In time for the summer vacation planning season the St. Lawrence County Chamber of Commerce updated its North Country Guide Web site with Google Maps. The maps enable Web site visitors to put the business or attraction listing into its geographic location thus eliminating some of the guesswork inherent in planning a vacation.
March 31st, 2006
The last survey was up for two weeks with moderate response, but the response was unanimous.
Those few brave souls who voted were given a choice between these two phrases:
The unanimous favorite was The best Web sites don’t make me wait.
This week’s poll is:
Which element is most important to a Web site’s success?
March 18th, 2006
In a Businessweek Online article yesterday, Michelle Conlin tells the story of Josh Santangelo, a Web developer who discovered that there is no eraser on the Internet.
This principle applies to any information that is posted on a Web page. For example, if you share your email address on someone’s guest book, it is likely to remain available through the Google cache and other services for a very long time. Email address harvesters are extremely persistent.
March 18th, 2006
Charles Herold of Opinionade has published an excellent comparison of the new release of Mozilla’s email and RSS reader, Thunderbird, with Microsoft’s Outlook 2002. For anyone concerned about security or interested in open source software, this will be an excellent read.
March 14th, 2006
According to ComputerWorld, McAfee released an update last Friday that incorrectly labeled and deleted legitimate files from any computer that had it set to automatically delete corrupted files. Included among these files were Microsoft Excel and standard Windows XP utility files such as shutdown.exe and install.exe.
Having come to believe some time ago that Norton’s Symantec products cause system instability and now seeing how nasty a McAfee misstep can be has led me to remove virus scan software from my computer.
Is this justified? I think so. With the advent of an open source browser that has strong security (Firefox), a firewall on XP that seems quite strong, an online virus removal program that actually works in most cases (Trend Micro’s Housecall) and the nasty underperformance of installed virus removal and protection software, There’s little else that makes sense to me.
I try to browse carefully, using Firefox and only clicking on links whose destination I am reasonably sure of and avoiding most advertisements unless I know the company advertising. I keep my firewall on. I know the url of Trend Micro’s Housecall.
No longer seeking a cure when I do not have the disease, I am browsing much more happily. Since I have tools at my disposal and can run them online as needed, I will not worry and enjoy a faster and more worry free computing experience.
For those who simply must use Internet Explorer, there is probably no alternative except to run virus scan software. In my opinion, McAfee still performs best. But keep to the minimum package: VirusScan only or with the personal firewall, which seems ok. For those who don’t mind a bit more work, installing the open source ClamWin for Windows is an excellent choice.
Edit: Since I wrote this, I discovered the the free version of AVG includes an on-access scanner. This definitely gives it an edge over Clamwin.
March 14th, 2006
Seeking a fast bulk ping service that actually works … here’s hoping the Ping-O-Matic server changes will help!
Ping-O-Matic Blog Archive Server Move
1 comment March 7th, 2006
With all the hype recently, I am beginning to wonder if AJAX is becoming the Flash of the 1990s. We are assuming that if a Web site uses AJAX it is better, or even the best design approach. So the solution to having a “useful,” “cool,” and “engaging” Web site is to add AJAX; never mind if it actually is the best way to approach a particular design solution.
For example, there’s a new blogging platform called AJAXPress that is being developed with a PHP/MySQL server-side component and an AJAX client-side solution. While it is interesting to watch a Web site display a “Loading . . .” graphic, I wonder what the difference is between watching a graphic and text proclaiming that your content is being loaded and waiting while my browser fetches another page.
The big thing that AJAX is supposed overcome is browser wait time, and yet it often does not succeed in this. Here comes another redundant Web design solution that will bloat many Web sites and actually help a few when it is done with careful planning that determines it actually IS the best solution for the problem at hand.
March 6th, 2006
Goals of updating the interface: remove UI elements that aren’t useful to majority of users - increase usability of elements that are useful - increase focus on web content.
This doesn’t surprise me that Firefox is revamping its look and feel since IE7 will add a slick new interface and many RSS enhancements. Firefox needs to show that it can evolve as well, even though it still is well ahead of the IE7 Beta 2 that I am using. I just hope they remember to keep it simple AND functional.
Of course, Firefox will be likely to stay ahead of IE7 no matter what it does when it comes to third party extensions. Its open source philosophy helps immensely with community involvement and development.
March 3rd, 2006
I did some quick research at MSN.com (Why didn’t I do this earlier?) after my post on my IE7 internet connection problem started to get some traffic. Of course, I found the fix to connecting over a LAN with IE7 posted clearly for all to see here. I quote the relevant text below:
Internet Connection Settings - If you notice a problem connecting to web sites, it may be due to the upgrade changing your Internet Explorer 6 Internet Connection settings. To rectify the problem, take the following steps:
1. Launch the Internet Control Panel by clicking “Internet Options” from the Internet Explorer Tools menu.
2. Navigate to the Connections tab
3. For each connection in the “Dialup and Virtual Private Networks” list, click the “Settings” button
4. Verify that “Automatically detect settings” is checked. If not check it
5. Click the “Lan Settings” button in the Connections tab, and repeat step 4 6. Click OK on the Connections tab.
6. Close IE and restart it.
Hopefully this will fix the problem. It seems Microsoft made a major change in how the internet connection is configured.
1 comment February 27th, 2006
While I still hold to everything I said in my Social Bookmarking “Research” post, I am developing more respect for Reddit’s radical democratic culture every day. I credit this post with helping me reorient my thinking.
My initial frustration came from receiving negative feedback on bookmarked stories (sometimes a great deal) with no context provided by comments. Now that I understand why the feedback comes without context, I can put it in its proper perspective.
Reddit’s feedback mechanism is so heavily used, at least from what I can tell, because of its ability to predict stories that will interest a reader based on their likes and dislikes. After I voted several stories up and down (I’d rather just ignore the ones I don’t like), I started receiving recommended stories that interested me without having to filter through the entire list of submitted stories myself.
Though I’m not sure that Reddit will be an everyday tool, it is an example of the rapidly emerging software built around the come to me Web structure that is made possible by RSS feeds.
February 18th, 2006
CSS Web design, e-commerce Web design, and internet marketing issues from the desk of Harvey A. Ramer at Design Delineations.
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