by Fred on April 30, 2007
CNNMoney.com is reporting that the Webmaster is back and salaries are up. The online report also reflects that IT professionals with Project Management Skills is one of the hottest IT jobs in the U.S. To comment on this, I’m on the phone with Bill Cullifer, WOW Executive Director and the WhyITNow.org initiative.
Bill, can you tell us what’s changed from the slump of a few years ago?
“Brent, what’s changed is that business, industry and managers that hire Webmasters and IT Managers have an improved understanding of the skills required and the IT and Web applications that help drive their bottom line.”
That’s great Bill. Any suggestions for those looking to get jobs in this Space? ?
“Brent, my biggest concern with the surge in popularity is that the “get rich quick” training companies selling short term training options will come out of the woodwork again. I caution individuals to consider training programs that offer the incremental training to land you a job yet will lead you to defined degree level programs within IT that promote life long learning.”
Thank you Bill. We’re certainly in it for the long haul for our readers and listeners.
From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii this is Brent Norris for the World Organization of Webmasters and the Wow Technology Minute.
Additional Resources?
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/biz2/0704/gallery.jobs_salaries.biz2/8.html
Google courts government sector webmasters
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/30/HNgooglecourtsgovtsector_1.html
by Fred on April 27, 2007
by Fred on April 26, 2007
by Fred on April 24, 2007
According to a recent NGI Survey, 60 percent of enterprises are aware of customer expectations for two-way Internet interactions. At the same time, only 19 percent give their current online applications high marks for the ability to offer two-way interactions.
The graphs from the NGI Survey are below.
Our customers want web 2.0 applications and now need the functionality and architectures to support our businesses for three main reasons listed below.
>> Socially aware applications engage users and help convert them to customers.
>> Rich Internet and AJAX Applications reward users with? increased usability saving them time in making buying decisions and supporting their research.
>> Service and persuasion architectures insure we meet the needs of visitors by providing paths that make their experience with your company more rewarding.
If you want to learn about the latest application mashups, visit programmableweb.com.
If you want to develop applications within a Microsoft centric framework visit ASP.Net and check out the new Silverlight, cross-browser and cross platform runtime and development tools.
And in the other corner, check out the new Adobe Media Player runtime and more mature Adobe tools, Apollo and Flex. These are my picks and no not because Adobe is a contributor to our success but rather I’m an old school Flash Designer and I don’t like switching tools every few years.
If you want to develop under open source or GPL licensing? check out the top ten ActionScipt tools listed at vox.com? and Web2Journal.com for lots of the latest news and resources.
From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii this is Brent Norris for the World Organization of Webmasters and the Wow Technology Minute.
Additional Resources
What does Open Source mean anyway?
http://opensource.org/docs/osd
Open Source Flash – watering hole for open source Flash developers.
http://osflash.org/
Enterprise Open Source Magazine
http://opensource.sys-con.com/
WEB 2.0 JOURNAL
http://web2journal.com/
Microsoft ASP.Net
http://www.asp.net/?
Intel Web 2.0 Technology Development Kit (TDK)
http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/articles/eng/1026.htm
The Top Ten Open Source Actionscript Tools
http://tuesdaycreative.vox.com/library/post/the-top-ten-open-source-actionscript-tools.html
NGI Survey Results – 60 percent of enterprises are aware of customer expectations for two-way Internet interactions.?
NGI Survey Results – Only 19 percent give their current online applications high marks for the ability to offer two-way interactions.
aloha
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by Fred on April 23, 2007
by Fred on April 20, 2007
Today I’ve got 5 SEO tools marketers will want to know about.
Number 1 : Seomoz.org will check your? url online? and? return a search engine optimization metric. With 14 different data points this tool could be your only measure of seo effectiveness. But experts will also want to measure inbound links along side multiple domains.
Number 2 : If you don’t want to pay for a premium membership with seomoz, use the free desktop app, Link Popularity Check to check total links to? many urls at once, broken down by major search engine.
Number 3 : Another great is URLTrends which lets you receive your results in rss feeds. Subscribe to the feeds to keep up to date with Google and? Alexa ranks as well as number of inbound links from the majors.
Number 4 : At WeBuildPages.com you enter a url and a keyword or phrase and this tool returns lots of great information about the top ten ranking sites for that keyword and how your url compares. Pages indexed, backinks, rankings and how many times the keyword appears on the specific url. Many other tools also listed.
Number 5 : Isn’t really a tool, it’s a collection of seo tools at Submit Edge. There’s too many to begin to list but at this time there’s 213 tools listed.
From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii this is Brent Norris for the World Organization of Webmasters and the Wow Technology Minute.
Additional Resources
Top 10 Best SEO Web Tools
http://www.rsspieces.com/2006/11/30/top-10-best-seo-web-tools
Read: Search Engine Land
http://searchengineland.com/
by Fred on April 18, 2007
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google must be stoked. After winning a bidding war with Microsoft over DoubleClick they will now retain the largest ad network for years to come, so it seems anyway. 3.1 billion was the price and 300 million in revenue expected annually. The biggest part of this deal for Google was to keep Microsoft out.
Google has also announced their acquisition of Tonic System and with some integration, will be releasing a Power Point competitor. Google has also improved their content removal tool.
In other news, Microsoft officially launched Tellme.com the free 411 service.
Apologies for not being more frequent with the news, over the last three days, I lost a motherboard, cell phone, water pump and my glasses. 
I’ll get Adobe Production Studio reinstalled tomorrow so we have an audio component again.
From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii this is Brent Norris for the World Organization of Webmasters and the Wow Technology Minute.
Additional Resources?
Irony alert: Microsoft, AT&T oppose Google/DoubleClick merger on antitrust grounds
http://www.techmeme.com/070416/p85#a070416p85
Why Google bought DoubleClick (Om Malik/GigaOM)
http://www.techmeme.com/070416/p33#a070416p33
Breaking: Google Spends $3.1 Billion To Acquire DoubleClick
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/13/google-spends-31-billion-for-doubleclick/
Google presentation app on the way
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4864
Google PowerPoint
http://www.techmeme.com/070417/p79#a070417p79
by Fred on April 13, 2007
Interview Katherine Spencer Lee from Robert Half Technology.?
We’ve been conducting research? provided by? the US department of labor and we’ve been speaking with small and large businesses that hire? aspiring and practicing IT workers.? Our research is suggesting a? gap between available jobs and having enough? IT Pros? to fill those jobs.
Today I’m speaking with Katherine Spencer Lee, Executive Director? at Robert Half International.
Robert Half International is a major? force in? IT employment? and we’re wondering what your take is Katherine on the current IT job market,? specifically, is it? getting larger in the US and? what effect Web 2.0 companies are? having, if any,? on the IT job market?
Also very much worth mentioning is the Robert Half Technology 2007 Salary Guide. According to the guide, software developers will see the greatest starting salary gains of any job classification in 2007, with base compensation expected to rise 5.1%, to the range of $60,250 to $94,750 annually. (Editors note: “Yay!”)
Our sincere thanks go out to everyone at Robert Half Technology and Katherine Spencer Lee for the interview. It’s a great time to be a technology worker, enjoy your day and happy aloha Friday.
From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii this is Brent Norris for the World Organization of Webmasters and the Wow Technology Minute.
Additional Resources
Robert Half Technology Focuses on Technology Issues Related to Employment
http://www.roberthalftechnology.com
Note: Robert Half Technology is a division of Robert Half International
IT professionals in the U.S. can expect starting salaries in 2007 to increase an average of 2.8% over 2006, according to the just-released Robert Half Technology 2007 Salary Guide.
by Fred on April 12, 2007
On May 23rd? in Las Vegas we’ll be at a Panel Discussion with IT leaders from around the country. We’re also planning a technology Innovators Awards Ceremony following the panel discussion.? We produced some audio in a podcast format over at WhyITNow.org to help folks understand the approach being taken to address some of our current issues like education and employment.
I recently called Bill Cullifer to ask him specifically about the “Why IT Now” panel discussion and Technology Innovators Awards Ceremony. In addition to detailing a very straight-forward agenda, this is what he had to say, “Brent, we’re bringing industry leaders together to address some of the toughest education and employment issues within IT. We also want to promote and recognize those leading innovators that are creating the demand and job opportunities? here in the U.S.”
So there ya go, if you want to be involved in the initiatives that are making a difference in our profession check out the WhyITNow.org website and come see us at Interop in Vegas. Don’t forget, we’re also hosting a golf tournament that’s shaping up to be the funniest event of the year.
From Aloha Workshops on the Big Island of Hawaii this is Brent Norris for the World Organization of Webmasters and the Wow Technology Minute.
Additional Resources
Why IT Now website
http://whyitnow.org
Why IT Now : Gold Tournament Info
http://whyitnow.org/8/it-news/
Interop Las Vegas Conference
http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/
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by Fred on April 11, 2007