Bynapse Technologies - Blog

Business to the Clouds

2011-12-08T17:28:00.001-05:00

Most likely that you have heard of Software as a Service, the original “as a service” idea, and you are certainly using this type of service on a daily basis either on your smartphone, tablet or by accessing your online bank account.

The “as a service” world has expanded dramatically in the last decade and we are looking now at a plethora of services that reside “in the cloud”, whatever the type, location or reliability of the cloud may we be talking about.

Here is a top of “as a service” I put together that a business these days should not ignore:

UCAAS or Unified Communications as a Service. The UCaaS industry is led by email, collaboration, conferencing and telephony. (Skype, WebEx, NetMeeting, CallTower, Cypress ..)
BAAS or Backup as a Service. Basically, backup to the cloud. (Amazon, Windows Azure, Iron Mountain ..)
DBAAS or Database as a Service (Daas). Virtually, all major database platforms are "up in the cloud today. This is a service that cannot be ignored. (Amazon RDS, Windows Azure SQL ..)
IAAS or Identity as a Service. Identity and access management, administration, audit and verification for cloud based services (Google, IBM, Windows Passport Services, Verizon Business)
SAAS or Storage as a Service. Also serving the loved and appreciated CDN (content delivery network) and powering BaaS. (Amazon S3, Windows Azure Storage, Google Docs ..)

I am planning to update this list and provide some insight into the ups and downs of using this and that service. I am personally concentrating on two major cloud solutions out there: Amazon and Windows Azure.

For the iCloud crowd, you have to appreciate the fact that Apple starts with the user and then figures out the technology part. The experience is great!

Implicitly Typed or Named Types

2010-06-10T12:31:00.001-04:00

An Implicitly Typed Local Variable, var, is “new” and it is subject to restrictions:

The declarator must include an initializer.
The initializer must be an expression.
The initializer expression must have a compile-time type which cannot be the null type.
The local variable declaration cannot include multiple declarators.
The initializer cannot refer to the declared variable itself

Beyond the obvious use of var with LINQ, you may also clear the code for readability:

var d = new Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, List<SomeClass>>>();

The entire debate around using the var is founded on readability.

Another pair of eyes see differently so the code has to self explain. That being said, using the var for just about anything is also an exageration. A method that returns a “hairy” type (like List<string>) would be easier to digest in a var but that would not tell those other pair of eyes anything about the purpose and the intention behind. So you would not know how that specific return was “intended to be used”. Just compare List<string> list = MyMethod():

var list = MyMethod()
IEnumerable<string> list MyMethod()

The second one is actually saying “I am not going to change this, use an index to access list members or modify members.”. It’s quite a lot to say in that few words. But it’s not over because it is also saying “I am going to use this list simply to iterate across it”.

The intention is what you are giving up if you use var. You are not giving anything up where the usage is obvious through the declaration.

var i = 5;
var s = "Hello";
var d = 1.0;
var numbers = new int[] {1, 2, 3};
var orders = new Dictionary<int,Order>();

are equal to

int i = 5;
string s = "Hello";
double d = 1.0;
int[] numbers = new int[] {1, 2, 3};
Dictionary<int,Order> orders = new Dictionary<int,Order>();

I' would write a LINQ query like:

var rows = from DataRow r in parentRow.GetChildRows(myRelation)
           where r.Field<bool>("Flag")
           orderby r.Field<int>("SortKey")
           select r;

But the debate is in the use of var, not in Anonymous Types, Object and Collection Initializers and Query Expressions, but everywhere in your code, for readability.

Here is Eric Lippert’s take on it:

All code is an abstraction. Is what the code is “really” doing is manipulating data? No. Numbers? Bits? No. Voltages? No. Electrons? Yes, but understanding the code at the level of electrons is a bad idea! The art of coding is figuring out what the right level of abstraction is for the audience.

In a high level language there is always this tension between WHAT the code does (semantically) and HOW the code accomplishes it. Maintenance programmers need to understand both the what and the how if they’re going to be successful in making changes. read more ..

LinX BoX

2010-04-09T07:00:00.001-04:00

This Friday’s Top 3 interesting sites visited this week:

This list is published every Friday and values originality. Submit your suggestions for next week as comments.

And don't forget my web templates shop at Bynapse.com - the easy web.

Reciprocal link of the week : Volunteer to Nepal

LinX BoX

2010-04-02T07:00:00.013-04:00

This Friday’s Top 3 interesting sites visited this week:

This list is published every Friday and values originality. Submit your suggestions for next week as comments.

And don't forget my web templates shop at Bynapse.com - the easy web.

Reciprocal link of the week : Termic

PDF and E-book creation

2010-03-31T11:00:00.001-04:00

Every now and then, someone tries to edit a PDF file and the old Acrobat and Distiller question pops back. What are the roles of those two and why still use Word to edit? Why is Acrobat still important in e-book creation?

First the basics. Adobe Acrobat only reads PDF files. It does not create PDF files, nor can it be used to create content of any kind. It allows setting of certain attributes and anchors, such as creating hyperlinks and setting document security settings.

Distiller is a print driver that outputs PDF files. It is not a reader, nor an application used to create any content.

Adobe Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader) does not edit files, you create your content in a applications like Word, Photoshop.. then print to Distiller (some applications have a “Save as PDF” functionality like Word does in an optional add-on) and save the resulting file as PDF. All word, spreadsheet or image editing or viewing applications should be able to print.

You may open the PDF in Acrobat for fine tuning:

1) create hyperlinks (see Tools/Locate Web Addresses)
2) create title and author (see File/Document Properties)
3) set your desired security level (see File/Document Security)
4) File SAVE AS whatever.pdf. It is important not to just SAVE but to use SAVE AS because this eliminates unused fonts and makes a smaller PDF.

An important decision is to embed fonts in your PDF, or use system fonts. This impacts the size of your PDF but embedding your fonts guarantees that your reader will see the exact page layout you designed. The better system fonts seem to be the small common ones such as Times Roman or Arial. You should know that embedding fonts is a Distiller option (Printer/Preferences/Adobe PDF Settings/General Conversion Settings).

Currently, High speed internet access is becoming the norm and PDF files are generally small. As I was saying in a previous post, content is King.

LinX BoX

2010-03-29T10:48:00.001-04:00

This Friday’s Top 3 interesting sites visited this week:

This list is published every Friday and values originality. Submit your suggestions for next week as comments.

And don't forget my web templates shop at Bynapse.com - the easy web.

Reciprocal link of the week : Smartbyte

Web application security

2010-03-26T16:12:00.008-04:00

It's a real possibility that the web server is locked down and secured.

Web application hacking requires the attacker to understand application logic.

A website may be ripped entirely and stored locally. While this does not give out the code behind, it shows how input is passed, what types of error messages are returned, and the types of input that various fields will accept.

Here is a list of vulnerabilities and possible attacks to add to your list. Also check this list that Microsoft put out:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998372.aspx#pagpractices0001_indexofpractices

Check out this article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998375.aspx

Hidden Fields

Hidden fields used for obscuring values are poor coding. The theory is that if end users cannot see it, it is safe from tampering. Many sites use these hidden value fields to store the price of the product that is passed to the web application. An example pulled from a website is shown here:

<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME="img"

VALUE="http://www.vulnerable_site.com/images/c-14kring.jpg">

Here is an example tampering with a poorly written shopping cart:

Save the page locally and open the source code.

Modify the amount and save the page. As an example, change $345.50 to $5.99:

Refresh the local HTML page and then click Add to Cart. If successful, you'll be presented with a checkout page that reflects the new hacked value of $5.99.

This is an extreme example for illustration purposes that an application should never rely on the web browser to set the values for sensitive data. Even without changing the price, an attacker might just try to feed large amounts of data into the field to see how the application responds. Values from hidden fields, check boxes, select lists, and HTTP headers might be manipulated by malicious users and used to make web applications misbehave if the designer did not build in proper validation.

If you think that there is a shortage of sites with these types of vulnerabilities, think again. A quick Google search for type=hidden name=price returns hundreds of hits.

Cookies

Cookies have a legitimate purpose. Security by obscurity is never a good idea. Cookies used with forms authentication or other remember me functionality might hold passwords or usernames and cookies can be viewed with cookie viewers. Example:

Set-Cookie: UID= bWlrZTptaWtlc3Bhc3N3b3JkDQoNCg; expires=Fri, 06-Jan-2010

The UID value appears to contain random letters, but more than that is there. If you run it through a Base64 decoder, you end up with mike:mikespassword. It's never good practice to store sensitive information, encrypted, in a cookie, a hash should be preferred.

Cross-Site Scripting

Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a computer security exploit that occurs when a web application is used to gather data from a victim . Here is an example of a possible entry in a text field:

<A HREF="http://example.com/comment.aspx?mycomment=<SCRIPT> malicious code</SCRIPT>">Click here</A>

XSS can be prevented by HtmlEncoding displayed data and the input from a form is validated. Prevention also requires that the users remain leery of embedded links.

Interception, Inspection, Modification

A web proxy allows interception, inspection, and modification the raw contents of the traffic, as explained in the following:

Intercept Allows you to see under the hood and watch the traffic move back and forth between the client and the server.
Inspect Allows you to enumerate how applications work and see the mechanisms they use.
Modify Allows you to modify the data in an attempt to see how the application will respond; for instance, injection attacks.

These tools make it possible to perform SQL injection, cookies subversion, buffer overflows, and other types of attacks.

ActiveX modal dialogs are pushed behind Internet Explorer's browser window

2009-04-23T11:12:00.009-04:00

It has been long since my last article but I must tell you, I have been spending my time doing some beautiful programming lately and, while I was away, Microsoft decided to put another browser out in the world.

For most programmers that have an ActiveX window embedded in a web page, showing a modal dialog from an ActiveX control in internet Explorer 7 was a challenge and here is but one of the hot discussions we had about the topic.

But.. hey, Microsoft did it again and now they're not just multithreading it away.. they're creating a process for each tab you open. We'll not discuss the good, the bad and the ugly of this idea, but your modal dialogs will pop up behind the browser window one more time, and they will stay there !

Here is how the people who know IE say you should go about determining which IE tabs goes to which Iexplore.exe process when using Internet Explorer 8 :
http://blogs.msdn.com/askie/archive/2009/03/20/how-to-i-determine-which-ie-tabs-go-to-which-iexplore-exe-process-when-using-internet-explorer-8.aspx

Now that sheds some light but how do show modal .. in my code ?

Here is an example of my solution for a bunch of ActiveXes I have developed in Delphi an I needed to make compatible with IE8 :

function FormShowModal(aForm: TCustomForm): TModalResult;
begin
try
EnableProcessWindows(MainHandle, False);
SetWindowPos(aForm.Handle, HWND_TOP, 0, 0, 0, 0, SWP_NOACTIVATE or SWP_NOMOVE or SWP_NOSIZE);
Result := aForm.ShowModal ;
finally
EnableProcessWindows(MainHandle, True);
end;
end;

procedure EnableProcessWindows(aHandle : HWND; disableWindow : Boolean);
var
aParentHandle : HWND;
begin
aParentHandle := GetParent(aHandle);
while (NULL <> aParentHandle) and (aParentHandle <> 0) do
begin
EnableWindow(aParentHandle, disableWindow);
aParentHandle := GetParent(aParentHandle);
end ;
end;

Where the MainHandle is the handle of the main form of your application. For an ActiveX, this is the ActiveForm's handle. I let you decide the best way to retrieve or pass that around.

I must tell you that the same solution works beautifully on IE7 and even inside a standalone executable so.. feel free to translate it into any other programming language you are using and go ahead and sell for IE8 too.

Now why did I do the SetWindowPos call ? Well if you click on the taskbar buttons, you will find that the dialog may still go behind the browser window and come back on top but I believe this is totally acceptable.

Write a comment if you found any other solution to this.

Virtual real estate, a high-valued asset

2008-09-15T11:16:00.005-04:00

The market is hungry for good readable and easily remembered domain names. For six months I have been searching to build on the right name and I found the market takes domain names as premium real estate. Many believe that buying the domain now is an unnecessary investment and wait until they develop the site (or product) and are ready to sail the cyber-wave.

According to Ron Jackson, editor and publisher of Domain Name Journal, there is a handful of people (between 1000 and 2000 individuals, most of them remaining anonymous to avoid competition) that make a living out of domain names but these are people spending six figures to snap up domains left and right and build an empire on domains.

I'm writing for the rest of us but if you're bitten by the domaining bug, I suggest waiting for Page Howe's Domain Name Investing: How to Make Money in Internet Real Estate. If that is your business, there is a community out there for you.

I was mostly looking to get the right domain name for my idea. I already had bynapse.com, a domain that gave me much joy to own but, as most of us, I had a name for my idea and found that people out there are looking for someone else's good idea. You may hear that ideas are cheap and abundant .. not when it comes to domain names !

I recently had a customer for which I've built a simple site for a good cause. He's trying to convince people to volunteer to help a school in Nepal. So we're chatting about the idea and he's searching at night for domain names and finds the name he always had in mind is available.

A few days later he contacts me so we can start setting things up just to find that the domain has been registered, is parked and offered for sale. Here is a nice article about some less ethical practices on DomainName News and if this isn't something a domainer usually does, its one more thing you have to consider when shopping.

In the end, he had his way and found both the English and French version of the new domain names I helped him to come up with, but this time, he searched and bought them right away and the site came up pretty fast afterwards. Check it out at VolunteerToNepal.org.

As a note, all searches leave a trace and there are always people on the lookout for a nice idea. Well, in this business, ideas don't come cheap and may end up as consistent checks to bring to the bank.

Checkout solutions for your E-commerce

2008-02-12T13:31:00.001-05:00

Charge that credit card, get paid and have your e-commerce web site up and running at a decent cost so it can support itself and bring some green. The idea behind an e-shop is to have the conversion from visitor to buyer done fast and in the most secure way so that it happens over and over again.

There are literally thousands of solutions out there for building or hosting your e-commerce. Many of those solutions are free or come with your hosting subscription. If you are a programmer or can get a hold of such an individual you can download and customize code and have your own solution in very little time. It all ends up in the checkout process and here is where all the lines in the water lie.

Having a simple low-cost solution that provides state-of-the-art security and service is not impossible by any stretch of the imagination and many of the most respectable companies out there offer easy to set-up solutions for decent fees.

The things that make me think twice when I look for a service, though, is the nickel-and-dimes type of deal. And when you're dealing with credit cards and other type of payments, reading the fine-print is a prerequisite. And in that fine-print (that often stretches over several pages) you may find that the service provider can change the contract at any time, for any reason.

Do not build your e-commerce around a checkout solution before you make sure you can use it. I've heard a few disappointed voices in Canada that enthusiastically built their web sites to use Google Checkout or certain versions of PayPal just to find that they're not available in Canada .. yet. It's not obvious information since the focus on those sites (as it should be on yours) is conversion.

What payments would you need to Accept or Manage, and don't be afraid to think ahead:

Credit Cards, Debit, Email Invoices, PayPal (when selling single or multiple items)
Recurring payments (like a monthly fee.. subscription)
Promotions (eg. 15 $ first 3 months and 99.99 $ after)
Shipping and handling
Bonus points and point partnerships (eg. Travel miles, Bank percentage rebates...)
TAXES
Contributions (donations)
Gift certificates and Coupons

Major sites like Amazon have their own secure systems to store credit card numbers and shipping addresses, but this article is for the rest of us who need security and fraud protection while selling to buyers who are shy of leaving the credit card number all over the place. EBags' Peter Cobb said that “retail is about overcoming objections” as the point here is to enable that transaction and get the money. Big players spend big to lure customers their way. Google offered a fee waiver through the end of the year in their move to take some market off PayPal' hands. But we are not talking from the customer's perspective here, as much as it is a crucial factor in completing the sale and it should not be overlooked, are we?

In the end, if we need to spend hundreds of dollars to integrate some system and pay ridiculous fees on each sale, it's going to kill your infant business before it can build you the income you're doing it for.

So here is a list of the most interesting and capable players I stumbled upon (I urge you to comment on it and add to this list)

Google Checkout - offers a decent platform for decent fees and comes backed by Google's name. It's not available everywhere though.
PayPal - much more widely spread and used but I feel the fees are a bit to the upper side of the ladder. I simply don't like paying "one-time installation fees" I guess. Still, a solid and reputable name in the business.
Amazon FPS - Flexible Payments Service is "designed from the ground up specifically for developers"... Or you can simply create a PayNow Widget and ... Amazon takes care of the rest.

There are others like Payjunction, Card Payment Solutions, Wells Fargo, VersaPlay, CollectivePos, Charge.com, DriveIt and all have a twist that make them attractive for a certain market or the other. Personally I look at the reliability of the company and I simply hate two-hundred pages contracts you can't keep track of.

From my point of view, those services should empower my business not suck it dry when the "exceptional case you find on page two of the fine-print" happens.

AJAX makes business sense

2008-02-06T12:04:00.000-05:00

I recently had to answer to the: “Should we go with AJAX” question and, for a developer, the answer to this question is not obvious. There are many benefits in using AJAX, both from the user or programmer’s perspective but this particular question is not technical. AJAX is not a programming language but a technique and this calls to a cost management conversation as well as the determination of ROI.

According to Wikipedia, AJAX is “shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a Web development technique for creating interactive Web applications. The intent is to make Web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire Web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user makes a change. This is meant to increase the Web page's interactivity, speed, and usability."

AJAX improves both performance and user experience (and often and desirably makes use of Service Oriented Architecture), makes a programmer life easier as it facilitates the development of wikis and the creation of dashboard applications which allows the user to become involved in building the final (tailored) user interface experience. The user actually controls an important part of the look and feel of the final product as well as determines the most important features (from those available) and arranges them to provide the most business value possible.

There are voices like John Crupi’s that say: “AJAX + SOA: The Next Killer App” and it is the direction on which Microsoft itself is moving. It is important as AJAX leads the “Web 2.0” revolution and brings desktop-like experiences inside the web browser.
To come back to the question that triggered this article, the Open Ajax Alliance website provides a great article on when AJAX Makes Business Sense. It’s a must-read as it provides the whitepaper to bring before the non-technical manager. As of why, a programmer can only say: “Let’s do it with AJAX”.

Exciting times folks, and the internet can only get closer to simplicity as web pages become richer and cleaner, but switching or even starting with AJAX involves thorough and honest internal evaluation and cost management.

Next Generation Applications have to be a part of this productivity improvement brought forth by those techniques as this platform-independent runtime technology is well-suited for next-generation SOA applications. What makes an answer to the above question, even though there is so much to say, is that AJAX enables a rich user experience with enhanced productivity at the cost of changing your optics and grasping the concept. I believe that those costs should be lower and development time should be reduced while the result is a rich user experience in a server-based application deployment that obviously provides lower maintenance costs as it replaces the desktop application.

Monetizing unused domains

2008-01-03T14:11:00.000-05:00

Park your domains and make a buck while you think about it? Unless you are in this business, domain monetizing is not going to put a meal on the table, but monetizing is possible and makes enough to make owning the parked domain worth while.

I wrote previously about domain parking and domain tasting and it’s paying for my unused domains, but can you really make a buck out of your existing domain names that just display the “Under construction” text and maybe a cute animated icon of a guy building … and building ?

The revenue generated by having unused domain parked with a domain parking provider may be disappointing as there is virtually no traffic coming in unless your domain name is really good and... If it is, you may get an offer for it quite soon. Again, if you’re not in this business, that offer story might be a once in a lifetime event. Do not forget that parking the domain with a provider has its rules:

· You cannot advertise or link to it.
· The content is predefined; you may only edit keywords that may bring up ads from your competition on your domain. Sometimes you may choose color palette or a display template.

There are trustworthy services out there that monetize your domain, like Sedo, Google AdSense for Domains and even some more costlier but more customizable services like WhyPark.
No matter how you look at it, a parked domain is not an active website so paying for it and putting too much time into it is not my cup of tea. But park my existing domain for free, and let it pay the expenses on its own, while I figure it all out, is.

Act on buying the domain though, since it might not be available by the time you have your website ready so parking is a good tool if you have a domain name that you would like to reserve, but do not intend to use immediately.

Let them go

2007-12-14T11:06:00.000-05:00

First of all I have to apologise for not writing here for awhile, I was and still am very busy writing code, something else I love to do besides writing my blog. I will be back in here shortly and let you know where my roads take me.

This is about ideas and talking about them or letting other people steal them. I was cooking some business ideas wondering if I should talk about them and if I do, would people go ahead and make money with my idea and forget about me. I know that question lingers around in lots of bright heads. One answer I got during a Microsoft' "Ignite your career"entrepreneurial session got me puzzled for awhile but, as much as it doesn't make sense, it holds some truth.

I forget who answered : "Ideas are cheap, it's what you do with them. Talk to as many people as you can, your idea will only get stronger". Yes and no and if you ask me.. I say don't follow this advice to the core !

Ideas are indeed cheap, as much as you're in love with yours, one hundred other guys have the same idea. That only means you should love it more. Talk to as many people about it... no.

Only share the idea at one stage, then calm down and do it, build it and here is the gold in that advice : "it's what you do with it". Follow through and don't worry about people stealing the idea, grow it, build it and stop talking when you start doing, then start talking again but now you've got a product.

An incoherent and incomplete idea is easy to take apart and ridicule, and that can tap into your enthusiasm and never recover. I know people that are talking a lot about others ideas and theirs as well, but they all get cold after a short while and never get anything out of that. The idea has to grow, be thorn apart and brought back together like Led Zeppelin or Genesis just did. Then you can talk about it with close friends and it stands the test.

Don't talk your idea out of you, people will go ahead and do something with it, obviously, and that's a compliment to you if they do. Talk some and do some more..

LinX BoX

2007-11-17T10:15:00.000-05:00

This Friday’s Top 3 interesting sites I visited this week:

This list is published every Friday and values originality. Submit your suggestions for next week as comments.

And don't forget my web templates shop at Bynapse.com - the easy web.

Reciprocal link of the week : TimeBooking

LinX BoX

2007-11-10T10:22:00.001-05:00

This Friday’s Top 3 interesting sites I visited this week:

This list is published every Friday and values originality. Submit your suggestions for next week as comments.

And don't forget my web templates shop at Bynapse.com - the easy web.

Reciprocal link of the week : Aloe Living

LinX BoX

2007-11-01T22:44:00.000-04:00

This Friday’s Top 3 interesting sites I visited this week:

This list is published every Friday and values originality. Submit your suggestions for next week as comments.

And don't forget my web templates shop at Bynapse.com - the easy web.

Reciprocal link of the week : TimeBooking

LinX BoX

2007-10-19T17:21:00.001-04:00

This Friday’s Top 3 interesting sites I visited this week:

This list is published every Friday and values originality. Submit your suggestions for next week as comments.

And don't forget my web templates shop at Bynapse.com - the easy web.

Reciprocal link of the week : Aloe Living

Buying the right stock photo

2007-10-16T08:29:00.000-04:00

Your site is ready for a face-lift and you’re looking for the right images to use. You’re also looking to print something consistent with your web site so your image looks solid and established. Here is where a stock-photography site comes in handy. But there are thousands out there …

There are differences in the quality of the pictures, prices, photo licensing between those sites and you can buy photos for web-only use, print, multimedia, personal .. Read the license agreements carefully before buying, especially if it’s a model picture (a human face is visible). You save if you get a subscription for the time required to build your site (if you are buying a large number of pictures) otherwise, sites like Fotolia are perfect for one-picture downloads.

The best way to look at photos is if they’re royalty free as you may usually use them in prints, web sites, multimedia presentations, for business communication, decoration and even personal use (you may print your photo wallpaper). Most sites provide this type of licence with subtle flavours to it so make sure you read the license agreement before you put up that huge banner on Champs-Elysées.

Determine how many pictures you need before you buy to decide between a bundle and a unit price.

Are you ready to use them? You can only use one image for a certain number of prints (a fair number provided in the license agreement) and you can not resell photos or templates using those photos. You may play with photoshop and alter an image, without gaining the copyright to it though but this is what I call wasted money, meaning that if you buy something, it should be what you need and should not require further alteration (that is not true for dresses, they always require alteration, believe me, I learn from watching … ).

What does royalty-free mean for the buyer? Most stock sites provide that type of license. It’s important to determine the right license you need and royalty-free gives you unlimited use of a photo in any media, you pay for the image only once and use it as many times as you need. This is the most permissive license ad you should look for that as your business may grow and you should save printing more copies of your materials. Right-managed photos need a special setup and environment to live in as well as a more refined targeting of the audience and are usually more expensive and may include brand names (models, companies, trademarks) .

No matter what license you acquired, you can not resell the photo you bought. If you buy a template from Bynapse (my web templates shop) you may use it, you even get stock photos and logos or clipart for free, but it’s the same story... You cannot claim copyright to the images and you can not resell them. Nor you can resell the template containing the images.

Now there is such a case where you buy the rights for an image (for the right price, of course) but you can become the owner and the photographer loses the right to use or sell the photo ever again. Fotolia is an example of a stock agency that sells image rights. It’s all about finding the right image for your needs and buying the setup, the environment and the colors that put you up in front and keeps you there.
Apple is an example of a company that does everything beautiful and stylish and look at it grow. Vista looks sleek and design gets better all the time.

Web 2.0 is all about using the right colors, images and message and if you have designs you want to discuss or you just want people to see, post them here and let’s talk.

LinX BoX

2007-10-12T16:23:00.000-04:00

This Friday’s Top 3 interesting sites I visited this week:

This list is published every Friday and values originality. Submit your suggestions for next week as comments.

And don't forget my web templates shop at Bynapse.com - the easy web.

Reciprocal link of the week : Pogo Cheats

Little search box

2007-10-04T10:27:00.000-04:00

The neat search box at the top of that sleek looking Web 2.0 style site you just visited looks good? Well, you can have it too, tailored to your desires.

The ability to perform an easy and efficient search seems to be the main ingredient and the greatest achievement nowadays and Web 2.0 style sites are all including it. Tailoring search results and harvesting a powerful search engine’s capabilities to extract relevant information and present fast results is a requirement all main search engines respond to.

Of course you’re not keen to see your competition on the results or in the ads displayed on the result pages (that happens if you’re not running a blog, like me, in which case I welcome all pertinent info to show up). You may not want to see any ads at all in the results (that comes for a cost, no matter if you use msn, Yahoo or Google to power your search). Display the ads and you get a free way to monetize the searches initiated from your site. Needless to say that you can restrict the search results to your web site or web presence (suite of web sites) or, you may just favor them in the results … sneaky

Here are a few links to such pages providing easy access to custom (to you) search engines. Just follow their instruction to get what you are looking for and know that you can modify the appearance and fully integrate at a later time, you don’t need to start Google size.

• Live Search Box - http://search.live.com/siteowner (this is Microsoft’s answer, really easy to follow guides, a bit slow for my taste). Nathan Buggia has a blog entry covering the basics, read it here.
• Google Coop - http://www.google.com/coop/cse (this one is Google’s solution, so easy and fast but for business use it costs $. I really like free stuff)
• Yahoo Search Builder - http://builder.search.yahoo.com (Yahoo, good, personalizable search results and powerful search analysis tools. Not as customizable or friendly as the previous two)
• Crafty Search - http://www.gonecountrygraphics.com/craftysearchbox.html (sooo easy, straightforward, unreal, sooo limited results though, I’ve put this here because it’s so easy to integrate though)
• Ixquick Search - http://us.ixquick.com/eng/link_instructions.html (easy to integrare and customize, real results coming back)
• Pico Search - http://www.picosearch.com/ (easy enough, I’m not yet convinced about the accuracy of the results, to be discussed)

Know that all search engines provide the results as XML as well, free or for a fee, so you can go all the way and have the results display in your own page, simply by consuming the XML dataset returned. Now you don’t need to know what XML is unless you’re a developer and you should better start reading up on it now.

Next week we shall talk about stock photos: who’s cheapest, why buy and how to do it or why not start selling too.

LinX BoX

2007-09-28T10:53:00.000-04:00

This Friday’s Top 3 interesting sites I visited this week:

This list is published every Friday and values originality. Submit your suggestions for next week as comments.

And don't forget my web templates shop at Bynapse.com - the easy web.

Reciprocal link of the week : Wood Wireless

You need to see my site

2007-09-14T13:36:00.000-04:00

In the movie Field of Dreams a farmer gets convinced by a mysterious voice saying “If you build it, they will come.”, that he is supposed to construct a baseball diamond in his corn field. This catch-phrase ruled the dotcom boom and it worked. Unfortunately, web entrepreneurs cannot cope with it anymore. You need to do more.
People come to your site if they can find it. Whether they stay there or not after they land, it's a story discussed in other posts on this site.

I am sure that the basics on getting some attention online are quite well known and pretty vaguely mastered. I shall write them down without going into depths as every web entrepreneur works toward fulfilling them to the best of his knowledge and abilities for as long as its online business shall be.

Know your purpose. Master your goals. Have a roadmap and don't try to start Google-size but get there.
Write and design for your target audience. Some industry best-practices work for everybody.
Expect to change your knowledge about your audience. Apply what you learn from your traffic metrics and adapt.
Follow design guidelines and don't overkill. There are more than 11 billion webpages out there, try not to scare me off.
Use every marketing technique (online and offline) available to get the word out.
It helps to own a domain name. (you can park it or taste it while you start up)

And the list can go on, feel free to add to it and let me know.
Here are a few items not everybody follow up with routinely and that need a little paragraph on the side.

Optimize your site for Search Engines.

80 percent of website traffic comes from a search engine query, states McAfee in “The State of Search Engine Safety". I don't know about you but I would use all the techniques to make search engines love my site.
Use site submissions, search engine optimization and search engine marketing and don't expect immediate results and don't expect to rank high on results either. You need to earn that but "if you work it, it will come". This entire topic is an art in itself.

Link to others and exchange links. Don't hold back on linking away (you can start by linking to this site .. no ? well .. I tried ). Try building up the links and having a few links back to you a day on some other sites or directories. This pays up.
Link and endorse your clients. Make them feel important (they are by the way) by linking to them (if they have a web presence) and giving them a small presentation. Your business feels more established and they will link back to you helping you grow as well.
Use reviews of your products and testimonials. Word of Mouth online ? Yes, third party sells work.
Use professional digital images to illustrate. A good picture is worth a thousand words. Let the user see the product it buys, provide video or links to reviews.
Answer the people. If you receive emails or comments, don't leave them there forever, answer them and get an honest opinion back.
Let's be honest, not everybody is cut to spend hours programming and building websites or even marketing and optimizing them. Weigh the value of your time and consider hiring a pro. Who's that ? A friend of a friend ? Well, measure up your goals, dreams, ambitions and you will know how expensive you should go.

Blogs can be both entertaining and informative and it's free to get out there. News and honest opinions help the community and help your traffic as well. Needless to say that every comment is welcome and enriches your view and your ways.

LinX BoX

2007-09-14T08:41:00.000-04:00

This Friday’s Top 3 interesting sites I visited this week:

This list is published every Friday and values originality. Submit your suggestions for next week as comments.

And don't forget my web templates shop at Bynapse.com - the easy web.

Reciprocal link of the week : Free Directory

LinX BoX

2007-09-10T08:39:00.000-04:00

This Friday’s (published this monday) Top 3 interesting sites I visited this week:

This list is published every Friday and values originality. Submit your suggestions for next week as comments.

And don't forget my web templates shop at Bynapse.com - the easy web.

Web 2.0 business models

2007-09-06T11:21:00.000-04:00

Web 2.0 is a hot topic, is this and that and all together as one. A technological and social shift defined by a manifesto that was published by Tim O’Reily that offers examples on how web technologies enable the change and makes a prediction on the obsolescence of traditional software development. Google is currently working on a Web based OS, it’ll come and probably the web will be called web 3.0 by the time applications will all run on the network rather than on PC, showing user created content and being improved by users and developers together rather than software companies. For some related thinking read my “Web 2.0 for rookies” article.

Web 2.0 has siblings, like “Enterprise 2.0”. "We're using Enterprise 2.0 as short hand for blogs and wikis behind the firewall. But that's entirely too limiting," said Andrew McAfee, associate professor of Harvard Business School, "We have not yet seen all the neat things that will go on inside enterprises.". Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg concludes that "Web 1.0 was all about getting things online. Web 2.0 is going the next step and making it work," with sites, he said, that are "created by the people, for the people every day.". Web 2.0 and it’s implications for enterprises is still on debate.

The truth is that if you need information while you study at some university, you’ll find it on the university site. And yet the student community events are on somebody’s blog or a student community site or even on MySpace and you need to visit that. Add healthcare questions and math club meetings or student discount store and you end up having a dozen sites to visit before you are ready to start the day knowing enough to be efficient about it. Now just imagine what a ”community site” would do in this situation where users add the required content if it’s missing, along with a story on how to go about the subject. A forum is good but the business model is not forum like, it’s integrating a variety of services that meet community needs. That triggers a Web 2.0 business model.

The new web companies move on a totally different path than the dotcom business model. The model is to capitalize on user-generated content. Digg, Facebook, Photobucket, Zillow, PickPal and YouTube, to name a few, are open houses that facilitate work from anywhere and are basically cheap to start-up compared to the dotcom million dollar launch model that provides closed portals (providing a huge amount of information but incapable to grow with each visitor).

"Web 2.0 is really the acceleration of transformation," Andrew McAfee said "It's not that users got smarter or more social. It's that technologists figured out what consumers wanted."

Social networking: Bringing it all together is one of the Web 2.0 business models generating a cascading effect based on user generated content and user interaction. Metcalfe's law comes into play here: “the total value of the service is roughly proportional to the square of the number of customers' utilizing the service”. If a user using Freewebs cannot connect to another using Facebook, it will switch. But what users can do, is syndicate their content. And for the users that can syndicate their content (MySpace users can not), tightly integrated API’s are available enabling marsh-ups.

Pay per use: Developing the compelling value innovative solution is another business model that applies to this wave of web companies. The service is free but for the killer feature you need to pay. It’s the software as a service model and the revenue comes from a critical mass of users willing to pay a reasonable price that supports it all. It also pays itself from partnerships. Those services are also publicised by users on social networking sites and the technology provided is reusable and expandable with users help. Flickr is a perfect example for this category.

In both these models, the product the company brings to the web is technology and this is used to generate the business value. In both cases the user generates its content (photos on Flickr, articles on Blogspot …) and they all interact. None of these companies have a “product” per-se, they don’t sell a CD or a book or a car, and yet they act like hubs and the revenue comes from partnerships, advertising, content … and the list can go on, I just leave it up to you to add to it.