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Showing posts from December, 2012

Wishing You a Healthy and Prosperous 2013

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My top Web design tools and innovations from year 2012. 2012 has certainly been an eventful year. Some good, some bad, and some outright ugly. Web design technology, internet marketing and social media have continued to evolve at a rapid pace. Staying current with the changing tide of SEO has been challenging. Reflecting back, I definitely saw my daily SEO routine change. I spent much more time doing "research". Keeping up on keeping up...my kids always tease me about that one. I am thankful for the generosity of the web development community, especially the "knowledge sharers". Reading their tech blogs and forums sure made my life easier when racing to meet another crazy deadline. For those of you out there...thanks for caring and sharing! My 2012 list of most useful web technologies & innovations OK, yes...a lot of Google mentions. And I know some of these technologies were around in 2011. But I have leaned on them a bit more than in previous yea

Google Sites - A Viable Web CMS Platform

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If you need to author, develop, and launch a website quickly, consider using Google Sites. I'm all about efficiency...like most small business owners I am always on the lookout for new tools to help improve productivity. My preferred method of Website development is either hand-coding HTML, or using a Web content management system such as DotNetNuke or Wordpress.  Customer requirements such as budget, time frame and functionality is the major "driver" on which path I choose to take. The Google Sites platform has become be a good option because it allows me to deploy rapid website development solutions for my cost conscious customers. Below, I will summarize the pro's and con's of using Google Sites.   What is Google Sites: Similar to other website builders such as Wix, Yola or Weebly...Google Sites is a free Website CMS hosted in the Google Apps cloud. Benefits of Google Sites: Cost - Google Sites (as of now) is a free service*. Speed - Rapid development

Google+ Communities

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OK, I couldn't resist.  I jumped on the early bandwagon and put together my first G+ Community page . Check it out here:  https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/102545819347311378712 So far I like it.  Although I do see a need for some usability enhancements.  Would love to be able to "pin" a post to the top of a category.  The ability to toggle post content visibility (under the titles) would be nice too.  Lots of vertical scrolling as the community post timeline grows. I have yet to use the hangout feature, but will do so as the need arises.  I do believe this is a great feature, and will become more widely used as people begin to understand how it works. People have asked me what Google+ is.  My simplified explanation is that it's like a hybrid social network.  A cross between Facebook, Twitter and email. Here's the real question...will Facebook and Twitter loyalists give it a try?  With the number of Android based phones out there, my guess is yes.