A nice resource for books and articles on everything web. Including chapter excerpts.

Some cities like New York, San Francisco, Portland and even Minneapolis have flourishing freelance resource markets; St. Louis, on the other hand, does not. Several factors may contribute to this:

Size – St. Louis’s creative market is not large enough to consistently employ freelancers.

Culture – A traditional worker bee culture encourages people seek full-time employment or leave.

Talent – Most beginners are not talented or smart enough to be independent contractors.

Business Practices – Agencies find it less risky to hire people than to constantly search for temporary resources.

True or not, these reasons are interrelated: If there was more work, the need for freelancers would increase. If agencies wouldn’t hire as many creatives, the need would increase and sustain more freelancers. If young folks saw freelancing as a viable work situation, more would consider it.

A huge by-product of a strong freelance market is a better skill level of these people; competition would demand people become better at what they do. In turn, the agency’s work would become better and they would get more projects. When they get more projects, there is more work and they hire the best people.

Imagine…

All agency owners fire their creative staff and hire the best ones back as freelancers.  All talented creative individuals begin to stand up for their rights and don’t work at crappy agencies for sub-standard pay. They gain confidence and take their work to the next level increasing the competition. They get more experience by working on a bigger variety of projects and make more money to boot. Companies seek St. Louis as a hot bed of creativity.

… and then I woke up.

I'm looking for an experienced Flash developer for an upcoming project. Must have excellent ActionScripting with XML skills and experience playing video in Flash.

Also looking for web designers with experience in highly-usable, application interface design.

Send me your stuff. mail (at) jamesbielefeldt (.) com

Stephen Birkman is creating very interesting portaits that emulate 19th century studio photography in a surreal fashion. Visually historical, yet a fantasy. Imagine looking at these images out of context, let's say mixed in with real ambrotypes from the 1870s.

http://www.stephenberkman.com/index.htm

A reverse auction is one of the most perverse ways to win business I have ever heard. Very little information about the project is presented: no schedule, no creative brief, no technical requirements, no examples, just a few basic facts.

“Design a promotional web site to collect recipient’s information with some reporting over a 6 month period.”

The only solid information is the budget. The object of a reverse auction is to estimate costs for the project within the budget based on a vague description, gut reaction, assumptions and an educated guess. In other words, a wing and a prayer.

I guess the project is awarded to the lowest bidder, but it can’t be as simple as that. This practice seems to be common in the sales promotion industry, but is foreign to me and violates everything I’ve learned about conducting sound business practices. Only in the advertising business could something this preposterous be acceptable. How low can an agency’s self-respect be to risk loosing money by winning a project they know little about? The very act of participating is an act of submission.

I don’t have an answer on how to fix this situation other than don’t play the game. If the project begins with this much in the client’s favor how can it ever get to a point where it’s fair for the vendor. Up front it’s a loose-loose for everyone. There is no honesty, no trust, no respect, no communication and no relationship. Money is the only factor – is there a profit margin or not.

The other day my son said something that resonated with me. He was practicing his printing skills -- he's six years old. He referred to what he was doing as drawing words, not writing, spelling or printing. What a simple yet accurate description. Isn't that what good typography is?

The act of writing is content creation, but laying out type is refinement of the display of the words. Much like drawing, typographic execution is important to communication. From now on when I'm thinking type, I'm drawing words too.

"I believe that the Internet is the one true integrator because it links all brand and messaging touch points. Using the analogy of an atom, the Internet is both the nucleus (the core) of integrated marketing programs and an orbiting electron. To employ a different image, the Internet is like Grand Central station, where consumers arrive, depart, and are funneled from node to node on the consumer adoption curve, and it is simultaneously one of many mediums controlling the flow of traffic to the desired destination.

As the chameleon of modern-day marketing, functioning as a storefront, distribution channel, medium, communication device, entertainment interface, fulfillment center, customer service mechanism, and information resource or productivity tool, the Internet is the key to turning the failed promises of integration into reality."

The above is an excerpt from Life After the 30 Second Spot, a book by Joseph Jaffe. Chapter 10 is available for download. Well worth the read, as he examines the purpose the Internet serves tradional advertising media.

I've been reviewing project mangement software to use in our business. The robust Microsoft Project was the first to be crossed off the list. It certainly would do the job, but the server version is too expensive and we need to share information.

The ubiquitous Outlook/Exchange was then considered. It has tasks, a calendar, public folders, contacts and now SharePoint. All useful, but it is not really suited for our needs.

A portal approach using DotNetNuke could work. The price is right, but I couldn't find any modules that provide task distribution and deadline notification, important features.

37 Signal's baby, Basecamp, is a contender. It is easy to use, web based and has plenty of features, but it's a bit pricey for us.

JotSpot Wiki is a nice site with a bunch of apps from which to choose. Collectively they can be used to manage a project, but they are not related making it difficult for team members to easily find information. 

So far, I like The Copper Project the best. It comes in two versions: standard and corporate. Of course the corporate version has all the features we need, but it is more expensive. However, it's cheaper than Basecamp.

The jury is still out and hopefully we'll find some young energetic entrepenuers out there with a good product that isn't too pricey and works well. The search continues...

Unlike the famous line from the movie Field of Dreams, just because you’ve built a really cool, innovative web app doesn’t guarantee a lot of traffic. Furthermore, even if you get visitors, they may not become users.

There’s a lot going on when trying to gain acceptance by users. It usually requires work on the user’s behalf to learn how to use an application and to incorporate it into their normal behavior. It must be worth their while to make an effort to use it. Acceptance of a new application will be more successful if several steps are taken to communicate, inform and educate:

User input – Users are more likely to adopt your product if they are allowed to help decide, or create part of it. Beta testing has turned into marketing by getting end users involved in the final development stages.

Awareness & Interest – Users need to be made aware of the new app. This can be done a multitude of ways: traditional marketing and advertising, search engine marketing, blogging, word of mouth…

Evaluation & Trial – With web apps, trial is essential. It is far more likely someone will pay to use something if they can try it for free. Trial periods or trial memberships have become the norm.

Part of the project plan and budget for developing a web app should include techniques for attracting users. Afterall, why build it if no one is going to use it. It’s easy to get caught up in planning development, but it doesn’t end there. Get the word out early using on and offline tactics. Ask for opinions and suggestions from users. Offer free trials, or a free level of membership. Have a marketing plan and get help executing it.

There is anxiety about choosing a hosting company and understandably so. Everyone has heard a story or two about unfortunate situations that happen and the vulnerability of not having control. As with many things, nothing beats a recommendation from a trusted source, but there is a practical approach to choosing a host.

Based on the requirements for a site, there are several things to consider:

Web server platform – Does the site need to reside on a Windows server, Linux or Unix server, or does it matter?

Bandwidth – How much traffic does the site have? What kind of content does it display? Rich media requires much more bandwidth than text files.

Drive space – How many and how large are the files (pages, images, audio and video, PDFs…) does the site have?

Email service – How is email provided: in-house, ISP, web host or another provider? If the hosting company will provide email make sure they meet the requirements for users, size limits, spam control, virus protection and web mail.

Functionality – Does the site require additional components to function? Complex sites often rely on applications and server software that provide business processes that must be installed on the web server or another server on the newwork. This is a big issue. For example, if a site has a content management system or e-commerce, is it compatible with the host’s set-up? Will they allow the installation of new components? Some hosts will if they meet their approval, but most are leery of custom built apps.

Database – What kind of database is required? How does it need to be configured and managed? How large is the data. Site traffic also affects data resources.

Add-ons – Hosting companies often have add-ons included with their hosting packages: shopping carts, payment gateway APIs, blogs, forums, wikis, site builders, newsletter distribution apps, the list goes on and on. Which of these are most useful?

Site & account administration – This can make managing your site easy or a pain. Hosting companies with good administration consoles allow users to log-in via a browser and control preferences and settings to manage the operation of a site and email services. This is important because the more robust the admin tool is the less need for customer service.

Support – Good hosting companies have 24/7/365 support by phone and email with quick response times. Check to see if they have a support ticketing system and logs on responses and resolutions.

Plan variety – Hosts with several plans allow you to choose what is needed without extra costs.

Security – Learn how the host updates and maintains their systems and what their security policies are.

Backups – Learn how often backups are done and whether they have off-site backup facilities.

Availability – Ask about down time for both their internal network and servers and the Internet connections into and out of their facilities. They should have redundancies throughout.

Price – Hosting prices have dropped steadily for the past several years and are a value now. Do some competitive analysis and find a good deal with a good company. They’re out there. One may also renegotiate their current plan based on the competition’s rates.

Depending on the specifics of a site’s requirements this list can get pretty long, but these are the main points to research. On-line places to look for leads on hosting companies are developer portals, software manufacturers support sites, resellers, and hosting watchdog sites. Also ask other business associates, especially IT folks. Be cautious of companies that host sites, but it isn’t their primary function. Often they provide this service to clients for which they have other relationships and market it as a side business. They usually cannot provide the level of service a true hosting company can. Quick action must be taken when the site is down and costing the business money. The more learned about hosting, the more confidently a sound decision can be made. Take time to do research and get help from a qualified consultant.

In addition to having the goal of learning Ruby on Rails, I am also diving into ASP.NET 2.0 using Visual Web Developer Express Edition.

My first impression, after using it for a couple days now, is Wow; a lot has changed from ASP.NET 1.1. I'm getting hung up on a variety of things like, no Bin folder, changes in namespaces and new server controls for data access. This is also my first use of the built in web server and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. Administrating these is different - simpler, but still different. I'm trying to compare using these free development tools to experiencing RoR for the first time.

A concern of mine is using the new server controls instead of the 'ol fashion way of writing things out. I remember how poor Visual Interdev was at generating clean code with their drag and drop controls, but I can already see these are much better, but usually IDE speed = more code generated and more resources at run time.

My goal is to quickly develop simple, robust web apps. The web projects I work on are usually not too complex: simple CRUD apps with emphasis on the interface. Rarely do I get into n-tier architectures. However, the tutorials do show how easy it is to build sites with several layers if needed.

RoR has a preconfigured app architecture that is more robust than the single tier project I'm currently working on and that's a good feature. It makes you conform to best practices.

More to come as I proceed.

On a recent trip to New York City I was pleasantly surprised to learn that all restaurants, bars and clubs are smoke free. Even the elevators in our hotel lounge seemed happy about it.