Pemaquid Communications

Well, you know what they say – Don’t Believe The Hype. Lately, there’s been a lot of hype regarding the word “mobile”.

Because phones have gotten so smart in the last few years, everyone is asking about mobile. “How can I need to take advantage of mobile?” small business owners, or those who run large membership organizations (at the urging of their members, no doubt), will ask. “I need a mobile version of my Web site” they’ll say, worried that they will get left behind and that somehow their site won’t get found.

Some Web design shops have been only too glad to tell people what they want to hear. “We do mobile”, they’ll shout. “Relax”, they say, “we’re experts”.

The small business owner in particular should be highly skeptical about such claims, however. Here’s why.

Mobile is easy

Creating a “mobile Web site” is a piece of cake. How do you do it? You… build a Web site, using HTML and CSS. Sound familiar? It should; that’s the way Web sites have been built for the last 15 years. If you use proper semantic code, and apply Web Standards when building your standard Web site, your site should perform just fine on mobile devices (they don’t call them “smart phones” for nothing).

If you want to “mobify” your Web site (create a simpler, text-only version of your site that’s optimized for not-so-smart phones) this is easily done with any one of a dozen conversion tools that any self-respecting Web development team can apply to your site faster than you can say “blackberry”.

Let me say that again: any self-respecting Web development team.

So much for so-called “expertise”.

When most Web shops say “we do mobile” this is, in reality, what they mean. Small potatoes. Chump change.

Mobile apps are hard

Of course, when most small business owners say “Can you do mobile” usually they’re really wondering “can you build an iPhone app for my business?” Most small Web development shops cannot, nor can small businesses afford bona fide app development.

iPhone app development (most of which is something called “native app” development) is highly specialized and sophisticated. it requires a special software development kit and rigorous testing needs to be done to ensure that the app can send, receive and store data properly. Unlike a Web site, which simply makes information available, an app must be primed for performance, connectivity and specific use cases must be tested for usability. This doesn’t happen overnight, and the cost very easily runs into five figures and often six. Once you’re done with the development, an app still needs to go through Apple’s review process before it gets listed in the app store.

And when you’re through with that, you may want to create another version of your app for Android mobile devices. Lather, rinse and repeat the previous paragraph.

Does your small business have the budget for that? I didn’t think so. But don’t worry – your competitors don’t have that kind of budget either.

Most claims of mobile prowess by small Web development shops are not in line with the (often unrealistic) expectations of most small business owners, and they are (surprise!) taking advantage of that to generate business opportunities.

The bottom line is that mobile is all that, and it’s also nothing at all. As always, when it comes to technology, small business owners should apply a healthy dose of skepticism when they hear the mobile pitch.

When designing all these way-cool, bubblicious Web 2.0 apps, and when working with frameworks like jQuery, it’s easy to get caught up in the ajax-y goodness of it all and forget about accessibility requirements.

One reason many Web sites don’t have a higher degree of accessibility built in is that accessible design is seen as hard work. It’s one more set of best practices to wrap one’s brain around.

Often, for designers, it can seem to take the fun out of things (though it doesn’t have to be that way).

Drew McClellan has a recent blog post on the subject that illustrates the point. He talks about the Cappucino framework, developed by 280 North and billed as a way to build “desktop-caliber applications that run in a web browser”. The 280 guys are even working on a drop-and-drop IDE, called Atlas, for creating Cappucino apps.

I haven’t tried Cappucino first hand, but the word on the street is that this system is incredibly stunning, and the folks at 280 North should be congratulated for the accomplishment.

Cappucino’s javascript-laden framework, however, still has a ways to go to address accessibility issues. Hopefully, the 280 guys – and others developing similar systems – will take the time and do the hard work necessary to make sure their creations have a high degree of accessibility built in.

We can do it without losing the Coolness Factor. Focus on simple elegance in your design, make it your business to understand best practices for accessible design, and you’ll be able to build sites that work with assistive devices and are also fun to use.

There are a ton of content management systems out there (see CMS Matrix). So how do you decide which one is right for you?

In selecting a content management system – or CMS – for your Web site, it’s important to remember that you don’t want to compromise the user experience or the accessibility of your site just so you can slap another page up there.

You also don’t want to become a slave to your CMS; it should work for you, not the other way round. It shouldn’t unduly compromise your ability to organize content on your site.

Some of the most popular systems include: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Expression Engine and Silver Stripe (all of these are open source; Silver Stripe was used to create the Democratic National Convention Web site).

At Pemaquid we’ve worked with dozens of these content management systems. Usually, however, we stick with the one we’ve developed ourselves: the Pemaquid Content Manager. The basic package can be installed quickly and inexpensively, but it’s easily customizable.

Are we proud of our little CMS? Yes. Is it the right solution for all situations? No.

Over the next few weeks we’ll take an in-depth look under the hood of some of the most popular content management systems and examine the pros and cons of using them.

I realize I’m just scratching the surface, but here’s a list of some of the decent GTD apps I found recently while searching for an app to help boost my productivity. Maybe one of them will work for you?

• todolist.com
• tadalist.com
• toodledo
• Sandy
• Simple GTD
• vitalist

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’m currently using Remember The Milk for immediate actions, and NetVibes for compiling checklists and long-term project lists. YMMV.

I’m a disciple of David Allen and his ever-popular Getting Things Done method for efficiently managing all the “Stuff” we need to do.

There are dozens of great tools our there to help you GTD. (See what I mean?)

For about the last six months I had been using NetVibes, a popular start page application, to create and shuffle todo lists. NetVibes lets you easily create and categorize todo lists and its ajaxy goodness lets you drag list items (and entire lists) around to prioritize them.

Still, in some ways NetVibes was lacking. I have an iPhone, but there’s no iPhone app for NetVibes, so I couldn’t add new todos directly to my list while on the go. And trust me, you don’t want to use the iPhone’s small view screen to browse NetVibes.

I also couldn’t set deadlines for my NetVibes todos – and moving a todo from the “Calls” list to the “Waiting for” list required a cut and a paste. I started to think I could do better.

So over the last two weeks I’ve been reviewing a veritable tag cloud of todo apps, and after creating countless user accounts, my vote for the best time-management app (at least during this election cycle) goes to…. Remember The Milk.

RTM was built to be a todo management tool, unlike NetVibes, which is really primarily an RSS feed reader. It’s also built for speed. It’s loaded w/ajax – I wonder how it performs w/a screen reader – which allows you to add and manipulate todos almost as fast as you can think them up. Items can be prioritized and assigned a deadline. And you can easily move items from one list to another w/a click or two.

You can search/sort your todos in a number of ways. Yep, you can tag ‘em too.

RTM is everywhere. There’s a widget that lets you integrate it with your Google Calendar; you can also tie it to other handy apps like Jott, and you can tie todos to locations.

SMS reminders? Check. iPhone app? Check.

I’ll still use NetVibes to compile long-term GTD project lists; and it’s a great feed reader.

If you’re feeling swamped trying to manage the crush of things you need to do each day, you might want to give RTM a look. As always, YMMV, depending on what you need to do and where/when/how you need to do it. Tomorrow I hope to post a list of some of the other time-managment tools I found while rummaging around the Internet.

We’ve pushed live a new feature in the Pemaquid Content Manager, Pemaquid’s content management system, that allows easier, more flexible sorting.

In the navigation bar for certain content modules, like home page Promos, you’ll see a subnav item called Sort. Click on the link and you’ll go to an interface where you can sort simply by dragging your items to the desired position.

Modules that allow sorting this way include: Promos, Staff Directory, Resources and ad hoc Content. New Content Manager Clients will be able to sort their content this way immediately; existing Clients may need to contact us for a quick adjustment to their Resources and Content.

Enjoy!

Reading through the tea leaves here is not that tough. Microsoft is offering a 60% premium over Yahoo’s recent stock price b/c it realizes that apps (email, spreadsheets, document-creation, etc.) is migrating from the desktop to a new home on the ‘Net.

Case in point: I work w/several young guns who:

• Use Google Talk for IM
• Use Google spreadsheets
• Use Gmail

They think “Why should I fork over my hard-earned moola for MS Office when I can get it online for free?”

Then there’s Google AdWords, Google Analytics; oh, and Google also has this really cool search engine thingy.

Google here, Google there, Google, Google everywhere…

It’s definitely a threat to Microsoft’s facetime w/computer users.

What does a combined Microshoo mean for business marketing online? Probably a new ad network, combined MSN-Yahoo! search engine. Something that looks a lot like… Google.

Stay tuned…

Pemaquid’s adventures on Facebook are the subject of a story in today’s Portland Press Herald (Just my luck, I got a haircut the day after they took the photo, and no, you won’t see it here).

Thanks to my Facebook buddies Wendy Clark (Portland Diner logo) and Jennifer Ecker (Web design) for their help in creating Pemaquid’s Facebook apps. Thanks also to Facebook friend Justin Ellis (PPH reporter who wrote the story), who gave us a very “honorable mention”.

Our apps mentioned in the story:

• Portland Diner
• Lost on Liftoff

More are on the way. Stay tuned…

Ladies and Gentlemen… we have Liftoff. Lost on Liftoff. (Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.)

Pemaquid Communications premiered a brand new Facebook app for Lost On Liftoff, one of Portland, Maine’s hottest local bands, @ the techMaine conference a few days ago.

Go here to add the Lost On Liftoff app if you have a Facebook profile.

The idea is pretty simple. Once you add the app, it puts a “badge” on your Facebook profile, along w/a player created in FBML (that’s “Facebook Markup Language”) that allows you to play your favorite Lost On Lifoff song from their latest album, Mixtape Blackouts. You can change the favorite song if you like and invite other friends and fans to add the app to their profiles.

For the band, it’s viral marketing at its best. Pemaquid launched (no pun intended) the app just a few days ago and – through the power of Facebook’s social graph – it already has several dozen people using it.

Lead singer Walt Craven did the amazing album artwork and is working with us to redesign the group’s Web site.

Rock on!

More from recent wanderings about the ‘Net:

• Mystery of the flat input buttons in Leopard – explained! – Have you noticed flat form inputs in Safari 3/Leopard? Dominey gives you the skinny.
• No more ‘click to activate’ – soon you won’t have to click to activate that control in the IE browser that makes an object play. Microsoft has licensed the component in question from Eolas. I think we’ll still use SWFObject and UFO, though. (Ajaxian)
• Anatomy of a good Web page (hotlinked image) – good markup, w/t/Cliff notes…
• Foamee – brought to you by Dan Cederholm. Ever wanted to keep track of who owes you a beer – and who you owe? Dan’s app makes it go down smooth. I’m linking you right to the How-to page…

Cheers!

Facebook apps continue to take the online marketing world by storm. For the uninitiated, a Facebook app is kinda like a widget that FB members can add to their profiles.

Pemaquid has several under development now. We’re the first Web design company in Maine (and so far, still the only one, though competitors are starting to get a little jealous) to have developed 3rd-party Facebook apps.

A good example of an app is Portland Diner (you’ve got to be logged into Facebook to see it, though there is a stand-alone site).

Why is this so important to marketers? One word: eyeballs.

Some of these FB apps have millions of members using them, so they become attractive advertising vehicles. Of course, you have to position things carefully so that the advertising message doesn’t cause the user experience to be a drag.

I’m going to be giving a presentation on Facebook apps at the MESDA techMAINE Annual Conference tomorrow. If you’re curious to learn the basic ins and outs come on down and check it out.

OK, so you’ve decided you want to add a blog to your Web site – a good move since. pound for pound, frequently-updated sites tend to grab higher search engine rankings than their peers who go without. So you download a copy of WordPress, an open source blog platform that has all the features you’re looking for. Great.

Next, you want your blog to have the same look and feel – theme, if you will – as the rest of your Web site. Your designer cracks open the WordPress blog in Dreamweaver and gasps at all the PHP code in the templating system. Skilled as she is with HTML, your designer can’t make heads or tails of the CSS or PHP.

Not to worry. Pemaquid has designed WordPress blogs for a number of Clients. In fact, this blog you’re reading is a WordPress blog (though an imperfect one – ever heard the one about the cobbler’s children who had no shoes?).

So if you’re looking to add a WordPress blog (or Typepad blog, or any other flavor), contact us and we’ll get you set up. We’ll do it fast too (48 hour turnaround is doable), if necessary.

Striped backgrounds are a bit like last year’s music now, but this is a handy tool for creating them:
Stripe Generator.

Played around w/t/ Facebook Platform over the weekend, and was able to create an app for Portland Diner. Now, members of Facebook’s Portland, ME network (and anyone else, for that matter) can add the Portland Diner app to their profile and check out local restaurant listings right there – which is of course why Facebook created the platform in the first place – to allow developers to create tools that would make the user experience at FB more engaging and – shall we say – “sticky”.

There are a few minor bugs in the CSS – Facebook doesn’t allow linked CSS and rewrites inline sheets placed in the <style> tags – but it seems to work just fine. There are other wrinkles – no javascripts are allowed, and Facebook requires that developers use a subset of HTML called, naturally, FBML. SQL can become FQL and there are some proprietary tags that include an “FB:”.

If you have a Facebook account and live in Portland, Maine, you might find the Portland Diner app useful. Go get it here. We’d love to know what you think; please let us know.

I’ve known about Netvibes for some time now and had toyed around w/it. Over the Fourth of July holiday, however, I suddenly realized how you can keep track, at a glance, of whether you’ve read the items in a particular feed.

That’s all it took.

I spent part of the day yesterday bringing in all my feeds and content, which I had set up in my old feed reader, Newsgator. This type of site, w/its high level of Ajax functionality, no doubt would be difficult for people who require a high degree of accessibility to use, but for an average joe like me, the usability is A+. You can see a tremendous amount of information in one screenful and very quickly and easily add stuff or move it around.