Web

Most web site development projects fail through lack of communication during requirements gathering. A disconnect between clients and programmers often occurs due to software being an intangible object. Unlike purchasing a car, developing software relies on clients describing desired functionality and programmers interpreting that description to create a tangible product.

Managing the consistency of a brand identity system is facilitated by documented standards and guidelines that are easily accessible to all internal and external partners who have the responsibility of communicating the brand. While the range and formats of these documents may include CDs, posters, fact sheets, PowerPoints and PDFs, I've found that PDFs tend to be the best format for ease of creation, delivery and security.

Drupal, by default, does not support automated logouts based on inactivity. Thankfully, there is the "Automated Logout" module, which allows granular control of automated logouts. And for browser exits, there is a value you can set in your settings.php file.

If I had a dollar for every time a potential client told me how easy web development is, or asked me to estimate the re-development of a Facebook-like website after a ten minute phone call I could travel around the world for a couple months. It it was easy to estimate and develop web applications (or any IT project for that matter) over 60% of projects wouldn't fail.

Hopefully, if you’re making a decision on re-designing or building a new website for your company at least one of the criteria for selecting an agency is; 1. “Doe's the agency’s own web site reflect the same kind of results that are being proposed for your new website?" In other words, doe's the website design company or agency practice what they preach?

From the true inventor of the WWW, Tim Berners Lee talks at the 2009 TED conference about the importance of sharing linked data for the new horizons of the semantic Web. He challenges all individuals, enterprises and government entities to open their raw data sources to the Web. Tim believes that the next generation of the Web will be the linking of information from open data sources to correlate connections and relationships with objects and even concepts.

If you work in search engine optimization, or Internet marketing and you haven't been exposed to Drupal yet, it's a wonderful CMS for a variety of applications. Specific to this blog post, however, Drupal is a phenomenal platform for search engine optimization and Internet marketing. With the right modules installed and configured, Drupal can be a complete joy to work with for an SEO. Use the following as a guide for the best Drupal SEO and SEM modules to install for your website.

Is traditional e-mail on it's way out? John C. Dvorak at PCMAG.com gives us 9 Reasons why E-mail is Dead. In some regards I do agree. It seems that social networking sites have already taken over traditional e-mail on a personal level but what about in the workplace? As John explains between all of the spam, junk and ever-changing email addresses "there is no real way of confirming receipt of an e-mail other than the annoying receipt request." But does social networking have enough credibility to really take over traditional e-mail in the workplace? Is e-mail really dead?

For now:

Friends: "I FaceBook'ed you."
Work: "I emailed you."

9 Reasons E-Mail is Dead

Way back in the day of Twitter (circa 2008, that is) a direct message was a good way to start a conversation and connect with a new follower. At the time, I thought they were an invaluable tool for driving traffic to a website and starting a flow of communication.

Then it all changed.