A lot of people have heard about blogs (web logs, a site where someone or a team of someones posts short articles on a particular topic) and I use blogging software (Wordpress, to be exact) on some of my sites because it makes it very easy to set up a blog and to set up a simple web site that the client can update and change themselves.

But, should every web site have a blog or be a blog?

I don’t think so.

If you have something to say that may be of interest to your clients, then a blog is a good way to get that info out and make it easy for you to put up posts regularly. Does that help your business? Yes, it shows that you know a bit about what you’re talking about, lets clients get a feel for you and how you work before they hire you, may even help a few people out and that’s always good.

But a blog can also do harm, especially if it’s set up and then not posted to regularly. I don’t think you need to post to your blog every day (as you can tell from my blog), but even getting a post up there every month can be a problem if you’re busy. And if you really don’t have something to say and you’re reaching for topics every time, it’s really hard to do. If a potential client comes to your site and sees you haven’t posted to the blog in 6 months, that gives a bad impression. It’s like looking in a shop window and seeing nothing but cobwebs and dust, you probably aren’t go to go in to buy something.

Not to discourage people from starting a blog, just think about how often you’re going to post and keep to some kind of schedule.

Here are a couple of links to blogs (of course) about blogging (or meta-blogs, if you will):

Daily Blog Tips

The Write Spot

I wrote about my iPod touch earlier (after getting it for Christmas). I had a few reservations about it, so couldn’t give it my unconditional love, but that’s pretty much changed now after the update that came out at Macworld Expo.

The update addressed a few of my concerns: it fixed the sleep timer (hooray!!) and let me move stuff around on the main screen, so it’s easier to get to the sleep timer, so I don’t notice the interface being slow. I found an easier way to pause the music: hit the main button twice and you get a small set of controls where you can pause and change the volume. Better than what I was doing, still not the best set up.

Still can’t see my podcast info, but that’s fairly minor.

What the update added was major: Google maps app including a gps-like locate me feature, notes, weather, and stock apps, and the ability to move buttons around and have extra screens to put new stuff on (when Apple opens the touch and iPhone up to outside developers).

I had to pay $20 for the update. A lot of people complained about this. It didn’t bother me. If it was only a bug fix I would have been annoyed, but might have still paid for it just to get the sleep timer fixed. As it was, I paid my money knowing what I was getting with the iPod touch. Then for just $20, I got a lot of the functionality of the iPhone, that’s awesome!

It also points out the beauty of the touch and iPhone interfaces, since they are all software based. Apple can roll out wonderful stuff for them and we won’t have to buy new hardware, we can just get a software update.

So, there is now one big problem with the touch. It’s not an iPhone

‘Twas the night before Macworld Expo and you could almost hear all the mac-macs and tech geeks holding their breath, waiting for what Steve Jobs will reveal.

As I also wait breathlessly, I thought I’d review the iPod touch. As soon as the iPhone was announced, I told myself, ‘When they put out an iPod with the touch interface, I’m getting one!’ Well, I waited until Christmas to get it and it was worth the wait.

I’m not much of a cell phone person (though after playing with the touch, I would love it if someone dumped an iPhone with a pre-paid lifetime contract in my lap), so I couldn’t justify the price of the iPhone. But I loved that interface, it looked so cool.

I read several lukewarm reviews of the iPod touch (dark video, not as nice as the iPhone), decided that since I didn’t have an iPhone, that comparison wouldn’t matter and I didn’t have any other handheld video device to compare it to (I had an old, white nano), I would go for it.

I’m very happy I did. The iPod touch interface is as much fun to use as I’d hoped. I could spend a few minutes each day just flicking through my photos. It’s actually fairly easy to type in the little keyboard (make sure you turn it sideways so the keys are larger) for things like web addresses. Being able to surf the web off this little device is awesome.

Oh and it’s very easy to read the display. My eyes aren’t as young as they used to be (no parts of my body are, when it comes to that) and reading that little nano screen could be hard at times. The text on the iPod touch is fairly large and very crisp.

In fact, I was standing outside an Apple Store, waiting for it to open (my MacBook Pro battery was bulging, oddly enough, on the day I went, there were about 10 people waiting for the store to open, is that normal?) and I could pick up their free wi-fe. I was so engrossed with surfing the web, that I almost didn’t notice when they opened the store.

Is it the perfect device? Not yet, but I have high hopes that some of the hiccups can be fixed with software updates.

Here are the nits I have to pick with the iPod touch:

• The sleep timer doesn’t work correctly. Okay, this is a big one, it’s a testimony to how much I like the iPod touch that this isn’t a deal breaker. When I set the iPod touch to have a sleep timer, it resets itself to play an alarm when the timer goes off if I go to any other menu (for example, to change the volume of what I’m listening to). So, instead of fading to silence, an alarm goes off, not good.
• I’m faster than the interface. I notice this mostly at night when I’m futzing with the sleep timer (maybe because I really want to just get the timer set and go back to sleep). This happens with almost any interface, so not sure what they can do about it.
• It’s hard to pause the music. When I’m washing the dishes and someone wants to talk to me, I have to take the iPod touch out of my pocket, click the home button, move the slider across, then hit the pause. Once again, not sure what they can do about that, but having a one button pause on the headphones (like the iPhone) sure sounds nice.
• I can’t see the text info on my podcasts. I often use that to see if I’ve listened to the whole podcast or not. I don’t see it anywhere on the iPod touch.

But, all in all, I love my iPod touch. I can’t wait to use it at Macworld Expo. I can surf the web without lugging my MacBook Pro around! Sweet.

Blogs are everywhere on the internet these days, most people have heard the term, but what is a blog? Theoretically, the term comes from web log and at the simplest level, a blog is a site where the writer posts entries, like journal entries.

So, it can be a sort of diary, if you would ever write a diary where everyone on the internet can read it. Probably not a good idea. More often, a writer has a subject they are interested in, say broadway musicals or politics, and they write about that subject. The entries can be anything but are often news or analysis about the blog’s subject.

When this all started, most blogs were written by one person, now there are many blogs that are written by a team of writers (TUAW and Engadget are examples). And these blogs make money. How you ask? Mostly by having Google Ads on the site. When a reader clicks through on a Google Ad, the blog gets some money.

Lately I’ve read a lot of articles telling businesses that they need blogs on their web sites. Blogs can be very useful, if you have something to say every month or so. If you are a small business that is putting up an informational site (something like an online brochure), then I’m not sure you need to have a blog. Even worse than not having a blog is having one that was last posted to 6 months ago (though it does happen to the best of us), then your company looks dead.

If you do have something to say (new information to post, new research to comment on) every month or so, a blog is a great way to start communicating to the World Wide Web (and your customers). But it’s not for everyone, keep that in mind.

The web is moving away from static sites towards dynamic sites, a trend that’s been in the works for a long time. You may have heard the term Web 2.0, this is the cutting edge of this trend, web pages that can be changed by the user on the fly, think Google Maps. But the trend is trickling down to even small sites.

Since most people want to make changes to their own sites and most of them don’t want to take a course in HTML programming and web design, I’ve been turning more and more to database driven, dynamic web sites. Usually, my client has no idea what I mean when I throw out those terms, understandably.

On the most basic level, a database driven, dynamic site is one that is created on the fly for each and every user from information stored in a database. For example, there’s Amazon.com. Unlike a static site, where you have a file for every single page, Amazon does not have thousands of files, one for each book, it has just one file that defines the layout for a book page, then fills in the info for an individual book from a database when a browser requests that book info.

But what does this mean for someone looking to create a small web site and keep it up to date themselves? It means that they can interact with the database (not as scary as it sounds as I’ll explain in a later post) and not worry about all the presentation details of the web site (colors, fonts, spacing, etc). When they want to change a word of a page or a description of an item, they can simply change the words in a database record and that change is immediately reflected in the site. The same goes for adding or deleting something (like a product) from the site.

It does require a different way of coding the site (using php instead of html, for one thing) and the site has to be well planned, or you’ll run into the old problem of not being able to put what you want up there, but it is a solution that lets you have a great looking site that you maintain yourself.

In fact, some people are already familiar with database driven, dynamic sites: every blog site is just that. And if you have a site that will have lots of content added to it, using blogging software (which is the database and the way you interact with the database) is a great way to quickly put that site up.

We purchased a Nikon D40 Digital SLR and we love it. We chose the Nikon because Ted had a Nikon ages ago (when we shot film) and has lenses for it. We went for the D40 versus the 10 Megapixel D40x for two reasons: price and the fact that David Pogue has been saying for awhile that Megapixels don’t really matter, 6 is enough.

So far, we’re very happy. First impressions: the camera is very, very fast, to start up and to focus and to take pictures. I took it to the Flower Festival in Lompoc and got these shots:

I’ve been thinking about anonymity and the internet. Seems that when people are anonymous (and what allows you more anonymity than the internet) some of them get really nasty, doing things like threatening people. I’ve read a few articles that discussed this in terms of online communities. The current thinking is that allowing anonymous posting isn’t a good idea. And monitoring the comments (and letting people know that you’re monitoring them) is even better.

This behavior shouldn’t surprise anyone. I think we do it from the time we’re kids. I’ve already noticed with my daughter (10 years old) that if she knows I’m paying attention, checking in on her, she’s less likely to misbehave. And I finally understand why mothers come out to clubhouses with milk and cookies. They aren’t worried that you’re starving to death, they want to make it clear that they know you’re out there and might pop in at any moment. Someone is paying attention.

This is what online community leaders need to do. They shouldn’t be Big Brother and listen to everything, they just need to pop in with milk and cookies every once in awhile so all the members know that someone is paying attention.

So, when you’re setting up a community, say some forums where your visitors can post questions and comments, realize that you will need to pop in and take a look and maybe pull some posts. That will help keep the discussion on your forums civil so everyone can enjoy them.

I was recently and abruptly introduced to the organization stopbadware.org when one of my clients sent me an email letting me know that Google was identifying her site as a possible spreader of badware. What is badware, you ask? Computer programs that take over users PC’s (mostly Windows PC’s) and then do things like log keystrokes to try and find credit card information and set up mail servers to send out spam. Often users don’t even know that they have badware installed, though the symptoms include slowdowns and sometimes complete shutdowns.

Is badware bad? Yes. Is it a problem for many, many people? Yes. As computer consultants, we spend a good amount of time cleaning badware off users pc’s (just want to point out again, not Macs, if you’re on a Mac, you’re luckily out of the badware loop).

Was my client’s site distributing badware? Maybe. Sometimes a hacker gets into a web server and alters web pages so they distribute the nasty stuff all without the owner of the site knowing. We were hacked a long time ago (thank you very much, frogee). The only vestiges of the hacking was a Dreamweaver lock file, that the hacker had changed so that it read something like ‘You’ve been hacked by the Cyber Overlord.’ As far as I could tell, that’s all the hacker did, overwrite our files to say we’d been hacked. So after the attack, I uploaded our files again and we were fine.

I mention this because that’s the only thing I can think of that could have triggered Google reporting us as spreading badware. I couldn’t find any of the hacks mentioned on forums (1 pixel frames, certain javascript). It’s a small site, less than 10 pages, not that hard to search. But I also couldn’t say for sure that there wasn’t something there I was missing.

It didn’t help that Google wouldn’t tell me why my site had been flagged. They sent me over to stopbadware.org, where I had to ask that my site be reviewed. They suggest you clean out the badware first, of course. I couldn’t find any, though I did re-upload the site and take down all those lock files. I also ran the site through a couple of online services that look for badware and it came out clean.

Our site was reviewed and I received an email saying we were clean. That was a relief, but still not a great experience. Was there badware on the site? Or were we flagged somehow because of that dreamwearver lock file? There doesn’t seem to be any way to find out.
And the all clean email included this ominous paragraph:

Please note that we will be retesting your website at periodic intervals in order to monitor that it remains free from badware. If we find that you are hosting or distributing badware in the future, the reviews process may take considerably longer than the original review.

The Bottom Line

Google can pretty much do what it wants with its search results, I’m not paying them, they don’t owe me anything. I understand why they are being so closed mouthed about what sent up the flag: they don’t want the badware distributors to game the system like some search engine optimizers have done since the start of Google. I’m not sure that it’s as important to be as secretive with badware as it is with search results, but that’s how Google has always done business.

However, there does seem to be a difference between page rank (where a site is put in the search results, 1 or 1,000) and actually flagging a site as spreading badware. Yes, Google says the site ‘might’ be spreading badware, but I bet that most people ignore that ‘might.’ After all, if Google thinks the site is doing it, the site is doing it. In many internet users’ minds, Google is the internet.

And there’s no arguing that being flagged as bad by Google immediately affects a site’s buisiness.

Is this going to help cut down on people’s computers being infected with badware? I’m not sure. I’ve only seen it from the other side, since I’ve never had one of these ‘possible spreaders of badware’ sites show up on my google searches.

I suppose I would be less frustrated if they had actually shown me what was triggering the flag, so I could fix it, instead of re-submitting my site and holding my breath, hoping that I didn’t get flagged again.

Oh, and by the way, I dislike the term ‘badware.’ It sounds like someone is being naughty. I prefer the term ‘malware,’ but that’s not what the organization decided to call themselves.

There’s a lot of discussion bouncing around the web design blogosphere about the number of women in web design, the number of women on web design panels and women in technical careers in general. Always good to read intelligent people discussing interesting, important topics. I would especially recommend Zeldman’s post: Women In Web Design and the comments to that post.

One comment that hit home was the first one, by a woman web designer, noting that 90% of her clients are women. I find that also true of my clientele. Does it matter that I’m a woman web designer (as someone else asked)? Well, I don’t think that I create ‘feminine’ sites that are somehow different from those created my male web designers, but I think it does matter in how I communicate with my clients.

We live in a society that still treats women and men differently. I have also noticed that male clients will pay attention to the other man in the room and never even look at me, even though I’m the web designer not the other man. Same thing happened to me as a woman engineer. As a engineer who minored in women’s studies, sometimes I feel like I’m not doing enough to change the status quo. Other times, I’m just tired of dealing with men who demand that I prove myself again and again and would rather go find some women clients who will actually listen to me and get on with the project.

That said, I’ve also worked with men who were great. I really don’t think it should matter if my clients are men or women and I try to work that way.

Oh, and I took the Web Designer Survey (if you’re a web designer, you should, too) from A List Apart. So here’s my badge showing I completed it and my answers will help us learn more about who web designers are:

I’ve been following the story of the harassment and death threats aimed at the author of ‘Creating Passionate Users,’ a blog that I read. I’ve enjoyed the blog, but am obviously not hooked into that part of the blogosphere, since I didn’t even recognize the names mentioned in the post about the harassment (warning: pictures and re-printing of the threats may be disturbing to some).

It made me think about all the stuff I don’t see on the internet, the porn, the vile language, etc. And, understandably, the experience has soured that author’s view of the internet and in a small way made me feel less safe as well.

One of the comments to her post made me think. A male blogger said that he had received similar threats/harassment, but he just let it roll off his back. We can get into a long discussion about our society, gender differences, etc, and why it’s easier for a man to ‘just let it roll off his back’ and not a woman. (and, don’t get me wrong, the guy who left the post was very sympathetic).

But I think part of the problem may be that the guys do tend to just ignore this kind of comment. It isn’t that we should tell these people that they shouldn’t make comments like that about women, they shouldn’t make comments like that about anyone. Then that avoids the whole problem of women sounding like whiners and babies when they do complain.

That’s pretty much my philosophy: women shouldn’t be treated differently, we should all be treated more civilly.

stopcyberbullying