Summersault Weblog

I recently found a neat little application that has been useful both at work and in my at-home computing. It is called Prism, and what it does is allow you to run your favorite web applications (Remember the Milk, Facebook, Google Calendar, etc.) as if they were desktop applications. Because it was built on the Firefox engine, it will run any web applications you can run in your Firefox browser.
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I’ve been waiting for a while now to see what Google was going to do with their acquisition of JotSpot, the collaborative wiki site that a number of non-profit organizations I’m involved in has used to organize our internal information. In my opinion, the long wait was a big risk to take on Google’s part…I used to send people to JotSpot all the time. when Google acquired it and stopped accepting new accounts, I still sent people there, saying “I’m sure it will reopen soon, it’s worth it.” Eventually I stopped sending people there at all, and encouraged them to use other tools or to go to the trouble to set up their own intranet with software like Mediawiki, the tool that powers Wikipedia.

Well, as of today, I’m pretty sure I know where to send people for creating free, powerful internal websites: Google Sites, the new incarnation of what was JotSpot.
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No matter whether you have a huge advertising budget or you’re a one-person marketing department, viral marketing can play a significant role in helping you get the word out about your company or organization.

Viral marketing…
1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others’ resources

What are some examples of viral marketing? Blogs, e-newsletters, files that can be downloaded and YouTube videos are just a few examples of current viral marketing vehicles. Be creative, be useful and be interesting and your message will be shared - free of charge.

Creating an engaging website that keeps your users coming back over time can be an exciting challenge. One way to take on the challenge is to add a feature that encourages real-time human connection: a live chat room. Assuming that meeting in person isn’t possible or logistically easy, a chat room on your website can help bring your community of users together, allows you to be more efficient in your conversations, and creates a sense of freshness and relevance on the site itself.

This weblog entry will help you get a chat room installed on your site for free. Getting a feel for how to best manage a chat room once it is up and running…well, that’s a weblog entry for another day.

There are three main technical approaches to putting a chat room on your website:
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As the Internet continues to grow and change at a rapid pace, new and innovative website design possibilities become a reality everyday. For our company that means keeping up with the newest innovations in website design and programming, and for our customers it means a broader spectrum of opportunities to reach their target audience.

But more than that, this is a crucial time to understand and support Net Neutrality. Without the guiding principals of Net Neutrality to protect us and our customers from crippling restrictions imposed by large telecoms and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), today’s innovations in web technology may soon be out of reach for companies and individuals without industry connections or deep pockets.
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When Mac OS X Leopard was released in October 2007, there was significant outcry about a number of changes made to the built-in firewall. One security consultant even went so far as to call the firewall “a mess…so simple as to be nearly useless”. Apple soon released a few security updates that fixed a number of complaints about the firewall, but for me, a general sense of brokenness and distrust prevailed. Now we’ve upgraded some of our Macs in the office to Leopard, and recently my negative perception of the new firewall has changed.
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