Web Jive - The Buzz on Web Development

Getting Video off of YouTube

2006-12-13T16:19:00.000-06:00

I had to go through the process recently of trying to figure out how to download video from You Tube for a video my brother was putting together. A process like this can sometimes be difficult since you don't know what to download and what's going to install spyware on your computer. So here's a sure-fire way to download video off of YouTube.

So, here's the process for taking video off of YouTube:

Download and Install the Riva FLV Encoder here - http://www.download.com/Riva-FLV-Encoder/3000-2140-10320097.html
Copy the URL of the You Tube Video you'd like to download (ex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2kJZOfq7zk)
Go to Video Downloader here - http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php

Paste the You Tube Video URL in the textbox
Select "You Tube" from the dropdown
Click "Download"

While still in Video Downloader, select "Download Link"

Click "Save"
Be sure name the file with the .flv extension (ex: mymovie.flv)

Next, open Riva FLV Encoder

For the "Input Video", select browse to find the flv file (mymovie.flv)
Select the proper "Output Directory" for where you want the file to end up.
In the "Destination video file" box, change the extension to the file you'd like to covert it to (ex: mymovie.flv to mymovie.mpeg)

Finally, click the "Encode" button (this process may take a couple of minutes depending on the file size)

And there you go! YouTube video at your disposal.

Online Sitemap Generator Tool

2006-11-28T21:14:00.000-06:00

If you haven't heard already, Google, MSN, and Yahoo have joined forces in support for a single xml sitemap format - Sitemaps 0.9. In the easiest terms, sitemaps are xml formatted files that provide a way for a website to list the URLs (along with related data) so that search engine spiders can index the website in the easiest way possible. It's basically an easier way for us (webmasters) to talk to search engines and recommend to how we'd like to have our websites crawled. This is great news! There is now a common sitemap protocol which will alleviate the drudginess of having to create different sitemaps for each search engine. In light of this merging of forces, the big three (Google, MSN, and Yahoo) have announced the launch of www.sitemaps.org, which will provide details of the current release of the Sitemaps protocol and will include future updates.

OK, so now that that's out of the way, it's time to create an xml sitemap. This can easily be done in notepad if you have a site with a small amount of pages (50 or less). You just need to follow the correct protocol (syntax). On the other hand, if you're working with a site larger than 50 pages, then you may want to consider a sitemap generator. Google provides a long list of third-party recommendations. My personal favorite is www.XML-Sitemaps.com. It's as simple and inserting your domain and letting it take care of the rest. Depending on how big your site is, you may need to wait for a bit. Once finished, it will spit out a fully formatted and compliant sitemap in several different formats of your choosing (up to 500 URLs). Go ahead and check it out!

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Gears of War Trailer

2006-11-22T09:07:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure if I would classify myself as a "gamer", but I recently saw a trailer on TV for the new XBOX 360 game Gears of War and loved it. The part that stuck out for me is that it wasn't just another commercial - it was remarkable and compelling in every way. Not only did I love this commercial but I had to find it on the internet and watch it 3 more times. The brilliance and creativity that went into this trailer is like nothing I've ever seen. The music was chosen perfectly and in 1 minute of time a story is told that intrigues anyone who watches. While I have no idea if the game is truly worth the hype, I have no problem admitting that I am now compelled to buy an XBOX 360 and Gears of War. The amazing part is that I know I'm not alone on this either...case in point - the music used ("Mad World" by Michael Andrews) has jumped into the top 10 songs on itunes within the last two days...it came out 6 years ago. Need more evidence? Gears of War has now become the fastest selling 360 game ever. If I wasn't a "gamer" before, maybe I am now. Check it out: Gears of War Trailer (HD)

Don't Commit Spam Suicide with Email Marketing

2006-11-06T23:08:00.000-06:00

So you're at the realms of launching a major campaign and you're realizing that your current email subscriber list is outdated and under-developed. You're confident this campaign is going to be a huge hit - that is if you can just get an audience to check it out. So how do you find and captivate a new audience? The decision of purchasing email lists is a process that gets abused too often. The truth of the matter is that your purchasing decision can really hinder your credibility and push you to spamicide (a status where you or your company is now associated with spam). Sure you can easily go online and buy a list of email addresses from a handful of vendors and move on with things, but do you really know where these vendors are getting these emails from and are they ethically responsible? Let's break it down - if the company you are buying the email addresses from is focused on selling email addresses, then take your que and leave. Once you've taken your ethical leap away from the spam vendors, here's how you build your list.

Determine your target audience - I mean really figure out a group you need to focus on.
Determine the established third parties associated with the target audience - focus on magazines, publications, websites, or companies of interest.
Rent their lists - many third parties will be will be open to negotiating a deal in renting their lists. These companies will most likely verify your credibility before signing off.

Truth be told, some publications, companies, or related online businesses rent their email lists out for a price. Is this ethical? Most of the time - yes. This works because the people on these lists have already agreed to receive newsletters (or offers from third party partners) that have been approved by the company. I've been involved in email promotions where I've rented email lists and have had surprisingly decent results. The bottom line is that it is more ethical and technically "kosher". Overall, I firmly believe you will have better results and you'll be able to sleep knowing everything's right.

Few things to note: On many occasions you usually aren't allowed to send the email out directly. Don't worry, this is actually a good thing. You will need to provide them with your templated email in which they will then wrap their branding around the outside which states something along the lines of "This offer is being presented to you on behalf of ". Think of it as being introduced to somebody rather than introducing yourself. Your initial acceptance will be much more conventional and received.

18 Question Checklist Before Building a Website

2006-10-30T20:33:00.000-06:00

So I came across a great article the other day called 18 Questions Your CEO Forgot to Ask When Building Your Website on www.stuntdubl.com. Not only does it hit the mark in outlining a "strategically correct" approach to building a company website, but it also provides some great resources with each source cited. Every web consultant should add this to their collection of resources.

Achieve Google Sitelink Status

2006-10-26T23:44:00.000-05:00

About 1 year ago, while surfing the web, I came across a very bizarre but interesting feature in Google’s result pages with a phrase I queried. I noticed that the top result for that query was displaying 4 "meekly" named sub-links for the website. After doing some research, I discovered that they were officially called Google Sitelinks (aka - Google snippets, snippet links, or website categories). I took an interest in trying to figure how I could achieve sitelink status, so I decided to set my sites on achieving this for one of my client's websites. After 4 months of research and testing, I woke up on October 11, 2006 to Google's re-cached version of my client's site - it had assigned Google sitelinks! Whoo-hoo!

I then took it upon myself to analyze what I had changed with the site since I set my sites on this... So what are sitelinks? As Vanessa Fox from Google puts it - Our systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they’re looking for... Google claims that the process of generating sitelinks is completely automated based on the website's structure as well as the query relevant to the user. While Google has released very little information about how this process is truly generated, I have discovered some interesting theories concerning sitelinks. How do you achieve sitelink status? So Google claims that the process is completely automated, but I say that is false. The sitelinks under my client's site (as well as a few other sites) are not named in reference to their titles, sitemap links, navigation, or anything that I could find. The names are very clean, simple, and semantic. Somebody must be on the other end validating these and giving the final thumbs up. It is true that your site can lose it's sitelinks upon re-caching. In my research, cambriausa.com came up with sitelinks with the query "cambria". Then, just recently, the sitelinks were gone. I have no concrete explanation for this, but my theories lean towards possible broken links or decrease in traffic. The sitelinks come from the top-visited pages and the pages that have the highest PageRank on the website - false and true. Based on my research, sitelinks are a combination of the top-visited pages, most linked to, most funneled to, longest user time duration pages in addition to other significant benchmarks. Google may also be using it's toolbar for help in establishing sitelinks - possibly through it's "bookmark" feature. Basic Guidelines:

The site must show up #1 for a specific proper noun keyword (or keyphrase) - typically involved with a company name or brand Good: "nikon cameras" - Bad: "cameras"
The site must have maintained the #1 position for a substantial amount of time
The keyword (or keyphrase) must show up in the title and meta-data somewhere
Must include an updated sitemap - with no broken links
Easily spiderable and good, clean navigation
Additional pages must have a significant position in Search Enginer Result Pages
Additional pages have unique titles and meta-data
Site validates with few errors and few broken links

Tips & Tricks:

Avoid changing the site structure
Include an XML sitemap in your root directory
Heavily validate your site through W3C
Include robots.txt in your root directory
Create pages under semantic principles and naming convensions
Site achieves 1000 or more visits a day (on average)
Site must have a substantial depth of pages (25+)

What to do next? Focus on optimizing your website and establish a good plan for the sub-pages you'd like to include in optimizing. The great thing is that Google has expressed interest in possibly expanding it's sitelinks program to include webmaster input in the future. Resources & Articles: - Information About Sitelinks (Google Webmaster Blog) - How do you compile the list of links shown below some search results? (Google Webmaster Help Center) - Google Sitelinks: New Name For Those Links Under The Top Listings (Danny Sullivan) - Google Web Site Categories Explored (Search Engine Watch) - UI Fun: Better Snippets (Matt Cutts) - Google's New Sitelinks (SEO Buzz) - What are Google Sitelinks? (Jonathan Hochman)

Top Web Blogs

2006-10-17T22:13:00.000-05:00

This is a compilation and repository for the best blogs of the web based on SEO, Web Design, Web Development, Web Marketing, etc.

Rondam Ramblings - Top Ten Geek Business Myths

2006-10-05T20:09:00.000-05:00

I recently came across this blog posting by a venture capitalist named Ron Garret explaining the Top Ten Geek Business Myths. If you're looking to start some new business ventures then this is a must read!

Click to Activate Flash Fix for Internet Explorer

2006-10-03T22:12:00.000-05:00

So by now you may have heard of Microsoft’s latest “pain in the”…I mean “patch” for Internet Explorer. Whenever a user comes to a page with embedded flash content, IE will display a “click to activate” message when you hover over the flash object. Here’s the latest fix/workaround for getting rid of the “click to activate” pain in 3 easy steps.

1. Place the following code in an external javascript file called external.js:

function LoadFlash1()
{
document.write('<object classid="clsid27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab #version=6,0,29,0" width="701" height="214" noexternaldata="true">\n');
document.write('<param name="movie" value="flash/car.swf" />\n');
document.write('<param name="quality" value="high" />\n');
document.write('<embed src="flash/car.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="701" height="214"></embed>\n');
document.write('</object>\n');
}

2. Put this in the head of your page:

3. Put this in the place you want the Flash to show up:

This should remedy your problem until Microsoft comes up with another way to make web browsing difficult on us.

Worst Domain Names of the Web

2006-09-23T16:32:00.000-05:00

After coming across many different sites with postings on the worst domains of the web, I’ve decided to compile my own list. These are all legitimate websites. The sad part is that most of these are unintentionally inappropriate. Let me know if I’ve missed any good ones. Enjoy!

www.BillGotHard.com – Bill Gothard Dedicated to helping youth and families make wise decisions Sorry Bill, but you’ll be staying away from my family and youth.

www.BlindSexPress.com – Blinds Express The best prices in blinds Is this similar to the Bench Press?

www.BsOfElPaso.com – Business Services of El Paso I’m glad somebody has finally owned up to the BS.

www.ChoosesPain.com – Choose Spain Owner Holiday Rentals I’m guessing the other choices were pretty bad…

www.CummingFirst.com – Cumming First United Methodist Church God can’t be too happy about how this turned out.

www.DaleShitChinStation.com – Dale’s Hitchin’ Station False advertising…Dale does not have a butt chin.

www.DicksOnWeb.com – Dickson Chart Recorders I’m going to keep quite on this one.

www.DieselShitMen.com – Diesel’s Hitmen I guess that’s what happens when you eat piece’s of sh** for breakfast.

www.ForDowners.org – Ford Owner’s Association This is place to be if you want all your hopes and dreams crushed.

www.GotAHoe.com - Go Tahoe Online Is this a question or a statement?

www.IPAnywhere.com – IP Anywhere Essential Tool for PCAnywhere I think you should keep this to yourself…

www.LaidAHo.com – LA Weight Loss Center in Idaho This is just wrong.

www.MoFo.com – Morrison & Foerster Legal Services Let’s get those mofo’s on the phone.

www.MolestaionNativeNursery.com – Mole Station Native Nursery Michael Jackson has given his full endorsement of the Nursery.

www.MomSexChange.com – Parked by GQ Domains I need to go call my Mom---Er---Dad---ahhh….

www.Mp3Shits.com – Mp3s Hits These must happen after mass consumption

www.ProgrammerStools.org – Programmers Tools Can you vote on your favorites?

www.SpeedoFart.com – Speed of Art Bona Fide Art Direction The old fat guy at the beach did one these the other day.

www.TeacherStalk.com – Teachers Talk Education Now Stalker of the Week goes to Jane from Ms.Wilson’s 5th grade homeroom.

www.TheRapistFinder.com – Therapist Finder It’s your life…Treat It Well. I hope nobody is this deperate.

www.ViagraFix.com – Via Grafix The new way to learn This is just plain stupidity…

www.WhorePresents.com – Who Represents? Find an Agent Gifting others is an act of kindness.

www.PenisLand.net – Pen Island Custom Pens This one is way too easy…I’ll let you comment on it.

Pop-up Banner Ads – Do’s & Don’ts

2006-09-12T21:04:00.000-05:00

The web is filled with annoyances and right at the top of list stands the infamous pop-up banner ad. Just recently I received a request from a client who wanted a banner ad on their website so they could display a “special offer” for their customers. To the client, this seemed like a brilliant idea… There are many uses for the pop-up, but I have yet to find any blogs that define best practices. Based on my own experiences, I’ve compiled my own ethical standards for using the pop-up. Nowadays, the web is crawling with spyware, adware, and malicious material, which has led to a highly skeptical audience of web users. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve come across whose pc’s are loaded with virus’s and malicious advertising material. These people don’t even want to deal with their own computers because it’s so saturated with junk. A lot of this junk contains malicious advertising software that will constantly throw pop-ups on their screen until they are blue in the face. It seems like the only solution is to give-in and buy the TV being advertised. What's more frustrating is that the sucess rate for pop-up banner ads is between 2-5%, which isn't bad. The tradeoff is that you'll see the exit rates for the page go up. Trust me, I can assure that you’ll see an increase. Bottom line here is that the users are crying for help and the browsers (IE, Firefox, Opera) are beginning to answer. Today, every browser is coming with a built-in pop-up blocker. Based on usage statistics, that means that 70-80% of users are currently using browsers with built-in pop-up blockers. With that said, in order to have a pop-up achieve its true potential, you are going to need to stop tricking your users and simply tell them that they should have pop-ups enabled. The absolute worst way of displaying pop-ups is on entry pages. Remember, you have only 10-20 seconds to prove to that user that they should stay at your website. Why even take that risk? For me, when I hear the “click” of the pop-up blocker on an entry page of a website, I immediately leave. Seriously people, what does that say about the rest of your website? Users (as a whole) have developed a negative connotation of pop-up’s, which means you need to be ethical and smart if you choose to use them and if you want to keep the user’s trust. If you have an unsure feeling about a pop-up then you probably shouldn’t use it. Then ask yourself, do you want to have to deal with this when you search the web? Don't forget that you have an alternative solution to use a link with a target=_blank, which will open to a new window. It’s as simply as that. Do - Open a link to a new window - it won't get blocked example - Make the user aware that you will be using a pop-up! - When the user clicks a link. - 2nd Tier (and beyond) web pages on your website. - Display pop-ups with a purpose: - PDF, word/excel docs - Help windows - Other files - Displaying pictures. - Surveys (sometimes) - Addition forms that require additional space. Don't - Use (Avoid for Body Onload) window.open(theURL,winName,features); - Use pop-up’s on entry pages! - Use more than one pop-up at a time. - Display cheesy ads. A majority of users frown upon this. - Display random sign-ups for newsletters. Although I love reading Sitepoint articles, some authors are notorious for doing this. Place the sign-up in the page, you'll get a better response anyway. Useful Articles/Resources - Create Dynamic Pop-ups in XHTML 1.0 Strict Pages by Michael Rainey - Practical Web Design - Pop-ups: Malign or Maligned? by Mike Tuck - Pop-up Blocking Stats by Matt Mickiewicz - To Pop, or Not to Pop by Chris Beasley - Accessible Popup Links by Caio Chassot Stop tha' Pop!

Web Marketing – Part 1: The Web Marketer

2006-09-10T20:41:00.000-05:00

As a web consultant, I frequently cross paths with marketers who believe marketing and web marketing are one in the same. To a certain degree, that's true. Trying to define the differences can be challenging and takes an understanding of both sides. Either way, today I’m going to set the record straight on web marketing. Just 5 years ago the web was simply just another medium for a company to advertise itself with the dependence on web in a very skeptical stage. While just getting over the dot-com bust, most companies were reluctant to invest time or money into their websites – it just wasn’t a safe investment. Dot-coms were dropping like flys. Since that time, the web has vastly changed and people have started to gain their trust back in the web, thus resulting in the emergence of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is marked as the turning point in the web, making it more important than ever before. Web 2.0 signifies new technologies, better security, faster internet connections, stronger web resources, as well as many other things. Web 2.0 has increased the importance in the web thus directly affecting the importance of company websites. With that has come the materialization of Web Marketing. Most people will argue that “marketing is marketing is marketing.” The truth is that Web Marketing is a whole new specialty that formulates into the combination of marketing, technical web knowledge, web best practices, and marketing best practices. Let’s be honest, just like any other profession, web marketers come in all different shapes, sizes, and skill sets. A successful web marketer will contain an understanding of web trends, marketing trends, and, web marketing trends. Let’s examine each… Web Trends and Skills – As you already know, websites are all composed of many different technologies and languages. Having a basic knowledge of the technical makeup of a websites is of great advantage to a web marketer. There’s always a small change or fix that is needed on the website and a web marketer will be required to get their hands dirty in certain situations. A basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is a must, while having a broad idea of server side languages is an added plus. With the knowledge of HTML, keeping the website W3C compliant should be a relevant and frequent task. Basic design skills in Adobe/Macromedia products (ex: Photoshop, Illustrator Dreamweaver, etc.) will play a major part in usability and proper design techniques. The technical abilities will abdicate well in scoping and implementing web strategies. The web marketer must fulfill the communication gap between the techies (developers, or "geeks") and the business users. Marketing Trends and Skills – The marketing aspect of web marketing is fairly straightforward. Employing proper marketing techniques will help a web marketer discover the needs and wants of prospective customers as well as help them satisfy those needs. It’s important for a web marketer to understand their customers and users. Many successful websites put usability and design at the forefront. The web compliments good creativity and frowns upon bad creativity. Implementing positive marketing ethics is important since competition is stiff in the web. Search engines are getting better at catching unethical practices, so consider yourself warned! Web Marketing Trends and Skills – Finally, we come upon the most important piece of being a web marketer – the integration of the web and marketing. A web marketer will need to have a strong mix of creative and technical skills for drafting Web Marketing Strategies, using web technologies, and analyzing internal web trends. Web Marketing Strategies involve a combination of Web Strategy, Web Usability/Design, Marketing Optimization, and continued analysis. While some simply call use the phrases “web strategies” and “web marketing strategies”, marketing is a crucial aspect of these strategies and must not be left unnoticed. Strong skill sets reside in a good understanding of the primary technologies included in email marketing, analytics, SEO, SEM, and strong web content building. There’s a vast array of tools in the world wide web that provide good solutions for these technology needs – a web marketer must be on their toes to provide the best solutions for each specific situation. Strength in knowing how to integrate web tools with each other will provide exemplary company value. Next, analyzing the results of implementations and strategies will provide tangible value for business users. A strong trait in web marketers will reside in their ability to employ web best practices in all web technologies and strategies. This comes with successful experiences as well learning from failed attempts. It's true, finding qualified web marketer’s for companies come few-and-far-between. Since web marketers are still pretty rare, the pay is good and the position stands in growing demand. Time will tell with what web marketing evolves into, but my guess is that it will only become more prevalent as the web moves into its next stage(s). Like the universe, there is still much to discover in the web. The opportunity is yours to discover the depths.

Hello World

2006-09-05T09:34:00.000-05:00

As a professional web developer and web analyst, I spend hours upon hours on the internet in order to figure out ways to improve and enrich it. I have almost 2 years of professional web development experience under my belt and it's become less of a job and more of a passion. I've had the pleasure to have been involved the development of many websites including www.minco.com, www.lundboats.com, www.lundsmarket.com, www.byerlys.com, www.forthejourney.com. I've worked with ASP.Net (C# and VB.Net) and PHP with past projects. I am at a stage where I am sponge to every piece of information I can get my hands on - I can't get enough information and I'm constantly learning new things. While the web is my specialty, I also have knowledge and interest in other areas of IT. As I start my blog, I will be documenting everything I learn and you are welcome comment and add things. This will act as a resource for myself and you are welcome to use it as a resource as well. Happy Tuesday!