I purchased the Delaware.Net and Delaware.com domains about 7 years ago, and I used the Delaware.Net domain for our web development company, and I’ve always had a plan to use the Delaware.com domain for a local portal. That plan is being put into motion as I write this post.

The real estate directory is but one of many features that are going to be launched in the site this spring. For example, this week we plan to launch a business directory CMS module that will contain thousands of Delaware area businesses when it launches. Our new Content Management System that just launched also feeds into the Delaware.com portal. This means that area businesses will be able to post jobs, syndicate their products, and market their businesses in new ways - AUTOMATICALLY.

Combined with our exceptional Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work that we perform for our clients, we can now provide our local clients a Delaware-Centric portal that will greatly enhance their local marketing efforts. With our best-possible local domain name (Delaware.com), our cutting-edge database applications, and our reasonable advertising pricing, we feel that we can offer a much better value than other Delaware-area portals.

If you are interested in marketing your company on Delaware.com, or if you have a question about the new portal, post a response below and I will answer your questions.

Find out what I am buying after the jump.

My Current Laptop – Acer Ferrari 4000
I get about 2 or three years out of my computers, because I either hand them down to staff members, or they just become slow and I am too busy to reinstall Windows on them. My current laptop is an Acer Ferrari 4000, and it has been a pretty good laptop overall. I really like the flat keys and the curved keyboard. The keyboard has been a joy. Another great feature has been the SSD memory card slot in the front of the laptop. I can literally take pictures with my digital camera (a Casio) and transfer the pictures to the laptop by putting the memory card into the front of the laptop – so nice. It really is convenient. Even pictures or music files that I have on my Treo Windows Mobile smart phone are easily transferred to the laptop in the same way.

As far as problems go on the Acer Ferrari, the number one problem that I have encountered is the battery. Not just the life of a charge, but also the life of the battery itself and the rate at which the charge life decreases over time. If you leave the battery in the laptop while using AC wall power, the life of the batteries decreases. It basically cooks the batteries. I have purchased two additional spare batteries for the laptop from Acer, and over time their lifespan decreases noticeably. I only get about 2 - 3 hours max on battery power. One of my batteries only lasts about an hour, so that is the biggest problem with the Acer. Another problem is that the fan ALWAYS runs, and it is loud. It never shuts off. I don’t think that the AMD Turion 64bit mobile processor is a good choice because of the heat. Watching TV and using the laptop on your lap is all but impossible without a sturdy pillow to shield your legs from the heat. The Acer doesn’t come with a built-in WAN EVDO antenna, so when I want to get online I have to insert a Verizon Wireless card into the PCMCIA slot. I could also tether to my Treo to get online, but there is a driver issue with the Acer Bluetooth radio that prevents the tethering from working right with the Treo. An employee of mine that uses a modern Dell laptop can tether with Bluetooth and doesn’t have the same issue. Most of the nicer, newer laptops have the WAN cell antennas built onto the motherboard, so with a newer laptop I wouldn’t have to carry around the WAN card everywhere I go. This laptop has a pretty large 15.4″ screen, so it is pretty large to carry around. When I ride my motorcycle, it is possible to carry it in a backpack ,but you really notice it. The speakers are not loud at all, and that is another annoying thing about the Ferrari. Showing someone a video on the laptop is all but impossible without headphones.

How I handle data backups
Using just one laptop for everything means that backups are extremely important. I use a tiny Western Digital USB hard drive, and I highly recommend this model. It is really small and affordable. It holds 160GB, and it costs $149 retail. It is about the size of an iPod. They come in white or black, and you can get them at Best Buy. Below is a picture of the one I have. It is easy to carry and easy to store.

No gaming laptops for me, thanks.
My next laptop will have a screen smaller than 15″. To me, 13″ or 14″ is the best overall size for a business laptop, as long as the screen has high enough resolution. 1280 x 1024 is NOT enough in my opinion, unless you have bad eyesight. Anything that has a screen smaller than 13″ means that the keyboard becomes too small. I have seen some businesspeople get those huge Dell XPS gaming laptops, or the enormous Sony/HP entertainment laptops, and they look ridiculous to me. To me, it also isn’t very professional looking to give a presentation or have a business meeting using a super-large or gaming laptop. Would you want to do business with someone that puts computer gaming above their job? No. So if your laptop bag has to have wheels on it because you have a gaming laptop, then something is wrong with your priorities. I travel quite a bit, and I need a laptop that is not only powerful, but portable for trips. I’ve also outgrown playing lots of PC games years ago, so I don’t need or want a heavy power hog of a machine so that I could play games. Besides, if I ever decide that I really want to play PC games again, I will setup a desktop gaming machine in my new house that is now under construction. The new neighborhood where my wife and I are building a house already has Verizon FIOS, so that would be great for a gaming rig. For now, the Nintendo Wii rules gaming at our house, and Guitar Hero on the Wii is such a blast, that it is all the gaming I need for now. Yes, I am really, really excited about getting FIOS at the new house. It will also make it nice for off-site backups over the fiber from work to home. Bye-bye Comcast!

Why I don’t like the Apple Macbook Air
I am not against Macs, and I even think that the new MacBook Pro is a contender to my next laptop. But while the new Mabook Air is very sexy, (I played with one in the Apple store), you really give up quite a bit to have a machine that is that thin. For example, I won’t compromise on having a DVD burner or having enough USB drives. I really want to have the DVD drive in my laptop. I am pretty hard on my gadgets, so the Apple Air probably won’t work for me. The IBM x300 is the main competitor to the Air, but the price of the IBM is ridiculous. Call me a protectionist, but since IBM sold their laptop division to Lenovo (a Chinese company), I have all but lost interest in them. I guess in the end that doesn’t make or break my decision on what brand I want, but it is a small factor for me.

So here are the specs that I am looking for:

1. 13-14″ ultrabrite screen
2. High resolution video card/screen – WXGA at the least
3. LED screen backlighting – this is the latest rage with the newer laptops, and it saves power and looks fantastic.
4. Built-in DVD Superdrive burner
5. WAN card to get onto Verizon’s network
6. 802.11N WiMax compatible WIFI
7. Plenty of USB ports
8. 9 cell battery life
9. The latest dual-core, low-voltage Intel Montevina laptop processor

My Number 1 Pick: Dell Latitude e6500

This September, Dell is releasing a new line of laptops to replace their successful D830/D630 lines. Below is a picture of what these new “e family” machines will look like. Notice that the old Dell circle logo is gone in favor of a sleeker, more industrial looking black and silver body, with the logo off to the side. Looks very nice.

The list of features for this new machine is stunning:

• New design with black case or optional colors
• Intel Montevina processor
• Ultra Wideband WAN (3g Wireless broadband)
• WiMax WIFI
• All-day battery (84 watt hrs)
• Intel Turbo Memory 2.0
• Up to 8GB of DDR2 800mhz RAM (fast)
• 5 in one data card reader
• Fingerprint reader
• GPS - woohoo! GPS comes built-in.  That will be great for travel.
• LED backlit display (brighter with less power consumption)
• 250GB hard drive, or solid-state hard drive option - I am all over this. A hard drive with no moving parts means that the laptop will be very fast, and use very little power. This feature alone has me super excited. If the solid state drive is at least 80GB, then that is what I will get.
• Pointing stick AND touchpad
• E-SATA port for adding external storage
• Backlit keyboard option
• Camera and mic option
• Bluetooth 2.0
• Discreet nvidia video card
• Price – expensive, but I don’t care.

My second choice – Apple MacBook Pro

For the first time ever, I am actually serious about a Mac. I think this machine makes a fine second choice, but the list of features can’t touch the new Dell. They will also be similar in price once they have all the options installed. I hope that capacities on solid state drives keeps increasing, because they are clearly the wave of the future. I can’t be without my cellular broadband, so the Apple gets killed right there.

“we are able to stop over 98% of spam before it gets to our customer’s mailboxes “

Why email forwarding is bad
Unfortunately, customers are sometimes blissfully unaware of how they hurt their own email service. Here is how it happens… A new customer calls. Let’s call him “Jim”. Jim purchase a new domain name for his business. Let’s call the domain name “somecompany.com”. Easy enough. Jim can now have an email address that looks like “Jimbo@somecompany.com”. So after we register the domain name for Jim, we also setup a hosting account for Jim’s web site and any email accounts that he wants.

A sample scenario
Jim then asks us “is it possible to have all email that comes into jimbo@somecompany.com to forward to my home email account?”. In the past we would say “sure”, but not any longer. Let’s say that Jim’s home email address is jimbo@comcast.net, or jimbo@verizon.net, or jimbo@att.net, or whatever. After Jim gets his web site live, and his new email address is published online, it will at some point get picked up by a spambot, which puts his email address into a spam directory. Or, an even worse scenario, is if Jim asks “can you have ANY email sent to somecompany.com, and have it forwarded to my home account?”. The second scenario is called a “catch-all”, and is a much worsescenario than simply forwarding a single email address. If a spammer were to use a baby book of names to guess a bunch of addresses, like bob@somecompany.com, carol@somecompany.com, and so on, they could easily send hundreds or thousands of emails to Jim’s new domain name.

Then… other providers block the customer’s server
Let’s assume that Jim uses Comcast for his personal email service. I am not picking on Comcast, this example is true of any large email provider.  Comcast wants to block any spam that Jim gets, just like how Delaware.Net wants to fight spam. Since Comcast has a LOT of spam to fight, they have spam-blocking servers that are smart enough to be alerted to large volumes of email that look like spam come from one source. That one source my be your catch-all domain, or that source of spam might be the server that is fowarding your email (and your spam) to your Comcast account. Comcast, Verizon, Yahoo, ATT, AOL, and most large personal email providers have systems like these.

“It’s important to note that ALL hosting companies get their email servers blocked
by other hosting companies from time to time. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens to all of them.”

When these systems see this spam coming in, they try to block it. What do you think they block? They block the IP address of the server that the spam came from - automatically. That means that ALL EMAIL SENT FROM THAT HOSTING SERVER IS NOW BLOCKED BY COMCAST. Including email from other customers on the same server. Not good.   Jim’s seemingly simple request to have all of his email forwarded into one account just caused a very serious problem for anyone else that has email accounts on the same server as Jim. Basically, those other customers can’t email anyone that has a Comcast email address.  If Comcast blocks an email server, then NO ONE else on that server can send email to Comcast. It’s important to note that ALL hosting companies get their email servers blocked by other hosting companies from time to time. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens to all of them.

Getting blocked for forwarding email is a huge headache for email hosting companies, because they have to (in this example) call Comcast, and ask to be unblocked. This takes time, energy, and money to make happen. It can take 5 minutes, or it could take 2 days. It depends on the systems that the blocking company has in place. Some systems are automated, and some are not.

So what is the answer to this problem? It’s amazingly simple. First, email hosting companies shouldn’t be auto-forwarding at all, since their customers can use one of the many popular email clients (like Outlook), that can check multiple email accounts at once. Outlook can also auto-filter the email to separate folders, giving Jim the separation he needs between his work email and he personal email.

We have finally removed all forwards and catch-alls from all of our email servers, and if someone ever asks to have their email automatically forwarded again, we will just point them to this article.

]]> http://www.johnmckown.com/hosting-companies-must-stop-forwarding-email-or-else/feed/ http://www.johnmckown.com/delaware-expo-trade-show-a-huge-success/ http://www.johnmckown.com/delaware-expo-trade-show-a-huge-success/#comments Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:03:59 +0000 john Internet Industry Presentations Internet Marketing Search Engines and SEO Local Delaware Google Marketing http://www.johnmckown.com/delaware-expo-trade-show-a-huge-success/

Three years ago, I came up with an idea to get a little more local exposure for us, and to also help out area chambers of commerce.  The idea was to have a business-to-business (B2B) trade show, where businesses that sell to other businesses could mix and market.  On March 5th, we held our third one.  It went great!
Thanks to all of our customers, friends, and partners that attended the Third Annual Delaware Expo Trade Show. The weather was perfect yesterday and we had over 1,000 attendees at the show. The exact number was close to 1,200. Our show is now the largest business-to-business networking event in the state of Delaware, with over 120 exhibitors. We got a lot of positive feedback on the show, and some ideas that we will use to make the 2009 show even better.

I was interviewed by WHYY television from Wilmington, and there were also several newspapers that were present that did stories on the show. We landed a spot on the front page of today’s edition of the Delaware State News. We are waiting for the pictures to come back from the photographer, and once those are available we will put them on the web site.

This show was planned and executed entirely by the Delaware.Net staff. We also sold all of the booths using our new Store-Logic Ecommerce engine.

We gave some presentations on search engine optimization, blogging, and more. Here is a picture of me giving my presentation:

Here is Greg, our SEO guru giving his presentation:

One of the coolest surprises for us came when Monster Racing brought their new NASCAR race car to the show, complete with a Delaware.Net logo on the side of it. They will leave our logo on the car for the rest of this season, so in a way we have our own race car.

We used a new thermal name badge printer this year from Zebra, and it really helped us get the name badges printed faster. We didn’t anticipate the number of walk-ins that we had, so for 2009 we will get a second Zebra printer so we can print them even faster. Those printers are like $600, but they really made registration faster. Special thanks to the Central Delaware Chamber of Commerce for bringing additional badge holders when we ran low.

As usual, the staff at the Dover Downs Hotel and Casino did a superb job. We also used a new pipe and drape company called Diamond State Party Rentals. They did a great job as well.
Our team did a fantastic job pulling the show together.

First off, iTunes gets in my way too much at work.   We built our own phone system for our office, which runs on Asterisk.  It is great.  One of the nice things about Asterisk is that it emails my voicemails to me as .MP3 files.   I can then listen to them on my smartphone, and also on my laptop right from Outlook.  Since I have push email using Exchange, the SECOND I get a new voicemail on my phone at work, that voicemail shows up as an email on my smartphone - uber great for making me more responsive to customer voicemails.

The problem comes when I wish to open those .MP3 files in outlook, and the gigantic iTunes fires up to play them.  What a pig of a program (iTunes).   iTunes if great if you live and die by your iPod, but when it is your default media player, it is too bloated for everyday work.

So VLC is great.  Super lightweight.   If you want your media player to look nice, another alternative is the GOM player, which is also very nice.  It’s also nice to have some Internet radio links handy in your browser or Intranet, that will open VLC player and just start streaming.  If you are new to Internet radio, check out shoutcast.com to find stations that you like.  You can then link to the stations directly as a bookmark and open them up in VLC.

SEO work can sometimes be less expensive than an AdWords account

Here is an example of how SEO can be more important than AdWords. We recently helped get a client up to the number two spot in Google’s organic (free) listings for their very popular search term, simply by working on their site. The client was spending over $5,000 per month, and they were able to drop their adwords account entirely because we got them so high in the organic rankings. This took a fair amount of work, and it cost them money, but the cost was much less than their monthly AdWords buy. Naturally, the cost of Google Adwords accounts can vary depending greatly depending on the search terms / industry / competition / and ad buy strategy in question.

Usability and conversion rates are much more important than search engine ranking alone

In regards to search engines, I am always amazed at business owners that spend a LOT of money to come up high in Google, and yet when you get to their web site, it is riddled with problems that prevent visitors from buying. I’m talking about sites that are nothing more than a brochure. They contain a logo, some “about us” text, and a photo. Lame. Even nicer sites than that have the same problem if they are hard to use, have a cold design, or don’t communicate the value of the product. No one buys on a site like that. Usability, conversion, social networking, blogging, vlogging, back-end business process integration, commerce, email newsletters, Intranets, content management, crm…. all of those things are really my specialties. Getting people TO the site is almost the easy part, to be honest. If you get people there but they don’t buy, I really don’t see the point. I’d rather sell 20% of 2000 visitors, than 0.5% of 10,000.

Before you spend money on an AdWords account, you had BETTER know your web site’s performance numbers first. you can start with installing a free Google Analytics account to get some tracking on your numbers. Doing this early will give you some benchmark numbers that you can use later to track your progress.

Conversion is the rate visitors that are “converted” into buyers after viewing your web site.   It is very important to make it as easy as possible to buy from your web site, pay a bill, or ask questions.   The easier you make those tasks, the more likely folks are to buy from you.  Likewise, be VERY up-front about additional charges, like shipping fees or other steps.   Naturally, I can’t post all of our conversion secrets here in my blog, but if you would like a free consultation with me, I can give you lots of additional conversion tips in person.

Site owner greed creates unrealistic expectations

That is a pretty powerful statement, but it is so true. It isn’t the SEO marketers or PPC Adwords marketers that are to blame… There is a TREMENDOUS need that some site owners seem to have to simply “pay a bill, and come up high” in search engines, as if that is a magic bullet that will make their site profitable. It won’t. Sure, there are exceptions to every rule, but more than 90% of the time, the people that I speak with that want to come up high with AdWords really need to take a step back and make their web sites work better first. Most are terrible - especially if I didn’t work on them

I am practicing what I am preaching in regards to our own web site right now. We’ve been so busy this past year that even our own site is really awful right now, even though our applications and work are getting us a lot of exposure. We have a new site in development that will change all that.

An example of powerful, free marketing from our blog (better than search engines alone)

If you go to http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver, you will see that Adobe put a quote from me on their homepage. Priceless marketing. Did I get that from AdWords? No. It came from one of my blog posts. A movie can make people cry - it can get an emotional response - and buying is an emotional response.

AdWords are great, but they are only part of a strategy. They aren’t the entire strategy.  There is a long list of things you need to do to your web site to make sure it is READY for AdWords before you begin to bid on words and phrases through Google.

Election years can be dangerous times for business owners that have strong political views and little self-control. Especially for those who force those views down the throats of their customers, employees, and peers. While I feel that it’s commendable for anyone to be passionate about their convictions and views (I know I am), there is a proper time and place to voice those views. Email makes it painfully easy for anyone to instantly forward a political view, comment, article, video link, etc. in the blink of an eye, automatically alienating at least HALF of the people that they are sent to. Recently, a local business owner did just that when they sent me a politically-charged email.

More after the jump.

The email that I received was one of those typical hysterical emails where the sender insisted all who received it then send it on to their friends and family. Obviously, I can’t get into what the email contained, but it was 180 degrees from my own personal viewpoint. The sender is a business owner that should know better. Another problem is, the business owner used my email address in the “TO” field, along with a bunch of other local business owners that know me personally. This makes it appear that I might share the same viewpoint as the sender does, which makes it even more inappropriate that it was sent it in the first place.

In the workplace, there are those common four taboo subjects that shouldn’t ever be discussed in detail; sex, money, religion, and politics. Recently, at a party, my wife and I were talking about schools that my wife and I prefer for our kids, and I would add school choice to that list of taboo subjects as well (a school principal was at the party - lesson learned).

I would add that you should never assume that people you speak with are being honest with you about their true political views. I personally know someone who is a staunch supporter of one political party, yet I have witnessed some of his peers speak to him assuming that he is a member of another party. And he is smart enough to let them believe what they want and just smile while they are talking to him. He knows that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is probably the best policy during an election year if you don’t want to alienate customers and peers.

Political lawn signs and car stickers are another no-no for business owners for the same reasons. I’ve made that mistake years ago in previous elections myself. This year’s election is sure to be electric, and hotly debated. Get out there and vote, and let your vote do the talking. Sending a politically-charged email, making a politically charged comment, or sparring with those that you don’t agree with will surely cause damage to your company and your reputation that will last long after the November elections. Just be careful out there.

Looking back at 2007

After a relatively flat 2006, we approached 2007 with a refined game plan. Specifically, to get the best talent I could find for our four teams; creative, programming, sales, and engineering. Mission accomplished. We now have 15 professionals, all working to bring the latest web technology to our clients. We are also looking for more employees to join our technical on-site team.
Some of the smaller office upgrades for 2007 include painting our office, getting all new computers for our staff, upgrading most of our software, and getting large dual flat screen monitors for everyone. We upgraded our office kitchen with new appliances and food choices. In the data center, we purchased a bunch of new HP and Dell servers, Cisco switches, and additional storage devices and drives.

Looking ahead to 2008

For 2008, we have some exciting new services and technology for our customers. Some of it I can talk about here in my blog, and some of our plans are proprietary and I can’t give too much information (yet). Here are some of the highlights…

1. New corporate web site for Delaware.Net, Inc.
   We’ve built so many web sites, that unfortunately we have had very little time to keep our own web site up to date. Now that we have a larger staff, that is all about to change. The conceptual designs for our new site is already complete, so you will see the new site in early 2008. We’re using this opportunity in redesigning our site to show our commitment to web standards, our newest applications, and more (the secret sauce).
2. New micro sites for our applications
   In addition to our new company web site, we are also working on new, smaller versions of our site for our applications. These sites will launch after our main site, and will contain more resources for our clients.
3. Team-Logic 2.0 AJAX Beta
   We completed our new AJAX-powered Intranet system in the fall of 2007, and it’s fast becoming our new web application hosting platform. When compared to commercial Intranet and ecommerce systems from other providers, there simply is no comparison because we offer more features, a better application, and for less money. We are undergoing live data testing in-house, and also with select customers now. This is going very well. In early 2008 we will add more functionality to this system and officially launch it with it’s own new microsite.
4. NEW - Mail-Logic Newsletter Server
   Starting at just $12 per month, our new newsletter server sets the standard for sending value and performance when you need to send out email newsletters to your customers, and your staff. Unlimited groups and mailings, automated bounce processing, web site signup, and HTML generation makes sending newsletters easier than ever.
5. NEW - Updated Real Estate Applications
   After leaving our real estate applications alone for years, they are undergoing a complete transformation. It is no longer good enough to simply have IDX listing feeds in a real estate site and call it a day. Our new real estate suite combines rentals, MLS feeds, lead tracking, content management, and local portal advertising. The new applications will launch in February, in time for the spring real estate season. Existing Delaware.Net clients will get special upgrade packages.
6. NEW - Updated Vehicle Dealership Application
   We’ve been rebuilding our dealership applications to use our latest CRM, email marketing, and content management applications. These will also feed used vehicle inventories to Delaware.com.
7. New Delaware.com Marketing
   Can’t talk a whole lot about this yet, but suffice it to say that we are building a local portal that will compete with other popular area web portals. We won’t be satisfied unless we create the best marketing portal for local area businesses.
8. Lots More
   More detail on our latest applications will be released soon.
9. Dream Home
   On a personal level, My wife and I have begun building our dream home, which will be complete in 2008. It is an exciting time for us as we pick out all of the options for our new home. We have already purchased a one-acre lot in the most prestigious neighborhood in Kent County, and our architectural plans are complete as well.

• FrontPage was a beginner tool, that professional web designers shunned.
• Adobe Dreamweaver is the defacto tool for professionals.
• Company Intranets became more critical to businesses, and yet most businesspeople are not web designers. So it made sense to make FrontPage into something even easier to use for web design newbies.
• Due to the last point, FrontPage because the built-in authoring tool for Microsoft Sharepoint (Microsoft’s limited Intranet product).
• Professional web site design requires tools that generate standards-based code, which FrontPage could not do.

Microsoft replaces FrontPage with “Expression Web”
For users that wish to build a web site, and who don’t need a basic corporate file-sharing Intranet like Sharepoint, Microsoft created a replacement tool for FrontPage called “Expression Web”. So far, it appears that this new program has been a colossal failure. Why do I say that? Because no one (and I do mean no one) asks for it. Back in the day, folks would go to Staples or their local office store and purchase FrontPage so that they could put up a web page quickly. Those days are gone. Those that need nothing more than an extremely basic web presence today can use online page-building tools to generate simple template-based web pages quickly.

More about template sites
Template sites built through a web interface have widened the divide between building a basic web presence, and building a professional web site. This divide means that it is both easier than ever to build a web site, and it is also harder than ever to build a web site. It all depends on what you call a “web site”. Domain registrars make a killing selling those template sites, and yet they really are hideous to look at. Superpages web sites that you can buy from the local phone book are also just as bad, and they fall into the template category. I stopped trying to talk first-time web site owners out of those template sites a long time ago, because if a quick and dirty web presence is all they feel that they need, then it will take a year or two of enduring zero business from the web before those web site owners smarten up and purchase professional web services from a firm like mine (Delaware.net). In a strange way, those template sites actually gain us customers because they serve to educate future customers of the value of a custom web site. Features like search engine optimization (making your site come up in Google) are sorely missing from template sites, and more web savvy customers realize very quickly that their template site is under-performing and is actually costing them money.

Web Video Overtakes Microsoft - Microsoft Responds
With the wild popularity of video on the web, thanks to sites like YouTube, Microsoft has been left behind in this important era of the web. Since Microsoft’s arch-enemy is Google, and Google bought YouTube, the situation has looked even worse for Microsoft. This is another reason why FrontPage went away. For example, you can’t even VIEW the web site for Expression Web without installing a “Microsoft Silverlight” plugin into your browser. What the hell is Silverlight? It is Microsoft’s attempt to complete with Adobe Flash - the web’s standard video player. Once Adobe got Flash to play video, it put another nail into Microsoft’s Media player (my least favorite video player). For Microsoft to get adoption of SilverLight, they have tied it very closely with ExpressionWeb.

If you still use FrontPage, its decision time
Since FrontPage is going away, you are going to need to get a new tool for building web sites. If a low-tech tool for a simple web site is what you want, then I would use Adobe Contribute, which is an easy to use tool for Creating simple web pages and Intranet content. Several licenses of Contribute can allow a small team to create a static Intranet that is a good start for having a basic Intranet. If you want to build web pages for a living, or if you are learning web design in college, then you need to start using Dreamweaver, Adobe design products (Photoshop, Illustrator), and Microsoft Visual Studio. Those are the tools that the pros use.

Lastly, there are other alternatives and hyrbids to all of these choices. It is now possible to have a web site designed fairly inexpensively, which can also have robust applications to help your business run. At Delaware.Net, we have many of these applications ready to install in your web site - like calendars, e-commerce, signup forms, file management, and more. If you have a site built in FrontPage, we can help you to come up with a newer, better way to manage and improve your web site.

Do I hate Microsoft?
No.  We have a lot of Microsoft servers in our data center, and we are adding more every month.  Most of the workstations in our office also run Windows, with the exception of some graphic design workstations that are Macs.   But when it comes to the web, web authoring, or Microsoft’s attempt to compete with Flash, they don’t have a chance.  Even their Internet Exploder (Explorer) browser is a CONSTANT headache for web designers because it is not standards-compliant.   So how are we supposed to believe that MS will make their developer tools compliant, when their web browser isn’t?  The answer is that they won’t.   You can see the frustration of web developers over Internet Explorer in an article that Computer World just released, and if you read the second part of it you can see how much hassle IE causes developers.  Every chance I get, I try to encourage customers to use Firefox instead of IE.