New AJAX Event Calendar Demo

Filed under: Custom Programming — Tags: , , , — admin @ 11:10 am

I have built a few event calendar’s in my time. Usually highly customized for client needs, and I based all the event calendar’s I have built in the past on various event calendars free everywhere online. But I had not yet come across an AJAX event calendar that allowed you to go through months and years on the fly. It seemed to me that with all the Buzz about AJAX these days, that this would be a project that would be ideal for AJAX technology. Changing months and years on the fly without having to reload the page each time.

So I set about building one for my own company. For the employee’s to keep track of deadlines, and events that the company hosts. While still in its primitive stages - no notifications are yet built in and recurring events have not been programmed into the functionality (yet!) - it’s still an effective calendar that can handle events. The demo is up here with limited functionality (adding events and viewing months and events within are the only options available in our demo at the present time).

Hope you enjoy!

The Source Code of Information

Filed under: Technology — jbeeby @ 2:20 am

In 2009 we as a species can easily define our current era as the information age with the way we handle large amounts of information, transfer information, the speed at which we transfer information but most of this is reliant on computers and technology in general. A personal observation is that humans in this era are also able to comprehend and negotiate more information and transfer that information faster and faster, perhaps trained or conditioned by the day to day use of our evolving technology.

A proper example would be typing; where one starts out slow and unsteady, learning the movements and the location of the keys. As time goes on you begin to type faster until eventually you can type faster than you can write freehand, thus the information must flow quicker, either from the brain or through the brain from a source.

It doesn’t take a look into our future to see that we are in a faster paced world, it is here now and people are adapting to it, learning to process information in many different forms and in many different ways, aided by our technology.

But is this really a proper definition of the information age? I am of the opinion that it does not properly define this era and is not exclusive to any age for many thousands of years. The age or the era should be relative to the way information is processed and packaged at the time.

The Dark Ages were dark fundamentally as a result of the way the information was being processed and used. After the fall of Rome it is noted that there was an “era of recovery and learning.” Learning.

The Industrial Age is about production of goods divided by time. Much like a gear on a clock, the information is held on the spacing of the tines, the speed at which it revolves, and the energy used to produce it. As the industrial age comes to a close in most areas it for so long dominated, the tines on the gear now turn into 1s and 0s. 1 equals a tine where 0 equals the absence of a tine, or the space between them. On and off.

The information we use now is no different than it was 2,000 years ago. Information today is vital, important, priority, protected, expedited, coded, secure, just like it has always been since symbol hit papyrus or the first mark was made for any purpose.

Information at its base form is the very building block of every single thing in existence, from sub-atomic particles to the largest galaxy in space.

What man has done is learn to wrap a package around information and give it a definition, which is then left to interpretation since the package itself is there to preserve the information throughout time. This is media.

The first media is the same as the last media, also just as linear throughout time as information itself. The first book is exactly the same as the first blog. The first scratch on the wall is the exact same thing as the first Twitter post. The first painting of a bust is the same as the first MySpace post.

To this I say that the information age has been and always will be. Whatever package or definition we’d like to wrap around it may change it, but by appearances only.

The source of our information when presented as I have above, makes information and the way we as a species deal with it, somewhat natural, fluid, unending. If there was a way to define this age based on the level of information transferred, the speed, and the processing, and/or the goals and levels at which we wish to deal with information - this would be the Instant Age.

“The Customer is Always Right”

Filed under: Client Relationships — admin @ 8:44 pm

I never understood the phrase “The Customer is always right” until I began doing web development work. The customer, or client in our case, is always right, even when they are wrong. It never occurred to me why however, until I began to build my own website and needed a designer to help me out with some of the design elements.

Designers have a way of wanting things done their way. They are artists, and like most people, tend to dislike criticism. So when a client wants to change their design, they are reluctant to do so. They may, through their own hubris, believe they are right but, in fact they are wrong. See, the designer and developer’s job is to give the client or customer what they want. It’s not the designer or developer’s site. The code, the design, it doesn’t belong to them. It belongs to the client purchasing the services of said developer/designer. And the client wants it done their way, regardless of the aesthetic appeal or business sense of it.

I figure, our job as web solutions providers is to give the clients exactly what they want but in the process, help persuade them to do things the “right” way. Whether they take our advice or not is up to them, but we are obligated to help guide them on the path to better business for themselves. See, most clients a web development company takes on are not in the business of the internet. They use the internet as a tool. It could be products or services completely unrelated to the internet and those clients are the ones we have to help persuade the most. They do not know the internet as intimately as development teams do. They do not understand what works, and what is effective. All they know is that they have an idea in their mind, and they want to make it a reality.

So we do that for them. How they want it. Now if what they want is changed along the course of the way because of good advice from us, backed up by solid facts and data, then we have done our job. Anything less than that is a failure on our part. It is imperitive that the clients a web development team take on are completely informed of the best practices for working with the great tool that is the internet.

It is our goal. Are there other web development companies out there that can do what we do? Yes. Can they do it better? Some of the probably, but, do they do it with the care and passion that we bring with the goal of not only completing the project but having the clients’ future success in mind? I doubt it. Its not important to us that we build fancy, impressive websites. What is important to us is that our clients are happy with their final product and that their business is improved from having come to us. Not only do we want to be proud of our final product, we want the clients to succeed. If we do our jobs right, they will have nowhere to go but up.

A Good Team is Priceless

Filed under: Web Development — Tags: , , — admin @ 10:27 pm

Most people have no idea what is entailed in the development cycle for a website (or software for that matter). As a web developer, I have spent the last 6 years at nearly every stop in the cycle. Alone, its a difficult proposition and requires long days (and nights!) of laborious work just to get through each cycle. The benefit of working alone is that there is no need to communicate your idea’s to teammates, and its easy enough to keep things all straight. The drawback, there is a ton of work. Design, layout, user interface, expandability, programming, content additions and subtractions, revisions, testing, optimization and marketing all are part of a lengthy process when, working alone, can consume months and months for a single (large) project.

Working in a team brings with it some relaxatioin of the pressures involved in the process yet, it also brings with it some cons. Like any team, in any environment, chemistry is required to get a project done efficiently and on time. Knowing your teammates strengths and weaknesses and they in turn knowing yours and each others, can make the development cycle a much easier one. I have worked and known my team mates John Beeby and Dayna Dukett for 15 and 6 years respectively. John, our lead designer, has a great eye for design and can take what I want and make it a reality without much conversation. I can give him a simple, basic idea and he will run with it and produce something far beyond what I had originally envisioned and, in many cases, far better. The project then comes to me where I polish the design, add in user interface enhancements, and the programming and testing. During this process, both John and Dayna our marketing specialist, are giving me constant input into what is pleasing to the eye and easy to use. Dayna adds in his suggestions for what will make marketing easier, placement of text and such and then I polish it more. All the while maintaining constant communication.

One I have finished my end and it is thoroughly tested, the project is, in effect, completed. I pass it off to Dayna while he begins a very boring (to me anyway) and time consuming process of optimizing the site for search engines. While he is doing that, John and I are busy researching keyword terms for whatever business our client is in so that when Dayna begins the paid marketing campaign, he has a bevy of information already ready to go and he knows what is being searched for and what to make bids on. This team work, this flow that we have developed over the years is worth ten times its weight in gold.

Now I have seen too many IT departments cut staff, and thus cut the chemistry of their teams to save a few short term dollars but in the end it costs them more. Doing such puts more workload and pressure on each remaining member of the team and in many cases, people that are cut are the “glue” guys of the team. Maybe not the most talented, or smartest, or hardest working, but the guy or gal that has the personality that keeps everyone else in the team on level ground with one another.