| LED Digest 2070: Learning In This Enviroment |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. January 9, 2006 Issue #2070 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ======= NEW ==================== --== Learning In This Enviroment ==-- ~ Salem Kashou "Is there anybody out there?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== The Good, Bad, and Ugly in Site Design ==-- ~ Lee Roberts "Is there anything that I would consider a plus in their design?" --== Voice Over IP Technology ==-- ~ Steven Rothberg "Isn't true competition great?" ~ Dave Roberts "Competition will keep prices low!" ~ Viggie Bala "[This technology] can serve business needs better than home needs at the moment." --== Screen Display Sizing ==-- ~ Rick McLean "This is my first 'read' of LED..." ~ Brad Waller "There is a reasonable solution to the fixed table vs. percent issue." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Internet Radio -- ~ Jennifer Thomas --== The 'Net Habit of Skimming ==-- ~ Kathryn Martyn =========== NEW ================================== From: Salem Kashou Subject: Learning I am having a hard time learning in this environment. Too many ideas and opinions expressed here are leaving me feeling paralyzed. If we don't reach consensus, it's all babble... How can we refocus and consolidate all the good points so that we can quickly determine how to proceed with certain web development strategies? I'd hate to be a beginner using this forum... sorting through (sometime way too long) each point and reconciling strong ideas and trashing the weak ideas. Is there anybody out there? Salem Kashou, Marketing Manager Kangaroo Brands, Inc. www.kangaroobrands.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Lee Roberts Subject: Good bad ugly > The first site is called Fables, Fantasy and Fairy Tales... > The site has won the Golden Web Award five years in > a row and was designed and created by a local company. - Tom Aman, LED 2068 When I checked for the Golden Web Award Web site, it no longer exists. I attempted to call Alexis Carter, owner of the site and the phone number is disconnected. Don't know what happened to Alexis, but hope all is well. Since the Web site is no longer up and running, even by IP address, I must go on memory. As a note, all of the sites for these awards or even the IAWMD.com Web site no longer exist. The list of sites included: iawmd.com diamondwebawards.com platinumwebawards.com goldenwebawards.com tlance.com cgisrus.com The last recorded version of the goldenwebawards.com Web site is from April 1, 2005 as indicated by the Wayback Machine (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.goldenwebawards.com). The Golden Web Award was given to anyone who submitted for it. It did not mean the site qualified or met any specific criteria. However, the higher awards, such as Platinum and Diamond, offered through that site did have some strict criteria. Alexis was smart even in the early days when links were not as valued as they are today. Simply by giving away buttons for awards the attention Alexis received was great. Does it mean that the site, www.fairys.com, warrant any special considerations in design? Not really. The Wayback Machine, http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.fairys.com/, shows the site started in 1998. The style of the site hasn't improved since then. Is there anything that I would consider a plus in their design? Unfortunately not. The splash page is old-school - couldn't with the audio since I don't use speakers on computers - with the internal splash page causing too many jumps to get to the information. The site needs a total redesign with a stronger attempt to make the site more user friendly. Lee Roberts http://www.applepiecart.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Steven Rothberg Subject: VoIP I read Marsha Kopan's concern [issue 2068] about possible VoIP price increases with interest because we've use Vonage for our home phone for a couple of years. Until they came along, the only choice that we had was Qwest. Let's just say that their reputation for terrible customer service was well earned. As soon as we had the opportunity to switch, we did. Vonage has been great. Mostly. We've had repeated problems with their voice mail system, such as the problem they had last week where their system caused our phones to indicate that we had messages waiting even though we didn't. But you can call and actually speak to a real person within seconds. You can email and actually get an intellible reply back within hours. And it is hard to beat unlimited local and long distance calling with all the voice mail, caller id, etc. bells and whistles for $25 per month. I do not share Marsha's concern about VoIP price increases simply because it is a very, very competitive market. Unlike traditional telcos with their state-mandated and archaic monopolies, VoIP companies actually compete for business. If you don't like one, it is very easy to switch to another. And now that number portability has become a reality, you no longer have to give up your phone number if you switch carriers. So might Vonage or any other other VoIP telcos try to raise their rates? Sure, but they'll quickly lose their customer base unless they provide much greater service than the others. Isn't true competition great? Steven Rothberg, President and Founder CollegeRecruiter.com job board http://www.collegerecruiter.com The highest traffic career site used by students and recent graduates. ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Dave Roberts Subject: VoIP You don't need to worry much about VOIP rates going up, since the VOIP companies don't have any way to lock you in. Once you have broadband, you can use any VOIP provider. So if your broadband provider wants to raise rates, then you can just call Vonage or Lingo or one of any number of others. Competition will keep prices low! Dave Roberts http://www.davedoesitall.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Viggie Bala Subject: VoIP The VoIP services can serve the business needs better than home needs at the moment. In the US they are already trying to present it as a replacement to normal phone. But it needs to run a few more development laps to achieve that. > The other thought is that they are coming in at a low price now > but once they've made their billions are they going to raise their > rates or come up with other gimmicks? - Marsha Kopan, LED 2068 While the VoIP services are cheap, the providers are actually making money. You can see that a lot of smaller companies are in the field. They don't have to invest heavily to start a service. They also don't have big pockets to serve at a loss. The prices will remain this way and can only go down. Many predicted that in future voice calls will be free. Apart from the VoIP services in which one has to depend on a service provider, the multi-location, multi-office businesses can benefit from running their own server at their office. The open source Asterisk PBX software (www.asterisk.org) is already became industry-standard. Consider this, if you have offices at 3 cities you can have a single intercom setup for all your office. You install an Asterisk server (open source application that runs in Linux) at your head office and IP phones at all locations are configured to this server. Calls from one office to another is an intercom call. If you are visiting from one office to another, you can still carry your number and answer the calls at the same number. You can also make outgoing calls through normal analog phone service, just like ordinary PBX. The incoming calls can land on the Asterisk server. The server greets caller and provides a voice menu. From there the call can reach to ANY person at ANY of your office. And if the caller knows your intercom number (say, 203) , they can straight away punch that no. The cost? Apart from the server & network running cost (offices are already networked so no special charges here) and broadband (which is already there for offices), the cost is nil. There are no subscription charges. Now if you have 20 offices in 12 countries the Asterisk usage procedure is still the same. From your office in USA you can talk to your company offices at UK, Poland, China or India on your office intercom. The cost savings on phone calls are really huge. Of course, you can't rid with your analog phones yet. But all your inter-office calls will not go through the phone company. All you need is an Asterisk Server and IP phones at your offices. The server can be entirely managed through web browser. Regards, Viggie Bala Helping Websites to Work http://www.viggie.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Richard McLean Subject: Display size This is my first "read" of LED, so if this has been posted, please accept my apologies. Back in the early days of web browsing, there used to be a web site that would, for a small charge, show you what your creations looked like on different platforms. It was very low tech. It captured a frame from each web cam pointed at each hardware/browser combination. However, it was good for finding problem combinations, a lot cheaper than ordering lots of hardware and a lot faster than loading browser after browser. If someone is able to fine it again, please post it. Rick McLean ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Brad Waller Subject: Display size There is a reasonable solution to the fixed table vs. percent issue. The problem with percent only layouts is that sometimes the page looks pretty bad with a narrow browser window. You may set the percentage, but that is only a "suggestion" to the browser when it needs to try to render the page. Columns set to be narrow might turn out to be wider than others that are supposed to be the fattest. Try making your window 500 pixels wide (or even 300) on a percent site and sometimes they start to look really funky. What you can do to fix this is decide what the minimum size should be for each column before they look bad, and then insert a 1x1 transparent GIF pixel into the header cells, but set them to the desired width (i.e. width="108") for each. This will constrain the minimum size, and then let the cells expand on your own terms for users with wider windows. In the case where sites look better "narrow" and you want to use fixed widths, you can center the page (but still have the text normally justified) so that it will look better on a massively wide window. You can also use background images and/or colors to improve the look of the "white space" for these types of designs. Brad Waller Manage and Sell your own site advertising http://adjungle.com waller, adjungle.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Jennifer Thomas Subject: Internet Radio I have a client who wants to start an Internet radio station. I looked into live365 but would like other options. Does anyone have any previous experience or info to share? Thanks, Jennifer Thomas ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Kathryn Martyn Subject: Skimming > Absolutely, edit the content so the skimmers > can get the core messages easily - but don't > think everyone is a skimmer. - Michael Linehan, LED 2068 Hi Michael, I didn't mean to imply that content should be pared down, just that those headings are critical. My point was we should not assume people are reading our carefully crafted content. If you use headings to lead a skimmer, plus the content for those who want it (more detail, etc.), you have win/win. Here's an excerpt from "Don't Make Me Think," that outlines the concept well: http://www.sensible.com/chapter.html Kathryn Martyn, M.NLP Ending Emotional Eating, One Bite at a Time http://www.onemorebite-weightloss.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2006 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. "There's more to life than books you know, but not much more." - The Smiths |
