Category: General

AJAX (or Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) is one of the many new web technologies used for creating interactive web applications. Despite the hype, the technology has been around for some time, but its only recently that the technology is becoming mainstream. This is mainly due to Google maps (maps.google.com) which uses AJAX to the fullest. Notice on Google Maps it allows you to move the map without reloading the page… at all!

Usually in web applications, the interaction between a user and the web can be described as either client-side or server-side and AJAX shifts interaction squarley to the client-side, meaning that all the data is exchanged on the fly and not behind the scenes.

What this means is that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time a user makes a change, thereby increasing speed, interactivity and general usability.

Examples of AJAX

• AJAX login demo
• Scriptaculous Lists with PHP
• Lots of AJAX Demos
• Article on AJAX
• AJAX Tutorial

Problems with AJAX

AJAX however does have it’s downsides. One major complaint is that it might easily break the expected behavior of the browser’s back button. For example, users generally expect that clicking the “back” button will undo their last state change – it is unclear whether in AJAX this happens.

Accessibility has also been touted as a major challenge for web developers who are interested in adhering to WAI accessibility guidelines. (note: they are *guidelines*, not rules!) What this means is that developers have to provide fallback options on users on other platforms, or how may be disabled and so cannot use some of the finer controls that AJAX utilises.

Summary

Personally I think AJAX is a cool technology, sure it uses a heck a lot of JavaScript programming, and sure I can certainly see that it has many accessibility concerns; but it does make the websites much easier to use and much more fun.

Whilst AJAX is being touted for the Rails framework, it can be used in other languages such as PHP, ASP, and .NET.

I think AJAX is at home for content management, and even WordPress 2.0 has started to use it. In a couple of months time, I predict AJAX technologies to be more mainstream in web applications and will be the stepping stone towards the much hyped web 2.0.

News of the World gets its pound of flesh

So Sven’s leaving after the 2006 World Cup and, if you believe the News of the World or other newspapers of the kind, it wasn’t too soon.

In my mind the English press always had it out for Sven since the get-go. He wasn’t English they cried. He doesn’t do the coaching they yelled. He doesn’t get angry, upset or show any emotion (good or bad) when England lose, or conceede a goal and doesn’t rant and rave from the dougouts they bemoan.

The press always want to have a dig at Sven and in the News of the World case they even gave Sven his own shovels. Sure he was naive, he was unflattering about players and the whole situation was beyond farcial, but was it REALLY necessary for the NOTW to bring down the England team?

What’s ironic is that when England get into the competition the News of the World will be fully behind him, and his team and will be distributing face masks of Sven, England flags and have headlines screaming “Come on you boys!”… and you know what, it’ll be totally hypocritical and I for one won’t buy their sudden change of heart.

So, the press get’s its pound of flesh and now they want to install another manager, but he *must* be English – but none of the top managers have true International background, nor have the top English managers won any major trophies to even compare with that of the International stage, and even the newspaper cliques themselves know that the way the National team plays is significantly different to the Premier League; so what’s the point of appointing someone that hasn’t got the experience?

If we are going to replace Sven, we need someone with an edge, or an X-factor; something that signifies he is not only tactically sound, but will actually get the team winning and will give the motivation that the press “demands” so that even if the team does lose a game the press won’t suddenly ask for the England manager’s head on a steel plate.

Another issue is why would anyone want to manage England? It’s a poisioned chalice, every paper is friendly one day then asking for your head on another, and if they can’t get you out by bad headlines – they by hook, by crook or by misdemenor.

You know what, maybe this will inspire the England team to go to that extra heights… and if we do win the World Cup, I don’t think the press should get any recoginition or claim any of the glory, nor let it have any stories that start “THE [enter newspaper name here] wins the world cup!”

After the dust settles, and all is said and done, who in their right mind would want to manage England? I don’t think I would! Would you?

Find good business offices, property and location in Newcastle-upon-Tyne can be quite hard if you don’t know where to look or how to start.

Here are some good resources to help you get started;

1. Office premises in Newcastle-upon-Tyne
2. Office premises in Gateshead
3. Office premises in North East

I recently watched a DVD video for the Asian Tsunami called “The best comedy DVD in the world”. Although the DVD can never really deliver the “best” comedy dvd in the world – but it did come close with a few Richard Pryor sketches…

But the best bit of the DVD was the showing of the famous “Four Yorkshiremen sketch” from the hit show At Last the 1948 Show which starred such lumaries as John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Marty Feldman and Tim Brooke-Taylor.

The sketch involves four Yorkshiremen who compare their difficult childhood upbringing, each trying to outdo each other in every respect with a game of perpetual one-upmanship which turns to obvious and blatant hyperbole by the end of the sketch.

A game called Yorkshiremen sprung from this sketch.

Here is the full sketch in full,

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Nothing like a good glass of Chteau de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You’re right there, Obadiah.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Who’d have thought thirty year ago we’d all be sittin’ here drinking Chteau de Chasselas, eh?

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o’ tea.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
A cup o’ cold tea.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Without milk or sugar.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Or tea.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In a cracked cup, an’ all.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Because we were poor… My old Dad used to say to me, “Money doesn’t buy you happiness, son”.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, ‘e was right.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, ‘e was.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
I was happier then and I had nothin’. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, ‘alf the floor was missing, and we were all ‘uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t’ corridor!

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we used to dream of livin’ in a corridor! Would ha’ been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, when I say ‘house’ it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
We were evicted from our ‘ole in the ground; we ‘ad to go and live in a lake.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t’ shoebox in t’ middle o’ road.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Cardboard box?

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t’ mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi’ his belt.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o’clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of ‘ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to ‘ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o’clock at night and lick road clean wit’ tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit’ bread knife.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ….. they won’t believe you.

ALL:
They won’t!

Resources:
Four Yorkshiremen Sketch

Marketing plans… “why do I need a marketing plan”? “my customer is everybody”, “marketing plans suck”, “marketing plans don’t work” — excuses range from the extreme to the petty; nobody seems to like doing marketing plans. I personally hated marketing research plans and often thought them to be a real waste of time.

But I think marketing plans have become a tainted word. They confuse, bambuzzle people and make us (business start-up companies) feel inadequate when there’s no real need to be.

I think the basic’s/foundations of a marketing plan are quite simple:

1) Who is your customer? The most common question I’ve heard is “who is your customer?” — you need to describe how much they earn, where they live, what car they drive — all these questions tell us who you’re targeting.
2) Why would they buy your product? — why would your prospects buy your product/service? Don’t say quality – everybody has quality products/services… plus I’m begining to think quality is another word for satisfactory. Dismiss satisfactory; aim for delighted raving fans!
3) What makes your customers needs unique?
4) What problem does your product/service solve?
5) What are the ways you will use to reach them? Direct mail, posters, leaflets, web, referrals? Pick one and dominate it!

There are tons of questions relating to marketing plans, just do a simple one — think of 10 really hard marketing questions (or, better yet, do a search) and help draw up something that’ll postively move you from business idea to business plan.

Time Magazine has put together a collection of the 50 coolest websites of 2005!

The full list can be found at:
http://www.time.com/time/2005/websites/

Turns out Donald Trump doesn’t just have an online university, but he also has his own blog – which gets plenty of comments, heat and feedback *sniffs*

Link: http://donaldtrump.trumpuniversity.com/

Of all the Internet buzzwords, E-business is perhaps the most mis-understood. We see e-commerce every day. From e-bay to Amazon, e-commerce allows the consumer to buy, sell and pay for products and services online. We also see e-marketing from search engine results, from e-mail lists and viral marketing campaigns.

But what about e-business? What is it, and why should you care?

(more…)

Here are a list of great questions, openings and closing statements that you can use in your business.

Ive taken most of these from Guerrilla Negotiating, and the 250 Sales Questions to Close the Deal;

1. What were your goals for todays meeting?
2. What is your main objective?
3. Before we get into any depth, can I get your agreement on the analysis? Will you look at the facts and decide for yourself if they make sense?
4. How do you plan to achieve that goal?
5. What is the biggest problem you currently face?
6. What other problems do you experience?
7. What are you doing currently to deal with this?
8. What is your strategy for the future?
9. What other ideas do you have?
10. What role do others play in creating this situation?
11. What are you using now?
12. What do you like most about it?
13. What do you like least about it?
14. If you could have things any way you wanted, what would you change?
15. How will this affect the present situation?
16. What would motivate you to change?
17. Is there anything else youd like to see?
18. How much would it be worth to you to solve this problem?
19. What would it cost if things remained as they are?
20. Are you working within a budget?
21. Just out of curiosity, how did you get to that figure?
22. Are you working towards a particular deadline?
23. How soon would you like to start?
24. When would you like to take delivery?
25. What do you see as the next step?
26. Who else, besides yourself, would be involved in reaching a decision?
27. On a scale on 1 to 10, how confident do you feel about doing business with us? What would it take to get it up to a 10?
28. If we do X, do we have a deal?
29. Have you ever worked with a company like ours before?
30. When should we get together to discuss this again?
31. What else may be prohibiting us from moving ahead?
32. Have I covered everything? Is there anything I am not asking?
33. Is there anything else youd like me to take care of?
34. It makes sense to me what do you think?
35. Why dont you give it a try?

Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay, is listed as the #1 most powerful women in business, according to a list prepared by fortune.com

“The empress of eBay still rules Silicon Valley. Though the stock has had a tough year, down about 30%, revenues and profits are strong. To keep eBay expandingit now has 68 million active usersWhitman has gone shopping, buying seven new businesses for more than $1.3 billion. Up next: the controversial $2.6 billion acquisition of Skype.”

The list also includes, Anne Mulcahy – CEO of Xerox and of course, Martha Stewart – Founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

See the full-list of the 50 most powerful women in business