News

Other than website design, I love reading about how our simple industry of designing and developing websites is advancing. It becomes even more exciting to find out that our progression is almost on the same level as the development of new website programming languages.

Previously while reading UX Magazine, I discovered such an article by David Armano. He shares his view of what’s happening to designers today and what would be happening in future looking at the trend of how designers are required to evolve today.

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Every time I’m having a discussion with a customer, the topic of email spam isn’t a rare item. It’s even more surprising learning that most small-medium business owners don’t really take into concern for the safety of their corporate emails. Imagine spending countless hours having to filter out your business email from junk email sent by spammers. How much business are you losing by spending time deleting useless emails than replying high priority emails from customers?

It’s advisable today to not list your emails on your website. Reason being is that we’ve heard countless stories of how spammers can ‘sniff’ out lone emails placed directly on websites. On the other hand, if you can’t help it and have invested in an up-to-date spam solution then there’s nothing much can be done.

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It was like every Monday today except for one difference. A visual came to me while struggling to get out of bed to start the day. An idea struck me and I started wondering, what if we actually had an interface to choose a dream of our choice.

What will it look like? How will it work?

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If you do a define search in Google for the word webmaster, you’ll find all the description rather similar in duties. The main tasks of a webmaster is maintain and administer a website. In actual employee talk it could really mean several things. It could be that you’re expected to handle tasks from design to programming to updating and maybe to even marketing or what you really do is update text and images on the website.

The humorous part about this is that instead of calling personnel who manage websites; webmasters, any more. We are now branding them as Web Managers instead. This instantly reminded me of Zeldman’s article; Web 2.0 Thinking Game.

So let me try this game here:

Web 1.0: Webmaster
Web 2.0: Web Manager

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Malaysia clients are suckers for the Flash trend. One look at competitor websites that have Flash and a chain reaction of jealousy (not envy) jumps in. They want something alike if not better without having foresight and care for their customers.

I even intentionally asked a prospective client if I’m looking to buy your product, what will I be doing on your website? It was easily answered; to find out more information about their product. The next scenario I follwed up with was if I was there to find more information, why will I be looking at the ‘moving element’ on the website?

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If you haven’t heard, the government is pumping billions of Malaysian Ringgit into the Ministry of Tourism next year. Why the large investment into that specific account? Well, if you’ve been counting the years of celebration, next year is our 50th birthday.

Other than the Tourism Malaysia website that I think needs a new refreshing outlook, we’ve also got a cyber campaign running in conjunction with Visit Malaysia 2007. The Visit Malaysia Cyber Campaign (duh!) targets to invite the world to visit Malaysia by relying on pure Malaysian spirit to send out email invitations, e-card invitations and even SMS invitations to your friends overseas.

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There wasn’t much advertising done to promote the Merdeka Blogger Project (MBP) this year especially by senior or already popular bloggers. I probably could start listing the excuses and assumptions of why the project isn’t so popular this year but I’ll not. I’d rather just like to say the project registration will still be open until the next Merdeka 2007 and bloggers can still celebrate the Merdeka message MBP is communicating this year.

The weird thing I’ve noticed is that everyone assumes the celebration of Merdeka is all about the history involved. It’s all about Mr.Tunku Abdul Rahman standing on a podium and lifting his hand a couple of times screaming the words, Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka! The criteria of unity is one of the things to celebrate on Merdeka but haven’t you ever looked beyond that?

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One of the biggest events is coming to Malaysia in just 2 days; Merdeka Day. While everyone’s trying to place the biggest Malaysia flasgs available on their ‘Kancil’ cars, why not blog on this proud day and become a Merdeka Blogger. I’ll tell you what’s a Merdeka Blogger and what makes a blogger become one. :)

Bloggers who blog on Merdeka day are called Merdeka Bloggers not just because they’re writing an article for that day. They can only be called a true Merdeka Blogger if they’re writing with patriotism for their country and most importantly, themselves.

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The last Weekend Mail (Malay Mail) frontpage article was so inline with the quality trouble of blogs in Malaysia. So what does a blogger with 3 years plus experience in the local blogosphere do, he decides to cry and tell the tale of truth to the media.

I found the time on Monday to write an article to the Malay Mail email provided and voice out my concern, my beliefs and my observation of what’s been happening to our local blogosphere the past few years. It might be read as insulting or it might be read as another blogger trying to be in limelight but my peers and blogging friends would know me best for being the honest person.

This is what I wrote to the Malay Mail on that dark Monday.

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Digital Web Magazine recently interviewed Veerle Pieters and I really liked some of the answers over there. I liked it so much that I want to share it here and remind myself as well as any designer they should be proud to be a designer whether or not others respect them as one in Malaysia.

Veerle who runs duoh! and her own personal blog is one of the celebrities in website design who designs very well and supports website standards as well. She’s spoken at two SXSW conferences sharing her insight and giving words of advice to other budding website designers. Without further due, I’ll tell you why I like Veerle Pieters after reading the interview.

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