Month: January 2006

Tough Choices and Making Progress

Kevin HallBusiness, User Experience

The world is not always the way we wish. I wrote a few days ago about how the state of Digital Rights Management (DRM) for music and movies is not where we want it. Andrew McLaughlin, senior policy counsel at Google, write today about the launch of Google.cn in China. He wrote about the fact that Google will not be offering Gmail and Blogger in China and will be filtering search results to remove some content at the behest of the Chinese government. Google is not happy about making this choice. I had a long talk with Brad yesterday about my disappointment about not having the perfect solution for distributing online media while protecting the content from illegal copying. I’m […]

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Woot.com

BradBusiness

On January 25th on Woot.com you would have found a Pioneer 1000 watt 5.1 surround sound system. Sounds of the Pioneers Oh, give me a home theatre with 5.1 speakers… despite the name, you won’t find these Pioneers sitting around a campfire amid sagebrush and manure, unless you’ve got really eccentric taste in interior design. No, this 1000-watt surround-sound system is equally at home in urban, suburban, semi-urban, exurban, and rural settings – anywhere people crave lifelike theatre sound on a cramped budget, anywhere where home theatre owners have more enthusiasm than dollars. If you are one of the few people left who hasn’t heard of woot.com then here is a little background. Woot.com is a basic website that sells […]

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Maintaining Relationships

BradBusiness

The old saying, “Out of sight, out of mind,” is very applicable to the business world. That is why maintaining a good relationship with your customers is key to getting repeat and referral business. Older clients can be a gold mine, you just have to find a simple way to keep your company in the back of their mind. Then when the client does need more work done they won’t open the phonebook to find someone else to do it, they will just pick up the phone and call you up. Here are some easy ways to keep those older clients thinking of you: monthly newsletters sent via E-mail set them up with an RSS feed to your blog every […]

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R-E-S-P-E-C-T…

Kevin HallBusiness, Content Management, User Experience

Volkher Hofmann is boycotting Sony BMG, Blue Note, and EMI. Why? Because he is sick and tired of paying to be disrespected by those labels and their intrusive Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes. And he’s not alone. The audiophiles and film buffs who spend the most on music and movies are the ones who are most insulted and turned off by DRM. As media conglomerates push DRM more and more and technology companies that produce computers, DVD, CD, and MP3 players build DRM support into their products consumers are growing more aware of DRM. And the more they know the more they bristle at the restricted playback of legally purchased music and movies, incompatible hardware and software, inability to backup […]

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Hating Life a Little Bit Less

Kevin HallBusiness, User Experience

PDF files are the bane of the web surfer. Often unmarked they stall your browsing for a virtual eternity while Adobe’s kludgy Reader fires up. In the meantime your browser freezes and sometimes crashes, your computer slows to a crawl, and you start to hate life. Well, I’ve found a way to hate life a little but less — the Free Foxit Reader (via Lifehacker). PDF files are still terrible for web users most of the time, but at least this makes them less of a hated annoyance when they are encountered. QUICK TIPS: If you are responsible for posting PDF files to a web site please mark them clearly. Use an icon and indicate next to any PDF links […]

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Time Zones and Countries

Kevin HallColdFusion, Web Design

I needed a quick list of countries and time zones and I wanted to add it to my database so I could manipulate it easily for a new application we’re developing (details on that coming soon). I looked around but didn’t find what I wanted so after a bit of searching I took a few static select lists and copied them into Excel. I then imported the lists into my database using ColdFusion. In case they help anyone I’ve made the lists available here as CSV files. Time Zones (.csv, 4 KB) Countries (.csv, 4 KB)

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Dynamic Datasources in ColdFusion MX 7

Kevin HallColdFusion

I spent some time recently trying to track down how to create a database and datasource in ColdFusion without going into the ColdFusion Adminstrator interface and doing in manually. I found plenty of articles and documentation on how this was done in ColdFusion 5 and notes that it had changed but nothing on how. Now that I’ve got it working I’d like to share how I did it in case anyone else is looking for help with this.

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Motorbilly.com

Kevin HallBusiness, Project Management

We are pleased to announce that Motorbilly.com is now online and that Ann Arbor based DJ Del Villarreal is happily posting fresh content there for your enjoyment. The content is being gradually added as Del has time, but he has already started to add announcements, links, and other material. The launch is what we refer to as a “soft launch”. The site is ready to go but the content is being added gradually. The benefit of this is that while Del is not yet publicizing the web site much on his radio show or at concerts or dances the search engines are starting to pick up the site and add it to their indexes. Del is a great DJ and […]

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