sharing large files

It has always been an issue to share large files for projects involving third parties - difficult to use emails for 50 Megs files, cannot expect everyone to be fluent with FTP, messengers/skype makes it a veeeeeeery long process to transfer files, and you usually loose version control on the way - The best solution so far was YouSendIt, limited to 100 Megs transfers though (free accounts).

Just came across a nice bit of software which may sort this out: http://www.collanos.com/

Free to download, it uses P2P technology, which is specially suitable for large files transfers. Worth checking out.

About Laziness, Impatience and Hubris

Laziness, Impatience and Hubris can be considered as very good qualities for a programmer, as pointed out by Larry Wall in "Programming Perl".

Laziness: you don't want to do the same things again and again - and you start coding useful libraries.

Impatience: a good programmer will always try to find ways to work faster.

Hubris: Finally, a good programmer wants to be praised not only for results, but for the quality of the code he is writing.

This is all very true for professional coders, who have a solid background in programming. but certainly not true for everyone.

Website programming is probably the best example: I have met many professional web designers who have never taken a single programming course during their curriculum, and ended up doing web design, simply because the financial reward is very high compared to the time you need to invest in learning how to build a website. you just need a few month learning the basic of dreamweaver, and can claim the same wages as a C programmer working for embedded systems, and who has studied IT for years.

I am not saying here that people HAVE TO study it for years before being able to sell their services as web designers. However, I would strongly recommend them to avoid considering Laziness, Impatience and Hubris as qualities really.

Laziness: "cannot be asked to understand what this bloody code does - but it's taking me so much time to fix all these bloody rendering in different browsers - let's charge client double for all the hassle I am going through." OR "I cannot be asked to build a new design from scratch" - let's steal the design from an other site and cross fingers that my client has never come across it before.."

Impatience: "ok, this should be good enough, I really need to get the money in now, and I have already put too much time into this project now! I cannot carry on fixing bits and pieces for ever, need to pay my rent as well!" OR "pffu, didn't expect this to be so complicated to implement. And there are so many other clever things I have seen on other websites and which I would like to try out - let's stop working on this, this is good enough, I want to work on something new, more exciting"

Hubris: "These bloody clients don't understand how hard it is to build websites, and how clever you need to be in order to achieve results - if something is wrong and I try to explain them that there are extremely complicated things involved such as box model, table vs div layouts, etc .. but obviously they don't understand, they just want their website to work" OR "I have just created a website without using a sigle table, amazing!".

cost effective web design process

Clients and sales propects often ask me: how can you be so cheap compared to your competitors?

Let's give some pointers: the key is to identify each step of the process and address is with a different resource.

The usual process we follow for building websites at Jazar are:
1) Information architecture: how is the information going to be organised, navigation, sitemap, etc ..
2) front-end design: look and feel, html/css templates, javascript
3) backend integration: intergation to the content management system, adding specific modules (polls, shopping cart, etc .. )
4) Testing
5) release
6) finalise the build and release process for maintenance purpose

It can be a complex workflow for large websites, but depending on your expectations, a simple site should never cost more than £1000 to build (no custom development, simple information architecture, no software release process, no expensive maintenance):

step 1: Infornmation architecture
You should already know which products and/or services you want to present on your site. Just look at the way your competitors organise the information:
1) Check our their sitemap
2) Duplicate it, replace their products/services with yours
3) Try to find something which you can improve, and modify your sitemap accordingly (nothing wrong with taking copying, as long as you add 5% of your own creativity - no need to reinvent the wheel)
4) Submit the brief
-------------------------
FREE

step 2: "front-end design"
You can pretty much divide this step into 3 sub categories: graphic design, html/css integration, javascript add-ons.

If you don't have staff or freelancers available, you can always use online resources:
1) graphic design: www.sitepoint.com (budget: £250)
2) html/css integration: http://www.psd2html.com (budget: £200)
3) Javascript add-ons: don't need for a simple website.
-------------------------
Total: £450

Step 3: CMS integration
We typically charge £450 for CMS integration. This gives you then the ability to manage the content of your site later, without depending on us to do the work for you. We are not taking any risk here, just setting up the tool for you. No subjective output, no particular testing required, we outsource most of it, so Jazar is still making decent margins...

You end up with a site worth £900 - and you have paid £900 for it. Don't laugh - I have seen quotes ranging from £2000 up to £25000 for the same brief! The Internet is very new market, and it is challenging to really know what you buy - and it is quite challenging to know how much your website is really worth.

So, thanks to my little article, you start getting an idea about how to assess what you should pay for your website. Is it helpful? Of course it is. But the real question should be: what do you want to do with your website, and how much should you be ready to pay in order to reach your objectives?

With a £500 car, you will probably be able to go and do your shopping for a while, drive around to go and see your friends around, or even drive away for the week-end. But you'll never be able to qualify for a formula 1 race.

That's pretty much the same idea with websites - don't expect to generate many sales leads with a £900 website - you'll probably need to invest a bit more in information architecture, custom development and marketing.

Running out of time now to go through this, but will probably carry on offline (on our corporate site), since this post could turn very quickly into a sales pitch...

BT gets into search engines marketing

Just came across BT website for small and medium businesses today - and amazingly enough, they are providing a range of web design and online marketing services for business: http://www2.btbroadbandoffice.com

Website build services

	Features	Price
BT eShop build	20 hours development time to include full ecommerce implementation for your business using BT eShop software, site design, training on updating and managing your online store. 2 Weeks ongoing support included for ad hoc fixes and feature training.	£849.00 (ex

This makes it £40/h for development cost + 2 weeks ongoing support, site design training for free.

Will need to dig a little bit in - it is very likely that they are outsourcing most of these services - wonder how the deal works.

They have got an extensive range of other services which I didn't take the time to test yet - just joined their BT tradespace and create my own trade space