Whether we like it or not Flash is here to stay, especially now that CS5 is going to allow deployment to iPhone, iPad, and other “smart” devices. It just won’t be used as much for your standard web site, just for specialized applications where that level of control is necessary. Adobe isn’t stupid. They realize that Flash is a platform, not a product or a plugin. They are changing the direction of how it will be used and from what I can tell that use will be more appropriate than creating Tetris or a bunch of words floating on a web page. A great example is TweetDeck. The battle for the top platform of tomorrow’s interactive app platform is just heating up.

Apologizes for the profanities in the notes, but it genuine Gary stuff. The message is a good one. Care, thank people, and do what you love.

One of the key tracks at SXSW Interactive is on UX or user experience design. Lilia Manguy presented this topic on how she works with her team to work through the UX process to create deliverables. Since conveying a user experience is challenging at the onset of a project it often works best to look at similar projects and how users feel, perceive, and interact with those projects and then work on providing a comparative analysis with what you are about to create. Here are my notes from this presentation. Read more

July 1, 2010 is quickly approaching. I know this, because I am currently working on a couple of ecommerce projects. One thing that struck me is the number of custom built shopping cart solutions out there. Personally I like these custom solutions, because they can be tailored to the specific needs of a client’s customers. You can support odd configurations and logic that an off-the-shelf solution may not support. The challenge is making sure the solution is compliant with credit card regulations otherwise known as PCI-DSS.

Yesterday I read in the Wall Street Journal weekend addition that Google may be purchasing Yelp. A web application that contains over 8 million reviews by people like myself. It also contains a community of people who want their voice to be heard and a large volunteer base that has promoted the site. That’s a lot of crowd sourcing to build quite the asset. $500 million’s worth to Google and possibly $750+ million to other potential buyers. Now that others have outbid Google.
Read more

I think the biggest factor will be web browser bundling and name recognition.  Yahoo & Google are household names.  Bing has a way to go in that area.  Although it has the benefit of being bundled with IE8 and Windows 7.  Safari, Chrome, and Firefox generally default to using Google as their search engines.  Where IE8 defaults to Bing.  Yahoo is only gaining marketshare through browser plugins and widgets and is slowly loosing their crowd.  Here are some interesting stats from a SearchInsider article forwarded from a colleague and friend.

Read more

I presented at the National Association of The Remodeling Industry regional annual meeting on LinkedIn the social networking platform for business professionals. The group is already using the platform and enjoyed learning how they could use it to expand their businesses. Special thanks to my co-presenter, Gary Fedor, of Capstone Training. Below is the slides from the presentation.