Archives for blend

2009: Year of the Commercialization of Social Media

Published on December 16, 2009

Almost gone are the days of pure person-to-person communication in the blogsphere and in online communities. Business always finds a way to invade and monetize any new communication media or platform. From FTC disclosures to self-promoting blog and forum comments,  what once was no-mans land for commerce is now the next frontier.

The hot topic, at least for us and our clients, this year was “How do we effectively use social media?” There has been a lot written about this subject over the past several months with a wide range of perspectives, but there seems to be consensus from the qualified experts on a few key points:

Look before you leap

It makes no sense to start a blog, begin Tweeting or set-up a Facebook page without first doing your homework. Learn what others are doing, what people are saying about you and your business sector and how they are saying it. Analyze the benefits to see if it makes sense for your business to spend time and money participating in social media. It isn’t for everyone.

It’s no silver bullet

Just like any other media, one needs a well planned strategy and well executed tactics to be successful. Sure the initial cost is low compare to broadcast media, but participating in social media in time intensive. It does not happen overnight and needs a consistent, honest approach.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

Social media will not save your business. Marketing should have many fronts and social media be a small part. I have read in several places only about 10% of your online marketing budget should be spent on social media. Obviously, this will vary depending on the type of business.

Beware of guarantees

Social media is the wild, wild, west of the Internet. The experts are learning new way to improving the conversation every day, but there are no guarantees. Anyone promising large numbers of visitors, or clicks, or viral content should be suspect.  There are ways to get short terms boosts in certain statistics, but how does this affect long-term goals? Long term goals are what matters. This goes back to strategy.

Social media initiatives can be successful. We’ve all read about some very effective things companies have done, but the important thing is how it can help your business. Due diligence, strategy, perseverance and the proper expectations go a long way in defining success.

No comments | Strategy

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus

Published on December 10, 2009

I recently bought some Field Notes memo books. There was a small glitch on their site, so I sent them a note. To my surprise, when my order arrived they had sent me an additional set of colored note pads just to say, “Thanks for the heads up.”

 Very cool. Thanks Field Notes folks ~”a DDC / CP joint.”

No comments | General,Resources

Bass Fishing and Business Lessons

Published on December 1, 2009

I love to bass fish and since fishing is more fishing than catching, there’s a lot of time for thinking. Thinking about fishing and thinking about everything else. Maybe that’s a big part of why I like it so much.

I find myself using fishing analogies as I explain business concepts to clients and co-workers. Maybe I’m thinking about fishing too much, but I’ve found some sound correlations between successful fishing and successful business.

Fish where there’s a good fish population.

Time is precious so spend your time fishing the most productive water you can find. Too many people spend a great deal of effort fishing lakes and rivers with poor fish populations. Your catch will be a sampling of the overall fish population of a body of water. Use that fact to your advantage.

The same applies in business. If you are selling products or services, make sure you are doing business in an area where the probability of success is the highest. This area can be geographic, demographic or whatever other qualifier makes the difference.

Keep your lure in the strike zone.

This is about increasing productivity. If most of the active fish are close to shore work your lure close to shore. If they are deeper, concentrate on that water. Most anglers cast from shallow to deep all the time. It doesn’t make sense to spend half the time fishing water where the fish aren’t active.

In business, this relates to face time or touch points. The more time you spend top-of-mind with a prospect, the higher the probability of her/him taking the bait. Also it’s important to be communicating with people that are actually interested in your offering at the time their interest is peaking.

Try several techniques until a pattern emerges, then fine tune your presentation.

Junk fishing is a term to describe using multiple lures and presentations to find out what they’re biting on. It’s a good way to learn what your prey is interested in, at that particular time. Once you catch a few fish a pattern emerges, then slight changes in presentation, like color, size or speed of a lure can improve the outcome.

People identify and related to different things. As you develop a relationship with a potential client, you may need to try discussing different aspects of your products or services until something resonates with them. At that point it’s all about the details to further solidify your understanding of their needs.

It’s all a numbers game.

More time spent on prime water making productive casts with a high-probability presentation equals more fish.

More time spent selling to interested consumers and communicating to them repeatedly while they are receptive equals more sales.

Be the ball.

In order to effectively fish a lure, one must visualize what the lure is doing beneath the surface: how it’s moving; what it’s bouncing off of; why it stopped all create awareness and increase sensitivity. Pay attention.

The same can be said for listening to what consumers are saying about your brand. Make sure you are acutely aware and are sensitive to the perception of your constituents towards your business.

Use good equipment.

On the water problems are often attributed to using improper or faulty equipment. Poorly maintained boat motors break down; old fishing line snaps and dull hooks miss fish. High-tech electronics give us insight into the fish’s world and professional-grade tools increase productivity.

Well-designed facilities, hardware, software and other tools make doing business faster, safer and more dependable, and can give one an edge over the competition.

Talk to other fishermen and share information.

I always talk to the anglers at the boat ramp and every fisherman I pass while fishing. I volunteer information and empathize with the ones having no luck.

Ask questions. People like to be experts. Let them. You’ll learn more, faster, by asking than figuring it out yourself.

Always be ready for the big one.

Catching a monster bass doesn’t happen very often, maybe only once in a lifetime, so always expect it to happen and be ready. This is the single most motivating factor most people fish for bass. A photo of a prized catch is always better than a sad story about the one that got away.

Owners work hard and make a lot of sacrifices to build a business. One never knows where or when the big break will come, so as with fishing, readiness to seize the moment is what separates the winners from the losers.

The more you do it, the better you become.

This is true with anything. Experience matters. It increases the quality and quantity of your work.

Become a specialist, but be verastile.

The best anglers usually excel at 2 or 3 fishing techniques. They have taken the time to master those methods and use those as their confidence techniques, but when the conditions aren’t working out they are still proficient at other more favorable approaches to be affective in a variety of situations.

Most businesses and business people have core competencies. They should be experts at them, but at times other services or skills may be required to get the job done or close the deal and the good ones rise to the occasion for success.

No comments | General

Continuing Ed for the Webbie

Published on November 24, 2009

Nowadays there are all kinds of great events one can attend to get the latest and greatest information about the web world. The mackdaddy is South by Southwest Interactive followed by numerous conferences about technology, start-ups, blogging, video, UX, you name it. It would be great to attend these, but they are expensive and take time. However, one of the best things about the web is how self serving it is.  Go Geeks! You can obtain a lot of knowledge shared at these events by using online resources.

A few weeks ago I pulled up a Twitter visualization site for the An Event Apart Chicago Conference and was able to witness, in real-time, people’s tweets about the presentations. It was amazing how much I was able to comprehend by simply doing this. People were tweeting because they knew people were monitoring the #aea hashtag. A lot of presenters post their presentations on SlideShare so you can see them. I was just watching videos recorded at the Web 2.0 Expo a week ago that were good quality and listened to podcasts from that event as well. Journalists at these events often do interviews and they always post them online. Facebook groups are also a good way to get information.

If you’re interested in attending a conference, but can’t. Look on their web site. There are often sites listed that will be broadcasting from the event and sharing the material. You can also check out the presenter’s web sites. They often publish their talks when they have time afterwards.

The information is out there if you look. Take part in any way can. It’s never been easier.

No comments | Resources

Stumped

Published on November 20, 2009

I have been having an issue with Worpress publishing a post I wrote. The admin just hangs when I try to publish the post. After a week of troubleshooting, my hosting company tells me they have SQL injection prevention software that is stopping the execution of the process becuse it thinks something in my post is an attack. I’ll buy that. I done a lot of things to try to troubleshoot the problem: new database, new installation of WP code, move to another server and still no luck.

I have successfully published the exact same text on 2 other WordPress blogs at this hosting company, but I cannot get it to work on this blog. ( Maybe someone is trying to tell me my post sucks and don’t let the world read it.) I thought it may have something to do with the length, but no. I published a really long latin text post fine. I have inserted it in pieces with success, but when I get to E-mail section, it breaks. I have never seen anything like this.

 Here is the text in question:

E-mail (mid 1980s)
E-mail is certainly fast. Type, send, and within a few seconds someone on the other side of the world can read your message - quite awesome. Several people can receive the message at the same time – this is huge – and a conversation can occur between several people – very useful. The problems with e-mail are with managing the conversation:
There’s a lot of overhead with e-mail and replies. Each reply is a new email message not a continuance of the original. Unnecessary noise is created by not being able to control who sees specific replies. Just look how full one’s Inbox becomes. One also has to create a completely new e-mail to communicate with a subset of the recipients and this new email is not related with the original.
It can be difficult to follow the conversation just by reading the message body, even though by default replies are basically in chronological order bottom to top, but sometimes people will put comments in line by the original text, messing this ordering up.

Why can I put it here, but the original post won’t publish until I remove it?

 Here is the entire original post.

Evolution of the Digital Message
As we look at the evolution of the digital message, let’s examine three distinct trends:
  • Ease
  • Managing chronology
  • Access
These three concepts are drive technology.
E-mail (mid 1980s)
E-mail is certainly fast. Type, send, and within a few seconds someone on the other side of the world can read your message - quite awesome. Several people can receive the message at the same time – this is huge – and a conversation can occur between several people – very useful. The problems with e-mail are with managing the conversation:
There’s a lot of overhead with e-mail and replies. Each reply is a new email message not a continuance of the original.
Unnecessary noise is created by not being able to control who sees specific replies. Just look how full one’s Inbox becomes. One also has to create a completely new e-mail to communicate with a subset of the recipients and this new email is not related with the original.
It can be difficult to follow the conversation just by reading the message body, even though by default replies are basically in chronological order bottom to top, but sometimes people will put comments in line by the original text, messing this ordering up.
Instant Messaging (IM) (mid 1980s)
IM has some advantages here. It’s super fast, with low overhead and addresses the ease factor, but the messages aren’t easily saved. Replies are always in reserve chronological order - even though the intent was not to be that way; it may be how they happened to be submitted. If the message is saved, it is much more difficult to read because it wasn’t witnessed in real-time - little context. Like e-mail several people can be sent an IM message simultaneously.
Short Message Service (SMS) (mid 1990s)
Short Message Service (SMS) is a lot like e-mail, only for mobile phones and  it’s limited to super-short messages. It’s one-on-one and not really meant to be saved, or at least, easily retrieved; best used for spontaneous communication or brief notices. Unlike an actual phone call, it does not need to be answered when received, in this respect it’s e-mail-like.
Blogging (mid 1990s)
Blogging is used as a method of communicating to a vast audience simultaneously. The length of the message isn’t restricted. It’s easily saved and affords conversation with commenting functionality, but comment lists don’t allow much flexibility with how comments to other comments are displayed. All comments are displayed as if to be to the original post.
Forums, Message Boards, News Groups (mid 1990s)
Forums have been successful in providing a very flexible platform for communication. The biggest advantage is one can reply or comment on the original message (thread) or a subsequent comment and it is displayed in a manner where the visitor can easily tell what has happened. It’s not a necessarily a chronological list of blog comments; comments can be related to comments. Also messages (threads) that have recent comments are bubbled up to the top of the list so one can see what is new. All forums aren’t the same, but the idea is - keep the active part of the conversation easy to find and interact with, while archiving the rest in an organized manner.
Micro-Blogging (mid 2000s)
Micro-Blogging has characteristics evolved from IM, SMS and blogging. Like a blog, it can be read by millions of people simultaneously, but has lower overhead, greater ease and speed than a writing blog post. This technology addresses some of the limitations of the above technologies but has limitations with other aspects like chronology, persistence and context.
The Wall (2004)
The Facebook Wall is a forum evolved. There is no single topic. You are the thread. The messages are not necessarily displayed in reverse chronology, but seemingly complex algorithms keep things top-of-page. There’s rating, recommending, sharing, adding. Access is controlled by relationships. It’s fast and easy and can be used on mobile devices increasing speed, accessibility and ease.
Google Wave
Although each of these technologies are pretty good at addressing different parts of the digital message conundrum, not one does it all; enter Google Wave. Wave is still in alpha testing, but it has tried to address speed, chronology, access and more. It combines an e-mail message with forum-type threading and reply mechanisms similar to The Wall. Messages or waves can be replayed, as they were written, like watching it unfold as a spectator, providing context. Recipients see messages typed on their screens in real-time. They can edit any part of the message and changes are noted and tracked. It is truly revolutionary.
The Future
The future is now. With mobile devices quickly becoming rich broadband applications and the user interface of choice, digital messaging will surely progress to include a real-time stream of communication that will have speed, accessibility, context, persistence and defy chronological limitations we see with today’s systems - one giant mash-up on steroids. Uses will be created we haven’t even needed yet. It will be empowering for those who embrace it and it’s all pretty mind blowing.

How I can include it in this post, but it won’t publish by itself? What charecter sequence could be the issue? What is going on? If any of you WordPress or other experts have any ideas, I’d love to hear from you.

No comments | General

Meet Penelope Trunk

Published on November 15, 2009

It all depends on my workload, but I read quite a few blogs. Most of them are technical, since I’m often looking for information. Recently, I find myself reading more non-tech blogs because they are linked to the tech blogs. Either geeks are becoming softer, or more people are becoming geeks. I’m not sure.

One such person is Penelope Trunk. Ms.Trunk’s blog was listed in Inc.’s 19 Blogs You Should Read. Ms. Trunk is plenty geeky, with other issues too, but she is not a technologist. She’s somewhat hard to describe. She calls herself a career advisor and her writing is much more than advice. I’d say she is a life coach that writes short stories that meander to a specific point. Most bloggers aren’t good writers. They just get the job done in an acceptable manner. Penelope is a good writer. It’s a pleasure getting useful information while being entertained.

Here’s a video of Penelope giving a presentation a few years ago. I found it interesting to watch her compared to reading her.

No comments | Inspiration,Resources

Meeting Client Needs

Published on November 10, 2009

There a lot of reasons why clients’ needs aren’t met in interactive projects and most of these reasons are not unique to interactive, but can be found in any project. Here are four essential activities, if done well, that make meeting client needs not so difficult:

Accurately Defining Needs

No good solutions come from properly defined problems. Often people concentrate on defining an elegant solution for a problem with a lot of unknowns, assumptions or incorrect information, when time would be better spent defining the problem in more detail and accuracy. Fully understand the problem before considering a solution.

Mistakes are sometimes made in believing a client has correctly defined their needs and then using their problem definitions to develop requirements. No project can overcome bad information during requirements definition. Therefore, always make sure the information provided by the client is accurate and complete as possible. Take time to do the extra work of confirming and evaluating provided information as part of the Discovery process.

Communicating

It is interesting that verbal communication, the most common method of communicating, can be so difficult to do. This difficulty makes it necessary to work hard at understanding the real meaning of what people actually say. A message can be understood fully and validated by using various techniques: asking the right questions, reiterating what was communicated in different terms, illustrating the meaning visually, inferring what was implied, stating the opposite for reaction, and having several people evaluate the message. It’s too late when you hear “That’s not what I said” on the delivery date.

Applying Knowledge

Now that the problem is acceptably defined and a dialog is happening. Knowledge is the key to understanding. It adds depth and clarity to communication. It does not matter how eloquently something is stated, meaning is lost if the message cannot be comprehended. Applying knowledge is problem solving and the crux of the planning process. Get the whole team involved. Get subject matter expert to participate in the conversation. Divide the facts into two groups: what is known and what is unknown. With the unknowns, intelligence can sometimes be a substitute for lack of knowledge. Breaking down the problem into small consumable parts allows one to examine and learn. One acquires knowledge from experience by using his/her intelligence. The moral here is, do your homework. Either know your stuff, or know how to get answers.

Choosing a Solution

The client needs have been properly defined, valid communication has occurred and knowledge applied, so a solution must be proffered. Often there is no standout solution. Cost-benefit analysis, available resources and preferences influence the solution choice. Here lies the art in the technology business: making the best decisions at the right times with the information at hand. However, it’s not magic. The process of measuring risk, applying expert judgment, and managing expectations produces a higher probability of success than a narrow-minded approach. Use what is available to you to make the most informed decision and try to mitigate the liability of the decision through your due diligence process.

No comments | Project Management

A Home for Interactive

Published on November 6, 2009

I’ve worked with companies where the web department is managed under marketing and where it’s managed under IT. Where to place the web group seems to be a puzzling decision for most organizations. My experience has been neither marketing nor IT works well. There always seems to be tension between the two departments. “Marketing has these crazy ideas; they are unorganized and everything has to be done now”, says IT. While marketing laments, “We don’t get satisfactory service; they screw it up; it takes them forever and they always make a big deal of everything.”

Much of this conflict is because of the different business objectives of each department: marketing needs timeliness and agility; their initiatives have dependencies such as media buys, cross-promotions, changing public relations and executive mind changing; IT’s responsibility is to conduct due diligence, minimize risks, do things following a strict process and test thoroughly. On top of this, people’s personalities in these two disciplines are often very different – creative vs. analytic. This scenario is much like oil and water. In addition to this unlikely mix, in today’s economy most departments are under staffed, raising tensions even higher.

My solution is to make the web or interactive department its own entity, not under marketing or IT. Interactive projects range from marketing assignments to enterprise applications that serve business needs, just like marketing and IT themselves serve business needs. Web should interact with marketing and IT like other departments. They can be team members and/or stakeholders. It all depends on the situation. If the Chief Marketing Officer and the Chief Information Officer isn’t the boss, who is? A new C, the Chief Digital Officer is one answer.

I just want to see less dysfunction in large organizations. Interactive has been around 15 years (for all practical purposes) now and many companies still aren’t approaching it efficiently. Functional improvements would make my job a lot better and benefit the organizations greatly.

No comments | Project Management

What’s on Your Website?

Published on November 3, 2009

The 2009 Forrester Groundswell Awards were divided into several categories which I thought were very appropriate. They were listening, talking, energizing, embracing, supporting, managing, spreading and social impact for both B2B and B2C companies.

These action words are what businesses do every day and are great ways to think about online strategy. The days of successful brochure-ware sites are long gone. Today’s web requires engagement and results.

All of the winners are companies that leveraged the collective knowledge of a community, which they created, and facilitated a conversation to do one of more of the action words above.

Results were measured in various types of conversions, traffic stats and other web data, but more importantly, business needs were addressed as well. Consumer or customer opinions were collected that resulted in increased sales and several companies acquired information that affected core business operations, improving processes and saving money.

No comments | Strategy

Half Done, Ain’t Half Done.

Published on November 1, 2009

Fact: It is almost certain, if you are half done with work activities at the half-way point of the schedule the project will be late or un-estimated man hours will be needed at the end to make the deadline.

Most people think if half the work is finished and half the scheduled has elapsed, the project must be half completed. While this sounds good, it is overly optimistic. Too often, the end of a project is a scramble of activity to get things completed on time and no matter how much planning there is to even out the pace, there’s always a sprint to the finish.

I’ll assert that what is called the half-way point is not as such. Time (schedule) is obvious, but work, or man hours, is much more difficult to gauge. If 1000 project man hours were estimated and 500 remain it would seem one could say the project is half completed, but all that can be truly said is, we’ve used half the estimated man hours.

Two common methods for projecting remaining work are using straight line calculation and a 50/50 S-curve model, but these are poor models. Let’s look at a project for a minute. The beginning usually starts slowly and work ramps ups, while the end has a lot of work going on right up until the deadline – hardly a mirror image. Neal Whitten makes a case for using a 70/50 S-curve model in which 70% of work is completed at 50% of the schedule. I agree with this model. It definitely will increase the probability of getting the project completed on time without a huge flurry at the end. This model has built in contingencies to protect the schedule thus minimizing the risk of overrun.

As the project plan and schedule are created, use the 70/50 rule. At each milestone assess progress and reevaluate what work is remaining and adjust the schedule to get 70% completed at the next schedule half-way point. Even though there may milestone deadlines that cause periods of increased workloads, this practice will spread out much of the needed work that piles up at the end of a project. Granted, some things need to be done at the end, but there will be time in the schedule to tackle this work and unknowns when they occur.

No comments | Project Management

Bad Impressions

Published on October 27, 2009

I recently had an encounter with another IT person that ended badly. My company built a web site for a new client that was his client. Let’s call him Ted. While working with this new client, we had been informed they wanted to switch hosting companies because they were unsatisfied with the service they had been getting from Ted. This formed an opinion in my mind before I even communicated with Ted. My bad.

When time came to launch the web site, we needed to manage the DNS and Ted was the domain administrator. My email was straight forward and written as nothing more than an inquiry and introduction. I figured he would be reluctant to provide much assistance; he was losing a client and wasn’t getting paid for his time. He suggested we transfer the domains so we had ownership and control. Great.

We ran into some issues that required Ted and I spend more time than we had hoped and I was unfamiliar with the process. Ted did not respond and provide assistance in a way that I thought was satisfactory. Because of my confusion and Ted’s poor communication, I was uncertain on what to do and I thought he had an obligation, as the administrator, to accommodate his client’s needs. This is where our rapport deteriorated quickly.

This story has several lessons:

  1. Always be professional, respectful and helpful.
  2. Don’t let other people’s impression taint your own and cause preconceptions or misconceptions.
  3. Don’t make assumptions on people’s knowledge, relationships and conduct.

In hindsight, I should have been more mindful and articulated my lack of knowledge giving Ted a better perspective. Ted should have expressed his situation, or offered to take the ball to get this done as easy as possible. He could have even charged for his time, so it didn’t seem like such a loss. Regardless, it’s a shame when two professionals can’t communicate properly and get something so simple accomplished without drama.

No comments | Project Management

Extend JQuery

Published on October 22, 2009

50 JQuery examples using default code base and plugins. Why write this stuff from scratch?

Via on design.

No comments | Technology

Looking In. Looking Out.

Published on October 1, 2009

A successful web site, or any piece of communication for that matter, must be presented in a fashion that is reasonably, easily absorbed by the intended audience. As we work on the information architecture of a site one of the first things that can cause issues is the difference between how an organization views itself internally and how it needs to represent itself externally. Working inside an enterprise can quickly become blinding because of engrained business practices and developed culture. Structure that makes sense to the organization may not be intuitive for people that do not have the proper insight.

We often spend a great deal of effort at the beginning of content planning educating stakeholders on why the proper perspective is so important. However, experience has shown us that although proper presentation is paramount, the final result is often compromised by unwillingness to change and internal politics. Fortunately, a good process for developing content, a well-structured site map, appropriate copywriting and a user-friendly page layout will greatly ensure success.

Step One: Business Strategy

A business strategy that has clearly defined goals is essential to begin collecting and evaluating content. Often, planning content along with other project planning activities help formulate additional goals, or bring to light good reasons for a slightly shift the initial strategy.

Strategic development should start with executives. After all, they drive the business, but other stakeholders (managers and people “in the trenches”), bring valuable perspectives and information. So they should also be interviewed to help solidify management’s objectives and assist with tactics to achieve the goals.

Step Two: Content Aggregation

As stakeholders are consulted, assign them tasks to collect any and all information that falls under their area of interest. Content that supports strategic goals is kept and content that does not gets discarded. It’s that simple. Once enough content is available for a given topic it can be evaluated for completeness and overall value.

Step Three: Content Organization

We start with a high-level site map (version 1.0) derived from information we’ve collected and our own expertise. This is used as a starting point for discussion with stakeholders. This is the first time difference of opinion is usually encountered. Since the intial interviews, stakeholders have an opportunity to form expectations and these expectations are usually centered on their concerns and not always overall business goals. The site map revision process must be driven by business strategy. Expectations must be managed from here throughout the project’s completion to avoid costly complications further down the road.

There are two situations that often arise during this process that can affect the outcome greatly:

  1. Internal departments should not necessarily dictate site sections – Just because a manager oversees several departments, content that describes these departments may not be best presented in the same section of the web site.
  2. Squeaky wheels – Project sponsors need to determine what’s more important: appeasing internal pressures or presenting successful content for audiences.

Once a revised site map (version 2.0) has been accepted, a detailed content outline is created from that structure. This outline can web page specific and even include sub-headings, but we have found it more accurate to keep it topic specific and wait to see how much content is in the final draft before assigning it to specific web pages.

Please note: the site map and content outline are “living documents” and subject to change as the project lives on, but always with respect to business strategy.

Step Four: Copywriting

Making content user friendly is the intent of the organizational process, but the page or word level is also where it really matters. This is where good graphic design can really pay off. Design adds meaning and heuristics help guide the viewer’s eyes around the page.

In addition to the appearance of the page, copywriting will make a huge difference in how well your message is understood. The tone should support the content, it must be engaging so people will want to read it and informative so people get value from it.

It’s important to know your audience. Every business sector has its own terminology, but your audience may not know what most terms mean. Use common language for descriptions and don’t assume people will understand what they are reading. Be especially careful when using specific terms for navigation labels and text links. It’s better to use common words and then inform users of the insider’s terms or acronyms.

No comments | Project Management,Strategy

Microsoft Web Platform

Published on September 29, 2009

The Microsoft Web Platform gives you the framework, web server, database and tools you need to build and run Web sites and applications on Windows®.

I’m not used to seeing this, but PHP is included along with several open-source apps.

No comments | Technology

Microsoft WebsiteSpark

Published on September 29, 2009

Visibility, support and software for professional Web Developers and Designers – at no upfront cost!

Heck of a deal.

No comments | Technology