When going through this exercise I am not truing to sell myself, just helping a prospect to make a more informed decision. And if they go with us the relationship opens with more trust and prospects knowledge that they’ve made the right choice.

Like other web-related standards and languages, CSS was introduced and is maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

CSS is mainly used to style the web pages and separate content from presentation. It has a simple syntax and allows web designers to completely change the look and feel of the whole website without touching the HTML code, e.g. creating different “skins” to cater for to different users’ preferences or clients’ branding needs.

CSS styles can be embedded in the HTML page itself, but the best way is to keep all CSS classes in a separate file or files with the .css extension. This has two benefits: it lightens the code of the HTML pages, which is important for SEO and download time, and it means that you only have to edit one file (the one containing a CSS class) to make the changes on every page that calls this particular CSS file.

When CSS is used for colours and fonts, a single change on the CSS file can change the look of every page within the same website. To achieve the same effect by changing the attributes within all the <font> tags, a webmaster would have to edit every tag separately. With big websites this work might take several days. That’s why the <font> tag has been deprecated along with some other tags that control the look and feel of a webpage.

The more advanced use of CSS is when the whole layout of a webpage is being held together using CSS styles only. Historically, web designers often used HTML tables to control the layout of the page; it was easy, but it was not what the tables were initially created for and affected accessibility, page load time and even SEO (to some extent) detrimentally. So, web designers aiming at quality have lately been switching to table-free, CSS-controlled layouts.

Controlling layouts using CSS is not a trivial task, because all existing browsers read CSS a little bit differently. Working out cross-browser solutions (i.e. writing CSS classes that will allow the page to look the same in all browsers and not fall apart at different screen resolutions) is a lot of work and many webmasters just give it up. But, it has become less complicated, as browser vendors release new versions of their software and gradually improve their interpretation of CSS. One day they will probably find common ground and start reading CSS classes the same way, so any CSS-powered page will automatically look exactly the same in Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox and Safari. Besides, the most skilled and charitable webmasters often create samples of cross-browser compatible CSS-controlled layouts and offer them for free re-use on their websites. One site containing a large and useful collection of sample layouts is Search Engine Friendly Layouts.

All this allows webmasters, who would like to offer their customers real quality services, to switch to CSS-powered layouts right now.

If you have established an online presence, developed a web application or other software for your business - or are thinking of doing one of those things - it’s quite possible that you or your colleagues will be trying to stay abreast of the latest Internet trends: e.g., Web 2.0, Social Networking or blogging.

You have probably heard of these, but do not have the time to read through long and sophisticated articles on such subjects. One of the goals of our blog is to make complex things easier to grasp by picking out the most important aspects and explaining them clearly and succinctly. We aim to provide short, but detailed digests written in simple language, which take just a few minutes to read.

Not only that, but as the blog is intended for you, we are interested in your feedback, so that we can improve our blog and, in future, include topics which are pertinent and of interest to you. We’d like you to tell us what you need to know and let us have your questions, so please take a few moments to register and send us a comment.

We welcome your opinions.

Why is it so important?

There are several reasons why keeping your mailing lists clean and up-to-date is your number one task if you are using email marketing for your promotional efforts.

Email addresses become obsolete. If your newsletter hits an address that is no longer valid, it will bounce. If your emails bounce too often, your ISP may block your email domain, because unattended mailing lists are considered a footprint of a spammer.

Email addresses added to your list may contain typos. As a result, sending newsletters to such addresses results in bounced emails, too.

There are also so-called “prank” subscriptions, when someone subscribes with an email address that is not their own.

Of course, some problems can be eliminated using the so-called “double opt-in” method, which is now used by most respectable email marketers. “Double opt-in” means that when a person subscribes to a newsletter, a confirmation email is sent to the entered email address and, in order to complete the subscription procedure, the recipient must click on a link contained in the email. Only after the link is clicked is the email address added to the list. Whilst this helps combat “prank” subscriptions and weeds out mistyped addresses, it doesn’t solve the problem with outdated addresses.

It should be borne in mind that if your email domain is mistaken for a spammer’s domain and blacklisted, it will be very hard, if not impossible, to get it cleared again and you will most likely have to create a new one. That’s why email marketers use different tools that can intelligently clean mailing lists used for newsletters and remove invalid addresses. The processes should be run regularly.

Well, as a technology, VoIP (also called IP Telephony, Internet telephony, broadband telephony, Broadband Phone and Voice over Broadband) is somewhat dry. It is, like a lot of technologies, the ‘behind-the-scenes’ stuff, but it’s the stuff which you do not need to understand to enjoy the benefits.

Here comes the ’science’ bit: VoIP is the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or through any other IP-based (Internet Protocol) network. Whereas traditional telecommunications involve sending electrical impulses down the line to carry sound, VoIP carries voice signals (in the form of data packets) using as its basis, existing internet protocols and thereby digitising the process.

But what interests users at large is what it offers and what it can do. One of the important, and undoubtedly most attractive, features is that an existing computer network can carry the data where there is the capacity, bringing substantial cost savings over a normal phone line. VoIP-to-VoIP calls are mostly free, whilst VoIP-to-PSTN (traditional phone network) are only the fraction of the cost of normal phone calls, because they relay the calls as far as possible over a computer network. The downside to this technology is that call quality is not always 100%, as data packets are dropped or delivered in the wrong sequence.

But this seems like a minor concern and since 2000, VoIP usage has expanded dramatically. Whilst initially, VoIP was pushed to corporate customers by companies such as Cisco and Avaya, who switched to VoIP to save on both call and infrastructure costs, it has now reached and been taken up by residential users. In just a few short years, VoIP has gone from being a new technology to a viable mainstream service, rivalling that of standard telephone services - or more than likely, replacing it, as telecomms operator upgrade. As more and more phone exchanges become digital (or part of the network) more and more VoIP calls can be routed in this manner and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) now offer this as part of their ADSL services. Phone and computer networks are converging, forever changing the way we make and pay for calls.

There are a number of ways you can take advantage of VoIP technology. When using Broadband, many ISPs will offer users free calls using Internet Telephony. This usually entails plugging another handset into the ADSL line on a separately assigned number.
As an end-user, you can also take advantage of VoIP by installing one of the many available VoIP clients. Programs are available in abundance: Jabber, Googletalk and many open source programs. Even Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger) now support audio and video calls. But the one service to have had by far and away the biggest impact is Skype. Skype’s simplicity and ability to work with firewalls that break other VoIP clients, Skype has radically changed the landscape for web-based communications with a reported 150+ million downloads. With a headset and microphone or webcam you can make audio/video calls to other Skype subscribers or chat with them using the built-in instant messenger (IM) function. Video-conferencing was once the (expensive) preserve of big companies, but is now available to everyone with a simple webcam and a VoIP client. These applications allow files and data to be shared between user.

Skype - recently acquired by Ebay - actually allows you to do much more and is at the forefront of convergent technologies and fulfils many of the criteria of a true Web 2.0 service. Skype enables the user to take part in public conversations with other users; with another plug-in, you can dial telephone numbers straight from your browser; but Skype is the first VoIP client to reach a large audience, offering users a real alternative to a fixed landline. In addition to free VoIP-to-VoIP calls, chat and cheaper calls to landlines and mobiles worldwide (with SkypeOut), non-Skype users can call Skype users on a ‘SkypeIn’ number and the incoming call can go to voicemail or be forwarded to another number.

But other companies are driving VoIP usage: Vonage has put its VoIP service on a USB stick, which means that you can literally take your VoIP service with you and then plug it into a PC and run the application and make your call. And Skype looks like it might have a serious contender in the Gizmo Project, which is offering many of the same services as Skype offers.

Beyond that, VoIP is being offered on cabled and wireless handsets, even mobiles, so that you do not need a computer to talk to people using the Internet. ‘Dual mode’ phones - supporting cellular and VoIP services have started to appear and ‘MoIP’ or ‘MVoIP’, as it is known, is expected to grow, once coverage for VoIP (over wireless networks) catches up with cellular coverage.

1.PHP is an interpreted language (the same is true of Python and Ruby, incidentally), Java is a compiled one. The nature of Java allows us to find many of the errors at an early stage, which makes an application more stable. Some simple errors in PHP code can be found only during application testing or even after release.

2. The PHP language specification is not very solid and it is possible to implement the same things in many (developer-specific) ways. It makes it difficult to support other developers’ code. Java language is much more standardised. The specifications are publicly available from various sources. There are many books, online resources and tutorials on how to develop on it.

3. The Java platform is enterprise-oriented, whereas PHP (short for ‘Personal Home Page’) was originally conceived otherwise, although it has evolved to a point where it can now be used to build enterprise applications. Java contains many modules, which are essential for business applications - features such as security control and multi-threading.

4. It is not as mature as the Java platform. It is mature, both in terms of
implementation, as well as APIs. There is less risk of some bug in the platform that poses security risks or has some intrinsic flaw in its architecture.

5. PHP started life as a procedure based programming language, while Java is purely object-oriented. OOP has been a feature of PHP for the past three years, so it does not have the stability of Java’s OOP and the focus has been on addressing bugs.. OOP is a concept and it is risky to use a concept realisation in business-crtical software development. There is a high probability that different version of the realisation in this case would be incompatible. The Java programming language is a real programming language complete with well-defined syntax and grammar. Developers can actually write complex logic in it as expected from any programming language. They aren’t just limited to working with a canned set of widgets that you provided script wrappers for. They can actually add their own enhancements or custom widgets when needed.

The real-world view:

Our development team started with a few core Java C++ programmers. When PHP became popular and we were asked to program in it, we developed our own framework similar to that of Java core classes.
But, as a fledgling company, we had the following requirements:
To be able to teach new staff members good development practices in a short time;
To add new team members to the project without a large overhead for our clients;
To painlessly pass the project over to an in-house team or another provider as required.

And we found that PHP just could not satisfy those requirements so easily and we were being asked to develop ever more complicated applications.
We switched to Java and stopped working on our own framework, as many open-source frameworks started to appear. We watched them develop, but did not use any of them for commercial projects. (We used CMS systems and some off-the-shelf packages, both paid and open source).

A PHP developer is actually hard to find, as many of them are self-taught, non-technical people who start with cutting & pasting the code from Zend portal. You can actually achieve a lot with cutting and pasting, but the real value of technical knowledge comes in knowing what to do if the code is broken or does not run as expected. A pool of good developers is split between dozens of frameworks and CMS platforms. So to continue something designed on joomla, for example, you would not need just a PHP developer, but one acquainted with that framework. If not, you would have to pay for him to learn it.
Having one good vendor for a technology makes things centralised and directed. For java there is only one set of core classes, and a couple of MVC frameworks: we use Struts as the most popular one.

When all is said and done, the debate about what is the best platform or language can go for ever. The fact is this: a tool is only as good as the team using it.
If the company who offered to develop in PHP have an experience in building and supporting complex applications using the framework they suggest, and they can ensure continuity of their service, then their approach is as valid as any other one.

There are a lot of different social networking sites, each with its own format. Usually, they allow people to make contributions and comment on the contributions of others. Such interaction can be achieved via any one of the forum thread, blog or club (group) formats and, in many cases, users are allowed to exchange private messages with each other.

There are different types of the social networking sites. A traditional forum (bulletin board) can be considered the simplest form of social networking site and, of course, it is a virtual community. There are many other, more sophisticated social networking formats.

Sites like Facebook, Myspace and LiveJournal concentrate mostly on providing their members with a convenient environment to express themselves - through personal blogs - make friends, contribute content to be read by others and otherwise communicate. Other sites (e.g. YouTube) put the emphasis on sharing different kinds of content (in the case of YouTube it is video streams), though it is also possible to comment on the content contributed by others.

Social bookmarking sites (e.g. Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon) are in a different class. On these sites, you can bookmark an interesting article or a picture (movie/audio) you came across in a blog or other online resource and share it with others. Bookmarks that receive the largest number of votes from other members go to the top. Comments are allowed, too, to exchange opinions on the bookmarked resources.

Business networking sites, which are chiefly designed to help people establish contacts with potential customers, while still maintaining all the basic principles of an online community, stand alone. The most prominent business networking sites are LinkedIn, Xing and Ecademy amongst others. While typical social networking sites are usually free to join, when you join a business networking service, you’ll most likely have to pay for the privilege of having access to advanced features and the more you pay, the more privileges you get. For example, Ecademy has three levels of membership: basic, Power Networker (Orange Star) and BlackStar. The first one is free, but this means you won’t be able to do much proactively on the platform, other than just browse the site and reply to certain kinds of messages. The BlackStar membership opens up access to accelerated networking and more business opportunities, but it is very expensive, so the majority of paying members go for the Power Networker option, which lets them enjoy the most important features of the site like initiating contacts, running your own clubs, posting blogs & Marketplace adverts, etc.

While catering to most people’s expectations, like the “sense of community” or the “sense of efficacy”, which can motivate users to join virtual communities and contribute to them on a regular basis, the virtual communities do have their drawbacks. Many regular contributors develop so-called “Internet Addiction Disorder”, which is considered a 21st century problem and, for some, it’s just as dangerous as drug addiction or alcoholism.

Another problem associated with social networking is spam. Once the social networking sites started appearing online, people quickly recognised their usefulness for business development. While there are a lot of ways to promote your business in online communities ethically and honestly (which usually means “indirectly”), people wanting quick results often resort to blatant spam, abusing both public and private features of the community websites to hard-sell their services to other members, mass-email the members of groups or “drop” (insert) links to their websites. The link-drops have another purpose apart from attracting people’s attention: an attempt at gaining authority in the major search engines.

In spite of all the problems, social networking is here to stay. It blends perfectly with the concept of Web 2.0, and the networking sites are growing in number and increasing their membership and income at tremendous rates. Many commentators believe that the importance of business networking in the continual process of promoting businesses and finding work will grow with time.

Podcasts appeared on the scene in 2000, when Tristan Louis proposed using enclosures in RSS feeds. They rapidly gained popularity due to the fact that they could be used for many different purposes. The uses of podcast include (but are not limited to) education, entertainment, advertising, delivering information and a lot more. By using the World Wide Web and podcasts to deliver information to their audience, journalists enjoy a lot more freedom and independence than when they work through radio, TV and other media.

Podcasts usually contain a series of files dedicated to one specific topic. Traditional podcasts comprise works by the same author, but with a new form of podcasting - so-called “social podcasting” - they can now contain the collective work of a group of contributors. Once you have found the podcast you are interested in, you can subscribe to it using special software called a podcast aggregator. It will automatically start when you turn on your computer, search for updates among all the podcasts you are subscribed to and download them. You can listen to them when it is most convenient to you. It is even possible to copy the podcasts in the same automated mode to your portable media player.

Podcasts can easily be found using podcast directories, where they are grouped by theme.

To create a simple audio podcast, all you need is a microphone and any kind of recording software capable of creating MP3 files. Once an audio file has been created and processed to improve the quality (if necessary), it is uploaded to a web server and made available at a certain URL. The URL can then be added to a valid RSS file using RSS generating software. Once the RSS file is updated online, the task is completed. Of course, if you have a website, you can link to both the podcast itself and the RSS file with a standard hyperlink.

At the same time, their value for marketing your business online cannot be overestimated. If you regularly update your podcast with new files of genuine interest to your target audience, the number of subscribers will grow with time and they will spread the word about your venture. Of course, if you care about the reputation of your business, you will need to hire a professional writer to prepare your podcasts, a professional voice talent to record them and a specialist to take care of the technical aspects.

Podcasts are an integral part of what is commonly referred to as Web 2.0, play an important role in online social networking and their popularity is sure to grow with time, as the technology progresses.

There are different schools of SEO; people who belong to those schools, preach different approaches to SEO, have different priorities and act differently. But they all have to continuously adjust to the changes in the way the search engines work, in one way or another.

In this article, we are concentrating on ethical Search Engine Optimisation; so what are the latest trends?

1. Growing importance of search engine-friendly design.

The rules of search engine-friendly website design are simple, but for years search engine optimisers tended to underestimate their importance. In 2003, talk of ‘keyword densities’, ‘title tags’ and ‘keyword-rich anchor text’ dominated the SEO communities. These things comprise SEO basics, and they are still important, but in 2007, more and more SEOs realised that clean code, consistency in URLs and correct use of HTTP responses are no less important for successful SEO than content and meta information. Properly designed sites often outrank keyword-rich sites in the search engines and professionals can’t help but notice this.

2. Being very careful with link building.

Link building is a dying art. The engines have developed very smart algorithms to analyse the quality of links, and the “link is a link is a link” principle no longer works. The engines are capable of discovering very complicated link schemes and applying different rankings penalties. The more spammy the link scheme looks to the engine, the more severe the penalty.

That’s why traditional reciprocal links are no longer used by good SEO professionals. They are readily detectable as a definitely artificial linking pattern and, in almost 100% of cases, exchanging links means you are already in numerous bad neighbourhoods: and bad neighbourhoods can have a detrimental effect on your whole SEO campaign.

That’s why it’s now more important than ever to be extremely careful when interlinking sites belonging to the same owner. Before you know it, you’ll step over an invisible line and trigger a filter or a penalty, so it’s better to underdo the interlinking than overdo it.

When a site has to be submitted to directories, submitting blindly to thousands of directories is not recommended. It’s important to do your research well and choose a few good quality ones, otherwise there will be no SEO effect at all or, worse still, a negative one. In terms of sending direct traffic, major quality directories are definitely the best choice.

The engines also have their ’spies’ in most link brokering schemes, so it’s best to stay away from them and not even try buying links without the rel=”nofollow” attribute under Google’s radar. Google engineers are much smarter than we tend to assume.

Earning natural links - and doing so gradually and patiently - is now the only way to go. One example of what can happen if people are not careful with links is described here

Among the basic usability principles, the following are most often cited by usability experts: simplicity, consistency, understandable language, accessibility and good means of control of the current status.

Simplicity means that every potential user of the application should be able to quickly and intuitively guess how to fulfill one of another task. Of course, different audiences require different levels of simplicity.

Since every person has a different idea of what is simple, and for the developer of the application it’s always intuitive, it’s always advisable to run an application through usability testing and to invite testers that represent the application’s target audience . For example, if the software is written for children of 8 to 12 years of age, the testers should be kids of the same age.

Consistency refers to the sameness of the navigation means/interface elements throughout the application/website. It’s already difficult enough for new users to learn your interface once; there is no need to make them re-learn it every time they move from page to page or from screen to screen. It’s also a good idea to comply with existing standards and make your application reasonably similar to other applications in the same class. Your users will appreciate it if you use the same shortcuts as everyone else.

The language issue brings up an important consideration. First of all, your messages should be brief and clear, just so the user can easily guess the meaning of menu items, buttons and other interface elements. There is no need to be cryptic or try and sound sophisticated. Save your users’ time; speak to them in plain language without unnecessary technical jargon.

Accessibility is another way (along with multilingual support) that can help you expand your potential audience. Make sure that people with disabilities will find it as easy as possible to use your application or website and you will be rewarded for your effort with more sales and happy customers.

Last but not least, help your users to always be aware of where they are. If you are developing a standalone application, make sure you provide a clear indication of the status of work the user is doing, which tasks have been completed successfully or failed and what else has to be done. If you are building a website, show the user which section of the site he/she is currently exploring and how to get back the easiest way possible. It’s very important to avoid confusing navigation patterns.

Remember that all efforts you put in the usability of your standalone or web-based application will quickly pay for themselves