The 12 Most has only been live for a few weeks, but it has garnered a lot of attention and traffic. At 12most.com, it is a Web site featuring posts by guest contributors with 12 tips or items on a particular topic. Thus far topics have included business, technology, social media, and a tribute to Father’s Day.

Last Friday I was honored to contribute a guest post titled, 12 Most Basic Things You Can Do For Your Web Site Without Modifying It. In it, I present a dozen tips to benefit your Web site without actually making any changes to the site itself. Some of these are based on The State of Your Web Site checklist, the others come from the full Web site assessment my Web consulting firm Dunkirk Systems, LLC offers.

With the quality of posts and contributors so far, The 12 Most is poised to be one of your 12 most favored Web sites.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni, Founder and President of Web consulting firm Dunkirk Systems, LLC.

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Announcements • Blogging • Social Media • Strategize • Web Design • Web Development • (1) Comments • Permalink

The next likemind will be Friday, April 15, 2011 in dozens of cities around the world.

In Chicago, it will be at Argo Tea, 140 S Dearborn St. at the corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets in the Loop from 8:00 am to 10:00 am.

I call likemind a gathering of creative-minded people, from various disciplines including Internet, advertising, art, social media, et. al. For more on likemind, read this great article on likemind Chicago from the Newcity and likemind from the New York Times.

Follow @likemindchicago on Twitter. You are welcome to join the likemind Chicago Facebook group.

Watch for future date announcements at http://likemindchicago.com/ - and Web site coming soon at that address!

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Announcements • Thrive • Web Design • Web Development • likemind • (0) Comments • Permalink

In the past I have said QR codes are a way of tying the offline and online worlds. After seeing the use of a QR code I am writing about today, I am changing that statement to this: QR codes are a nexus between mediums.

Name.com is a great domain name registrar I use personally and for my business (note the link is an affiliate link). They have a clean and intuitive user interface that does not bombard you with upselling options at every click! They also provide outstanding and efficient human support whenever I need it. As part of that service, Name.com have recently launched an app for Android mobile devices, allowing you not only to register new domain names, but backorder domains as well as manage your entire account. They announced this with an email message as pictured below.

In it, there is a QR code. It links to a page on their Web site for the app. The email message is consistent in design with the Web page. The options they include on this Web page, including the ability to download it by SMS (texting to us in the US) and email, as well as a QR code taking you directly to the Android Market.

In this case, the QR code was a bridge between digital mediums – email and the Web. Of course if I read this email on my mobile device I wouldn’t be able to scan it, but as I opened it from within my Thunderbird email client, it worked. An argument can be made whether to link directly to the Android Market from the email rather to a landing page which then links to the Market. This is a great scenario for performing A/B or split testing on the email message, which they may have done anyway. Overall I believe this email from Name.com does a decent job of communicating the value behind the QR code.

What do you think of this QR code use? Would you link directly to the Android Market? Have you or would you use a QR code in an email message? You are welcome to share your thoughts and opinions in the comments of this post.

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Mobile Technology • QR Codes • QR Codes In Action • Strategize • Technology • Web Design • (0) Comments • Permalink

Microsoft recently launched a program for “moving the world off Internet Explorer 6” called the Internet Explorer 6 Countdown, aptly at IE6Countdown.com. For some of you reading this, hearing about this may be somewhat amusing, for others, you may not know why Microsoft would want this to happen. I will try to address the reasons for upgrading your browser here, and why many – including myself – want IE6 to go away!

A Lot Has Happened In A Decade

IE6 was launched on August 27, 2001. A lot has happened in the area Web technology since then. Web programming standards have changed, with an emphasis towards heavy use of cascading style sheets (CSS) to position content on a Web page, when previously HTML tables were used. This has made Web code “lighter” in it’s physical file size, as well as ease of maintenance. As IE6 itself has not changed, many newer Web pages may display differently, or not display at all. This forces Web designers and developers to add functionality and code to display specific code on IE6 that is different than on other browsers, which only adds to future maintenance.

As well, other browsers have entered the marketplace, including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera. These browsers have been designed to render newer Web standards properly, though each has its own nuances. Not to mention newer features to the browsers, such as tabbed browsing and subscribing to RSS feeds. One feature of these other browsers is in their ability to “self-update” and apply incremental changes to the browser software, and prompt the user to download completely new versions of the browser. IE6 does not do this. Windows Update will prompt a PC user to install a new browser version or incremental browser update, but the user can opt not to install them. In some cases, a user may not even have the option – these tend to be corporate users, who centrally control what updates are made on a corporate computer.

Another reason why corporate users may not use the latest browsers is due to some corporate Web applications requiring IE6 to run. Many of these apps may not have a business need to change, thus corporate IT staff have made no efforts to upgrade the browsers. Only newer versions of Windows have come with newer versions of the browser, and hopefully by then these apps have changed for the newer versions.

So Why A Campaign?

Microsoft relied on people to upgrade the browsers themselves, and in many cases the browser never updated or upgraded. Also, IE6 was viewed as slow and unfriendly, which attributed to a migration away from them. People may use IE6 on occasion – for certain Web apps that required it – but would use Firefox or another browser as their primary browser. Thus not only did IE6 lose market share, IE browsers overall lost market share. So why not a marketing campaign to bring attention to the browser already installed on your PC?

Where the idea of a campaign around a countdown to IE6 going away is interesting, it’s just that – clever marketing. If you look at the chart on the IE6 countdown Web site, the country with the largest use if IE6 is China, which raises all sorts of questions around piracy as well as their ability to even get access to the newer browsers.

As someone who build Web sites, I have IE6 installed on a computer I use, and this is namely for testing my Web sites. My primary browser is Firefox 3, and I also use Google Chrome on occasion, both for Web browsing and testing Web sites. I agree the world would be a better place without IE6. Unfortunately I don’t think this campaign will make it go away completely.

I once had an idea about how to rid the world of IE6 – rather than have a marketing campaign, hold a contest for someone to write a virus or malware which would replace a version of IE6 with a newer version of IE. Though ethics heavily come into play, it would certainly be more effective!

What do you think of this campaign? Do you still use IE6? I welcome your thoughts and reasons in the comments of this post.

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Build • Technology • Web Design • Web Development • (6) Comments • Permalink

Last week I received an email from Yahoo indicating it will be shutting down the service MyBlogLog on May 24, 2011. For some of you reading this, you may be saying, what the heck is MyBlogLog anyway? Allow me to explain.

MyBlogLog was a social community for blogs. Bloggers joined MyBlogLog and would put code into their theme or template pages to display a widget. If you were a member of MyBlogLog and visited the Web page of another blog who was also a member, your avatar would appear within the widget. This would show that you - and others - visited the blog site. The widget could be adjusted to show a small or large list of avatars, as well as the names of the person and blog behind the avatar. By clicking within the widget you could go to the MyBlogLog page for the blog itself or for the visitors.

For myself, MyBlogLog was more of a merit badge for how many different people would visit my blog more than a way to learn about my visitors. I rarely went to the MyBlogLog Web site itself. Overtime, the widget was slowly demoted on the sidebar of The Hot Iron and other blogs which I had signed up for it. Where it was something I would recommend for client blogs, eventually it was not. The accompanying image shows the latest status of the MyBlogLog widget for The Hot Iron as of this writing.

My guess is its popularity waned for others as well. Here’s the text of Yahoo’s email:

Dear MyBlogLog Customer,

You have been identified as a customer of Yahoo! MyBlogLog. We will officially discontinue Yahoo! MyBlogLog effective May 24, 2011. Your agreement with Yahoo!, to the extent that it applies to the Yahoo! MyBlogLog, will terminate on May 24, 2011.

After May 24, 2011 your credit card will no longer be charged for premium services on MyBlogLog. We will refund you the unused portion of your subscription, if any. The refund will appear as a credit via the billing method we have on file for you. To make sure that your billing information is correct and up to date, visit [url=https://billing.yahoo.com]https://billing.yahoo.com[/url].

Questions?

If you have questions about these changes, please visit the Yahoo! MyBlogLog help pages.

We thank you for being a customer on Yahoo! MyBlogLog.

Sincerely,

The Yahoo! My BlogLog Team

When I read this, my first reaction was, “people paid for this?” It was always free when I signed up for it, which pre-dated Yahoo’s acquisition of it. The link to the help pages originally linked to a MyBlogLog page which basically stated what was in the email. As I write this it links to a help page on Featured Listings, which looks like another soon-to-be discontinued service.

My guess is after May 24 the widget will not appear on Web pages, and soon I will remove it from The Hot Iron’s templates. This appears to be yet another change Yahoo is making to slim down its operations, including the shutdown of Geocities and using Microsoft Bing’s search marketing services instead of its own. With MyBlogLog, and the same can be said for Geocities, why didn’t they just spin it off and give this away to someone to let them continue with it? Perhaps they didn’t want to incur the cost of doing so, or perhaps it was easier to just shut it down. I don’t know, as the help topics don’t pertain to it.

So long MyBlogLog – it was fun while it lasted! What do you think about this latest decision by Yahoo? Should they have kept it going? Did it provide any value to you, even if only as eye candy? Please share your thoughts in the comments on this post. And perhaps you will see your avatar in the widget when you do so?

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Blogging • Build • Web Design • Web Development • (1) Comments • Permalink