And it's Getting Dark Now!

Nearly forgot that, it's Halloween now. UUAAAHH...

  ¶ 'And it's Getting Dark Now!' posted by eA : 4:41 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Search the Web's Brightest AJAX Libraries and Toolkits Having a passion for AJAX I did a bit of research on AJAX libraries and toolkits based on free OpenSource technology and created a comprehensive AJAX Search Engine. Currently it searches more than 30 top libraries and toolkits:

Presenting their highlights with AJAX demos, new features, sophisticated functionality, screencasts and individual control to the audience it's a pleasure to get inspired by an enjoyable and comprehensive AJAX experience.

Once you need an excellent IDE for JavaScript development give Aptana a try, it's Eclipse based and free.

More on AJAX:

• Sketching Early Stage Designs with AJAX
• AJAX Toolkits of course OpenSource
• AJAX Will Transform Web-based Applications Forever

  ¶ 'Search the Web's Brightest AJAX Libraries and Toolkits' posted by eA : 12:20 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Back in Black: CSS Rounded Corners New applications let users combine data and functionality from a variety of sources into a custom environment blurring the line between software and the Internet using an architecture of participation. AJAX is an ideal partner to design accessible, clean, fast and flexible interfaces for an infinite number of media and to complement modern SOA architectures.

• View CSS Rounded Corners Example

Labels: ajax

  ¶ 'Back in Black: CSS Rounded Corners' posted by eA : 5:15 PM  0 comments links to this post

  What Users Motivates to Engage Online In today's attention economy where infinite media choices offer numerous products and services to a limited amount of users it's even more important to deliver an outstanding experience to a coveted, but limited audience.

Experience showed that there are certain points that drive a rich online user experience. To become a rich online user experience, a product or service must address a user's interactive demand to connect with other people, to be as compelling to be worth to be memorized and shared, to extend one's horizon to make better decisions and to become smarter or to improve one's digital lifestyle and to look out for people with same interests.

Directing the creation of marketing tools, steering the execution of marketing and technology programs and successfully driving growth in targeted markets through implementation of key projects becomes more and more challenging as understanding rich user experiences is critical to success.

• Dedication and Competitive Drive Required
• Sketching Early Stage Designs with AJAX
• Ruby on Rails with TnT 2.0

Labels: markets, networking

  ¶ 'What Users Motivates to Engage Online' posted by eA : 12:45 AM  0 comments links to this post

  Dedication and Competitive Drive Required In skiing as well as in business and technology it is required to set and achieve goals, to have the dedication and competitive drive and to succeed even in outstanding moments.


The slide show will tell you about some of my favorite off-piste that l'Espace Killy offers in Val d'Isere: La Face du Charvet. I present these more to be viewed where we have skied rather than to encourage you to do the same.

The risk zero doesn't exist in the mountains. Off-piste skiing involves analyzing the mountain to find these safer areas, skiing in a manner that minimizes risk and being equipped.

• Watch 'Skiing La Face du Charvet' as a Slideshow
• Check your Body Mass Online
  

  ¶ 'Dedication and Competitive Drive Required' posted by eA : 10:14 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Fantastic Shot of a Sailfish Raising it's Sail

Although diving extensively in tropical open waters I've never been lucky to meet a Sailfish. Reaching speeds of up to 68 m/h it's the fastest fish on the ocean, it's an exiting and extraordinary opportunity to shoot such a photo of a Sailfish with it's sail raised. I'm really jealous.

Labels: photos, travel

  ¶ 'Fantastic Shot of a Sailfish Raising it's Sail' posted by eA : 5:29 PM  0 comments links to this post

  All one Needs is a Good Search Engine Some years ago when I decided to extend the personal and professional use of the Internet above the level of exchanging some pretty basic information I was amazed by the launch of a new product or service in Germany.

Today, 8 years after with an international experience a good knowledge of the consumer market, mobile and internet industries, well in particular, with an excellent knowledge of interactive Web platforms designed for consumer markets it looks different.

For most German retailers offering a web shopping cart means trying to follow and copy the Amazon model - tschibo.de, otto.de, quelle.de, weltbild.de, neckermann.de, conrad.de, buch.de - their number is endless, a shopping cart is a shopping cart with or without customer reviews, where ever they go, Amazon is already there.

German media company Bertelsmann continues to execute stop-and-go strategies - although everybody knew already years ago that the Internet will change the media landscape for ever they stopped their Internet activities and go now following MySpace planning a two-way interactive networking Web site - probably the next disaster following their previous effortless Internet investments.

They think they are new and innovative - I think they copy and follow.

All one needs is a good search engine, professional skills and creative thinking. Google's automated search technology enables one to obtain nearly instant access to relevant information, it's products and services are numerous and free of charge.

Ideal for me to focus on new and innovative challenges.  ¶ 'All one Needs is a Good Search Engine' posted by eA : 1:17 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Rapid Product Sketching with JavaScript (BMI) A Body Mass Index (BMI) is meant to be a simple classification system which measures one's individual body composition, calculates weight/height x height and returns a value in kg/m x m. It tells you about your constitution. Check it out, good fun:

• Body Mass Index

  ¶ 'Rapid Product Sketching with JavaScript (BMI)' posted by eA : 5:25 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Fog at Sunrise in Dubai

Flying with Emirates to a dive trip on the Maldives involves 9 h of pure flight time from Fankfurt/Germany to Male/Maldives and usually requires one stop in Dubai, well nothing special about that, usually it's clear sky and a hot sunny weather. The more I got surprised when I stumbled upon this amazing photo.

Labels: photos, travel

  ¶ 'Fog at Sunrise in Dubai' posted by eA : 3:23 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Current Business Models for Free Online Video As a result of the recent merger of Google and YouTube, which holds a tremendous amount of the current video market, services like free videos, shortfilms or TV-like streams and branded entertainment will provide a free audio-visual experience in future.

Complementing each other's services usually leads to an effective monetization leveraging network effects, in this case I'm thinking of accessing YouTube's community tagged videos and combining them with Google's algorithms and ad-technology.

Shaping a business model based on the idea of a community means to balance the divergent interests of users, artists, the entertainment industry and technology. Current business models for free online video include:

• Contextual, displayed, targeted and linked advertising
• RSS advertising
• Sponsoring and donations
• Affiliate programs and merchandising

I can't say how many people participate in and with videos regularly, but home-made videos are attractive, hype and innovative because they represent a service that would not make a commercial sense from a traditional media point of view.

As a user one doesn't have to care about video standards, just upload a film and the website does the rest for one while using a blog creating an atmosphere sharing video over the Web documenting individual experiences and videos and keeping in touch with friends and family has become one of the strongest growing fields on the Web.

Funny entertaining clips, international TV shows, sports related video clips and home-made amateur star videos dominate the needs of an international audience.

However that attractive user audience loving Internet-based clips and videos they can view, listen, interact with and participate when, what and how they want and technologies standing out by an intuitive and natural user interaction reducing the amount of friction for users to interact with rich media online makes me think if serious online marketing is shifting shift to an entirely new format: Video.

Home-Made Videos invade cyberspace, enter Video Top 100 lists with millions of views showing impressive amateur-made videos, personal mash ups of film screenings and discussion programs and reflect the diversity of culture.

I think the more we zap TV ads, the more important it becomes for brands to integrate products and services into the video programming and deliver an emotional outstanding experience for the audiences.

Labels: networking

  ¶ 'Current Business Models for Free Online Video' posted by eA : 1:23 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Getting Reflective with JavaScript Publishing to the web in a modern 2.0 art has become a vital trend over the last months. Apple does it already, of course in iChat, iTunes, iPhoto and even iWeb it can be admired: Adding glassy reflections to pictures and graphics.

There is several ways to get it done professionally, just check it out and have fun:

• The Photoshop way
• The JavaScript way

  ¶ 'Getting Reflective with JavaScript' posted by eA : 7:27 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Sketching Early Stage Designs with AJAX During the early stage of a product or service I'm often creating designs and mockups to visualize and communicate in an effective way, to define the use-case, to deliver functional specifications or to code with the purpose to

• create new opportunities for self-expression and collaboration
• complement and compete in products and services
• leverage network effects and monetization

Addressing a user's demand the number of required features, functions, tools and options of today's products and services is huge and in times of AJAX, Flash and Rich Media it becomes even more important to make clients fundamentally understand why they are a good thing. I've written already a number of articles to explain the basics:

• Trendspotting a Web of User-Generated Content
• Trendspotting Media Transformation
• Socializing on Tech-Based Interaction
• AJAX Toolkits of course OpenSource

The use of AJAX, which has gained a tremendous industry momentum by Google services like GMaps and GMail, provides a new user interaction model delivering highly interactive, desktop-like user experiences.

Building the case, AJAX Web-applications provide enormous advantages compared to conventional Web-applications, they avoid slow response times and scrolling after the page has reloded thus improve end-user productivity, lower bandwidth consumption and costs by partial page updates and reduce the time to wait for the next page.

Applied to eCommerce systems AJAX even increases revenues making new applications easy and intuitive reducing the amount of friction for end-users.

AJAX is based on open standards like JavaScript, HTML, CSS, DOM and DOM Events, XMLHttpRequest, XML and SVG, highly available in most modern Web-browsers and compatible with existing Web development technologies allowing a smooth transition to next generation Web-Interfaces with a strong ROI and requires new ways of thinking and skills, including strategy, creative and technology to help customers, clients, users, audiences and participants to fundamentially understand the advantages.

Light-weight collaboration techniques, user-suggested tags, bottoms-up approach are just a few expressions to name in this context.

Labels: ajax

  ¶ 'Sketching Early Stage Designs with AJAX' posted by eA : 6:10 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Ruby on Rails with TnT 2.0 The idea that people will pass on and share interesting and entertaining content can create a tremendous awareness of a product or service in the form of funny video clips, or interactive Flash games, images, and even text.

As products and experiences become more complicated or gain new capabilities new technologies, disciplines and the hyper speed of today's platforms require new ways of thinking and skills, including strategy, creative and technology helping customers, users, audiences and participants effectively use or experience these solutions.


Using a powerful Model-view-controller (MVC) software architecture applying principles such as 'Don't repeat yourself' (DRY) and 'Convention Over Configuration' Ruby on Rails (RoR) is an excellent hyper productive framework to realize new ideas and help customers, users, audiences and participants effectively use or experience these solutions. Having the Prototype Javascript Framework already in place it's easy to develop and apply usful dynamic visual effects and user interface elements based on AJAX.

An active creator today can enhance brand visibility and credibility, achieve customer intimacy or just simplify the process to find the latest information about new products and services allowing visitors to subscribe to blogs via RSS and be notified when posting something new.

As a passionate application developer it takes one afternoon from initial installation to deploying the first application. Just follow these guidelines:

• Learning Ruby
• Using Ruby on Rails

Labels: ajax, rails, tnt

  ¶ 'Ruby on Rails with TnT 2.0' posted by eA : 10:36 AM  1 comments links to this post

  Trendspotting Media Transformation A fundamental shift in the way teens use technology and media has taken place during the last months.

• Trendspotting a Web of User-Generated Content

TV consumption will remain forever, but it is no longer No1 priority among a coveted audience, the teens, who spend more time on the internet now blogging, video sharing and social networking. Business Week reported last week about the value of new media businesses:

'How much their value is rising, however, is becoming a topic of increasingly hot debate, among moguls in Hollywood, entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, and investors in New York.'

Digital content management and distribution systems based on access rights empower an increasing segment of users to edit, create and share content and utility-based hosting solutions ensure availability also during peak periods.

To take advantage of the business opportunities in media and entertainment industries a transformation of the traditional creative and business processes enabled by digital technology has to take place to create solid online communications, to serve the community with outstanding services, to ensure further developments and last but not least to hook in some of the best social turntables are some reasons.

New business models can evolve to create new levels of operational flexibility and operating environments can evolve to serve these models.

Media companies should (if not yet done) be able to form an attention loop to gather continuous feedback and establish a converged, flexible environment to optimize value for an on-demand world.

It does not mean to mess it all up from one day to another, not at all, it means to conduct a proper approach to managing risk and change as well as applying a lot of pragmatism and establishing a roadmap and toolkit for the journey to digitization. More  ¶ 'Trendspotting Media Transformation' posted by eA : 11:16 AM  0 comments links to this post

  Reaching People from 36 Countries Speaking 16 Languages Isn't it fantastic, within seconds one can take part in a worldwide distributed live-communication and reach an international audience living in states such as California, New York, Florida, Germany, China and even Israel and New Zealand?

Today the use of statistics has broadened far beyond its origins and within seconds it helps to understand data and make informed decisions throughout the natural and social demographics and other areas.

Connecting and socializing in a modern digital world involves many activities like getting the news, watching a video clip, research a product, manipulate a video, writing a blog or sending email, even scanning outstanding realworld things from the last summer trip. As the worlds of entertainment, computing, and communication go digital the trend has shifted towards digital media and an online lifestyle.

Hallo America how are you? The use of the mathematical methods of statistics just told me, that within the last 7 (seven) days my little blog reached people living in more than 36 countries including United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, France, China, Austria, Poland, Japan, India, Belgium, Italy, New Zealand, Croatia, Ireland, Brazil, Spain, Finland, Mauritius, Thailand, Iceland, Yugoslavia, Norway, Hong Kong,, Malaysia,Turkey, Sweden, Denmark, Indonesia, Hungary, Switzerland, Vietnam, Taiwan, Israel...


speaking more than 16 languages including English United States, German Standard, English, English United Kingdom, Dutch Standard, French Standard, Polish, Chinese PRC, Spanish, Italian Standard, Portuguese Brazil, Japanese, Danish, Hungarian, Finnish, Chinese Taiwan.


As a result of a constantly growing acceptance of social media the global audience has set a new standard for online creative content, online news, audio and video streaming with a potential to reach participators not bounded to a single geographical region or language and thus to broaden reach and to attract the attention of niche markets and markets that did not exist before.

Most visited posts during the last week include:

• Trendspotting a Web of User-Generated Content
• Fascination of Sharing Home-Made Videos
• Comprehensive List of Digital Video Distribution Networks
• AJAX Toolkits of course OpenSource
• Winning OpenSource Frameworks in Web 2.0

Immediate reactions on new products and services can best be monitored in blogs and other user-generated media like web pages, newsgroups, chat lines, forums and message boards.

I'm also expecting a lot more user-generated multimedia presented as moblogs, vlogs, photo sharing and podcasts.

Web 2.0 new applications let users combine data and functionality from a variety of sources into a custom environment blurring the line between software and the Internet using an architecture of participation.

Building the next-generation information infrastructures now exploiting the Web as a platform means to embrace the Web's unique strength: Interaction and participation. More  ¶ 'Reaching People from 36 Countries Speaking 16 Languages' posted by eA : 10:55 AM  0 comments links to this post