Wired’s Mike Isaac recently compared some of the front-runners in the tablet market: HP TouchPad, Motorola Xoom, Apple iPad, Apple iPad 2, RIM BlackBerry PlayBook and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Here’s a synopsis of his summary broken down by categories. READ MORE
In what looks to be a shot across Apple’s bow, Microsoft is bringing touchscreen to laptops and PCs via its new Windows operating system, cleverly code-named Windows 8. The company unveiled the user interface at the D9 Conference and anticipates the same positive response that Windows Phone 7 elicited at its debut. READ MORE
How are people finding your web site? Which key words are luring them there? What design elements might be turning them off? As Mashable’s Meghan Peters points out, Google Analytics makes it easy for anyone to track and analyze loads of data that can help improve a site’s performance. Here’s how to get started using it. READ MORE
Google has thrown down the gauntlet to competing web benchmark tools made by Apple and Mozilla, says MG Siegler over at TechCrunch. Taking aim at Apple’s SunSpider and Mozilla’s Kraken JavaScript Benchmark, the Chrome-maker didn’t just challenge its rivals in claims of speed, it went one better by modding SunSpider and hosting a new version of Kraken, so they both can better measure Chrome’s (obviously superior, they’re asserting) speed. READ MORE
Rich Internet applications are the cornerstone of Web 2.0, the next generation, truly interactive Internet. They go beyond first wave HTML applications to offer better interactivity, speedier and more satisfying user experiences that keep customers around longer, as well as a way to differentiate your brand on the Web. If your company’s core interaction with customers is online, rich Internet applications can prove worth the effort and expense. “Being able to differentiate the experience online is a huge win,” says Ron Rogowski, principal analyst with Forrester. New programming and design tools such as Ajax –which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML — and Adobe Flex, a set of technologies used to build cross platform applications with the widely-adopted Flash multimedia software, are facilitating the creation of these rich applications. And unlike desktop applications, rich Internet applications can put more computing power on the client and create a seamless interaction without requiring a software download or creating possible version control headaches in the future, as desktop applications do. Improving user experiences A better online experience means fewer abandoned shopping carts, more sales, and more business. Rugsale.com has a “shop together” function that replicates the experience of two people shopping in a store, where they can separately look at items and then show them to each other and talk about them later — albeit through browsers. Companies like Rugsale.com want to increase sales and minimize returns, so allowing people who will share a purchase to collaborate on that purchase online is a plus, Rogowski says. Companies don’t need to worry about the bandwidth needs of rich Internet applications: The majority of homes have broadband connections. According to Gartner, 60 percent of U.S. homes have broadband, and by 2012, it will be even more common, as 77 percent of households adopt it. And even those people who don’t have broadband at home likely have it at work, Rogowski says, so connection speed becomes less of a hurdle to the implementation of rich Internet applications. However, along with the flexibility of these new tools to improve user experience on your business website comes the chance of making design mistakes that end up frustrating your customers. “The root of the problem with building rich Internet applications is that designers try to do too much, making them more complex than they need to be,” Rogowski says. These design mistakes include hiding content and navigation, going overboard with animation motion, not offering helpful interactive cues, and making the applications too complex. What not to do with rich Internet Don’t make customers work to get to content. Interfaces should be designed to expose contextual details without cluttering the page or forcing users to lose the flow of what they’re doing. Don’t make it into a game, with customers having to search for navigational elements. “Some rich Internet applications go to the opposite extreme of forcing users to hunt for content and navigation that they might not even know is there,” Rogowski says. If users miss the navigational elements, you lose the benefits of your application. “Rich Internet applications help users stay engaged as they move smoothly through complex processes like projecting their net worth at retirement or configuring a luxury auto,” Rogowski says. Don’t go overboard with animation and motion. Development tools make it easy to incorporate animations onto webpages. They also can expose additional information on an item when a customer rolls the cursor over text or an image, bringing up a window that layers on top of the page, without having to refresh the whole page or open a new one. While animations can be used to create interest, if overused they can end up being distracting. Ditto motion. “Sometimes the movements associated with opening and closing this content can be distracting,” Rogowski says. When used correctly, motion can bring up just the information a customer is looking for, without requiring him to open a new page, and potentially get distracted or lost. Don’t confuse customers with poor interactive cues. Make it clear which text or images are active, by coloring the text, or providing an icon that suggests a customer could delve deeper, so that customers don’t have to guess how to navigate. “Users should be able to quickly discern what’s clickable and what’s not,” says Rogowski. Don’t make applications too complex. Don’t try to cram too much onto the page. Companies often make the text too small, and therefore unreadable. “People would rather scroll than squint,” Rogowski says. How to use rich Internet effectively Rich Internet applications can be designed effectively by creating a “persona” that takes into account what the user will be doing on the site. Rich Internet applications don’t provide a lot of benefit if people can’t figure out how to use them. In addition, to get the most out of an investment in rich Internet applications, test the application with people who are actually going to use it. Don’t wait until the application is finished. Test it throughout the design process. For a small company that doesn’t have the budget for extensive usability testing, an option is to find a guinea pig at your local Starbucks. “Rather than exposing the complicated process, make it simple for your customers,” Rogowski says. By not giving good interactive cues, you defeat the purpose. “The simpler the interface, the more powerful the tool,” he says.
Widgets — easy-to-copy chunks of code that people can add to their own websites or social networking pages — are fast becoming an important tool for businesses. No longer just for simple news headlines, weather bugs, and tiny games, small and mid-sized businesses are using them to raise the profile of their brands or products and track interactions with customers. The so-called “widgetsphere” is a place where guerilla marketing, innovative promotion, and viral distribution are the Web 2.0 way. “I’d say widgets are extremely useful, both as marketing tools and as a business tool in general,” says Jacqueline Taylor-Adams, marketing consultant and owner of MasterGriot.com, a site devoted to the spoken-word art form. “It would behoove anyone in business to learn how to use them.” When to use widgets One of Taylor-Adams’ consultancy projects is Black Business Space Value Tour, an entertainment and business development site that sports no less than six widgets on the page, including: community chat, blog listings, sample audio downloads, and more. Her own MasterGriot page, however, is widget-free. “It depends on what you want to accomplish on each page,” says Taylor-Adams. “This one is more for promo and connecting with the community, so I use various widgets to accomplish that.” Kelvin Brown, business consultant and owner of KB Enterprises, agrees. “You don’t want to use a widget on a strictly product site,” says Brown, “because it draws attention away from the primary purpose of the site, which should be sales.” Widgets — also sometimes known as gadgets or apps — are the latest incarnation of Web 2.0 technologies, a suite of tools including blogs and social networks that seek to foster information sharing and collaboration. The rise in use of widgets is partly attributed to the social networking craze, as such sites as Facebook made it easy for users to download and install a variety of widgets such as world clocks and movie trivia quizzes. Widgets are now widely available — most often for free — from a variety of developers and sources. “I think it’s the future of Web 2.0,” says Shara Karasic, community manager at Work.com, a small business advisory site and another believer in new uses for widgets. “You need your information no matter where you are, and widgets can make that distribution easy.” Google’s customizable homepage, iGoogle, uses widgets the company calls “Google Gadgets” that any savvy coder can make. Google offers video step-by-step instructions that seem easy and well laid out for the code-capable to learn from. But unless you know something about Application Programming Interface (API), HTML, and/or JavaScript code calls, it’s not a task for the general non-techie. “It’s a fairly easy process to create a Google Gadget when you follow our instructions,” says Heather Spain, spokesperson for corporate communications at Google, “but it’s really intended for developers, and not just average users.” How to use — or build — your own widgets So how do you start using customized widgets, and maybe even build your own for your small business? You can hire a code writer to build your widget, but they have to be made according to specific code requirements for each Web 2.0 platform. That means you’re looking at re-coding for each platform — Facebook, MySpace, iGoogle, Orkut, LinkedIn, etc. — you’ll want your new widget/gadget distributed on. Or, you can just go to Widgetbox, a San Francisco company that helps people find, create, and use widgets. “The small business community is very aggressive about using the new tools,” says Widgetbox CEO Will Price. “We think that’s where the new business model is going for small and medium businesses.” Widgetbox has quickly become one of the largest, if not the largest gallery of widgets online, with over 50,000 downloadable widgets and growing fast. Widgetbox offers a free, easy to use widget builder, as well as an extensive FAQ, and a responsive support team. Anyone can make a widget for almost any purpose, and then load it into what appears to be any widget-able platform, from Facebook to WordPress and even as an iGoogle gadget. One extra advantage Widgetbox has over others is the ability to download any widget from any site, then convert it for any other site you want to use it on. “We support the major Web protocols,” says Price. “You can do content widgets, streaming audio, or video widgets, you name it. Widgets are like the Shetland pony of the online world, they can do pretty much anything a website can do. We also now support widgets on the iPhone.” I tried it myself, and built what Widgetbox calls a “blidget” for my own blog. It took maybe three minutes to create a professional looking widget that listed the titles of blog entries, carried the logo picture from the blog, and was complete and ready to distribute. No coding required, no API code calls, no HTML/JS. “This is an experimental year,” said Price, “where people are trying out all kinds of new ways of using them. It’s going to be interesting to see where things go.”
Widgets — easy-to-copy chunks of code that people can add to their own websites or social networking pages — are fast becoming an important tool for businesses. No longer just for simple news headlines, weather bugs, and tiny games, small and mid-sized businesses are using them to raise the profile of their brands or products and track interactions with customers. The so-called “widgetsphere” is a place where guerilla marketing, innovative promotion, and viral distribution are the Web 2.0 way. “I’d say widgets are extremely useful, both as marketing tools and as a business tool in general,” says Jacqueline Taylor-Adams, marketing consultant and owner of MasterGriot.com, a site devoted to the spoken-word art form. “It would behoove anyone in business to learn how to use them.” When to use widgets One of Taylor-Adams’ consultancy projects is Black Business Space Value Tour, an entertainment and business development site that sports no less than six widgets on the page, including: community chat, blog listings, sample audio downloads, and more. Her own MasterGriot page, however, is widget-free. “It depends on what you want to accomplish on each page,” says Taylor-Adams. “This one is more for promo and connecting with the community, so I use various widgets to accomplish that.” Kelvin Brown, business consultant and owner of KB Enterprises, agrees. “You don’t want to use a widget on a strictly product site,” says Brown, “because it draws attention away from the primary purpose of the site, which should be sales.” Widgets — also sometimes known as gadgets or apps — are the latest incarnation of Web 2.0 technologies, a suite of tools including blogs and social networks that seek to foster information sharing and collaboration. The rise in use of widgets is partly attributed to the social networking craze, as such sites as Facebook made it easy for users to download and install a variety of widgets such as world clocks and movie trivia quizzes. Widgets are now widely available — most often for free — from a variety of developers and sources. “I think it’s the future of Web 2.0,” says Shara Karasic, community manager at Work.com, a small business advisory site and another believer in new uses for widgets. “You need your information no matter where you are, and widgets can make that distribution easy.” Google’s customizable homepage, iGoogle, uses widgets the company calls “Google Gadgets” that any savvy coder can make. Google offers video step-by-step instructions that seem easy and well laid out for the code-capable to learn from. But unless you know something about Application Programming Interface (API), HTML, and/or JavaScript code calls, it’s not a task for the general non-techie. “It’s a fairly easy process to create a Google Gadget when you follow our instructions,” says Heather Spain, spokesperson for corporate communications at Google, “but it’s really intended for developers, and not just average users.” How to use — or build — your own widgets So how do you start using customized widgets, and maybe even build your own for your small business? You can hire a code writer to build your widget, but they have to be made according to specific code requirements for each Web 2.0 platform. That means you’re looking at re-coding for each platform — Facebook, MySpace, iGoogle, Orkut, LinkedIn, etc. — you’ll want your new widget/gadget distributed on. Or, you can just go to Widgetbox, a San Francisco company that helps people find, create, and use widgets. “The small business community is very aggressive about using the new tools,” says Widgetbox CEO Will Price. “We think that’s where the new business model is going for small and medium businesses.” Widgetbox has quickly become one of the largest, if not the largest gallery of widgets online, with over 50,000 downloadable widgets and growing fast. Widgetbox offers a free, easy to use widget builder, as well as an extensive FAQ, and a responsive support team. Anyone can make a widget for almost any purpose, and then load it into what appears to be any widget-able platform, from Facebook to WordPress and even as an iGoogle gadget. One extra advantage Widgetbox has over others is the ability to download any widget from any site, then convert it for any other site you want to use it on. “We support the major Web protocols,” says Price. “You can do content widgets, streaming audio, or video widgets, you name it. Widgets are like the Shetland pony of the online world, they can do pretty much anything a website can do. We also now support widgets on the iPhone.” I tried it myself, and built what Widgetbox calls a “blidget” for my own blog. It took maybe three minutes to create a professional looking widget that listed the titles of blog entries, carried the logo picture from the blog, and was complete and ready to distribute. No coding required, no API code calls, no HTML/JS. “This is an experimental year,” said Price, “where people are trying out all kinds of new ways of using them. It’s going to be interesting to see where things go.”
No, they haven’t found a cure for spam yet. But until then, it’s still a fight worth fighting. According to a March 2007 survey by Wellesley, Mass.-based Nucleus Research, two out of every three e-mail messages received on the job are unwanted or unsolicited. All that spam costs U.S. businesses $70 billion — or $712 per employee per year in productivity alone, the same study estimated. And that’s not counting the losses due to viruses, worms and Trojans it spreads, or the identity or trade secret theft it can cause. What can a small or mid-sized business do, especially if your IT department is on the smaller side, too? Here are some tips from the experts: Consider a Hosted Service: If you don’t have the staff or the time to fight spam properly, perhaps a hosted service such as Google-owned Postini or MessageLabs is for you, suggests Joe Stewart, senior security researcher with SecureWorks, an information security firm based in Atlanta. Hosted services offer spam blocking, extensive anti-virus coverage, and disaster recovery services for about $100/month for under 100 users. Install a Good Spam Filter: SecureWorks’ Stewart recommends some open-source filters, such as Apache’s SpamAssassin. High Mountain Software’s SpamEaterPro and CA Anti-Spam are among the many vendor-provided options that work well with a number of different email servers. Safeguard Those Addresses: Make sure the workers in your office are not using their work email address to conduct personal business, or for online shopping. Ditto for FaceBook, MySpace, or other social-network sites…spammers often look to these for new addresses. Also, discourage workers from signing up for newsletters with their work email address. Block Sender: Make sure all workers using Outlook and Lotus Notes know to right-click and “block sender” on a piece of spam so that the sender cannot send anything else to that address, notes Mike Song, an email efficiency expert, corporate trainer, and CEO of Guilford, Conn.-based CohesiveKnowledge Solutions Inc. Take Out Website Links: “Be careful how you list worker directories on your corporate website,” warns SecureWorks’ Stewart. If you must list workers’ email addresses, publish them inside Javascript, not as an email link, he suggests. Set a Spam Trap: Consider creating a fake employee profile, complete with bogus title and address, on the website. Monitor what e-mail comes to this “employee,” since it is likely to be spam, suggests Stewart. Use it as a test of how well your anti-spam techniques are working. By trying these steps, your business can have the upper hand in the war against spam. But diligence remains key: “Remember that the spammers actively test the anti-spam software,” notes Stewart. “You can’t just install the software and have the problem go away.” SIDEBAR: Where to Go for Spam-Fighting Help Postini is a hosted solution that screens email for malware and spam and offers back-up and archiving services. It serves about 10 million end users. MessageLabs is a hosted solution that screens email and instant messages for malware, spam and spim. It offers back-up and archiving services. SpamAssassin is an open-source-based spam filter written in Perl. It can be downloaded free from the above website. High Mountain Software’s SpamEaterPro is a widely used spam-fighting software program. The company also offers a hosted spam-fighting product, spameater.net. CA Anti-Spam is another popular anti-spam software product that includes anti-virus, anti-phishing, and other features.
Connecting your network to the Internet without a firewall is like leaving the front door of your office wide open when you leave on vacation. Chances are high that someone will eventually walk in and steal your valuables. Many machines and software programs come equipped with firewall programs, but when you’re protecting sensitive data, it’s better to know what you’re getting — and what you could have instead. A competent firewall will safeguard your business from attempts by hackers to steal confidential data, just as a locked front door deters thieves from ransacking your home. Small and mid-size business owners are increasingly opting to install firewalls for this reason, with 44 percent of such companies planning to purchase firewalls within the coming 12 months, according to a recent survey by Forrester Research, of Cambridge, Mass. The most important criteria for small and mid-size businesses is simple manageability, according to the report. The good news is, there are just two basic types of firewalls to consider: hardware-based and software-based. Here is a rundown of how they work and why they may or may not work for you. Hardware firewalls Hardware firewalls are integrated into the router that sits between a computer and an Internet modem. They typically use packet filtering, which means they scan packet headers to determine their source, origin, destination addresses, and whether the incoming traffic is related to an outgoing connection, such as a request for a website. This information is compared to a set of user-created rules that determine whether the packet should be forwarded or blocked. If you have a wired or wireless router installed, check it to see whether it already includes a hardware firewall. Most do. The advantages to a hardware firewall are: A single hardware firewall can protect your entire network, which is a boon for companies with multiple computers. Because they don’t run on your computers, they don’t affect system performance or speed. Hardware firewalls work more efficiently for businesses that use a broadband Internet connection, such as DSL or cable modem. A hardware firewall won’t easily be disabled by malicious software, as software firewalls can be. The cost of one hardware firewall to protect multiple computers may ultimately be lower than installing licensed software firewalls on each PC in the office. The disadvantages to a hardware firewall are: Routers can be expensive, ranging upwards of several hundred dollars. They may be more difficult to configure, especially for novices. Hardware firewalls treat outgoing traffic from the local network as safe, which can be a hazard if malware, such as a worm, penetrates your network and attempts to connect to the Internet. Software firewalls Software firewalls are installed on individual computers. They intercept each request by the network to connect to the computer and then determine whether the request is valid. Software firewalls can also be configured to check suspicious outgoing requests. The advantages to a software firewall are: Top-rated software firewalls cost less than $50, so they’re a more economical choice for an office that has, say, fewer than four or so machines. They’re easier to configure than hardware routers. You can determine the level of protection you want with a few clicks during the installation process, and provide different security levels according to the machine or user. The highest level of security may block all cookies and JavaScript, which will cause some Web pages not to load or it may display them improperly. This is particularly true for members-only sites. They’re flexible. You can specify which applications are allowed to connect to the Internet, thus reducing the possibility that malware will do so. A potential scenario where a software firewall would be advantageous is in the case of an e-mail worm that creates its own e-mail server, like the recent “MyDoom” worm, which may not be recognized by a router because of its trusted origin. You can take it with you. A software firewall protects the computer it’s installed on no matter where that computer is connected. This is an important feature for business travelers with laptops. The disadvantages to a software firewall are: Software firewalls use more system resources, such as memory and disk space, than hardware firewalls, therefore dragging on your computer. You must purchase a separate copy for each computer connected to the network, racking up charges fast. Software firewalls can’t be configured to mask your IP address. Instead, they close unused ports and monitor traffic to and from open ports. For the highest security level, experts recommend you protect your system with both types of firewall. One you’ve decided on one — or both — test your security using a free online firewall probe, such as the one at HackerWatch.
Running a business on the World Wide Web can be a source of frustration if you don’t have the right tools. Many business owners continue to expect their customers to wait what seems like an eternity for an entire webpage to load if a customer changes what they want to see or buy. But a wait of even a few seconds can be more than a frustration to a customer. It can convince them to shop somewhere else. To avoid such lost sales, businesses that sell goods online need to become familiar with AJAX, a development tool that can be used to create interactive Web applications without requiring a new page to load. What Is AJAX AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. In layman’s terms it works like this: Say a custom shoe company wants to make it easier for customers to create their perfect pair. On an AJAX-designed site, each time a customer clicks on a new color, it simply pulls up a new image or object, instead of loading an entirely new page. How does it work? Asynchronous applications are, basically, those that can do more than one thing at a time. We’ve come to expect this from most programs. For example, you don’t expect your screen to go blank whenever you hit the save button in Microsoft Word, but in Web-based applications it’s always been a case of having to wait for an entirely new page every time you perform any operation, regardless of how small. AJAX performs this function by using a bunch of already popular technologies such as XML, HTML, JavaScript, and the XMLHttpRequest object to make quick updates to the user interface without having to reload the entire webpage on a browser. AJAX Behind the Scenes With AJAX, JavaScript code embedded within webpages runs when a user performs an action. That JavaScript makes a request from a host typically running some sort of application server. The host returns an XML-formatted message containing some information. That information is then processed by more JavaScript code to dynamically update the page being displayed, showing the retrieved information. The important point here is that only the information that has changed is sent back from the server, not the entire page. Think of a photo browsing page that displays 20 high-resolution pictures at a time. The page gives the user the ability to select and zoom in or out on any of those pictures. Even with browser-based caching it would be inefficient to refresh the entire page and all its pictures whenever the user selected one to take a closer look. With AJAX the page can request that single image in whatever size is required then display it without reloading the page. Benefits for Your Business The obvious benefit for your business of using AJAX on your website is performance. Webpages are much more responsive when they don’t need to be completely reloaded after every click. Responsive webpages are more effective and will make customers stay longer and, hopefully, buy. On the server side, AJAX has huge benefits for websites that have sporadic traffic patterns. MacRumors.com, a website that sees a huge influx of traffic when Apple Computer is making product announcements at Macworld, uses AJAX to limit its bandwidth usage. “The setup was designed to offer unlimited scalability and tailored to provide live text updates to a large audience of people,” the website says. The website goes on to say that it uses AJAX to reduce the amount of data that needs to be sent to individual viewers. “If not for the efficiency of the MacRumorsLive AJAX update system, the same webcast would have required approximately twice as many servers and would have had to transfer almost 6 times as much data,” the website says. Other AJAX proponents define the business benefits in terms of time savings. Ajax Info, a website that compares traditional Web applications with those created with AJAX, concludes that “a business can save between 500 and 2,800 man hours per year on a 10-step hypothetical process, saving roughly four seconds per step (a between 30 percent and 70 percent reduction in labor costs).” Challenges Remain At the same time, business owners need to be aware that while as many as 93 percent of Web browsers used by the general population are AJAX-compatible, there are other users who will be excluded from accessing these applications, according to a May report from Forrester Research. Those excluded users include the following: Those who use screen readers. Web users who rely on screen readers – a software application that helps blind users or people with vision problems — may be disadvantaged by Ajax because screen readers rely on being alerted that a page has been updated or changed and AJAX applications may not trigger those screen readers that a change has been made, according to Forrester. While the number of computer users reliant on screen readers is small, there are laws on the books in the U.S. requiring reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. Those who use mobile devices. While the Web browsers on cellular phones with Internet connectivity are becoming more sophisticated, many still don’t support AJAX. Those who use employers’ computers. Some companies disable JavaScript on sites outside the intranet in response to security fears or other concerns and that means employees will not be able to take advantage of the AJAX-enhanced site, Forrester says.
