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Online Mockups…easy!
Part of the regular web development cycle is the user interface mockup. I’ve worked with many different tools including Google Sketchup and Adobe Photoshop to build representations for clients.

But nothing has been as quick, easy, and fun as Balsamiq Mockup, and online (and desktop/offline) user interface mockup tool for PC, Mac and Linux.

Desktop version is $79, but the online version is free, with some limitations.

I’ve done a couple of small projects for personal work using the free (5 minute nag screen) online version.

Mocking up
Here’s how easy it is to use:

1. Load up the default ‘demo’ page.
2. Press Ctrl-A to select all default elements
3. Press Delete to remove all default elements
4. Start selecting and dragging in elements from the element bar at the top of the page (over 60 of them)
5. Double-click on an element to edit its properties
6. Repeat until you’ve got a mockup you’re happy with

Yes, it’s that easy.
With the free online version, you’re prompted every 5 minutes with an advertisement, but you can still save your work or print it out. Ads don’t get in the way of your workflow.

Developers have chosen a simple, look for the presentation because:

Balsamiq Mockups intentionally uses hand-drawn UI elements, so that people don’t get attached to “that pretty color gradient” or think that your mockup has actual code behind it and is “practically done”.

This lets your audience focus on the functionality of the item and is generally more open to honest critique (which is what you want at the mockup stage).

Some other features of the online version:

• Export to Human-readable text
• Import from text
• Integrated into Confluence, with other apps in the pipe
• Pre-drawn controls and icons
• Very easy to use
• Free

So, if web User Interface design, User Experience design, or website design is your thing, you need to check out Balsamiq Mockup.
Technorati Tags: mockup, user interface design, UI, User Experience, design, website, website design, mockup, Balsamiq Mockup, review

The online world was in a tizzy this afternoon as Google’s Gmail application crashed and burned.

Gmail and Google Apps for domains all seem impacted.

This is a breaking event so I’ll update this post when more is known. Gmail’s Blog has nothing on it, currently.

*** UPDATE ***
It looks like the big brains at Gmail have fixed the issue.

The issue was caused by a temporary outage in our contacts system that was preventing Gmail from loading properly. Everything should be back to normal by the time you read this.

And indeed it does seem to be back to normal. Excellent.

photo credit: Jef Poskanzer

One little secret that your ISP (Internet Service Provider) has likely been involved with is the Internet-wide patching of the Multi-vendor DNS Issue.

Simply, this issue could allow malicious evil-doers to redirect your surfing to websites that they control, intercepting important and private information (such as passwords, banking info, etc).

Frequent Black Hat Speaker Dan Kaminsky today announced a massive, multi-vendor issue with DNS that could allow attackers to compromise any name server – clients, too. Kaminsky also announced that he had been working for months with a large number of major vendors to create and coordinate today’s release of a patch to deal with the vulnerability.

News of this industry-wide vulnerability and the collaboration (to fix the flaw) was originally scheduled to be announced at the Black Hat Security Conference in August, but due to the vulnerability being published elsewhere, the presenter thought it best to release the information so that people can take the appropriate actions.

What can you do?
Basically, this is a complex issue, but it boils down to a simple test and a very simple fix.

The test:
To find out if you are vulnerable to this issue, you can use the DNS checker link on Kaminsky’s webpage here (in the upper right corner).

The fix:
If you are vulnurable, then you can either A) wait until your ISP fixes their DNS servers, or B) set your own computer’s DNS strings to point to OpenDNS servers.

I highly recommend option B.

The OpenDNS website has friendly, easy to implement instructions on converting your DNS settings and also offer a whole host of additional features your current ISP may not have:

Features

• Features Overview
• Content Filtering
• Adult Site Blocking
• Domain Blocking
• Domain Whitelist
• Phishing Protection
• Statistics
• OpenDNS Guide
• Customization
• Large Cache
• Ultra-Reliable Network
• Shortcuts

I’ve written about OpenDNS before, so feel free to check out these previous articles and then help save the Internet.

• OpenDNS: Safer, smarter, speedier surfing
• One year of OpenDNS

And if you do test your ISP using Dan’s web page, please post your results in the comment section! I’ll start things off by adding mine.

Technorati Tags: Black Hat, DNS, OpenDNS, Security, Flaw, Vulnurability, Privacy

photo credit: Kevin Steele

A friend recently asked me for a bit of advice regarding merging two corporate domains. Two organizations, with similar or complimentary lines of business are now one. What to do about the left-over websites. A quandary.

Below I’ve outlined 6 areas to consider, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I guess the only reasonable quick-answer is to first understand the business goal for the merged business. Once you understand that, you can begin to ask questions about the goals for the new website.

Let me create a fictional example to help illustrate the situation, then dive into the six points, and then I’ll outline a couple of things to think about for each of these points.

Obviously there are many more things to consider, but this is a blog post and not a downloadable eBook

Please leave your thoughts on what I’ve missed! I want to learn from you…now on to the example:

Ben’s Bikes (a local mountain bike retailer) has merged with Sammy’s ski and sports shop. Ben’s Bikes is a market leader in this region, with over 40% of the annual sales volume in new mountain bikes. They also have exclusive dealership agreements with a number of the premier mountain bike manufacturers in Europe. They have a very loyal and select clientele and are considered the ‘go-to’ shop for all regional mountain biking aficionados.

Sammy’s cycle shop is a general bicycle retailer. They don’t really specialize, but they do have a wide selection of mid-priced bikes in all categories (road, mountain, touring, cruising, kids, etc). They also have multiple locations in the local geographic region.

The businesses have merged and are operating as Ben & Sammy’s cycle therapy. They have a small internal team tasked to manage the website integration.

Now that we understand the landscape, we go back to the quandary of the website. Let’s get to some important questions:

photo credit: casey atchley

Audience
These are the visitors to your site; your potential or past customers. Questions you should be asking your team include:

• Who are you servicing and what are their goals for using your website? This is basic and should be asked before any website is designed (or redesigned).
• What’s the business purpose? Is your website there to book appointments, to take orders, or to provide a catalogue of information? Your new site will depend on how well you answer that questions, and how well your audience understands that purpose.

photo credit: marcbel

Content
This is what your audience is looking for. Audiences conduct research and order online.

• Inventory — both sites likely have similar content, so which do you keep and which do you ditch? You can’t make content decisions until you’ve evaluated all the content assets.
• What about content unique to one business…is it still relevant in the new business landscape?
• Keep only content that supports the audience’s ability to fulfill the business goals of the site. Everything else is distraction.

photo credit: inju

Google Juice
Both sites have some search engine pagerank value. This is the value of
the page to a particular set of search keywords or search term. It determines how high the page appears in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) when a particular phrase or keywords are searched upon.

• Determine if pagerank is really important to your business needs, or not, and consider appropriate Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques in your merge process.
• 301 Redirects — if you’re creating a new domain, you’ll need to set these up to ensure that the search engines know that the previous businesses haven’t vanished, just merged. Setting them up can be a bit technical but is very important to ensure that visitors who’ve bookmarked the old business pages are appropriately redirected to the new site.

photo credit: perreira

Ancillary touchpoints
Over the development of the two previous websites, you’ll find that there may be some communication touchpoints including RSS feeds, tag feeds or even
regular email newsletters. You’re going to have to consider migrating
all these to the new site.

• Now’s a good time to evaluate the integration of your entire communication process. Where does web fit? How about RSS feeds of particular content streams…or newsletters? This is where your marketing team will have some valuable input too…really!
• If you’ve had a website, you’ve likely been measuring traffic to that site. Well, since you’re merging sites, now is the perfect time to re-evaluate your website measurement strategy. Will you continue using the free utilities or consider purchasing a service contract with a service provider? What kind of reporting do you need? What kind of decisions are you going to be making based on what kind of data?

photo credit: robholland

Changing external linking
Both websites have been around for a while, and have a fair number of inbound links from other sites and online articles.

• These help build pagerank (Google Juice). Yes, they’ll automagically flow through when they hit the 301 redirects, but it’s also good to contact the sites directly and ask them to update their links. This is a great time to (re)establish communication with your website network…work the social side of the medium

photo credit: alq666

Promotion on your old sites
Regardless of all the work you do, your old websites will still be bookmarked or linked in old email etc. If, perchance, that someone does click on an old link, help them find your new location.

• Keep your old sites live for a year or two. Domain names are pretty cheap these days. After you’ve merged them into the new site, kill the old content on the old sites (to reduce the size of the sites you’ll need to maintain) and leave helpful messages on the appropriate landing pages. Use your analytics and server logs to determine heavily visited pages.

I’m not the expert…what do you think!
As I mentioned, this is not a book, just a blog post. So, there are many more things to consder in the merge process. I’ve listed a few above, but what do you think? What have I missed that I shouldn’t have? Leave your thoughts below.

photo credit: purplelime

It was a fairly painless update (thanks to the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin), but there were a few quirks I’ve had to address:

• Avatars. WP 2.6 has much better support for Avatars (images used to identify authors of comments). But, my theme doesn’t natively support them so I’ve had to maintain use of the Easy Gravatars plugin.
• Turbo mode. This is an admin. function, but basically it lets you
  speed up some admin functions with Google Gears integration. Gears behind my firewall is messy, but I will be trying this from more open connections in the future.

If you’re interested in seeing more of the WordPress 2.6 features in action, check out this video.

Technorati Tags: WordPress, blogging, blog, blogger, upgrade, easy