web

When I got home tonight, I had the itch to try out Amazon S3. Not even sure why. Before I knew it I had signed up for the service, and tested it successfully.

So I added a form to a client's website last week. I charged $350 (the work was really worth $700 but I was trying an experiment).

I finally got the balls up to submit a simple patch for a Drupal module. It is a module called Twitter that lets you incorporate Twitter into your website.

I want to be able to distribute my drupal apps via my Drupal "command centre" (It's just a drupal installation I use to manage all my projects).

When I was first looking for a good CMS system, I came across Joomla first. The thing that attracted me to Joomla was the themes at http://rockettheme.com. Quite simply, they are very cool.

OK Kiddies.

Interesting journey today has revealed 2 very cool API's that could be used for music site mashups.

If you're a web developer, designer, editor, WHATEVER, then working with the latest source copy of a project is important to you.  Usually this happens in the way of editing the live site, but this isn't an ideal situation.  Subversion makes life easier, by providing source control that everyone can use to access the latest version of your project - but where to host it?  http://www.assembla.com - it's free and gives you up to 200MB space to work in.  It's also got a lot of other great development tools to help you manage your project effectively.

http://www.assembla.com

At some stage in your life, I'm sure as a customer you've become friends with a trader.  Maybe your newsagent, the butcher, a sales assistant at one of your favourite shops.

Think for a moment why you like going to the shop?  You go to the shop, engage in friendly banter and discuss things.  There is an interaction between you and the customer.

Now think about the shops that you go to where the sales assistants always seem to dart out of the way - always have "go away, I'm busy" faces on, and the only interaction is the scripted "Have a nice day" as you are handing over your money.

Most websites are a lot like the second shop I'm talking about.  Shops don't run on autopilot as well as they do when you are out there making your customers feel welcome.  Want a great way to improve sales at your website?  Engage your customers!

Ask questions, get them involved in the products you are selling.  Get opinions, make them feel like it is important that they are there.  Stop treating them like numbers, and more like people, and you're going to win everytime.

How could you engage your customers better?