Introducing Blog Lessons for Bloggers

Hello everyone, Danny Foo here and I know I’ve been not blogging lately. Business has been busy for Simpleet Solutions and the company is cashing in on a number of current projects. At the moment, we’re in the midst of creating an application and winning customers with other proposals.

Besides the great business relationships we’ve established, I’d like to personally create a better and stronger relationship with readers who’ve been with me all these years. Therefore, I’d like to introduce to you a new category for this blog called; Blog Lessons.

Read more

I've got a 'Knack' for Web Design

While browsing through my daily library of websites, I stumbled on an engineering website that wanted to express their non-lack of sense of humor. And I must say, they did it very well with the inclusion of a cartoon by Dilbert. Don’t know who’s Dilbert?

Dilbert is a popular American comic strip. Written by Scott Adams, the comic is known for its heavily satirical humor about a micromanaged office, featuring an engineer as the title character.

Source: Google

Read more

How Much to Pay for a WordPress Theme?

This topic is not old nor new in this industry of web design with its sister industry; blog design. That is why while part of the blogosphere was discussing; How much would you for a wordpress theme? at WPDesigner.com, it didn’t drove me into much of a discussion.

The debate of cost is as subjective as a design itself. Many people made of designers, consumers, marketers, managers and directors have their own take of this topic. This is one of the reasons I don’t believe in having a standard cost to my work. The only thing I truly believe is a minimum cost when I’m hired to do a project.

Read more

TMNet Could Be Losing 80% of Business

I’m currently at the One Utama, Starbucks Coffee outlet with my lil ol white Apple Macbook. While waiting for my girlfriend, I expected to logon to the free wireless normally provided by Timezone. It was after buying a drink, finding a comfy one seater sofa and sipping on their signature hot chocolate and trying to connect to the Wi-Fi did I notice there wasn’t Time available here. Bummer!

I had 2 options which was to either sign up an Airzed account or a TMNet Hotspot account. Both are premium services and I’ve never really believed in signing up for anyone of it. My reasoning is if you’re a customer, you’re technically ‘paying’ for the usage of their Wi-Fi. Nonetheless I have around 1 hour to kill so I decided to might as well register with one.

Read more

Malaysia Politician Contradicts Himself

I can understand the dangers I might be treading on here but the Internet to me is freedom of speech while I’m normally a responsible writer and don’t take actions that could threaten myself. Therefore, in this case it is my personal opinion of why I feel the Internet industry in Malaysia is still slow especially in its content area.

In The Star today, there was an article titled; Don’t quote websites, says Zam. It’s about our current Information Minister advising the newspaper media to not quote websites (or even weblogs) of their content because they are made by “frustrated journalists or frustrated in politics” and that’s a direct quote.

Read more

QUIZ: Spot the Similarity

Before I head off to bed, I’d like to leave my dear readers and visitors with a small quiz. I’m sorry to say there are no prizes to be given away – maybe in future. However, reason I’m doing this is to see if you can spot a similarity I’ll continue to discuss on tomorrow when I resume this entry.

So let’s get started. Spot the similarty between these 2 different websites; Happy Cog and The Blog Studio. Below are the screenshots if you don’t feel like visiting them.

Happy Cog web design The Blog Studio web design

Please subscribe to my comments after you’ve guessed to instantly find out when I’ve updated this post.

Read more

Monitor Website Statistics with Google Analytics

Once upon a time when Google was still offering GMail accounts via invites, they introduced their website statistics application called Google Analytics. If you hadn’t known, this was only after Google purchased the web analytics firm; Urchin. The analytics application was on an invite basis as well and I was one of the lucky ones to get it early.

Ever since I started using Google Analytics to monitor few websites and customer projects, I’ve totally fallen in love with it. The application is not only powerful but it allows me (as a web designer) to track important data. That said, if you only want to get a kick out of the number of daily visitors to your website then Google Analytics will give you a boot later.

Read more

Maybank2u myzone Web Design Contest

Updated: September 4, 2007
Closing date is now September 15, 2007 (12:00AM)

While doing some online banking at Maybank2u, I became curious of a new area called; myzone. I found out myzone was meant to be Maybank2u for teenagers. Talk about building a brand to reach the youths.

So anyway, while I was there snooping around I found something of my interest. In conjunction with the launch of Maybank2u’s new myzone for teenagers dubbed “It’s my account, it’s my freedom”, they’re holding a web design content. Interested yet?

Read more

Book: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

While reading one of my newsletters from Sitepoint, they recently released a book titled The Principles of Beautfiul Web Design and it became already sold out!

I’ve followed Sitepoint for a good period of time and the first book I bought from them while still in Melbourne; Build Your Own Database Driven Website is still used as a reference for me. What I seriously like about their books is because it’s not overly technical and the guide is made simpe so it doesn’t confuse you with too many tech jargons.

Read more

Good Help is Hard To Find

Last week, I did a presentation of what Simpleet Solutions had to offer clients. I talked about the processes and strategy we take to build them a website with a unique web design and solid web development foundation that wouldn’t only work now but is also expandable in the future.

Ever since I started Simpleet Solutions and presented to the medium sized audience, we’ve had inquiries pouring in about our services and rates. It’s good to see a new business grow exponentially with the principles of web standards especially in Malaysia. But like simple marketing, you need to supply enough to the demand.

Read more