News

I might actually be the last to know here but while flipping through my daily NST today, I discovered hidden in the corner a small visual of a local minister being in a Podcast. When I first saw this I thought if it were a local or international blog but then noticed the local .com.my domain to the URL.

Digging into the archives, the Monster Blog created by NST has been launched since early July around 12-13. Looks like I’m getting rusty and local happenings aren’t going too well with me. But not to fret, I’m still here sharing what I know with those who want to know. :)

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When designers say Adobe others will say Photoshop or Illustrator. When website designers say Macromedia (acquired by Adobe in 2005) we’ll say Dreamweaver or Flash. If you said Microsoft to a clerk or an accountant, they’ll say Word, Excel or Powerpoint. But what happens when Microsoft decides to become like Photoshop or Macromedia?

You get the Microsoft Expression applications aimed at graphic designers, interactive designers, website designers and yes, I said de-sign-ers. The introduction of these new applications aimed at professionals might be the replacements of Frontpage and Paint. You also may download the free trial availabe for either one at their website.

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It’s not going to be long now before the new Wufoo form creator invades the Internet offering free form creation for beginners, website designers, website developers and to who ever that needs a form that tracks valuable required data on their website.

The Art of Wufoo Form Creation is something I just can’t express how happy I am to have a service like this now availabe. However, I can tell everyone a lot about the inside of the application and how it’ll make your life easier when creating forms and having a place to store important data when I received the Invite to Wufoo.

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The homepage is one of the more important website design I spend most of my time on when helping a client come up with a new website template. Not only is it the first landing page customers experience normally but it’s the doorman of your website. If your website design or website architecture is not optimized then you get a rude doorman answering to your customers.

Homepage design nowadays are unique and have adapted the one page sales letter concept. If you’ve seen a website trying to sell you something, it’s a long page with a lot of content about the product and very little website design.

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A friend of mine related an unhealthy working experience he had with a client and he’s thankfully granted me this opportunity to share his story here. The story I’m about to tell you describes the unpredictable and sometimes unproffessional action a client does.

My friend provided his services of helping a client design a brochue and booklet. The relationship acquired in this early phase was smooth sailing and the contract was signed even. After the work was done, the client reviewed it and was very happy with the results so all payment was cleared up between the two. But here comes the unpredictable thing the client did.

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Many sites fail basic tests of Web usefulness and usability. One reason is that
designers and stakeholders use false assumptions to rationalize poor decisions.

This causes problems like: barely legible text that annoys customers, forced
registration that cuts into sales, inappropriate ad formats that hurt brand, and
rejection of great ideas that result in missed opportunities.

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I was never a student in business administration much less had fun doing accounts no matter how easy it was in secondary school. But I grew to love the subject of marketing especially the creative and behavioral patterns involve in it. I never knew how exciting and challenging creative marketing could be to sell a product or service.

There isn’t a definitive term to website marketing strategy even after I tried to dig an answer out of Google. So here’s what I interpret of a website marketing strategy. It’s simply a plan to help market your website. The word market has different meanings but the core term we’re looking for is trading or selling.

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I just got a spam in my Inbox of a local workshop, talk or seminar going down in Kuala Lumpur on the topic Search Engine 101. The event only might interest me in what the speaker has to say in the second half after lunch. Yup, it’s going to be a whole day affair for anyone willing to pay RM499-RM599 per person.

The speaker is Ms Meng who probably is working with a local company called Webflexx. According to the spammed newsletter, she’s been very involved in the web scene and has been managing lots of public listed companies and etc and other marketing jargon you’ll read on 1-page ‘buy this now’ type of websites.

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It was back in March that many were warned of the threat or problematic occurence of the new update. Maybe it wasn’t so bad back then because it was few months ago and there wasn’t so much to worry. Not to mention the implementation or affects of it was actually taken for granted.

And I for one didn’t expect it to be so much of a problem. I’m not sure all of you have heard or read this before but when embedding Flash, there’s a lot of fugly code to deal with. You’ve got the OBJECT, PARAM and EMBED tags. The more important of the 3 are the OBJECT and EMBED for Internet Explorer.

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Hawk shared a blog entry by Andy Rutledge with me. Andy’s blog called Design View has got numerous entries regarding design and the one Hawk passed to me was definetely worth highlighting. :)

Andy created a small multiple choice quiz testing the knowledge of design fundamentals and certain involving elements in website design. I think everyone who claims they’re a website designer or have attended design school should take the Andy Rutledge Design Test for a spin.

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