It’s always nice when a conference is in our backyard.  On December 8-12 2008, we will be attending Search Engine Strategies Chicago at the Chicago Hilton on Michigan Ave.  This will be our first year attending this event that is now in it’s 10th year in Chicago.  Hosted by an industry seasoned veteran, Kevin Ryan, the conference is geared towards both website owners and search engine consultants.  As of now, they have not listed the speakers. However, looking throught the agenda on their website it looks as if they have some very interesting topics.  The topics consist of basic search engine optimization techniques, as well as discussions on some of the latest trends in search engine marketing.

ArsTechnica.com is featuring a report done by web security firm MessageLabs that spam accounted for 81.5% of all the e-mails sent in June. Illinois was the most-spammed state, with 92.1% of all e-mails considered spam. Read entire article here… The MessageLabs report only measured the total amount of emails traveling on the internet, not the open rate by recipients or percentage that was blocked by anti-spam software or filters. What it does indicate is that Illinoisans are less protective in keeping their email addresses private, freely posting them on things like web pages and forums.

For several years Aslan hosted our client’s email as part of their hosting package and it seemed like everyone offered email with web hosting. Ours was a basic service and we got plenty of requests (ok, complains) for better features and spam handling. We did what we could with limited time and resources, but basically what our clients saw was what they got. It wasn’t until we upgraded all of our servers about a year ago and saw how little performance we actually gained did we realize how bad trying to manage our own email service was hurting us. The majority of the server resources were going toward processing email which as the MessageLabs report shows was spam.

At Aslan we’re web application developers, and managing email is a full time job that requires dedicated personnel and servers. We decided that we needed to offer a better email solution for both our clients and us. In researching many options we found that Google Gmail for Business fit our needs best. It gives our clients the power of company as big as Google managing their email for FREE! It’s easy to setup an account and configure it in such a way that the people you’re communicating with only see your company’s identity not Google’s. Any new client that needs email we setup on Gmail and we’re working to transferring all of our current clients over as well.

We’ll stick with our strengths and let those better equipped handle all the other stuff.

We’re rollin’ so let’s keep it going with a short one.

#3 Can I Find Help if Needed?

There is more RIA work out there now than developers which is bad if you need to pull someone in to help on a project.

I have never been disappointed by the amount of quality information and help the various online communities provide, but if there comes a time when you need to pull someone in to do some development you might be stuck on your own.

It’s been a while… actually a very long while since my first post, but finally here is the second. A lot of bloggers are writing about exactly the same issues dealing with RIAs as I am so I know it’s on everyone’s mind. Here’s my take.

#2 Is it Worth the Extra Time/Cost?

The majority of developers are still more efficient in other technologies like js, php, cf, ruby, and .net. If a comparable solution can be developed in one of those technologies by comparison the RIA version will take longer to develop. Do the benefits = cost?

I was first seduced by Flex with how easy it was to prototype an application. Building a HTML layout and design would have personally taken me months, but only took a couple of hours! In Flex Builder I simply arranged the containers and controls, added a view change to each button and then had a great looking and functional prototype. (yea, I’m NOT a designer so the default skin was better than anything I could do.) It took significantly more time to actually building out the application than we originally planned. Basic things we were used to doing in ColdFusion took up to 10 times longer in Flex. We had to learn the Flex/AS methodology and new syntax on the fly and during a lot of sleepless nights. Would all that headache be worth it on your project?

Also, be sure not to underestimate the future maintenance and update costs. Unfortunately we’re not working on Flex everyday so whenever I open up the code I have to remember where everything is and how it works.

The current version of Google Analytics has been greatly improved since the buyout of Urchin a few years ago.  This web analytics package now has the capability of relating most any action on a website to dollars.  An e-commerce website can be linked to your internal search engine to see which search terms people use that produce the most revenue.  Your e-commerce site can also be linked to your landing pages bring in the most revenue.  Google Analytics also allows for adding up to 4 specific website goals.  Here you specify the paths you think customers will take to result in a conversion.   In an e-commerce site an obvious goal is to track what happens after a customer adds a product to their shopping cart.  Once a product is added, that customer should complete their order.  If an order does not complete, your Google Analytics goal will help you to figure out what went wrong by showing where most customers leave their carts behind.

Our first Adobe AIR application has been released for about a month and so far has turned out to be a success. Looking back on our three Rich Internet Application (RIA) projects so far (two Flex 2 and one AIR), this one made the most sense as an RIA. Here’s the thought process we’ve gone through when deciding if a project should be developed in an RIA technology:

#1 What’s the Simplest Solution?

We find that the simplest solution is usually the best. This is the KISS Principle, “Keep It Simple, Stupid!” Flex is sexy, but could the same be accomplished using vanilla HTML and CSS?

I’ve seen a general concern on the blogosphere lately that the majority of Flex applications are just rewrites of simple web pages. The most interesting Flex applications are still being released on private intranets, but that’s starting to change. Putting up a simple contact us form in Flex is probably a bad idea. I do think it’s great to rewrite code in another technology as a learning exercise. Just make sure to keep it on your development box.

That’s enough for now I’ll continue with “#2 Worth the Time/Cost?” next time.