Just recently, I’ve been watching the Digg Dialog with Marissa Mayer. I’m embedding it below.
But, first of all, a little information to make sure we are all up to speed:
1. DIGG – for those of you who don’t know about DIGG, you have to check it out. Digg is one of the most popular web site’s in America. Founded by Kevin Rose (his blog – http://kevinrose.com/), DIGG (http://www.digg.com) is a user generated news site. Users submit new articles that they find on the web. Then the users vote (i.e. DIGG) these stories up or down. Stories with the most diggs appear at the top (on the home page). With well over 50 million users – it can be VERY interesting to see what is being dugg right now.
2. DIGG DIALOG – this is the same concept as digg – but applied to interviews. DIGG will announce a new Dialog coming up. Then users will submit questions that they would like asked. Users will then vote (digg) stories up or down. The top 10 questions – as determined by US, not the interviewer or news channel – are then asked.
Previous Dialog’s have included Trent Reznor, Richard Branson, Nancy Pelosi…
3. MARISSA MAYER – Marissa is the Vice President for Search and User Experience at Google. Her influence is all over the search side of Google.
So, the top ten questions, as voted on by the DIGG community were asked of Marissa. Here’s the video:
Yet More Reasons Why I Love WordPress
Posted by Eric on January 21, 2009 | 1 Comment »I was just recently working on a client’s site (Share Gain) – which, of course, is powered by WordPress. WordPress has become my favorite Content Mangement System of late. The work prompted me to renew my love for WordPress.
If you’ve been reading the blog, you know that I power my entire site using WordPress. I’ve also started using it as the DEFAULT install for every single site I develop.
Here’s a quick story about a Fort Wayne area client that I was doing some web design work for.
We had just recently taken the new, updated site live (http://www.sharetogain.com). Now ShareGain has started posting content from all their learning sessions on the site. So, they just recently had a morning session and the President of the organization went on-line and posted a Google Docs Slide Show from the mornig. They quickly wanted all of teh following (things we didn’t realize before we rolled out the site live):
- A way for people to get e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted to the site, AND a way to customize those notifications to only be when certain CATEGORIES are update (for instance – I can get notifications whenever something new is posted in the IT/Technology category)
– DONE – just used Post Notifications - I made a few small edit to have it not list all categories – as some categories are just for displaying content and things like that. BUT, I was able to find some help on where to modify the PHP code from the authors page!
- A way to let a presenter of the session know whenever a comment is added to the post – So, Craig, the President may make the post, but we want the session presenter to get an e-mail whenever someone makes a comment about this post. That way the presenter is encouraged to go on-line and continue the discussion
– DONE – just used Subscribe To Comments – no modifications (other than what is exposed via the admin panel) needed here – it just works like we wanted it out of the box
All in all, it took me about an hour to get the changes done. Thanks to the beauty of Open-Source, the beauty of GPL (that I can re-distribute and modify), and the beauty of WordPress.
I can only image how long this would have taken trying to use a closed proprietary system.
This is why I love WordPress and am using it in all my web design projects.
Web Development – “IN DEMAND” jobs
Posted by Eric on December 19, 2008 | No Comments »As I’m sure anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock lately has heard, there is an economic recession going on around the country.
But, what I find very interesting is how despite the “recession” certain areas of the economy seem to be holding their own or even growing.
Web Development might be one of those areas (interesting that a web developer would notice this). According to odesk.com, several areas of web development continue to grow. Odesk is an outsourcing job board sort of web site. They match up freelance people to available projects – sort of a job board deal.
So, on the Odesk blog, they just recently talked about how web development jobs are growing rapidly:
“Knowing and being professional in at least some of the skills below to maximize your prospects for being employed.”
Odesk says jobs in PHP, AJAX, Javascript, XML, MySQL, CSS and Graphic Design are all growing.
According to their information, PHP related jobs are growing the fastest
From their own blog:
“PHP is by far the most in-demand web development programming language right now. As you can see from the graph, it has enjoyed a steady climb from November 2007 leveling off in July 2008 at a spectacular 1400 jobs posted. The demand for PHP development work has tripled over the period of a mere 9 months.”
You can read the whole article here:
http://www.odesk.com/blog/2008/12/stay-employed-web-developer-skills-in-most-demand-php-ajax-mysql/
Of course, here at EH Design, we specialize in exactly these areas – PHP, mySQL, CSS, Javascript, and more. We are a Fort Wayne based Web Design firm that specializes in web development. CONTACT US if you would like to talk!
WordPress 2.7, here we go
Posted by Eric on December 16, 2008 | No Comments »I just updated my Content Management System to WordPress 2.7.
For those of you who haven’t been following the news, WP 2.7 is a pretty significant update to WordPress. A bunch of things have been moved around.
Here’s a few initial thoughts:
Plugins:
- Oz Admin Drop Down – one of my favorite back-end plugins is no longer needed – as a matter of fact, it breaks the admin pages. So you need to delete it, deactivate it, etc. Otherwise, you won’t be able to see the menu on the left.
- Custom Admin Branding – no longer works – well, it works, but not as nice. WP changed the look of the log-in screen so my custom made log in no longer works. That’s not a big deal for me, but can’t wait to get this fixed for other clients. Being able to put in a custom Branded log in screen is a big deal.
Back End Menu:
- I love having the menu on the left hand side. I love being able to shrink the menu to just the icons – giving me more space for writing and other things. In short it is a big deal.
- The dashboard is now actually a useful page. Before it was nothing more than just a waste. Now, I’m looking forward to seeing it in action a little more. Things like quickPress intrigue me.
OK, that’s it for now. I’ll have more thoughts later as I work through everything.