Open Source ideology for Software Solutions

The concept of Open Source Software (OSS) has existed for numerous years. Its major reason is to hand over with the program its source code and the right to use the program and its code for free. This status mentions to all types of program circulation – both financial sale and free distribution.

Open Source software solutions originates from non-commercial environments underscoring the value and accessibility of a program and not striving to maximize the sales earnings by all means. These were university scholars, assemblies of geek programmers, and businesses blending research with enterprise that assisted to the popularization of this program distribution form.

The most popular and most commonly utilized type of Open Source permit is GNU GPL. On the basis of this license most free software solutions are distributed worldwide (including the Linux kernel). This allows – in comparison with commercial license – protects the user’s privileges and not the privileges of the producer.

The Open Source Initiative is a large-scale difficulty for the businesses selling financial software with a closed source code. Such businesses are equipped in the direction of profiting earnings from the sale of their products. In order to be money-making they generally try to make their purchasers reliant on them. The economic principle or the desire to outrun affray often lead to commences of imperfect products.

Arguments against OSS put ahead by the closed source software solutions providers are apparently right: Lack of blame for OSS product, need of support, anonymous authors. In detail it’s just marketing illusion and a try to defend one’s own business. Responsibility for the product and OSS support can be acquired as an added service supplied by several third parties and the case of author’s anonymity is explained by the openness of the code – any individual can control and modify OSS either on their own or with the help of without coercion selected suppliers. It makes the client independent from the supplier after accomplishing the transaction/buying the product. The purchaser can but doesn’t have to help with the subject that traded him the program.

Web Solutions for Online Businesses

Online business are getting day by day boost up due to manual business marketing and web marketing tools. Better web solutions strategies, better online communication and extended reach to targeted audiences are some of the many benefits offered by online business. The web solutions providing companies have helped businesses from various domains to withstand the ever-growing competition by providing custom web solutions.

In case you are about to face the online marketing and web solutions challenges, here are few spheres, where web and software solutions companies can help you.

Website Designing

To support your website web marketing strategies you need to have a powerful website support and this is where you feel the need of web solutions providers. These companies are equipped with various website designing tools to entertain your online business needs.

Web Hosting

Once you are ready with a decent website design, you need to put it on-air and make sure it never goes off. For this, you are again dependent upon web and software solutions providers for services like web hosting and web server support. Online storage and back-ups are other great solutions offered by these companies and required by your business.

Website Promotion

Website marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) can decide the ranking of different websites online. The companies offering web solutions are well-versed with all these techniques to help you achieve business goals in a time-effective manner.

All these web design services required to be offered in a secure and cost-effective manner. These factors can differentiate one service provider from other. You need to make a rewarding decision while choosing a company offering web services, so that your online business desires are gratified fruitfully.

Custom Website Solution Help You To Make Your Website Attractive?

You will be noticed only when you are unique and beautiful things catch one’s eyes. If the thing is appealing then a person will feel to stop and glare it. A thing which is not magnetized goes unnoticed and upraised. To make your website catchy it is very important to work on designing.

Many business owners usually do not understand the language of website design and development. Custom website solutions will make your website trendy and noticeable in the crowd. You may hire freelance custom website designers or attain the services of a company specializing in this field. Business owner should be able to make the web designer understood the goal and ambition of his website.

The website should be very attracting and its color, pictures should appeal the audience. A beautifully designed website is able of dragging more and more visitors. Custom web solutions providers work on graphics, HTML codes, and flash animations. The website should not look fuzzy and people should understand what message the site is throwing. With the approaching of internet, the demand of web designers is increasing day by day and to become an expert web designer, a person need to study and experiment a lot.

A proper website development analytics solution should, at the very minimum level, provide feedback on website activity, visitor information, browsers, website traffic origin, search keywords and referrers. Whether your company is big or small, it is very important that the website look unique in all respect. An appealing and well designed site brings profit to the company.

10 Quick Website Maintance Tips

Posted by Tim Priebe

1. Keep all your images in a subfolder. If your file is something.com/index.html, then your images for that should be in something.com/images/Justify Full

2. Save a template for creating new pages. Create a page that has all your website design elements, including your menu and header, but lacks content. Then, when you create a new page, start out by copying that template.

3. Use some sort of CMS for frequently updated pages/sections. For example, if you have a news page, set up some blog software to make updating it much easier.

4. For pages that may have a lot of material added in the future, set the pages up so they can expand vertically. In most cases, you don't want your design to be set up where the page cannot expand vertically. Instead, the design needs to be set up where more content later won't break it.

5. When referring to periods of time, use absolute terms. For example, instead of saying I wrote an article 1 month ago, I would say I wrote it in May, 2006. That way I don't have to go back later and change the number of months. Also avoid words like "recently," "yesterday," and "soon."

6. If you do update a page frequently, make a back up copy each time you're getting ready to update it.

7. Keep a list (whether it's posted on your website or not) of the exact pages you've changed, when you changed them and what you changed.

8. If you have a page with pictures, make sure you keep any new pictures the same width and/or height as the others. Which one of those looks best will vary from layout to layout.

9. If you have a prominent picture on your front page, change it out every once in awhile. Make sure the new one is approximately the same size, though.

10. Don't use a lot of different colors and sizes in your fonts. And don't have tons of bold and italicized words and sentences. That detracts greatly from the professionalism of your site.

Are You Focusing Too Much on Your Home Page?

I've been talking with a client who wants some changes made to her home page. She has a lot of ideas and pointed me to several other competitor sites for examples of the sorts of things she wanted.

However, while her home page can likely be improved by some redesigning, the question nagging at me is "should it be redesigned?"

Her home page has an overall bounce rate of around 30-35%. The bounce rate from Google is about 12%, and the average time on page is around a minute (there's quite a lot of content) so clearly it is doing something right.

Sure, I could refresh the colors and move some content around. But is this a good use of my time and her money when the home page represents 20-25% of page views?

Yes, that's a lot for a single page. However, when the other pages on her site represent over 75% of pageviews, it makes sense to spend most of my time on their maintenance and improvement rather than on the home page.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. It's a small site, so almost all of those pages play an important in driving business.

However, I don't remember when some of these other pages haven't had their content updated. And, visually very little has been done from a design standpoint.

This is why I tried to explain that her home page is actually far less important than she thinks.

Your Home Page is Like a Hotel Lobby

Jared Spool argues that it is the least important page on your site, and while I'm not sure that I could go that far, I feel that its importance is certainly overstated in the minds of most people.

I explained to her that she should think of her home page like the lobby of a hotel (an idea coined, I believe, also by Jared Spool).

When visitors arrive at your hotel, certainly they should find that the lobby represents the hotel favorably. It should be attractive, spacious, with elegant lighting, welcoming colors, and the odd feature here and there.

The lobby should make it easy for the visitor to orient themselves — to see where the front desk is and where the lifts are. It should make it easy for the guest to find out any important information at a glance — upcoming events or where the conference is being held.

However, hotels are ultimately judged by the quality of their rooms. The last hotel I stayed in was the W in Seattle. While it has a nice lobby, it's the rooms that really make a stay there memorable.

And so it is on the web. A web site will live or die on the quality of its 'rooms' — the content and design of its interior pages, be they news articles, product pages, or social networking tools.

The home page, like a hotel lobby, is something that visitors pass through to get to where they want to go. It is not a destination in and of itself.

Consequently, it should be treated as such and the time spent updating and enhancing it (or even designing it in the first place) should reflect its importance to the organization compared with the rest of the web site.

Clients and stakeholders love to focus on the home page, forcing designers to endlessly tweak this and move that (particularly the colors, for some reason). In fact, designers tend to overly focus on the home page too, often giving the page design for rest of the site short shrift.

I actually prefer to design web sites from the 'ground up,' starting with the interior template(s). Since most of a web site is going to use this template doesn't it make sense for it to be the main focus of your design efforts?

For a recent redesign project, I asked the designer to start with a key interior page template and not worry about the home page design. It was hard for them to do, but now we have an excellent design for our core product information pages.

The home page design has come fairly naturally and organically out of the design of these interior pages. It just made sense to:

1. Lay it out in a certain way which highlights the key information we want to call out
2. Use a particular design style to make it fit with the rest of the site

As a result, the home page design went through far fewer revisions than I expected, which left us with more time to focus on the design of the rest of the site.

WEB DESIGN FEATURES

It is easy to make a dorky web page. It's also easy to make a very nice, clean, professional-looking web page even if you don't have much design experience. Often the difference, even for beginning designers, is simply a matter of eliminating certain features that are guaranteed to make a page look amateurish. Go through the list of things that people--designers and non-designers--from around the country have cited as the things that make the difference between a well-designed and a poorly designed web page.

One of the elements of Good Web Design is a lack of the elements that make bad web design. If you stay away from everything listed on the page about dorky web pages, you've probably got a pretty nice web site. In addition, keep these concepts in mind:

Text
Background does not interrupt the text
Text is big enough to read, but not too big
The hierarchy of information is perfectly clearColumns of text are narrower than in a book to make reading easier on the screen

Navigation
Navigation buttons and bars are easy to understand and use
Navigation is consistent throughout web site
Navigation buttons and bars provide the visitor with a clue as to where they are, what page of the site they are currently on
Frames, if used, are not obtrusive
A large site has an index or site map

Links
Link colors coordinate with page colors
Links are underlined so they are instantly clear to the visitor

Graphics
Buttons are not big and dorky
Every graphic has an alt label
Every graphic link has a matching text link
Graphics and backgrounds use browser-safe colors
Animated graphics turn off by themselves

General Design
Pages download quickly
First page and home page fit into 800 x 600 pixel space
All of the other pages have the immediate visual impact within 800 x 600 pixels
Good use of graphic elements (photos, subheads, pull quotes) to break up large areas of text
Every web page in the site looks like it belongs to the same site; there are repetitive elements that carry throughout the pages

Keep in mind that the point of eliminating Bad Features is not just to make the page prettier, but to communicate more effectively.

Bad Design Features

Below are features that can make a web design look dorky. These are not just my personal opinions, but are ideas I have collected from speaking to groups around the country. Examples of many of these features and more detailed explanations of the problems and solutions are in my book, The Non-Designer's Web Book, written with John Tollett.

Backgrounds
Default gray color
Color combinations of text and background that make the text hard to read
Busy, distracting backgrounds that make the text hard to read

Text
Text that is too small to read
Text crowding against the left edge
Text that stretches all the way across the page
Centered type over flush left body copy
Paragraphs of type in all caps
Paragraphs of type in bold
Paragraphs of type in italic
Paragraphs of type in all caps, bold, and italic all at once
Underlined text that is not a link

Links
Default blue links
Blue link borders around graphics
Links that are not clear about where they will take you
Links in body copy that distract readers and lead them off to remote, useless pages
Text links that are not underlined so you don't know they are links
..(If you're not going to underline your links, please make darned sure
..that each link is perfectly clearly a link! Don't make me wander around
..with my mouse checking to see if randomly colored text is a link!)
Dead links (links that don't work anymore)

Graphics
Large graphic files that take forever to load
Meaningless or useless graphics
Thumbnail images that are nearly as large as the full-sized images they link to
Graphics with no alt labels
Missing graphics, especially missing graphics with no alt labels
Graphics that don't fit on the screen (assuming a screen of 800 x 600 pixels)

Tables
Borders turned on in tables
Tables used as design elements, especially with extra large (dorky) borders

Blinking and animations
Anything that blinks, especially text
Multiple things that blink
Rainbow rules (lines)
Rainbow rules that blink or animate
"Under construction" signs, especially of little men working
Animated "under construction" signs
Animated pictures for email
Animations that never stop
Multiple animations that never stop

Junk
Counters on pages -- who cares
Junky advertising
Having to scroll sideways (800 x 600 pixels)
Too many little pictures of meaningless awards on the first page
Frame scroll bars in the middle of a page
Multiple frame scroll bars in the middle of a page

Navigation
Unclear navigation; over complex navigation
Complicated frames, too many frames, unnecessary scroll bars in frames
Orphan pages (no links back to where they came from, no identification)
Useless page titles that don't explain what the page is about

General Design
Entry page or home page that does not fit within standard browser window (800 x 600 pixels)
Frames that make you scroll sideways
No focal point on the page
Too many focal points on the page
Navigation buttons as the only visual interest, especially when they're large (and dorky)
Cluttered, not enough alignment of elements
Lack of contrast (in color, text, to create hierarchy of information, etc.)
Pages that look okay in one browser but not in another

Startup embeds Web photos with shopping links

By RACHEL METZ

NEW YORK (AP) — Inspiration comes in many forms, and in the case of James Everingham, it appeared as a pair of knockoff Christian Dior shoes.

Everingham's vision ultimately became Pixazza, an online advertising startup that converts photos on Web sites into interactive advertisements.

Mouse over an image, and tiny price tags appear over handbags, dresses and other items. Hover on top of one, and a balloon pops up with images and links to similar items you can buy online. Move your mouse away, and the balloon disappears.

Even Google Inc. is interested: The online advertising and search leader, through its new venture-capital fund, is among those that have recently invested a combined $5.8 million in the company.

Everingham came up with the idea after his wife spent hours figuring out what shoes "Sex and the City" star Sarah Jessica Parker was wearing in a photo ($1,000 Christian Diors) and hours more looking for a similar, cheaper version.

When the shoes arrived in the mail, the two sifted through a number of blogs and spotted comments from consumers who also wanted to know where they could get celebrities' looks.

Everingham figured he hit on an online void. If all those people were spending that much time seeking out products they could buy, why not find a way to bring the products to them, without coming across as an obnoxious intrusion?

After all, ads work best when they don't resemble ads but rather a feature that helps shoppers find items they may already be interested in buying.

Pixazza was born out of that inspiration last August and has since added a number of Web site publishers, merchant advertisers and investors to its stable.

By working with the company, Web sites can earn money from the images they would have displayed anyhow. And while it introduces another type of advertising, Pixazza believes its flavor is different.

"Unlike other means of monetizing their sites, which come at the expense of the user's satisfaction, Pixazza increases the user's satisfaction while increasing (the site's) incremental revenue," Chief Executive Bob Lisbonne said.

Pixazza, based a few miles from Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., is modeled somewhat after Google's AdSense advertising program, which lets Web sites share revenue from Google ads targeted to the keywords in specific articles and Web pages.

But while AdSense is highly automated, Pixazza needs people to tag images because computers are not good at recognizing what is in a photo and determining which parts are interesting, said Everingham, Pixazza's chief technology officer.

Pixazza currently works with about 10 sites, including the celebrity gossip and fashion blog I'm Not Obsessed. Working from home, taggers link photos on those sites to more than 2 million products from dozens of merchants that have signed on as advertisers, including Amazon.com Inc., Overstock.com Inc. and Macy's Inc. Taggers aren't necessarily looking for originals, but rather similar items in a range of prices.

Users who run across an item of interest simply hover over it and click on the link to buy the product at the merchant's site. Image taggers are paid with a small portion of the merchant's commission; the remainder is split evenly between Pixazza and the Web site running the image with the embedded tag. Advertising merchants only pay a commission when a purchase is made, an appealing approach because they only pay when the ad works.

For now, Pixazza is focusing on fashion-geared images, but it plans to expand to other categories like travel, sports and home design later this year.

Bill Sweeney, who runs I'm Not Obsessed's business operations, began letting Pixazza tag the site's images in February after Pixazza approached the blog a month earlier.

Sweeney said Pixazza essentially offers a jazzier version of the "Fashion Finds" feature his site has already been producing. That feature identifies what celebrities are wearing and gives readers information about where to get those and similar items. Using Pixazza saves time, and its ads are more attractive than "Fashion Finds" was, Sweeney said.

He said readers like that the ads are inconspicuous, and Pixazza's advertising works because they are embedded in the celebrity fashion photos that are already one of the site's main attractions.

It has generated extra revenue for the blog, though it's just a start: Sweeney said Pixazza currently accounts for less than 5 percent of their overall ad revenue.

"We're not getting rid of them any time soon," he said.

Lainey Lui, a Vancouver, Canada-based entertainment reporter, has also been using Pixazza for several months to tag images on her blog, Lainey Gossip.

Lui doesn't yet see the ads as another revenue stream.

But she likes that Pixazza tags shoes, for example, in a photo that shows them as part of a complete outfit. By contrast, she said, a Google search will just give you links to Web sites selling those products.

Like Lui, eMarketer analyst Jeffrey Grau believes Pixazza's appeal is in its ability to show consumers how they could use a product, especially with photos on fashion and celebrity-geared sites.

"You're seeing someone you want to emulate wearing an outfit and think, 'Oh that's cool,'" he said.

Buying that kind of look is just a click away.

It's still too soon to tell what kind of money Pixazza can generate for Web sites, especially as the online advertising market is slowing because of the recession.

Regardless, Lisbonne believes that there's major potential for Pixazza, as Web sites are hungry for new sources of revenue, and images are prominent online but largely untapped for ads.



Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Who are they? CYBER DESIGNZ

Cyber DesignZ is an Offshore Software Development Company determined in providing the best Software Solutions to organizations globally. They aim to provide stable and high quality products at optimal rates, empowering our technical expertise to provide outstanding services and deliver on-time high quality solutions.They have worldwide experience, with offices in the USA, Canada, India and Pakistan.They have custom built, high tech premises with hundreds of trained and experienced professionals working 24/7 to ensure our customer's satisfaction. As an offshore outsourcing company , we offer rates as low as 60% off the market price.