User feedback regarding a CMS web application was that the certain areas of the site were running slow. There could be many reasons for this like the usual suspects of a slow internet connection, poorly optimized images and stylesheets, and large page sizes. In this case there was a large amount of data coming from a couple tables in the database and were combined together to render the page. This was slowing the page load time down as the MySQL database was combining this data. This is where a simple optimization technique called indexing can help. Read more

There is a lot of flame wars and debate over what web application framework is the best. At SXSW interactive there was a panel discussion amongst some of the developers and users of a range of different frameworks. It was a battle as to who was best at documentation, setup, templates, models, and optimization. In turns out the right framework has more to do with the solution you are targeting. Read more

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.

Self promotion is getting other people to WANT to do your promotion for you. Peter Shankman personifies and lives this notion. He is well known for HARO, which has changed how media, individuals, and companies connect. His presentation at SXSW was powerful and mind changing, enough so that I’m promoting right now. It is about creating win-wins. These wins can also be good for the environment as Val Casey pointed out in her Keynote speech. So how do you do good and be that guy or that company that everyone talks about and make money? Read more

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

I was reading in information week about Microsoft’s new MVC framework for .Net. What struck me was that I always associated model-view-controller frameworks with Microsoft. It is a roughly based on a design pattern that I used years ago in developing native Windows applications. It just makes life easier and it is nice to see that Microsoft is now providing it as part of .Net. So what is MVC and how can it be used in almost any application? 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.