I just read about Googles plan for online storage here. But the question is, how useful would this be?

Don’t get me wrong, Google has some great services such as Gmail and Google Docs. But the problem with the GDrive is nothing Google can control: Download/Upload Speeds.

With time bandwidth speeds have been getting a lot better. But I don’t think we are close to being able to have a majority of our storage online. Imagine going back to the days of slow read/write speeds on a CD drive. That is what would happen if we moved to a model like this. Imagine trying to upload all your images, movies, docs, and backup info. Now most in the US are lucky to have an upstream of 1mbps. At that rate for every 24hrs of uploading you would be able to upload almost 9GB of data. Now if you want to upload your 250GB drive of data to start syncing to, it would take 28 days of non stop uploading just to get setup.

Now maybe I am being a little bit pessimistic, but I feel unless our speeds can increase by at least ten times this will not be viable.

Tell me what you think.

I just published a new version of software for the Medical Passport. This version (v1.3.0) has a number of new features.

• Easy Saving - The sofware no longer requires you to click a button to save your information. This helps prevent losing your information beacuase you forget to press the save button.
• Prefered Medical Facility - In your personal information you can have a preferred medical facility. This shows up in the summary.
• Dentist - Under the physicians there is now a place to add a dentist.
• Charting - This is much improved and pulls in more information for doctors to easily start and finish a chart.

There are other small bugs that were fixed plus small other enhancements that have been taken care of, but this software is turning out to be a great asset to doctors and patients alike.

I have been working on the new PlasmaCAM site for awhile. It employs a number of technologies.

The home page was made using Flash. We made sure and added links at the top and bottom for SEO value. The home navigation of the slides were done using Actionscript 3. All the slides are called from a loading php page in Actionscript, and all the slides are separate SWF files. This allows the ability to create a new SWF file and ‘plug it in’ easily without making any changes to the loading SWF file or the php code.

The rest of the site is database content driven. This is going to allow the ability to change text without going into the html and changing it. It is the step PlasmaCAM needed in separating the content from the style.

Other parts of the site, such as the owners community, uses jQuery and ajax functions to save user data and perform client validation.

So far the result are favorable, the conversion rate has almost doubled and the length of visit has gone up by almost a minute. This has been pretty consistent as it was launched at the end of November.

Ive written ajax request the long handed way using the long hand way of a XMLHttpRequest. It can be tedious and frustrating. Don’t get me wrong, it works great but building this functionality can take a long time, just to avoid a page refresh.

This is where jQuery comes in handy. In a few lines of javascript you can create quick ajax requests. This is how its done:

1. Download the jQuery library and include this file in your head tag like so.

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”path-to-file/jquery.js”></script>

2. Create a php file that will be called and return value to the DOM. This can be a simple file that echos ‘Hello World’.

3. Create a page element that receives the markup. Here would be an example:

<div id=”loadedContent”></div>

4. Now that you have a php file that returns content, and a page element that can recieve the content you can now create the javascript/jQuery to make the ajax request and input the results into the DOM.

<script type=”text/javascript”>
$(document).ready(function () {
$.post(”hello-world.php”, function(data){
$(”#loadedContent”).html(data);
});
});
</script>

That’s it! On the page load it should request the page. You can go further by using simple click events and send simple name/value pairs using the same request. jQuery is simple and easy to use. If you have any questions please leave a comment.

After downloading and installing chrome, here are my first thoughts.

1. Its fast, but when many tabs are open with flash it slows down a lot.

2. Its simple design turns me off. Don’t get me wrong I love simple design, but when I feel like more functionality is lost it crosses the line. I’m used to Firefox with custom add-ons such as firebug and such. I have the feeling that more browsing tools are being taken away.

3. I have the feeling in the back of my mind that Google is using the browser to monitor browsing habits just like many think is happening with Analytics. This may not be true, but one has to wonder if rankings may depend on how often a site is visited using Chrome. I’m not saying this is how they will rank sites in the future, but could be a factor.

Those were my first thoughts on the beta of Chrome. It has potential using the webkit engine if it was more customizable and I didn’t feel like half of my browsing experience was taken away.

Just released! I just finished developing a new version of the Medical Passport. This new version adds charting to the Passport formally called Electronic Medical Record. So in short, if you are away from home, and something happens, a new doctor can create a chart that is stored on your medical drive. Then when you get back to your doctor, he/she can see exactly what another doctor has done or given you. I am continuing to develop for Essential Medical and there are some new and exciting things coming up that should be a great asset for the medical community. See the features of the EMR HERE

I have had an interest in affiliate sites for the last few years and its looking more appealing all the time. I have seen great success from others in this area and have about a half dozen idea floating in my mind for doing this. I will most likely try both sides as an affiliate and a host of a program for a few different sites. One site i will be offering a program for is Essential Medical. This will work similar to the distributor section just online. For every refering site that sales either a download or drive Essential Medical will pay $5.

Also on the other end of things, I am looking to be an affiliate for a few differnt sites and will be setting up specific blogs and sites just for this purpose. I will document my findings as I progress.

Here is the rest of the list.

1. Watch your load speeds. As a lot of people are on dial up, load speeds are an issue. No one wants to wait along time to have a page load. More and more are moving to faster connection speeds, but still a large percentage of people are still on slower speeds. While adding images or even thinking about video, remember load speeds.

2. Do not play music on your home page automatically. This has been mentioned by many books and design sites, yet still designers do it. For one most find it annoying when it starts, and two it can alienate people from your site because in various likes in music. I you must have music for example, a band site, give the user an option to turn it off, or have volume controls.

3. Easy to use navigation. This one is pretty important. Users want to know where they are and how to easily get to where they want to get. Make the site map of your site easy to read, and make the structure easy to follow. Also the navigation bar should be easy to read and consistent throughout your site or application.

4. Colors of text vs. background should be pleasing. There are always those sites that use red text over bright blue or something similar. Then you try to read the first line of text and go cross-eyed. Black texts on a white background is preferred, but if you need to use different colors, make sure the text is easily read, and does not strain the eyes.

5. Content. Write content for your site that is appropriate. Do not try to combine 3 businesses into one site as users will get confused as to what they are looking at. For example, if your site is about skiing in Aspen, do not try to run an online poker page from the same site. Domains and hosting is cheap enough to separate your business ventures.

6. Spelling goes a long way. Make sure you run your content through a spell-checker. I find even large corporate sites have very easy to fix spelling errors. Simple spelling errors put off users. If you can not spell right, it shows that a user cannot trust you with a product or service either.

I am making a list of mistakes in web design. I know, there has been tons of these lists on other sites. But this list is different, it also takes into account newer technologies that have been used over the last few years. So here we go:

1. Write for web not print. In the text of your sites make short easy to read paragraphs. You are, most of the time, writing to explain a product or service, not write a novel. If the first thing a user comes up against is a wall of text, more than likely they will leave.

2. Write articles on the web on one page. This is a common complaint I have heard lately from people. I have never done it but have seen many people split articles into many pages for no real reason. Make pages contain information people are looking for without looking for a next button. They would rather continue scrolling than click to 5 different pages for the same article.

3.With the big hype of AJAX, don’t overdo it. Make sure you have a purpose for using it. Google maps have a valid reason for updating maps, but to go to a site filled with cheesy dropdowns and auto completes for no known reason is bad design.

4. Do not overuse animations such as Flash. These technologies serve specific purposes. Flash is great for interactive elements in a site such as video or animation, but search engines do not know what content is in a .swf file so cannot index it. Plus people do not like splash screens, they want the website.

5. Do not use popups on your site. With the huge push on internet security, users mostly view popups as spyware or annoying ads. If you must use popups, make your user aware by spelling it out on your site that you use them. This will make them more aware that you use them and that they should expect content from your site to be displayed using them.

6. When linking, do not use the target of _blank. Most users are still using non-tabbed browsers. Users can find this obtrusive and feel like your site is opening windows for them.

That is just a few tips on design, I’ll give you six more in a few days. Stay tuned.

Like most other software developers and web designers we have trouble with some clients. I really feel the problem to this is a client does not understand the work and effort that goes into a site or software package. If a client saw what was involved in the Software Development Life Cycle and designing a functional database or design they may think about things a little differently.

Clients should think of software or a site like a house. Once a foundation is down, any drastic changes are costly. With a house, if you decide to add a room half way through, you have to get plans re-approved for loads and building codes, drastic changes need done, and the extra labor in building the extra piece. The same is true with development. If you have a database and software halfway through being built, and a client requests a change in structure, there can be many effects in database integrity, other pages or forms affected, and the extra work to build.

This shows that even small changes to software can affect many aspects. Without fail, this also pushes out deadlines and increases costs as a lot of work needs to be done to make the so called “easy change”. Please keep these in mind when working with a developer or designer. They will be happy, it will cost you less, and the chance of the project getting done on time will increase.