Just Talk About Web

Edicy: Let Create Your Website (Above Culture Conflict)

Jimmy — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:42:27 +0000

Le Web, the biggest conference for European startups, passed and unfortunately what were all in media not about startups but about how different between American, Silicon Valley-based startups and the European counterparts stirring up first by Guardian’s Paul Carr then by TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington.

Credit: Edicy Blog

It came to my notice today a blog post by Tõnu Runne, CEO and co-founder of Edicy - a web service that allows you to create websites on fly like services from SynthaSite and WebNode I’d covered months ago.

Yes Tõnu, all the noises around the event will soon fade out (better than nothing anyway, I suppose) but the startups will still be there grappling with the bad economic weather — a few may survive yet most will die no matter how much time they spend for lunch or for work. But that won’t prevent them from starting other startups here or overseas, I can be sure.

Edicy, an Estonia-based statup selected for Le Web finals, was launched by the end of July and up till now users has created 27,706 sites using its service according to the counter published on its website.

Here are some key features, according to Thibaud Imbert, Edicy’s personnel.

User-friendly interface : Ease of use by drag and drop interface.

Designs : Tens of ready designs, more launching all the time.

Customer Support : Online support via Skype chat.

Medias : Add media like video and music on your website. Upload several files at once.

Carefree on-site editing : Every change of every page is always automatically saved.

SEO friendliness : Page based keywords - add words describing each page so that search engines know where to look for your content.

Download your site : Download your site to publish it anywhere you want - it could be another hosting company, your own private server or maybe you just want to have a personal back-up of your site.

Multilanguage environnement to web editing package.

Available in several languages: English, Chinese, Russian, Estonian, French, Icelandic, Portuguese, German…

Custom domains : Edicy Pro lets you publish your site built with Edicy to any web address. There are no limits, both international (www.myname.com) or local (www.myname.de or .fr / .cn / .co.uk etc) addresses are welcome.

You can simply enter your email address and start creating your site right away. The service provides a very easy-to-start interface for anyone with a little or no experience on HTML to create (simple) websites basically via point-n-edit, drag-n-drop features.

Comparing to WebNode, it seems more lightweight and easier to start. I like the built-in multilanguage and blog features that enable users to create professional websites as long as they spend enough time on customizing provided themes.

Start creating your website here and the below picture is my (fake) blog on preview

If you successfully create a website on Edicy, please share your experience here. Thank you.

Beyond Web Surfing

Jimmy — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 09:25:01 +0000

As Google’s Chrome official release was announced yesterday, the buzz around this browser was again raised.

I’ve taken a look on my Woopra’s analytics to see how many readers came to the Just Talk About Web using Chrome lately. Less than what I’d expected, only 2.8 percent of my blog readers were surfing web on Chrome boat, in comparison to about 48 percent on Mozilla-based browsers, 40.6 percent on Internet Explorer and 6.21 percent on Safari of all versions.

Of course, 2.8 percent by Chrome shown here is still far above its share on the whole net that counts for less than 1 percent. But I expect a little more because most of my readers are tech savvy who often welcome new, innovative software especially what from Google.

When Microsoft’s Internet Explorer dominated the net with more than 90% share, users just used browsers for its core functionality: web surfing, and most of time they read what was posted on the websites, nothing more. There were some plugins trying to squeeze into IE as its toolbars which, in most of cases, added no values to the browser if not devalued it instead.

Browser at that time was just-another-software, and because IE is integrated into Windows, free and fast enough, nobody cared about it or really wanted to change it for another browser that could be slightly better some way. That’s why the story of Netscape ended (sadly) as everyone has already known.

For years with almost no changes, Internet Explorer gradually became a little bored plus many malwares and viruses found the way to exploit its unfixed security holes that made surfing web on the Microsoft’s browser appear not joyful instead potentially dangerous.

Geeks then began to seek for alternative, and this time they decided to follow open-source software that they expected a better attitude in development and faster reaction to security problems. Finally Firefox, the lightweight browser from Mozilla, has won their hearts.

In 2004, the first official version of Firefox, which had been known under Phoenix or Firebird names before, debuted marking a big change in users’ web surfing behavior. Microsoft, however, almost unnoticed that little fox, never expecting a new browsing war coming from the ashes of its defeated enemy.

Users come to Firefox firstly because it is fast. Gecko rendering engine on which Firefox is being built can render web pages much faster than IE’s out-of-date engine. Secondly, they love tabbed browsing feature introduced in Firefox 2 that gives them a whole new experience on web surfing.

However, the main reason that keeps geeks on Firefox is its extension system. Firefox’s extension system, which is made possible by XUL and some of the other rich underlying technologies, allows developers create almost whatever they want and integrate them into the browser (in form of add-ons,) even features that go far beyond the core functionality of the browser. Soon after XUL was introduced, people began to refer Firefox as a “browser operating system.”

Thousands of add-ons are now available for download to fulfill almost all the wildest dreams of users on what they want to do without leaving their favorite browser. As a web developer or designer, you can find invaluable tools for HTML/JavaScript debugging or analysis. As a blogger, some add-ons make it possible for you to create, to post and to manage articles directly from browsers, then other add-ons to support you in getting buzz around it by submitting to social networking sites.

Of course, nothing prevents you from playing music from Firefox status bar or managing company’s EC2 cloud computing system from the browser if you can find appropriate add-ons. Far from the time when you opened a browser just to trip around websites, browser now can do much more than that.

So, it is no problem to switch to Chrome if you are using browser as simply as it is designed for by default. But lacking of add-ons would soon become painful for those who has reached beyond web surfing.

Google is rumored to deal with major OEMs to install Chrome as default browser on new PCs — an effort to neutralize Microsoft’s “natural” advantage of having IE integrated into Windows pre-installed on most of new computers. But it may be not a real threat to Firefox which is all installed by users themselves on Windows PCs.

Choosing a default browser now is not only about how fast or cool it can be but that is about the usefulness. Chrome, though being backed by powerful Google, will have a long way ahead to be an optimal choice for most of users, I suppose.

Are You Still Using Dreamweaver For Web Development?

Jimmy — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 08:52:26 +0000

Dreamweaver, the web IDE created by Macromedia now belongs to Adobe, was once the default tool for serious web developers but now seems fading out from its first position.

Still Dreamweaver is a powerful tool for creating web layout or modifying web UI on fly, I found myself not to use it for developing web applications with heavy JavaScript feature requirements.

Just yesterday Adobe announced to cuts 600 jobs as a result of missing revenue target. Of course, the economic downturn certainly hits the company but in the statement Adobe admits that the demand for its new Creative Suite 4 (CS4) is “weaker than expected”.

You can buy Dreamweaver as a part of CS4 at $1,799 with Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Fireworks and Acrobat Pro enclosed that obviously targets designers rather than developers. Or you can buy it alone at $399 price tag per license.

On the other hand, the latest Aptana Studio prices at $99 only for professional offer or you can use it for absolutely free if you don’t require advanced features (that you may hardly ever need) or supports.

Putting aside the price differences that may be (arguably) offset by more solid quality Dreamweaver provides, Aptana Studio is designed from the beginning for modern web developers with supports for PHP, Rails, Python, Adobe AIR (oops), and iPhone app development.

Aptana Studio also supports better JavaScript development by integrating all popular JS libraries like Dojo, Prototype, jQuery, Mootools, ExtJ etc into the suite. Yes, with some extensions, Dreamweaver can provide code-assistance for some JS libs but they are not as natural as Aptana’s does and that is not a total solution for developers.

Built on Eclipse framework much famous for the flexibility, Aptana’s IDE inherits plugin system that allows you to add virtually any functionality you like via thousands of Eclipse plugins available for free (thank open-source community) while the number of Dreamweaver’s extensions cannot match even partially.

I’m not only one person recognizing Dreamwaever has become less important tool for developers, Dion Almaer, Ajaxian, said unpleasant news about it too:

There was a time in the past that everyone used it

A lot of designers still use it, but developers don’t

Developers poo poo it.

So, I wonder if any web developer is still using Dreamweaver for ordinary work and why?

Payoneer Debit Card & Virtual US Bank Account

Jimmy — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:45:45 +0000

For almost all those who are doing some kind of business online, especially who are not living in the United States, getting payments is often inconvenience. Seeing a strong demand for a new approach to handling business transactions over the net, Payoneer — an Israeli startup firm whose headquarters are in New York City — is driving the concept of prepaid debit cards to influence more Web payout services. The company provides a new type of payment channel for payees which solve problems in other payment methods, such as checks and wire transfers especially for international payroll.

How Did I Have Payoneer’s Debit Card?

If you are actually finding ways to monetize your websites or blogs, sooner or later you would likely end up with a vendor who provides you the payment method via Payoneer Debit MasterCard (PDMC). Over six months ago, I visited ReviewMe and was attracted by this revolutionary payout service, ordering the card and it came to my door two week later.

When I had the first payment one month after, I activated the card and felt very happy while checking the balance with money already in — no more checks which often take months to cash out. Thank God!

In fact, I can use PDMC like any other cards to pay for both online and offline services. I can fund the card from other credit/debit cards or via Western Union (which I prefer) and it is extremely handy to add the same card as payment method to other services like iStockPhotos, TextLinkAds who also support Payoneer’s way (there are over 200 of them AFAIK.)

How about Virtual US Bank Account?

Though PDMC provides excellent payment method it is not total solution for all services. You may still have to receive checks from Google (for income from adsense/checkout services), Commission Junctions or Amazon’s affiliate program etc. if you don’t have an US bank account. As a foreigner, you will hardly open a US bank account without presenting in person at the bank plus a lot of identification docs to show that is impractical for most of us. You may all know the best (and legal) way to withdraw money from your PayPal’s account is to an US bank. Now Payoneer’s virtual US bank account, which is in pilot test period, comes to heal such (big) pain. Here is more info from support forum:

…Since it is ‘Virtual’, it means that it is not a physical full service bank account. However to outside parties who wants to do a ACH (Automated Clearing House), ie Bank to Bank transfer, it would look like a real bank account. You know that Paypal does allow people from some 40 countries to withdraw funds to their US Bank account, this is where the Virtual US Bank account would be of great benefits. Also some affiliates program may pay by check and ACH and does not uses Payoneer as an option, if they can do ACH, you can provide them with your Virtual US Bank account and have them transfer your earnings to there. This would open up a whole new avenue of receiving money from US affiliate programs when you are not in the US.

Also this is a Receive Only account so you be very sure that no one would be able to steal your money if they know your Payoneer-assigned account number and such. All the money you receive through ACH would be transferred to your Payoneer account and you can withdraw or spend the money via the Payoneer Debit Mastercard.

So, the question is “Is it easy to have the account?” From my experience I can’t say it was difficult to ask for but surely Payoneer does not offer it to everyone at the moment. First, you’ll need to join the community forum (highly recommended for many helpful resources about Payoneer card and account there), find feedback e-mail address and send you request with clear reasons why you really need an US bank account. Depending on your payment record and other factors you can receive e-mail with other questions to clarify what you are actually doing on the net. If you can answer all questions honestly and persuasively you would much likely get the account activated which directly links to your PDMC.

Good luck!

Earning Money from Ad Tweets

Jimmy — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 05:25:25 +0000

Just a few days ago I had a discussion on the urgent need for monetization of web services under pressure of economic downturn and one of mentioned runners is Twitter whose way to distill money from its service appears blurred with “coming soon” promise.

Not in pursuit of “great ideas”, Magpie — a European company — has come up with simple service that helps users to moneterize their tweets by sending ad messages to followers occasionally.

First, you can enter your twitter’s identity and calculate how much you may earn monthly like the following screenshot:

With about 130 followers to this Twitter account you can earn up to 55 US dollars. Not bad though I doubt you can reach this amount practically because the more ads appear the more risk you would loose followers and that ends up you should never set up to the highest frequency for ad per number of tweets which can be adjusted from Start page.

Entering password so that you agree to authorize service to send ads from your account, you’ll soon see the first ad shown and you can check how much you earn from Account page for a single tweet.

Hey, you’ve got 75 cents (as current exchange rate) for the ad — good rate, no? However, you may now wonder how annoying the ad is. Not much, actually Magpie is doing good job to select the right ads that look like a normal conversation. See the example below that links to a blog post which your followers would likely think it was a normal article.

Interesting service! But before signing up to Magpie you should carefully consider if it would harm your reputation. Here are some advices you should do before (and after) sending the first ad to your buddies.

Inform your followers that you’ll joint Magpie and ask it is annoying if they see ad messages occasionally.
Set low ad-tweet ratio, maybe 20 tweets per ad will not make your followers irritated.
Regularly check Magpie’s ad messages to see if they are relevant to what you often tweet (as promised). If they are about out of acceptable limit, stop the service immediately.

Personally, I don’t register to Magpie with my twitter’s account but it may not be the case if an account is just used to broadcast blog posts like RSS feed. Weighing the money one can actually earn to one’s image, I can guess only a few people will sell themselves to Magpie, so the nightmare about unmanageable stream of ad tweets may not come with Magpie yet.

Using Doodle to Arrange Events

Jimmy — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 07:53:28 +0000

Doodle, a Zurich based web service like Wuala, helps you to find suitable dates for group events, like a meeting, a conference call, a reunion, etc — a simple idea that works fine.

Using the service is deadly easy: you’ll have two options to create a date-time or text poll (of course, you’ll need to register and activate your account but it should take less than one minute). The first poll type is extremely useful and most used (I guess) while the later can be used to vote for something within a group.

You can create a date-time poll and select day range in which the event should occur.

Then define time range in slots, a bit tedious task to type times but you have option to copy the first row to ones below.

After the poll is created the poll URL will be emailed to you then you can forward it to all participants to collect date/time they are available for the event. Here is an example after all members have voted for times:

It’s obvious that the event should be held at 9:00 AM on November 4 — simple and useful, right? Hope you’ll use it to arrange the next reunion with school mates.

One (Google) Open ID to Rule All

Jimmy — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 05:36:20 +0000

I always consider OpenID a great idea eliminating the need to remember and retype my user name and password thousands of times to register/login to online services. However, there is only small portion of sites integrating OpenID for a reason: not many people have created an OpenID (and ever known what hell it means). It would be much easier to tell them to register to a service using their GMail’s login info instead and chance they has already owned an Google’s mail account is much higher than having an open id.

Recognizing the need and benefits to use its own credentials everywhere, Google now allows web services to join a limited test of an API based on the OpenID 2.0 protocol that offers users the option to sign in to websites with their Google account credentials.

The initial version of the API will enable websites to validate the identity of a Google Account user plus the optional ability to request the user’s e-mail address. Taking Plaxo, one of early selected services which are allowed to integrate Google Account for sign-on option, you’ll reach familiar Google login page as first step to register.

After confirming that you wish to register to Plaxo using Google’s credential, you’ll be redirected to Plexo’s sign-up screen for additional info with e-mail address pre-filled by GMail.

Not much different from other OpenID providers though the ability to access Portable Contacts and OpenSocial REST APIs will come in near future that:

…allow a website to immediately provide a much more streamlined, personalized and socially relevant experience for users when they log in to trusted websites.

stated on Google APIs blog.

To learn more about this new API please consult the documentation. At the moment you can access to the limited trial via Google Federated Login discussion group and register using the provided online registration form if you are interested in offering Google OpenID for sign-on to your services.

Update: After a number of reports suggested that Google was not following the OpenID guidelines closely but just forking OpenID to suit its own agenda, Google quickly anwswered pointing out there are some technical issues they have to overcome to fully support standards and they will start publishing XRDS files (part of OpenID specs) “as quickly as possible.” Moreover, they remove restriction and now open API to all websites. Read more…

Does Wuala (Named BitTorrent 2.0) Work?

Jimmy — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 09:39:20 +0000

Wuala, among many online storage offers like xDrive, Box.net or (to certain degree) Microsoft’s Live Mesh, is unique for its own feature: it works like a P2P network.

Based on research by ETH Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Wuala’s core tech allows files being held in small encrypted pieces distributed across the “Wuala Grid” of users, and unlike BitTorrent, they are at the same time mirrored on Wuala’s servers. This overcome the main issue of BitTorrent requiring files must be seeded by someone else to be downloadable.

Users start with 1 GB of free storage, then they can buy more (sure) or trade local hard drive space for online space, one-to-one exchange. So, files of any type from others members can be stored in your computer, scared? No, in fact only the fragments of files are stored and they are not executable. Like that, your files are stored in other members’ drives but they are all encrypted locally before uploaded, nobody including Waula can see them if you don’t want to share.

Now let’s start by downloading client tool available for Windows, Mac and Linux from official site (Java is required to run the client). On Windows and Mac, simply click onto downloaded file to run and after initial update you can see all published files in tabbed categories: Images, Video, Music, Documents and Others — each divided into Tops, Featured and Recent sections.

Wuala supports social features like sharing to all or selected friends/groups, adding comments to images, video or documents.

Unfortunately, my experience with the software came to end when I tried to register so that I could further examine P2P features which I’m most excited about. The client tool just crashed whenever I reached login screen. I found no other way to register/login online to upload or get files (?)

Currently the only online storage I’m using daily to synchronize files from my home PC to company one is Live Mesh. It works nicely providing a number of methods to access files stored across computers and online. Of course technically it’s a different story but I love software that runs at first try. I’ll update this review when I can get better result running the tool.

Update: Today, I was able to register and login to Wuala service. It is one step register from client tool then you immediately own 1 GB storage. Adding some image and video files by drag-n-drop them to default Image, Video folder, the tool uploaded them in background and I could see progress from status bar or by opening “Uploads” dialog by clicking to the upload icon to show details of file queue.

Wuala provides quite a few options for sharing, commenting, contact to owner of file via e-mail or directly on Skype (if the owner published Skype ID). It also integrated to file system so that you can access files/folder stored on Wuala like any other files in your computer.

Generally, Wuala works smoothly on Mac though it still crashes after using for a while on Windows. The initial update that loads info of thousands of public files can slow down the tool a bit. Innovative technology, cross OS supports are some strong points that may lead Wuala passing other “pure” online storage services. Obviously, it is still far from the challenging position to BitTorrent until it can gather enough quantity (of files and buzz!) to change the game. However, Wuala is one of the most interesting “web 2.0″ services I’ve seen recently.

Free VPS from Webbynode

Jimmy — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:14:24 +0000

I’ve been hosting this blog in virtual private server (VPS) for several months. As I mentioned in the post “Web Hosting Saga“, I won a free coupon and after moving all sites to Xen-based VPS, everything is working excellently, no downtime I’ve experienced.

FYI, a web hosting provider, Webbynode, is about to launch a new service targeting developers and startups who are looking for scalable VPS hosting for the next-big-thing and this is a unique chance to get a free VPS plus many other benefits when the service opens to public.

The service is “not to provide a ‘host-in-a-box’ solution - but rather a totally custom web application to let you manage your “webbys” more efficiently, create clusters between them, move them between different data-center locations, and more.” And they are looking for beta testers who are:

People with Linux & Server Management experience

Interest in building Linux fail-over solutions using VPS.

Enough knowledge to make these “webbys” rock-and-roll!

Setup your own Hosting environment, and work with us in order to set you up with Failover and Cloud Storage services.

So, here are some benefits to be beta testers:

Get the 411 on our development progress!

Participate in contests where we will be giving away free Lifetime Memberships, and iPod giveaways!

Be part of a Community of developers & Linux enthusiasts

Access to our amazing Article Library

It’s FREE!

Receive 100% FREE VPS Service for the beta testing period, and up to 50% discounts when we go live.

If this sounds what you are looking for, just check out http://www.webbynode.com and drop your e-mail for reservation.

Web 2.0 or Not?

Jimmy — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:12:19 +0000

After a crisis of any type, chance is one can have valuable opportunity to look back oneself. Everyone would probably wonder his/her position is stable enough and, if really not, what is the reason? If one day, like all other days, your boss call you off for a friendly talk in which he tells you about the difficulties your company has been facing due to whatsoever happen any time. And, as you may smell, he fires you along with others. Upset, angry, low or depressed, yes, all bad feelings you can imagine however it is very likely that you must have done something wrong.

Like a person, a business model must go through the mill to prove if it is right or wrong. Talking about web 2.0, Tim pointed out the success of Google as the lighthouse for new area of web, yet, we should be aware of the fact that Google can always find out clear business model for development around search service and, with little luck (or no luck at all), the biz has become extremely thriving. Number of users is an important factor for Google’s success obviously but the way to make money from that number seems the utmost essential cause.

Day by day, we are hearing about startups kicking out one third or one forth of their staff, and even issuing guidelines for least-painful way to fire. Apparently, the least painful way is NOT to fire anyone who gets along with you when you started such dicey business although you can cut bonus off or lower salary to overcome hard times. Anyway, you can keep your company only when you have a good business model.

Web 2.0 as I saw on the beginning day was about small services which definitely have the way to make income and profit to avoid the fate of infamous “Web 1.0″ dot-coms. Inspired by the success of YouTube and other services which attract million of users but almost no revenue, the principle was soon broken. Venture capitalists smell new way to get huge return illustrated by extravagant vision of “user generated content” and “collective intelligence” defined somewhere on the steps of exciting economic acceleration.

And the downturn came suddenly (as always), now time for startups to weight opportunity to survive with left invested money. Cutting all costs, stopping unrelated projects and reducing work force may be not all the answer. It is urgent to get money from services you provide right now, unfortunately, not as easy as you may think before unless you understand the rule of business is for a positive P&L statement from the beginning.

Probably Mr. Berners-Lee has right point to see Web 2.0 like any type of web. From Wikipedia to emerging Twitter, FriendFeed, all should think of monetization in very “classic” way like the web is working now: pageview - ad - money. It’s about to get by on, not to be cool and unbeneficial now.

Well, only good news is I’m quite sure that there won’t be another dot-com bubble burst anytime soon.

Just Talk About Web

Edicy: Let Create Your Website (Above Culture Conflict)

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Beyond Web Surfing

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Payoneer Debit Card & Virtual US Bank Account

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How about Virtual US Bank Account?

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