Working as a freelance web designer can be great and certainly very rewarding – but many people seem to have a completely wrong idea when it comes to this job, and consider it to be something much different than what it actually is. One of the things most often misinterpreted by people is that it’s easy to become a freelance web designer and get rich in a matter of months.
That’s actually the largest challenge you’ll be facing when trying to start as a freelance web designer – getting off the ground in the beginning of the whole ordeal. With the tough competition you’ll have, you’ll really have to have something unique to show to your potential clients if you want to have any chance of getting good jobs. Otherwise, you’ll have to start out with lower-paying jobs that also take up a lot of time, until you’ve built up a good portfolio.
Which brings us to the next point – it may seem that a freelance web designer has it easy with regards to their time and schedule, but it can actually turn into a nightmare if you don’t get a grip on it quickly enough. Scheduling your work isn’t difficult, the difficult part is to stick to that schedule when you’re in front of your computer at home. Once you’ve got that down, you’ll actually be halfway through the path to becoming a good freelance web designer – but it probably won’t be as easy as it sounds.
www.cbtplanet.com
Unlike file and e-mail servers, database applications require multiple copies in the production system. There should be versions for training, QA, patch, test, and a possible stand-by copy for purposes of disaster recovery. As production in the database grows, so will all copies, as it will consume large storage quantities.
Also, the government and other regulatory bodies are pushing for data retention. Healthcare data for example, needs to range from 10 years of patient records up to permanent storage of data for deaths and births. Some banks also need to retain data for 5-7 years to make sure that there are proper operational and financial records of businesses. Without proper data management strategy, the company will carry a huge burden since failure to produce records is no longer considered as a defensible strategy in court litigations.
Today when organizations are distributed at various locations, getting everyone together is a bit difficult at times. For instance, in case of most of the organizations, sometimes half of the team of a company would be based somewhere in the US, and half in some other part of the world. In such cases, web conferencing is a savior! Web conferencing technology is now a mainstream medium through which individuals or groups can meet face-to-face in real time to interact.
Web conferencing technology supports sharing of slides (PDF and PPT), video, whiteboard, chat, voice using Asterisk PBX, and desktops.
Web Conferencing features include the following:
• Asterisk based web conferencing allows instantaneous conference calling where the user can select any group of contacts, or any e-mail or calendar appointment and automatically initiate a conference call to all the recipients
• Web conferencing allows to join the Asterisk VOIP based voice conference from within the client using a built-in SIP phone
• Hosted Asterisk based web conferencing allows chat with other users including private chat
• Web conferencing facilitates to view the presenter’s slides and cursor
• It helps share a video stream (webcam) with other participants
• Web conferencing also facilitates uploading of slides (PDF or any office document supported by Open Office)
• In web conferencing, the presenter can mute or eject listeners from the voice conference. In web conferencing, the presenter can share their desktop (yes, even on Linux).
Also, don’t forget to enjoy the benefits of the best application hosting solutions, such as hosted VOIP PBX, Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, etc., which has become the preferred way for companies to implement business software.
Dynamic HTML or DHTML is a collection of technologies used together to create interactive and animated web sites by using a combination of a static markup language (such as HTML), a client-side scripting language (such as JavaScript), a presentation definition language (Cascading Style Sheets, CSS), and the Document Object Model.
A DHTML webpage is any webpage in which client-side scripting changes variables of the presentation definition language, which in turn affects the look and function of otherwise “static” HTML page content, after the page has been fully loaded and during the viewing process. Thus the dynamic characteristic of DHTML is the way it functions while a page is viewed, not in its ability to generate a unique page with each page load.
Read the rest of this entry »
A lot of websites fail to use their structure effectively for SEO. It’s just not one of the issues that tends to dominate. Site owners are so focused on the many other factors of SEO that they overlook one of their site’s major assets. This is a shame, because a bad site structure can put your entire search engine optimization plan in peril.
The restructuring of your site’s architecture is possibly the thing that will cause the most disturbance to your site, and it requires a lot of work. This is a reason many companies shy away from it. Site restructuring, however, is a basic search engine optimization technique.
A search engine optimization company will look at your site’s architecture if you pursue a site-wide optimization plan, and you can discuss this with us at www.seoconsult.co.uk. The reason behind this restructuring is usually because sites are created without link power in mind. Site restructuring for SEO involves creating logical paths through the site, which is of benefit to both site users and search engine spiders. It also involves the analysis of existing ranking power of certain pages and the strategic use of their ranking to support other pages.
It’s easier to understand the effects of bad site structure if some examples are reviewed.
Example 1: Misdirection and broad keyword use
Imagine that you are one of the millions of online retail sites around the net. You want to make sure that your customers can always find the page they want, so you provide links to everything from everywhere. In a basic example, your site might have a cuddly toys main page, and 50 cuddly toys product pages, all with roughly the same amount of content promoting your cuddly toys range. Each of these pages connects to the others with an equal number of links.
Because you want your site to rank for cuddly toys as a keyword, you might stick with cuddly toys as your keyword for all of these pages. As a result, the search engines aren’t being given any direction as to which page is the most important. Given a level playing field, the search engines are as apt to pick one of the cuddly toys product pages as they are to pick your main category page.
Example 2: Specific keyword use, link misdirection
Even if you do distinguish between the keywords for those pages, for example using ‘cuddly toys’ as your main category page keyword and then using ‘cuddly lion toy’, ‘cuddly elephant toy’ and so on for each of the product pages, the search engines are going to have a hard time figuring out which page is the important one. The keywords are similar enough that other factors are going to come into play. If the links don’t direct support to a main page, the search engines are still likely to choose one of your product pages.
Site structure is something you should consider carefully during your initial optimisation. Talk to your consultant about this issue.
Want to make your business intelligence assets, such as, SQL Server Reporting Services RDL files, Power Pivot files, and Excel files easily discoverable or searchable? Then here is a new add-on feature by Microsoft for the SharePoint Server 2010. Microsoft Business Intelligence Indexing Connector for FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint enhances search capabilities for Excel and Reporting Services reports and the underlying data sources that are part of the report. You will see improved results, descriptions, thumbnails, previews and have the ability to refine search results to quickly and easily find the information you need. In addition to finding the documents, the Microsoft Business Intelligence Indexing Connector can also crawl the data sources revealing items that are not necessary in the report itself but critical to the user’s discovery and as part of the refiners. Read the rest of this entry »
What is PerformancePoint Services?
Most of the time it happens that the metrics that make up your key performance indicators are not simple values from a data source. In SharePoint Server 2007 PerformancePoint Services, you could create two kinds of KPI metrics: Simple single value metrics from any supported data source or Complex multiple value metrics from a single Analysis Services data source using MDX. Now things are even easier with Performance Point Services in SharePoint 2010. Let us check what is it? Read the rest of this entry »
continuation…
James Gonzales also said:
Good Encoding Starts During Filming. In order for Flash Video to playback smoothly, it needs to have been shot well in the first place. That means using a still background, so that there’s no extra movement, and avoiding colors that don’t translate well.
You Can’t Edit While Encoding. Because encoding tools are used to create online video, people often assume that they can be used for editing, as well. For the most part, they can’t. While Adobe’s standalone Flash Video encoder lets people make simple trims off the front or back of a clip, it doesn’t offer true editing, and neither do the other encoders. For that, you’ll need a separate editing tool.
…to be continued
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and SharePoint Server 2010 are bundles of great, efficient, and helpful features. Yes and when talking about its features how can we forget about InfoPath Forms Services, right? InfoPath Forms Services is a server technology that makes it possible for people to fill out forms in a Web browser. By managing forms in a central location, you can streamline business processes and improve relations with customers, partners, and suppliers.
Take advantage of SharePoint InfoPath Form Services and other useful features of SharePoint 2010 hosting, SharePoint Foundation hosting or SharePoint Server 2010 – with shared or dedicated hosting by a SharePoint 2010 hosting provider.
Role of forms in SharePoint solutions
Forms play a significant role in all business process management solutions.
o Form-driven applications start with a form that is used to gather data and add in other SharePoint functionality to process and report on the data including workflows, reporting, custom Web Pages, and external lists.
o Document workflow applications automate document-based business processes. Adding InfoPath forms to workflows lets you gather information from the users at predefined times in the life of the workflow and let users interact with the tasks for that workflow.
o Business data applications start with data in an external system that is made available in SharePoint Server through Business Connectivity Services.
o Ad hoc business processes can be managed by using SharePoint lists. The forms used for creating, reading, and updating items in these lists can be customized by using InfoPath 2010.
o Document information panels use InfoPath forms to display document metadata within the Microsoft Office system client application.
Types of InfoPath forms
o Microsoft InfoPath Designer 2010 is used to create form templates. Form templates define the data structure, appearance, and behavior of a form.
o Microsoft InfoPath Filler 2010 is used to fill out forms that are based on form templates created in InfoPath Designer.
Key features of InfoPath Forms Services
o Custom data validation ensures that users don’t submit forms that contain invalid data.
o Customized layout helps simplify the form-filling experience by splitting forms into multiple pages or creating separate views that are optimized for specific users or tasks. Conditional formatting lets you optimize the form-filling experience. For example, you can show or hide fields in the form based on values entered by users.
o Data connections to other sources such as SharePoint lists or Web services let you pull supporting, contextual data into your forms.
All in all, by using InfoPath forms in your SharePoint solutions, you can ensure that only valid, good quality data is gathered. InfoPath 2010 achieves this by letting you standardize, customize, and optimize the process of gathering data without writing any code.
Do you want to know what you should not do when working with Flash Video? One of he country’s top flash video turners gave these answers when asked questions on what problems his students routinely had. The answers could save you frustration and time.
James Gonzales taught in classrooms, in online tutorials, in books where his experience in getting students to master Flash. A professor at College of Marin, in California, and the author of Macromedia Flash Professional 8 Hands-on Training, published by Peachpit Press, he has also written tutorial articles for InformIt.com
1. Video Capture Is the Real Difficulty. When teaching, Gonzalez often sees that capturing video gives his students far more problems that converting it. Getting the digital video they want into a format that can be encoded is the bigger headache. Often, students approach him with a commercial DVD and ask how they can get the content onto their sites. Gonzalez then needs to educate them about video formats�and digital rights.
…to be continued.