September 4, 2007

Import Contacts… no!

Christian Decker wrote this in the late evening:

Queup

Many Web Applications nowadays have the option to import your contacts from you other accounts like Gmail, Hotmail, MSN, MySpace, you name it. It usually is a nice feature for both the users and the owners of the application, as the users can get quickly connected to their contacts, while the owner rapidly gets new users. But stop! Not all “import contacts” options are the same, there are the good guys and the bad boys:
  • The good guys don’t ask you immediately to import contacts and certainly don’t force you to. They give you the option later on or they let you skip it, maybe you’ll do it later. What they certainly don’t do is automatically invite every contact you import by sending them yet another stupid email, or send friend requests in the case of social networks. These are absolute nonos! Don’t ever do anything the user is not asking for.
  • Then there are the bad boys, their mentality is best summed up as “All your contacts are belong to us!“, no really they don’t give you the option to skip import or tell you that if you don’t do it right now you won’t be able later. On top of this thy will send an invitation to everyone on your list and keep hammering them with updates, possibly citing you as the sender. These people will get pissed and at least delete you from their contact list, if not worse.
I had this problem once in the last few months and I can’t tell you how embarrassed I was to find out that an invitation has been sent to all my work colleagues. So please, please, please web developers be nice and give me a moderate import contacts, even if an aggressive import can fastly grow the number of your users, it will piss off ten times more!

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Ajax, CSS, DOM and JS-related resources

Christian Decker wrote this at around evening time:
Ajaxian today has a feature about the most useful information sources on Ajax, CSS, DOM and JavaScript (or as many will know them: the basis on which the whole Web 2.0 is built :) ), so I’ve skimmed through my del.icio.us account looking for stuff to add and here are my favorites: So that’s it from my side, if you have more resources you’d like to share with the rest of the world post them on the original article.
70-442, certification exams are valuable in providing knowledge and skills of designing and optimizing data access with the usage of Microsoft SQL Server 2005. 642-652, Wide Area Application Services for Field Engineers exam (WAASFE) is very beneficial for IT engineers and technicians to promote their skills. 642-445 certification exams are also associated with Cisco IP Communications Support Specialist certifications to promote IP telephony networking system. 642-565 cisco exams are designed to assess the abilities of candidates how to tackle cisco security products with the use of latest technology. 642-176 certification exams enable the candidates to get job successfully as SMB engineer. 640-816 stands for Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices Part 2 (ICND2), having direct association with Cisco Certified Network certification exams. 156-310 exams are designed for the assessment of professional and technical abilities of the candidates.

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November 29, 2006

WikiMatrix: find the best for your needs

Christian Decker wrote this in the early afternoon:
Did you ever wonder what the best Wiki for your needs is? There are simply hundreds of different Wiki Systems on the Internet, some general purpose, others are really specialised. Now you can compare the most popular (and some unknown ones too) using WikiMatrix. They also have detailed information for every system, like MediaWiki or DokuWiki. WikiMatrix Nice objective comparison.

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November 16, 2006

Web 2.0 Designs

Christian Decker wrote this in the early evening:
I’m not a designer, so I often need some, let’s call it, “help” with the design of my webapplications, and it looks like I’m not the only one having trouble in getting the look and feel right. Don’t get me wrong, but there only very few pages that are well designed compared to the huge number of ugly, sluggish looking or copycat sites. Why am I telling you all this? Lynn Chang at Yahoo Publisher Network has posted a roundup of Web 2.0 design styles. She lists the styles that have become popular during the Web 2.0 Hype:
  • Layout
  • Gradients
  • Strong and contrasting colors
  • 3D Icons
  • Rounded Corners
  • Oversized Text
Especially interesting is that for nearly every style she also gives a n example. So if, like me, you find yourself once again without ideas on how to design the next Webapplication I suggest you let yourself be inspired by those example :D

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November 2, 2006

Best of the Best Web 2.0 Web Sites

Christian Decker wrote this in the early evening:
The guys at Real World Software Development have pubblished a huge list of Web 2.0 applications.
Web 2.0 sites are cropping up all over the place!  From Social Bookmarking Sites, to Real Estate sites, this list has only the best Web 2.0 Sites available today!  What makes a site a Web 2.0 Site?  Web 2.0 is the second coming of World Wide Web. New and improved sites that make the web their platform, provide users a way of interacting with each other, and organize and categorize their content are perfect examples of Web 2.0.  Below is a list of web sites that are the best of the best!
Another thing I learned from this post: there actually exists a Web 2.0 Validator, it’s only sad that Snyke.net isn’t Web 2.0, I’ll have to make some minor (or major) edits :)

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