Web Professional Minute

Aloha and Welcome to Today’s WOW Technology Minute

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce B2B eCommerce spending in the U.S. alone is projected to be $1.3 trillion by 2007

If you’re looking to take advantage of a piece of this growth consider taking a closer look at the following specialties that employers/agencies are looking for the most.

Strong design or development skills with a strong business sense. The name of the game is “return on investment” and nothing excites managers and business more than a solid designer or developer with an understanding of their business model and the metrics used to measure their ROI.

Seriously, if we’ve learned anything over the last few years, it’s common sense. For you to be most valuable, you have to provide the most value. Understand the opportunity and goals your position represents for a ccompany. Understand your need to provide constant value.

Remember, there’s always a market for quality service and understanding where you offer the most return on investment for any potential client or employer is a critical success factor.

For more resources tune into the wowtechminute.com.

From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii, this is Brent Norris for The World Organization of Webmasters and The WOW Technology Minute.

Aloha and Welcome to Today’s WOW Technology Minute

Network Security is big business and important to us all. The Yankee Group predicts huge growth in the U.S. From 330 million today to 800 million by 2008. The growth is a result of enterprise security breaches and growing concerns for public policy regulations.

For fat contracts, big paychecks, and long kudos’, The The World Organization of Webmasters recommend that web professionals consider complementing their expertise in the following areas:

-Risk management. Get your head around the potential risks including external AND internal threats.

-Public Policy. Understand the ?€œSarbanes Oxley?€ act passed by the U.S. government. This act requires U.S. publicly traded companies to follow rules relating to IT.

-Specifying Solutions . Do not depend on sales people to spec out your security requirements. Ask yourself the questions your boss or client would ask if security is breached.
From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii, this is Brent Norris for The World Organization of Webmasters and The WOW Technology Minute.

Aloha and Welcome to Today’s WOW Technology Minute

MSN Search is strategic for Microsoft. This means they pour millions of dollars into something and we check it out to see if we like it.

I like it. My favorite part is the ability to ask questions. I type a question in the search box, like, “Who won the 1976 Daytona 500?” A window at NASCAR.com pops up with the answer, David Pearson who won what is is still considered the greatest race of all time.

I also enjoy the “Near Me” or local feature. I type “hospitals” into the search box and click the “Near Me” button. The results show me the nearest hospital and also a few closer clinics. A click on the Virtual Earth feature reveals all the important information about the hospitals in context. I like that.

Questions answered, local results and the new Virtual Earth are all great reasons to check out MSN Search. Oh and it’s probably a good idea to preview your own listings to make sure anyone searching for your products or services can do so easily.

From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii, this is Brent Norris for The World Organization of Webmasters and The WOW Technology Minute.

Aloha and Welcome to Today’s WOW Technology Minute

This is the season for paying taxes and watching out for online scumbags.

As the April 15th tax filing deadline approaches, cyber-scumbags are planning attacks on nice people simply trying to pay the man, online. That’s right tax filers, you’re the target of these scumbags and we’ve got some help.

Today Websense Security Labs announced that they have seen a rise in phishing attacks via fraudulent emails and websites that spoof the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Websense has discovered targeted attacks originating outside the U.S. from compromised machines overseas.

An example of one of these Phishing scams would be an email claiming that you’re eligible for a tax refund. If you follow the link to confirm, you get forwarded to a fraudulent site that requests personal information. Here’s the important part -You don’t have to give any information for the Phishing scheme to work. You only have to be on their site long enough for them to compromise your machine.

From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii, this is Brent Norris for The World Organization of Webmasters and The WOW Technology Minute.

Aloha and Welcome to Today’s WOW Technology Minute

Spam is out of control.

Commtouch Software of Israel, can proove it. They have recently analyzed more than 2 billion messages and determined the global average spam level for the month of February was 58.2%.That’s almost 2 out of every 3 emails. Hey congress, where’s the Do Not Spam list already?

The consumer situation however is far worse: 71.5% of the emails received by the average consumer is spam.

Of particular interest is the fact that the situation differs significantly between users in various regions. It appears that spam is most rampant in the United States and Russia, where about 75% of email traffic consists of spam. France and Hungary are the countries with the smallest volume of spam — only 26% of total email traffic.

Get some great links to spam reporting software and Federal agencies from our podcast transcripts at, wowtechminute.com.

From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii, this is Brent Norris for The World Organization of Webmasters and The WOW Technology Minute.

 

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Aloha and Welcome to Today’s WOW Technology Minute

If you’re developing a technology strategy for your company or for clients, here’s three basics to keep in mind:

#1 Research – In Eric Gurr’s article on “Creating A Small Business Technology Plan”, he points out, that the business process needs to be understood. No dougt about that.

In particular, you need to identify which business processes are affected by technology.

#2 Target – Target specific areas of your business that could benefit the most from technology spending. Identify the low hanging fruit and start picking.

#3 Establish goals – set clearly defined, actionable items to help you or your client achieve those goals. Ask yourself, would better marketing bring in more sales? Or, could technology be more effective at reducing costs through something like better support online.

Outline your company or client’s short and long-term goals. Focus on the single thing that can help the most at this particular time and keep your technology plan alive by scheduling quarterly updates to the plan itself.

From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii, this is Brent Norris for The World Organization of Webmasters and The WOW Technology Minute.

Resources related to this article

For more information, visit http://www.myspace.com/cingularstudio

Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060406/CLTH064

Aloha and Welcome to Today’s WOW Technology Minute

With the snake oil sales people of the late 90’s dot-com era out of the way, its time to get real about the opportunities that abound for Web professionals.

If your one of the lucky Web pro’s that’s been around since the mid 90’s, I don’t have to remind you that’s it’s a more competitive market today. YOu also know that today’s Web professionals are being asked to wear an additional hat or two to keep up with the frantic pace and our customers demands.

Here’s the good news:
According to a study by the U.S. Department of Commerce and reported in the Wall Street Journal:

B2B eCommerce spending in the U.S. was $40.00 billion in 1998
B2B eCommerce spending in the U.S. was $767.00 billion in 2005

As the economy gains momentum and we reinvent the web, the number of individuals and teams that create, market and maintain sites on the Internet will be in greater demand. To learn more about the hottest markets, regions and the required skills to tap into this growth stay tuned.

From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii, this is Brent Norris for The World Organization of Webmasters and The WOW Technology Minute.

Aloha and Welcome to Today’s WOW Technology Minute

Social networking site MySpace, is the second most visited site on the Internet.

MySpace CTO Aber Whitcomb recently joined Bill Gates on stage and said, “Our business depends on giving each of our 65 million registered members a unique and compelling user experience.”

With 35 million visitors last month, they have some serious web server needs. What I find interesting is the lengths Mr. Whitcomb went to praise Microsoft for their server and database software. Especially on merits of reliability and scalability. Sounds really good but in stark contrast to news of Vista being delayed for consumers.

Unrelated but interesting was the new of a special extension in the next version of Internet Explorer. Simple List Extensions will allow users to interact with RSS feeds and hopefully will somehow make our efforts here at WOW, more valuable for you.

From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii, this is Brent Norris for The World Organization of Webmasters and The WOW Technology Minute.

Resources related to this article

MIX06 conference in Las Vegas – http://blog.mix06.com/virtualmix

A visual representation of MIX06 – http://channel9.msdn.com/photos/mix06/Scan-0002%20(Letter).jpg Part 1
A visual representation of MIX06 – http://channel9.msdn.com/photos/mix06/Scan-0001%20(Letter).jpg Part 2

Microsoft Corp. MIX06 conference, Web designers, developers and decision-makers are exploring ways to harness the latest Web technologies to deliver better customer experiences. Hosted by Microsoft, MIX06 features participants from leading Web, media and design companies including Amazon.com Inc., Avenue A/Razorfish, BBC, eBay Inc., Fluid Inc., MySpace and RezN8 Productions Inc. BBC, MySpace

Aloha and Welcome to Today’s WOW Technology Minute

Moore’s Law basically states that computers double in processing power every 18 months.

Forbes magazine reports that planned obsolescence has fallen under sway of Moore’s Law. Manufactures faced with an increasing demand for newer, fancier electronic gadgets delivered at a faster pace have come up with faster ways to get your electronic goodies to the market.

Computer manufactures HP and Dell have moved their manufacturing overseas. HP for example, moved its engineering and testing to Taipei to be closer to the suppliers cutting its development time from 12 months to 7 months. Dell computer has outsourced much of its component design, screens, and drives to supplier partners in Taiwan.

Other electronic manufactures are following suit. Playaway, a digital audio book player company was reported as manufacturing its digital device from idea to production in a period of 13 months. Where does it end?

You tell us. Be heard at our online discussion forum linked-up at wowtechminute.com.

From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii, this is Brent Norris for The World Organization of Webmasters and The WOW Technology Minute.

Aloha and Welcome to Today’s WOW Technology Minute

Phishing, that’s fishing with a “Ph” is when someone creates a phony Web site to lure you into sharing your personal data. They steal money from surfers and that sucks, with an “S”.

They will get caught Neil Holloway has anything to do with it. He’s the president of Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and he recently unveiled a global law enforcement campaign that will target cybercriminals behind these phishing attacks. By the end of June 2006 Microsoft will have initiated legal actions on more than 100 cases against individuals suspected of committing online fraud; 53 of these will have already started by the end of March 2006.

The legal actions are linked to a larger Microsoft program, the Global Phishing Enforcement Initiative (GPEI) and has already taken down 4,744 phishing sites. Look for the new Phishing Filter in Internet Explorer 7. That’s fishing with a “Ph”…

From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii, this is Brent Norris for The World Organization of Webmasters and The WOW Technology Minute.