Many designers and developers may disagree that the Web 2.0 craze is over, but I think it is reasonable to say it is winding down. By “winding down” I do not mean that Facebook, Twitter and other massively popular sites are going to vanish, but I do not foresee a lot more revolutionary sites emerging that are not classified under the next step (Semantic Web or Web 3.0). As a developer I feel that there will always be a piece of 2.0 in all of our future sites for quite a while, but there are a few items that will have a major impact until newer technologies make these obsolete (after the jump). I would love to hear your opinions as well so please leave some comments.

(more…)

Yesterday Gmail was down for a short period of time though to some it was an eternity. We recommend Google Apps (with Gmail) to a lot of clients due to the incredible reliability, unbeatable price (free for most purposes) and normally near 100% up-time.  Due to the mayhem that ensued across the blogosphere we decided to run some internal backups so we have a fallback in case Gmail ever explodes or disappears suddenly, which would probably have more adverse affects on the economy than on our petty email threads.

If you use Gmail for your primary email provider I would suggest scheduling your own backup if you do not already do so. Lifehacker.com has a great tutorial to get you started on a Windows machine as well as a Linux-based machine (you can just follow the command line steps to configure and run fetchmail). Better safe than sorry.

As an aside - does anyone know of a PHP-based script that can accomplish this same task? Being a Web developer it would be great to run this from our Web server without installing Cygwin.

Planning on redesigning your site but have a tight budget? You may want to rethink how you are going to spend your funds. Sure you can look into outsourced companies, chop shops, pre-designed templates or student designers, but in most cases (not to be cliche) you are going to get what you pay for. As long as your site is not a usability nightmare and looks like it was designed in 1990, there are a lot of other ways to draw attention and traffic to your site that are more important than a few bells and whistles.  Here are a few things you may want to allocate more time/money towards that in a business sense will be more advantageous to your site. If you are interested in getting help with any of them, please let us know! (more…)

Being both a graphic designer and business owner, I have a love hate relationship with Microsoft Excel. Having an uncontrollable need to make things look clean, organized and professional in my layouts often leads me to clash with Excel. Being a business owner as well, it is essential that I use Excel for a variety of reports and spreadsheets. Today however, I stumbled across a few tips that help Excel users customize their layouts (among other useful tips) that helped bridge that gap within me between design and business. (more…)

Owning and operating a business is the best way to fill up every hour of your free time. Even when you aren’t sitting at your desk your mind is still contemplating your next action, thinking about landing your next project or developing new marketing ideas. Sometimes it is hard to “turn it off” and today I still have that problem although I am able to recognize it and consciously distract myself from thinking about it. It is like running an engine for 24 hours a day until it eventually over heats or burns out. This applies to employers and employees alike (at least those employees that enjoy their jobs). Here are some tips on decreasing your working hours, both physically and mentally, and some other ways to start enjoying your personal life while maintaining a successful career. (more…)

Over the past year, the online service known as Twitter has exploded onto the social networking scene. Twitter allows you to tell the online world what exactly it is that you are doing at that very second. While you may think “great…another social networking feature to further divulge my personal business to the entire world”, Twitter can be a practical tool to help convey short point of interest to your Web site’s visitors. (more…)

Many of you are probably already aware of this, but Mozilla enlisted the help of the world to help set a new world record for most software downloaded in 24 hours. We were among the millions that download Firefox 3. However, the experience in playing a part in this record breaking event did not end with downloading the software.

(more…)

Rare is the person that does not have a nightmarish customer service story to tell. At some point in time we have all experienced customer service so dreadful that it amazed us that the offending individual or company was even able to do business! What makes it so frustrating is that providing exceptional customer service is not that hard. All it takes is a little common sense.

(more…)

Blogs are all the craze these days, not only because of the freedom and opportunity, but because there are a lot of great systems out there to get you started. So many, in fact, that the list can be overwhelming: TypePad, WordPress, Blogger, TextPattern, LiveJournal, Drupal, MoveableType, and the thousands of customized systems (take a breath). So when a client mentions they are interested in a simple blog system to get started we are obviously faced with many factors including flexibility, customization, goals, and budget. In the end however, our recommendations are usually dwindled down to three systems, each of which caters to a particular need.

(more…)

I recently read a post over at the freelancing blog Freelance Switch that I strongly agreed with and want to share to our readers. Being a business owner, husband and father of one (with another on the way), the act of balancing work and family time is very important. This article by Allan Branch highlights some notable points about work and family life.

The link to Allan’s article is as follows:

http://freelanceswitch.com/working/balancing-work-family/

To add my own thoughts, I cannot stress how important your family is. I love my job and all that Riddle Brothers Web Design and Development offers to its clients. However, I love my family more. I set aside time each day to spend with my family. We sit down to dinner together every day and spend time during the evenings and on the weekends together.

A schedule is key. Setting aside designated time for your family will really help to increase your productivity. Create the boundaries between work and home, and then abide by those rules. 

�