I get questions all the time from clients about RSS… I am often asked to give them a newsroom area to posts current news and events, but then I am asked to simply turn off the RSS icon. I think that a lot of people must not understand the beauty of what RSS can do.

You can checkout my post titled What is RSS and Why Should I Care?

Don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed at the right.

So, I was doing a little maintenance on LinkedIn and saw this fancy little ad for Microsoft Vista Ultimate.

Of course, I had to click on the ad because I was curious to know what spin Microsoft was going to put on Windows Vista now trying to prove to public at large that Vista is a "stellar" product. Just because I use it, that doesn’t mean that I think it is a great product.

Funny thing happened when I clicked through. I ended up at their Small Business Center Site and see this error message:

So, in order to see this at it’s best, I have to download a piece of software that isn’t even a final release, wait for it to install and then restart my browser? Oh, and I couldn’t see the whole error in FireFox… only if I logged in with Internet Explorer. On FireFox, I wouldn’t have any idea what to do.

Of course, in small print at the bottom, I can see in HTML, but I bet most people that would end up here would click the big install button.

So, here is the best part… I decided to install the update to see what I would get… to see why it was so much better in a technology that is not in final release and requires me to take a minute or so of my time to install.

When I installed, it told me to restart my browser. I did. Opened it to my normal home page. No way of knowing (unless I copied it for this blog) where the page is.

So, the brilliance of all this is:

1. Pay for click through to your site.
2. Tell people to install your software.
3. Tell them to leave.
4. Don’t provide a way to get them back.

By the way, it is not worth the install or the time spent viewing the videos because they don’t tell you anything that you can’t already do, more easily on your Mac.

I find it fascinating how often I.T. is assigned to the task of building a website. For the uninitiated, this may seem like a logical thing to do. After all, a website is technology and requires programming and stuff, right?

Wrong.

A very small part of a website is programming. A very small part of a website is technology. Oh, it might take a lot of work. It might be a requirement for the site to function properly, but I.T. should really not have a say in what the customer sees… the face or the marketing aspect of the site.

In my opinion, here are the top five components of a website… in order of importance.

1. Graphical Presentation - all the pretty pictures. All the pretty buttons. This is the first thing someone sees. This is the first thing that can turn them away.
2. User interface - This tells people where to go. What do they do next, etc. this may be second to the graphical presentation, but it is a very close second.
3. Content - Well, you need to content to put on the buttons and graphics, but there is also core site content. People will see pictures and captions of pictures before they ever see this. The may not even read this.
4. Social aspects - Blogs, forums and support features. If you don’t have the core content or pretty graphics, this won’t matter. It especially won’t matter if people don’t know how to get there from the user interface.
5. Programming - programming comes last. Of course, there may be programming required to accomplish any of the above, it is last for one very important reason. If you don’t have the above figured out, programming doesn’t matter. If your designer doesn’t create graphics, your programmers can’t install it. If you don’t know what you want the user interface to look like, your programmers can’t build it. If you don’t have your content written, your programmers can paste it in.

So, get I.T. out of the website design and put marketing on it. Either get it done with an in house marketing team to do it or outsource it. Either way, don’t depend on I.T. to build you a great website. Oh, they might be able to pull it off, but those types of I.T. people aren’t nearly as common… besides, even if they could, should I.T. really be setting your marketing direction?

I have a few servers hosting my client accounts. I spend a bit of time on occasion with technical support. I prefer the live chat option because I can ask a question and easily do other things while waiting for the answer instead of having to worry about listening… I get to communicate in my time.

I find it interesting on their live chat they have  "Real Photo" (look in the bottom right corner of the pictures). I decided to take a screen shot of the last four that I found… notice the names.

Either they are quadruplets or it isn’t really a "Real Photo."

I am betting they aren’t quads. In fact, I have noticed at least four or five other names with the same picture (since I communicate with them often, I notice these things).

Here’s a thought… if you are going to use real pictures, use real pictures.

Last week I was very excited to have found DocSyncer… providing me the ability to synchronize my local MS Office Documents with Google Docs.

I was pretty pleased with the ability to upload my files from my desktop in one fell swoop and then manage the files either on my computer on on Google Docs.

The problem was, it didn’t really work. All my files got loaded up, but I learned that they didn’t synchronize at all… once they were loaded, the versions no longer matched up.

I thought that I would take a few minutes today to see if I could figure it out and get it to work… because it is really cool.

When I went to the DocSyncer website, I found this note.

Thank you for your interest in DocSyncer. Our service will be shutting down on June 20th, 2008. All current users can continue to access and use the service until that time.

DocSyncer began largely as an experiment. When our primary startup (ProtectMyPhotos) began to appear that it wasn’t going to work out, we wanted to try something radically different with our technology. In a very short amount of time, we were able to build DocSyncer for the world to enjoy. However, it was always an experiment and we weren’t sure it could be a business. We’ve figured out in a very short amount of time that DocSyncer is a cool tool - but not a business. With no way to pay for itself, we’d rather shut the service down than let it fall into decay as our team begins to work on a new project. We regret that anyone who’s enjoyed DocSyncer will be disappointed to see it go - we’re certainly disappointed as well. Nonetheless, we made some great progress with DocSyncer that we’re proud of. We synced more than 5 million documents to Google Docs - making us the largest user in the history of the Google Docs API.

Until we meet again, good luck and thank you for the support!

Couple of thoughts I have.

1. Shouldn’t you figure out if you have a business model before you work on building something this cool?
2. If Google can do it for free, why can’t they?
3. It really is a cool idea. If they could just get it to work right, I bet Google would buy it.

Oh well… I’ll have to be careful to do a little more research before I think something is cool.

I had to create a new document today for a number of people to manage. I had a suggestion from a few people to put it on Google Docs. I am not a huge fan of Google Docs… it is not quite as responsive as I like and I really like local documents so that I can work offline whenever I want. Not too mention, it is not as fully featured as MS  Office Applications or OpenOffice.org Applications.

Nevertheless, it really did make most sense for me to have this particular document online so that I don’t have to continue to email the document when I make an update.

So, I got to thinking… how great would it be for there to be a way to synchronize Google Spreadsheet with a Microsoft Spreadsheet? If I could find a way to mirror the two documents… one online and one on my desktop, it could give me the best of both worlds. I figured if I could synchronize my Google Calendar with my Outlook Calendar, surely I could do it with my documents, also.

Evidentially, I am not the only person thinking the same thing.

In my search, I found DocSyncer. You have the ability to have all the supported documents automatically sync for you. It is a little slow in the sync (i.e. you can’t make a change and force it to sync right away), but it really does seem to work well.

Setting DocSyncer up is a breeze. In about 15 seconds, you have your account set up. You simply add your Google Apps login information, install the software and it will start to sync. It takes a little time for it to get the sync done the first time (so be patient), but it work great.

Try it out. Let me know what you think.

When you have to make the choice between proprietary and open standards for a product you are offering, you have to consider the long term implications of that.

A few years ago, Microsoft launched a new type of DRM. It was called "PlaysForSure." Their thought was that it should be a new standard that all the online music stores and digital music players would be able to use. The intent was that if everyone used the same DRM format, everyone would be much happier. The fact is that DRM is designed to take features away and not to enhance the listener experience.

So, there are two concepts that I am talking about here.

The first is providing a service that is unique to you. We all want to "lock" our customers in to using our technology. We hope that if we "lock" them in to our service or product using proprietary technology that we’ll have a greater chance at customer retention. More often than not, we want to "lock" them in because we know that we are terrible at customer support and the customer experience, so we have to trick them in to sticking with us.

The second concept I am talking about is that when you have proprietary technology that you use, you run the risk of not being able to support it. Microsoft’s DRM was such a problem child that they didn’t even use it on their own Zune digital media device, have canceled it for their music store (the store failed), and now are saying they will cancel all the authentication servers for the DRM. That means that people who bought into the service and have music under that service will not get what they paid for because of lack of authentication.

Of course, one could say, "Well, it’s Microsoft, what did you expect?"

But, I don’t think it is that easy. Many companies have tried a proprietary technology they hoped would one day be the standard. They have "locked" their customers into their service. When it failed, all the customers were just out of luck. Think about the BlueRay and HD DVD format. Looks like BlueRay will stay and HD will not.

When you have a new thing you are offering, you may not have an open standard to use, but, if you have the option, stick with open standards. Don’t make it hard for people to leave… after all, if you have to "lock" your customers in because your customer service stinks or you really aren’t that good, then you will end up with a failed online music store, dwindling profits and a new Vista operating systems that is riddled with problems product or service.

Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Just the name is annoying. Have you seen this anywhere? Do you know what it is?

This is the stupid little box at the bottom of many forms that ask you to validate if you are human or not. Some are simple (like add 2 + 2 and input your answer). Some are obscured text to input.

Sometimes they are downright impossible to decipher. I had to try 4 times the other day before I could get my account set up on one site.

John points us to a list of the worst CAPTCHAs found on the web. If you find worse, let me know. Here they go:

Corey Smith
Co-founder of Resumango where you can build a better resume for free

What operating system do you prefer on your computer? Microsoft has been pushing quite heavily the Vista operating system. Of course, they kind of have to because they have put so much development into it and Apple had a number of major releases (5, I think) between Windows XP and Windows Vista.

The problem is that Vista has a number of bugs and problems. IT people understand that. Most end-users understand that. Sometimes I think that the only people that don’t understand that are the people at Microsoft.

Ziff Davis conducted a survey about their opinion of the future of Windows. It has been a year since Vista’s luanch and 92 percent of the respondants say that Windows XP is their primary desktop operating system.

What I find fascinating is that when asked what “other operating systems” are on their desktops, Vista was considered one of the top answers. In fact here is the list of “other” operating systems on desktops.

Sounds like there is a problem in how Vista is being received in the business community. If 92% of people still have XP as their primary system and 30% of people asked about other operating systems consider Vista to be one of the “others,” I tend to think that Vista is having some sales and marketing problems to go along with their technical problems.

So, what do you think that means for your willingness to accept new Microsoft products in your office?

Source: eWeek

Corey Smith
Co-founder of Resumango where you can build a better resume for free

A few weeks ago, I moved my email services to Google Apps. My main motivation was I wanted to find a good alternative to an Exchange Server. Since I left corporate America a few months ago, I have missed the synchronization that an Exchange Server provides. I can’t justify the costs of one, so I needed an alternative.

Google Apps provides free email hosting for up to 100 email accounts on your domain. You can petition for more without paying extra. The shared calendars are pretty cool, too. Recently, they added IMAP support which allows the users to have their email in their favorite email desktop client sync with the Google Gmail interface… so you can have the best of both.

If you are used to the way that your client handles email in a POP3 or Exchange environment, it takes a little getting used to (for example, you can’t hit delete in Outlook, you have to drag and drop to the trash and identifying something as spam or not as spam is a little more complicated). But, once you get used to it, it works really well.

One of the things that I really didn’t like very much was that I couldn’t synchronize my calendar. I still prefer to use Outlook for my email. I do because it is so well used. But, I really like the idea of having a web interface to modify my calendar.

Yesterday, Google released a little app for windows that allows the synchronization to work. It is pretty cool. I set it up and, in no time, my Outlook calendar was in sync with my Google Calendar.

I think that Google has a long way to go to replace Exchange. There are still many services that Exchange can do that Google can’t. However, having worked in Corporate America, I tend to think that for the features that the majority of users utilize Exchange for, Google is a better choice for a better price.

Now, you might be interested in how to set up your Google Calendar to share with Outlook. So, here are some instructions:

If you don’t have a Google account, you need to set one up first from here. Or, better yet, just move your email to their service from Google Apps.

1. First, you download Google Calendar Sync from: http://dl.google.com/googlecalendarsync/GoogleCalendarSync_Installer.exe

2. Simply save the file to your desktop so that you can find it later.

3. You’ll have to agree to the terms and conditions.

4. Read through the Google Calendar Sync Terms of Service, and click “I Agree.”

5. Continue to follow through the Installation Options and click “Install” to finish the set-up process.

When you have Google Calendar Sync is installed on your computer, the Google Calendar Sync Settings window will appear:

Simply enter your settings and hit save. It should take care of the rest for you.

Now, I haven’t tried every permutation of how your calendar can be set up, but I didn’t have one problem.

Here’s the best part. I can manage my calendar in Outlook, but share it via Google to other’s on the web. Microsoft, eat your heart out.

Corey Smith
Co-founder of Resumango where you can build a better resume for free