Articles

We're a bit obsessed with performance optimization around here.  It's an itch that can never be fully satisfied because there's always something more that can be done.  Brightball.com is powered by our web application development platform, The Intersect (we're also fans of NBC's Chuck).  The Intersect is the same system we use as the basis for all of our client's projects and we decided to put it to the test at the hands of Yahoo! YSlow.

Most people think about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) solely as an exercise to increase the amount of external links to their pages. I call this the Link Equity strategy where the goal is to accumulate and hold on to as many external links over time as possible. The logic behind this is simple: the more links to a page, the better it ranks; and while Link Equity certainly is a very important piece of an SEO campaign, it alone is not enough. It must be balanced with a consistent effort to create and maintain SEO quality pages.

Developing a strong website that’s easy for the search engines to catalog and index is all about following a few simple steps. Site structure can be your best friend when it comes to getting high search engine rankings and once you have established that perfect site structure your website can continue to grow and adapt with the search engines.

Implementing new technology is not an end in itself. Rather it should be though of as an ingredient in what I call the Process-Oriented Innovation Cycle, where the goal is to improve the overall efficiency of a company through continuous process and workflow improvements. I have successfully used this approach for many years to deliver innovation that targets ineffective processes and workflows, and then utilizes technology tools to support all required changes. The illustration to the right shows how the four phases of the cycle feed into each other. Here is a is a brief description of each phase:

Testing your website design is one of the best ways to determine how well things are working. Testing doesn’t have to be hard either. A lot of times simple adjustments can make a huge difference.

Getting easy inbound links (IBLs) isn’t always the easiest assignment. The most straight forward way is to create good useful content that other users will naturally want to link to. This method is great but it takes time. Another technique for getting easy inbound links is to follow the leader. Just like with keyword research, it’s often suggested that you look at your competitor to see what terms they are targeting. This works the same way for inbound links.

 In today’s economy, building and expanding your business is more important than ever, but with limited resources, how can you expand? Reevaluate your company’s marketing strategy and identify areas where you can cut expenses without affecting the quality or marketing opportunities available. For some companies, professional translation services are substituted for cheap machine translations, but the pitfalls of an inaccurate translation can be tremendous.

Cake has a wonderful shell script function built into it called extract that will run through your code and create a .po file full of all of the text contained within your __('My text here') calls. You can then pass these files onto to translators to modify them for your languages. When you want to add variables though, you have to break it up into pieces which may change the context of the phrase. Here's a way around that.

As a result of our current economic state, many companies are looking for avenues to cut costs and achieve the maximum ROI. The following tips will assist you in reducing your translation costs when planning your next international marketing strategy.

I couldn't find any resources on setting up WYSIWYGPro with Cake so I developed this helper along with instructions for total integration with your system. If you've never used WYSIWYGPro, you should check out the demos. I've tried every WYSIWYG editor out there and none of the other ones even come close as far as I'm concerned.

PublishableBehavior allows the use of datetime fields for start and end ranges on content. Included functionality allows for checking published status, toggling to published / unpublished status, and adding conditions to a find to properly filter those results.

In any economic state, every business-minded individual knows that one of the best tactics for growing market share is expanding into new markets. Considering our dire economic situation today, marketing budgets are shrinking not increasing. Because of this, the idea of entering new markets is seen as quite risky rather than advantageous. What can you do when funds are not available for international advertising? Website translation is your most cost effective marketing tactic to reach your foreign consumer base.

Social media is all about getting involved with other members of the community and interacting with them. Whether you’re a cyclist, fortune 500 CEO, or candle maker…social media has a place for you.

While working with the date/time input fields in Cake I got tired of having to select 3/6 drop down boxes to choose all of the date/time information and specifically of having to select 3/6 drop down boxes if I decided to clear the date. A little bit of jQuery will clear this right up though.

Today’s savvy Internet user leaves little room to be directed by companies to take a particular course of action. The consumer has become the expert and is in control. We have seen this change of power especially within the real estate industry. Consumers are on-line analyzing local markets and exploring homes via virtual tours with no help from a live individual, all the while making decisions without involving professionals. This trend has overflowed into many industries around the world. What does this mean for professional service companies that want to earn business? Be the first to offer consumers educational information about your services and give it away at no cost.

If you've spent anytime wanting to use ACL on your applications, you know how tedious it can be to manually enter your entire controller and action structure. This Task will handle finding and loading or updating all of those for you whenever you run it from the command line.

A few weeks ago you might have seen my video titled video blogging 101, which explained how to get started video blogging and provided information on possible programs that you could use. I also mentioned that I was going to do another video on how to optimize your video once it was ready to be released to the public.

The statistics are staggering. Close to 1.1 billion people all over the world use the internet. Yet just over 229 million of them are in North America. Imagine being able to reach that many individuals... and in their own language. Currently, fewer than 10% of websites in America offer a language option other than English.

The World Wide Web should be just that, World Wide, yet many of us are not leveraging its power. The simple fact is, if you have a website, your business could be global. The market is no longer limited to a radius of ten miles surrounding your “store”. Your market is the entire world. When you effectively communicate with people in foreign countries, they will buy from you.

Social media is changing the way we relate to each other and how we relate to the organizations that serve us. Global social media outlets have become the new approach to marketing products and services in this fast-paced and growing worldwide market. So what are these global social media sites and how can you integrate them into your international marketing plan? Social media outlets are blogs, vlogs, podcasts, and user created content as well as social networks. However, the specific forms are not as important as their effects, and most importantly their ability to share and interact with each other. All social media sites, such as YouTube, Facebook, or Digg, are based on the idea of peer-to-peer content exchange. This concept offers businesses the opportunity to build a relationship between a brand and its consumers.

You are ready to launch your product or service into other regions of the world and you believe that your only investment is translating the content about the product. However, by doing only this, your reach may be limited. For your product to be successful you must ensure that it will acclimate properly into the culture of the target country.

With the global trend accelerating these days, international competition has increased. Products and services need to be introduced effectively in order to achieve successful entry. The cliché, "English is the official business language" is becoming obsolete.