Chris's Blog

R2i Panel Discussion, Seminar & Booth at NYC DPA Conference: Showcasing Social Media Integration and RIA

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:27:00 GMT

I’ll be speaking at the DPA Conference Wednesday, June 25^th in New York City. The topic is Rich Internet Applications (RIAs): Web Tools for Tomorrow's Richer, More Social Sites- What they are, how they work, and why you need them. We have killer examples and breakout the RIA world today and how it can be used for organizations. I’ll post the presentation after the show.

RIA - How They Are Being Used

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:11:00 GMT

RIA’s have been popping regularly since the beginning of the year on more and more sites. I have found that most RIA segment into the following categories: Rich Media, Product Selection, Visual Search, Widget Builders and Forms & Data Visualizers. Since the release of Silverlight 2.0 (BETA) and Adobe Flex 3.0, designers and engineers have the professional grade tools and adoption of the technology. The results are the increase in creative practical use of RIA .

Microsoft and Adobe battle for the Rich Internet Application Engineer

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:08:00 GMT

Today, the RIA battle lines are drawn between Adobe and Microsoft, and they’re fighting for the loyalty of people like you, who will use their products to build websites, widgets, WEB 2.0 tools, and whatnot. In the Adobe camp is a legion of graphic designers, who are experts in tools like Adobe Flash. In the Microsoft camp are the developers with expertise in the .NET framework, developer tools, and server-based products. Both sides want to retain their loyal followers and while attracting defectors from the other camp.

Visual Search Engines

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 04:20:00 GMT

We tend to be habitual in our use of the internet. Searching the internet has been relatively the same for years. We hardly question the process or the 'secret sauce' search engines use to rank results. Type the phrase, get results. Scan those lists and descriptions looking for clues and click on the first or most interesting link. Read the page and return to the original search result to repeat. Been there and done that a thousand times.

Rich Internet Applications (“RIA”) Overview - Part 1

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:46:35 GMT

In the Internet world there is a new kid in the town, and the name is RIA. It stands for Rich Internet Application (if you see it as “Rich Interactive Application,” that’s just Microsoft terminology and trying to be different). In a nutshell, RIA is a browser-based application that achieves the experience of a desktop application with little server-side interaction. With the limitations of browser-based applications obliterated, expect to see some pretty cool RIAs on websites and other digital gadgets, like phones, cameras, and TVs.

Online Real Estate - Keeping Your Property Hot

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:23:46 GMT

Today’s real estate market is definitely a buyer’s market. This represents a dramatic turnabout from just a few years ago, when sellers could simply list their property, name their price, and expect competing buyers to bid and even overbid for the opportunity. Our online real estate (i.e., our website) also has its buyers’ and sellers’ markets, in terms of the hills and valleys of site traffic and the effort we need to expend to keep our online properties hot.

Generation-O

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 21:17:18 GMT

Because open-source technology is freely distributed with limited or no intellectual property restrictions, it promotes progress through the contributions of collaborative users. When we think of open source, we might think of things like the operating system LINUX, the programming language PERL, the browser Firefox, or the database mySQL. The reality is that the open source movement extends to collaborative, user-generated content, like YouTube, MySpace, and Flickr, where the very substance of the site relies on community contribution. Open-source has grown beyond the software realm to become a cultural phenomenon for multi-generational segment of our society that I call the Open-Source Generation or Generation-O.

A New Picture

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 01:30:43 GMT

Believe it or not YouTube has been around for less than two years. During this period they built a community that attracted over 20 million unique visitors per month. Today YouTube, Flickr and other such media sites are common and part of the everyday fabric of a web 2.0 experience. Mashups, or the mix of information such as images, data and documents on a site are also a relatively new but have quickly gained incredible usefulness. For instance most of us have used Google Maps, MapQuest or Microsoft’s Virtual Earth to locate a restaurant or get driving directions to a destination. Have you ever chosen the satellite view and zoomed in on your home? It is fun to do but not overly useful especially since the image is typically several years old and the zoom level is not clear. Now imagine multiple pictures of your home from various angles pieced together for a 3 dimensional view with the ability to zoom to a granular level from various angles.

Today's Website Baseline Tools

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 21:43:54 GMT

Several years ago, I would tell clients that websites without a content management system were typically high-maintenance and expensive. Today, that’s still the case, but you can add “outdated” to the list.

To compete for visibility and impact, today’s successful websites employ user-generated content, social networking, and community features, often called “Web 2.0” elements. This type of content attracts bigger audiences organically via search engines and increases the time users spend on your site. Although this content is “free,” it needs to be managed efficiently, and DotNetNuke (DNN) enables you to plug-in popular social networking modules, such as blogs, wiki, and chat, with low development time, security, and professional performance.

Second-generation Web 2.0 tools aren’t just hype. Websites with social networking features offer the visitor or member a real-time method to collaborate and participate in the formation of site content — that’s community building. Meanwhile, search engines gobble up all this hyperlinked activity and push the organic and viral connections. As an owner of the site, you reap ROI benefits in terms of visitor traffic, site stickiness, and targeting of content.

DNN is an ideal content management platform to take advantage of the Web 2.0/social networking trend, which is rapidly becoming a website prerequisite. In a nutshell, Web 2.0 content is hot, users are ready to dive in, and with DNN the water temperature is perfect for developers (sorry for the analogy but it is currently 100 degrees outside the office).

Microsoft vs. Open Source

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 16:50:56 GMT

I recently attended an event that revealed a lot about how the general market views open-source technology. The title of the event was “Open Source vs. Microsoft,” and it included a panel debate between a successful open-source company and a well known Microsoft systems integrator. The goal of the debate was to give both sides of the fence an opportunity to present their arguments and perspective, so that the attendees could choose a technology platform with insight on the pros and cons of each camp.