As an interactive agency we pride ourselves in our ability to keep in the forefront of the latest trends and techniques. We get so wrapped up in keeping up with the techno-Joneses that we often don’t realize that there is a huge line behind us of others struggling to keep up with just the basics of what we take for granted.

FTP
I’d like to assume we’ve all used FTP software before and we all understand how to login and send a file to a remote server, but this isn’t yet the case. In just this year alone I’ve ran into several clients and friends who aren’t familiar with FTP services. I’m sure there are several of you out there who can relate to people trying to send you multiple 10 Mb files via email only to wonder why they are bouncing back. That same person is often likely lost when you go on explaining how to FTP rather then emailing them.

The HOME button
Clicking on the logo takes you back to the homepage, right? No, not according to many we’ve spoken to. Many times either during the initial homepage design or just prior to launching someone always asks “How do you get to the homepage?” Often, I have to be the home-button-Nazi and say “No Home button for you” but is that correct? Certainly it depends on the site, information rich CNN uses the HOME button but product based Amazon uses the logo. Can we get a standard here?

New Browser Windows
OK, this one is a tough one to justify to a client. I for one hate the idea of a site opening new windows unless I asked for it. I’ll CTRL-Click or Apple-T my way to a new window but countless clients demand that we pop open their externally linking content in a new browser window. Their logic is “if someone comes to my site and I offer them links, then they might leave my site”…. yes… exactly! That is what browsing the Web is all about. Can you imagine how awful the browsing experience would become if every click of a URL spawned a new window?

The Web is not Word
Granted, the Web-based WYSIWYG editors have come a long, long way over the years but due to CSS and inherit limitation these editors aren’t as feature rich or flexible as word-processing applications for the desktop. To the chagrin of many designers / developers clients love to use all sorts of colors, fonts and sizes in their copy. This is evident in a short reviewal of all the PowerPoint presentations out there. How do you explain to a client that an online Web-based editor is going to give them what they need to make changes, but there are inevitable some changes which will need to be done by a trained developer?

Sometimes You Have to Scroll
At some point long ago the idea of a scrolling pages of content was seen as the 8th deadly sin. I believe those days are long gone. This concept was replaced by the notion of developing layouts which cater to varying browser / display settings. For instance, you still want to have the important content fit into an 800 x 600 display but even those dimensions are going the way of the Dodo bird. Let’s go back to CNN, here is a site where you aren’t going to see the full content in 800 x 600, you’ll need to be at 1024 x 768 and even then you’ll scroll vertically and that is OK. I don’t subscribe to the notion that people are too lazy to scroll… get real, if they are too lazy to scroll then they are likely to lazy to move a mouse in which case you are marketing to a vegetable.

The bottom-line is we have to do a better job at educating the public, our clients, and our friends. It’s always good to remember that many people aren’t in this industry and many just don’t care about most of the things we designers / developers and programmers are passionate about.

I’ll append this list again in the future but for now I’ll end my rant.

By default OSX has a nice screen capture feature which is invoked by hitting Shift-Apple-4. Sure, it isn’t the most intuitive key set but now you know. The default is set to capture all images as PNGs which is fine in most cases but sometimes a hassle if you are capturing the image for quick posting to a blog, in which case GIF or JPG would be useful and the file conversion is just another step.

So here goes:
Open up Terminal ( under Applications / Utilities )
Enter the following command into the Terminal
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type *FILETYPE*

Where the command says *FILETYPE* replace it with JPG, PDF, TIF or PNG.

Hit enter and you’ll be good to go!

Today I tried Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express as a change to Visual Studio, hoping that it had less bloat and would be a good alternative or upgrade from previous Visual Studio IDEs, even as an Express version.

This was the popup it presented to me when I opened my first site.

What the f*ck!

I respect that Microsoft wants to promote version 3.5 of the framework but this is f*cking stupid, and arguably irresponsible, too.

Google has announced a new feature; the ability to share your Google Analytics data with the public and Google. At first this may seem counterintuitive especially for companies who guard their Analytics data; however there are some very useful instances to consider data sharing.

There are two aspects to the Data Sharing feature of Google Analytics:

Share with Google Products Only (by default)
It’s important to note that by default Google will share your data with other Google services unless you’ve opted out. The real plus of this feature is the benefits you’ll gain with Google Conversion Optimizer. Assuming you are using Google AdWords. Conversion Optimizer will offer automatic bid management tied to your maximum CPA goals. But Conversion Optimizer hasn’t been released just yet, so we’ll have to wait to see how good this really is.

Share with Google Products and Benchmarking Service
First off, it is all anonymous. The concept behind the benchmarking service is sort of a “I’ll show you mine, you show me yours” approach to industry trends. By opting in to the service you agree to submit your Web traffic data to a greater pool of annoymous statistics. In theory once this is available you’ll be able to better compare the performance of your site verses the industry.

A Recommendation to Google
Give the site owner the option of showing snippets of analytics code on their Web site. This would be useful for any site which is ad revenue driven. It would give advertisers greater transparency to the performance of various advertising channels.

We’ve had a bit of discussion in the office recently regarding Steve Balmer’s threatening letter to Yahoo! and MS’s potential acquisition of it.

Balmer makes several strong points in his letter. One, that the current state of the economy today makes the offer even better than it was several months ago. And two, that the board of directors may be potentially ignoring their share holder base and the best monetary outcome for it. After clarifying MS’s position, Balmer said that MS would be forced to go directly to the share holders if Yahoo! didn’t re-consider their offer and start a path of negotiations.

This can be looked at from a couple different points of view. On the one hand, this is a very Microsoft “strong arm” type of move — trying to take what MS thinks is theirs, regardless of the potential obstacles that might lie in the way. On the other hand, MS makes a few good points. A large majority of expert analysis suggested in January that Microsoft’s 62% premium offer over Yahoo!’s stock price was a good deal for share holders. And while many holders may believe in getting the best deal they can, they also don’t want to potentially throw a deal away all together.

Still, what is most interesting about this battle is the publicity of it. Both sides are using the press to their full advantage. Making hostile bids and equally hostile rebuttals. In my opinion it seems that the PR battle occurring on both sides could potentially harm both the perceived outcome of a deal by the public as well as the employees of both companies. Yahoo! and MS have very different cultures and the last thing a sustained group of Yahoo! employees will want is the feeling of being overtaken forcefully by a hostile company.

It seems unlikely that MS won’t get their way at some point. However, the question remains that even if MS is capable of forcing Yahoo! into a buyout, will governments both here in the U.S. and abroad allow it to happen? This process is definitely still in the early stages, but man what firefight it’s been so far.