed is a tool to inventory system software and the state of updates. These tools include:
Secunia
Belarc Advisor

Specific tools to detect and clean anti-malware include:
a-squared
Malwarebytes
Windows Defender

You may need to test, so the eicar anti-virus signature is helpful:
Anti-virus test signature

A more radical approach is sandboxing, that is, setting aside a separate area of memory to run suspect programs. These tools include:
Sandboxie
VMWare

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

What’s New in Social Software: Presentation at the Center for Business and Technology at JCCC

Taking a cue from Facebook’s News Feed and the idea of followers, many applications in the social networking software space now use the friends and followers metaphor to pull people back to the sites. Ma.gnolia, the social bookmarking tool now supports following of other ma.gnolia users. Much like the approach Facebook took with News Feeds, aggregating followers allows users of the SNS sites to quickly peruse the activities of other users of the service. Rather than search for bookmarks tagged by topic, following other ma.gnolia users works by reputation and allows me to utilize other people as filters for topics I’m interested in following.
If I trust a specific ma.gnolia user to bookmark content that is relevant and useful, then I’m likely to follow them. As a ma.gnolia user, my profile on ma.gnolia shows me their bookmarking activity, and avoids the need to visit many different profiles to see their recent bookmarks, or check their status. That usage pattern also keeps me as a user involved with the site for longer times. If I’m selling ads on the site, then the exposure to ads increases, and the site owner’s potential revenue should increase.
Twitter takes this follower and news feed idea to a simpler level by allowing me to add 140 character posts that are less than a blog post, but more than a status post. Add the cross fertilization of Twitter applications, and the idea of “What are you doing now?” spreads into other areas. I liken it to being at a large party where I know some people well, a lot of other people less well, and a whole group of people I know of, but I’m not yet acquainted with them. Twitter allows me to drop in on conversations among all of the party goers and eavesdrop or reply if the conversation provides an opening. Like any party conversation, the topics veer toward banal, but also useful, sometimes entertaining, and most always opinionated.
These links may help you get a handle on this trend.
You can catch me on Twitter: Keith Krieger on Twitter, LinkedIn: Keith Krieger on LinkedIn, or Facebook: search for Keith Krieger.

Who’s following (or not) on Twitter?.
Trying to find someone or something on Twitter? Try Twitter Search.
Watching buzz? Looking for people talking about you, your company, your interest on Twitter? Try Tweetscan.
Looking for blog buzz about you, your company, your interest? Try Technorati or Blogpulse.
Get Satisfaction is another Twitter search tool.
50 ideas for using Twitter in business.
More Twitter tools.
And if those aren’t enough ideas for you, how about 140+ Twitter tools.
Skout: Location status and what you’re doing status delivered via cell.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Effective Search Strategies presentation resources

I’ve posted the short set of links to resources for the Effective Search Strategies presentation. Please let me know if you have any questions about the techniques reviewed.

Friday, September 05, 2008

Marketing a new browser

Most everyone in the web design world has commented on Google’s browser, Chrome, as to its bugs, deficiencies, and the possibilities of it taking market share from everyone. I find the marketing of Chrome to be interesting, in that Google’s extremely simplified home page gives the link to download Chrome very high visibility. Google rarely adds links to their home page, so the Chrome link is especially noticeable. That placement may have a bigger impact on the uptake of Chrome than anything else.

Amidst the Chrome talk, Microsoft quietly noted that IE8 will fully support CSS 2.1. This is quite a jump from previous versions, but we will need to see if the general release will actually do so. And while this would be a good thing, a substantial percentage still use IE6. Moving that user base from the browser they’re comfortable with to a standards-compliant browser will be a challenge. And unlike Google’s home page, Microsoft’s broad product range makes it difficult to highlight a single release. On the other hand, Microsoft does have Automatic Updates. . .

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Job Opening at Washburn University

Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, has an opening for a full-time webmaster. The description has the usual laundry list of desired skill sets.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Speaking at the National Association of Government Webmasters conference

I’ll be presenting at the National Association of Government Webmasters conference in Chicago on September 11. The topic will be 90 minutes on social media in the workplace. NAGW’s site has more details and information.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Site launch for the Native Sons and Daughters of Greater Kansas City

The content continues to evolve, but the largest share of work is complete for the Native Sons and Daughters of Greater Kansas City site. The site was previously built in a haphazard manner, and rarely updated. The look roughly compares to the previous look, with the addition of events in the right-hand column.

The image at the top changes next. The organization is 70-plus years old, and has a long history of preserving Kansas City’s past. Several sites, including Fort Osage in Sibley, Missouri, Union Cemetery, in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Town of Kansas site, were revived and maintained with efforts of the group. Given that background, and a deep set of print archives, I’ll be pulling imagery from the archives to use for the header image.

And since the membership is still oriented to a 1980’s approach to content, member engagement, and activity, bringing more content into the site is critical to making the organization meaningful to people under the age of 40. That means more content, which in turn requires a plan to condense the navigation on the left and top to a more manageable list. So, more to come.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Resources for Wireless Security presentation, August 5

These links to resources for wireless security may be helpful to protect your home network and your portable digital devices. As with any links, I can only guarantee that they worked at the time of the posting.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Tools and Techniques for Online Marketing: July 29 and 30 JCCC class

These are links to sites and online resources for the JCCC Center for Business Internet Marketing class held on July 29 and 30, 2008

These links to web resources may be helpful to you after the class is completed.

Google webmaster tools:
Tools for site status, statistics, diagnostics, content submission, and sitemaps, among other worthwhile tools.

Domain name registration at GoDaddy
Thousands of registrars will help you register a domain name. GoDaddy has the mind share right now.

Thousands of hosting companies will host your site and your email address. Here’s three hosting the sites of my customers.
Web hosting by Dreamhost
Web hosting by media temple
Web hosting by 1and1

Build your own 404 error pages to replace the browser defaults. Friendly 404 pages keep the visitor around, and may help you, the web editor, to find problems missed by other link checking tools.
Custom 404 building at Plinko

Keyword development tools will help determine the unique sets of terms site visitors might use to find your site.
Keyword development with Wordtracker Wordtracker is a paid service, but offers a free trial with limited scope.
Keyword research using AdWords
Keyword density is calcluated in a formula:
Density=keyword frequency divided by total words on the page
Density of 7% is appropriate, while density of 10% and above results in stilted language and possible penalties by the search engines. You’ll need a worthwhile Keyword density checker

Adding search capability to your site helps visitors locate the information they desire more quickly. You can find and configure search for your site from
Custom Google search engine
Roll your own site search
Free site search from Atomz
Search Builder at Yahoo!

Usability and findability is critical for any site. Jakob Nielsen’s site, Jakob Nielsen’s Useit.com

My Facebook profile