Archive for the 'editorial' Category

Common HTTP Error Codes and Designing for the User Experience

HTTP Status/Error Codes provide valuable metrics about the ‘health’ of an application and its use.  Online Producers, Developers and Designers should be mindful about the most common Error Codes, and what kind of information and tools should be displayed for users when these errors are inevitably encountered.

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This is the professional blog of Eric Marden, a veteran web developer, entrepreneur, and inspirational speaker.

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The Google Enigma

Google-As-A-Giant-Robot

Whenever a company becomes wildly successful in a brief span of time, it naturally becomes an object of fascination for corporate executives and even the general public. More than that, it comes to be presented as a new model for business success. Reporters and scholars scour its history and its practices, looking to distill general lessons for other firms to copy. Google is no exception.

For all its success, Google is still a young company, and it has yet to be tested by adversity. We don’t even know whether its approach to management, and in particular its approach to innovation, is a cause of its success or a product of its success — a crucial distinction.

Interesting stuff. More here.

Amazon announces SimpleDB

This is going to be huge! Combine it with their other services, and you have maximum scalability for any project. Media Temple (my current host) may lose me after all of this comes out of beta. I am already using S3 for backups and will begin rolling it into all of my upcoming podcast projects. I’ve been flirting with this Ubuntu AMI (Amazon Machine Image) on their EC2 platform, with good results. Keep ‘em coming, Amazon.

Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time. This service works in close conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), collectively providing the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud. These services are designed to make web-scale computing easier and more cost-effective for developers.

Learn more and sign up here.

Google Maps Mobile Adds My Location

Google Maps Mobile, has just been updated to add a slick new feature that helps pinpoint where you’re at using the Cell Towers for triangulation. If you have a GPS enabled phone, it will use that instead. Its pretty accurate, so far - usually pulling my location up within 3 meters (with my new Blackberry Curve II).

After the jump is a video explaining how it works.

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PayPerPost Bloggers Losing Pagerank

TechCrunch reports:

If participating in PayPerPost wasn’t questionable enough morally before, today it’s now a poisoned chalice as Google has commenced punishing PayPerPost bloggers by completely removing their page rank.

This story hits close to home, both as a blogger - and as an Orlando resident - where PayPerPost is HQ’d. I’ve never really seen the benefit - except to advertisers - to use any good will and influence I’ve built up on my sites to push products on my audience that I didn’t believe in. And while IZEA, the company behind PPP and other Social Media Marketing efforts tries to balance their commercial interests with social awareness, Google’s move against them was warranted, in my opinion.