Blog

Welcome back to work everyone!  We hope you had a great time over the silly season and the typically laid-back and relaxing January that follows.  Some people only managed a few days off, before getting stuck straight back into things in early January (usually tying up those pesky pre-Christmas loose ends).  The Australian tradition has always been that the year doesn’t really officially begin until we have all had a big barbecue on Australia Day!

So here we are, February 2011.  How are those New Year's resolutions holding up?  What about the big plans and schemes you hope to unfold as the year rolls out?  If you live in Queensland or Victoria, many of those plans might have been literally washed away – or perhaps the floods and other extreme weather have inspired you to commit even more strongly to your stated goals and ambitions, despite the setbacks.

Are you ready to start 2011?  Any projects in mind?  New Website?  Revamp the old Website?  Marketing your business in a new way?  Whatever you have in mind, start early... because you know things always take longer than you expect.  Have you put a plan together?  A to-do list, or mind-map?  What about considering the resources you might need, both in terms of budgets and materials, but also time and support from associates and suppliers?  From our experience, it is highly likely that you might be in need of a little support from someone who might have been on the journey that you are planning on embarking on.  We can help you sort out all your plans and ideas and start getting it into gear.

Here at Cyrius, we had a very interesting year last year, in our little Web design world, here in Sydney.  We took on some exciting and challenging projects, new clients and even managed to completely re-design and re-launch our own Website.  2011 looks to be the year where all that ground work last year might well have been preparing us for take-off.  We also scaled back in a few areas to make ourselves more flight-ready, allowing a few projects to be passed on to some of our associates, so that we could really concentrate on the ones we are passionate about.  Perhaps this is what you are planning on doing.  De-cluttering and simplifying, so you can really focus on what you want to do.  What better time to do this than right now, freshly into a new year and full of motivation!

Here's to the year ahead!

By Stefan Sojka

I just read this article about the Physics of Angry Birds in Wired Magazine on-line:  http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/physics-of-angry-birds/  It made me think about how such 'simple' looking games are programmed and the maths and geometry built in...

Programming is generally fairly unmathematical – sure, it may seem like a similar type of activity that similar types of people might perform, but without the maths component, programming is quite limited to instructions and functions devoid of physical behaviours – motion, shape and change over time...

The better a programmer understands maths as well as programming, the better the motion is going to be, which is why a lot of programs and games seem to have rather clunky motion... the programmer simply wasn't that good at maths.

Any good coder ought to have a pretty good maths qualification to complement their programming abilities.  Ask for their resume.  Look for the evidence of mathematical genius. :-)  We have used a couple of maths genius coders over the years – and it makes a huge difference to how their finished work turns out.  Everything is smoother, and their ability to get things done is far better than programmers who only learned programming code.

Most animation and video programs, such as Adobe After Effects or Flash have the ability to key in mathematical formulas, outside of their standard presets (which are largely mathematical in foundation as well).  Anyone who knows how to get in and tweak the formulas is going to have a whole new level of control and ability to perform what you might require.

Programming is powerful, but throw in some pure maths and you make magic happen.

By Stefan Sojka

While it is common knowledge that many people use overseas companies to take on programming jobs, due to the lower wages and costs, what they often forget are the issues that may arise:

• Communication barriers may exist, not just with language, but with time zones and different business practices or standards
• Sometimes a local ‘agent’ might take on a job, then outsource it overseas without the client knowing or having much say in it.  Then, when the project hits a stumbling block, things can get very difficult, even to the point of the agent losing control and the project failing completely
• It can be difficult to deal with any disputes or legal issues, since the outsourced company may operate under different national laws.  The channels of resolution that we are very fortunate to have in Australia may not be available
• It can happen that the overseas company may quote very low to get a job and then introduce all kinds of additional costs as the project unfolds, once they know you are powerless to take the project elsewhere
• Projects can be developed with proprietary code that you don’t own and can’t take elsewhere, so you are stuck with the development company no matter how badly the project turns out
• It might be difficult to get even the basic specifications of the job right, if you are not able to meet with the programming team in person to work it all out.

If you are considering outsourcing overseas, keep the above points in mind.  In the end it might be cheaper to pay higher local rates in order to guarantee that the job is done right first time, with peace of mind, the security of knowing you can deal directly with the company involved and the protection of our strong local laws, regulations and insurance.

If you want to take advantage of the many benefits of outsourcing programming overseas, it is often advisable to go through a local contact or company with an overseas office where the work is done.  This way you may pay a bit of a premium to cover the local costs of managing the project, but because you are engaging a local company, you will have more protection for fair trading, a local person to deal with and the extra confidence of working with a company that you have a better chance of assessing and determining their credibility and credentials.  Just be sure to do your homework before getting started.

It can work out very well indeed, so long as you are prepared and aware of the risks.

By Stefan Sojka

This blog is about how you can boost your keyword search ranking in Google.  It is also actually helping to boost ranking of this Website at the same time as it is telling you!

Blogging is a great way to add content to your Website – good, relevant, helpful content.  Search engines like to index more content on a Website, as it helps determine if your site is better than the next one and so should be higher up the ranks for the certain keywords your site or blog might be about.

Since I want to get found for, say, 'Website design Sydney', or 'Web design Sydney', it makes sense that I should blog about this topic and related topics.  It is an opportunity to tell people what you know about your business and your industry, which in turn lets people see that you are knowledgable and authoritative, and helps Google and other search engines index you better.

The best way to do this is to make sure that your blogs are topical and relevant – so this blog posting is about how to get better ranking in Google – by writing blogs!  It’s ironic, but by blogging about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for ‘Website design Sydney’, I am informing my readers and boosting search engine ranking at the same time.

So, like your blog, which will be all about your business, the posts in this blog covers many topics related to Web development, Internet marketing, business Websites, Internet culture, marketing tips and technical advice.  All of these add content and information, and help Google decide that this site is worth putting up the list a little more – in other words, is worth visiting.

If you do it right, chances are that other Websites will start linking to your blog articles.  This further increases your on-line footprint and lifts you higher up the listings.  It also boosts the overall quality of your industry’s presence on-line – because someone like you has taken the time to write something helpful and informative for your fellow industry members and customers.

Blogging is a great way to communicate and is also a really good way to add value to your Website in more ways than one.  Information, advice, expertise, link-building, search engine ranking – everything is given a little boost every time you post a blog.

Happy blogging, and if you are based in Sydney and are looking for a Web developer who understands Website marketing and internet business, give us a call. :-)

By Stefan Sojka

About 13 years ago I made a big mistake.  I bought a PC.  There I was, a true Apple Mac devotee, surfing the net, making music, building Web pages and running my business, when it was time to upgrade.  At the time, Apple Macs were relatively quite expensive, compared to PCs, and a friend offered me a second-hand Pentium 90 for $500.  Compared to the three or four grand a new Mac was going to cost, I jumped at it.  I crossed to the dark side.

PCs are cobbled together Frankenstiens, built from a terrible collection of misfitting parts, all with different protocols, standards, compatibilities, etc.  And their operating system is one made by a man whose primary objective was not to make the best operating system in the world, rather to just get his operating system into as many computers in the world as he could.  Windows, an overlay to MSDOS, is a mess.  No wonder the 'blue screen of death' became such a well-known phenomenon.  Clunky, buggy, insecure... and that's just the software – the hardware – with all its associated third party software just adds exponentially to the complexity, and in turn, to the problems.

Since that fateful day of purchasing the PC, I have become a slave to the system.  Endless patches, upgrades, re-boots, blue screens, error messages, downtime – so much down time!  Not only that, but I was set on a path of never-ending spending on new bits and pieces.  My Apple was a single unit – the PC was a box full of junk, each piece of junk requiring replacement at regular intervals.

All of this is fine, if you are a boffin – boffins (nerds, geeks, whatever) love pulling things apart and replacing things.  They love the latest gadgetry – they even love it when things crash, because it gives them a chance to prove how much of a boffin they are as they join newsgroups and search technical documentation in their quest to resolve the problem.  I am not a boffin – I use computers because I want to get things done.

I might have saved three grand on that fateful day I bought my first PC, but I think over the last 13 years, I have probably wasted at least $100,000 in downtime, lost productivity, fees paid to boffins, lost focus (as I spend half my life talking to boffins) and my environmental footprint, with all the wasted junk I have bought, re-bought and thrown away, is about the size of King Kong.

It's time for me – and the world – to wake up.  We don't need PCs – we never did – Bill Gates only made us think we did – because he wanted to control the world.  PCs will always be poor imitations of real computers.  They will always be cobbled together, they will always be ever more complex as each operating system upgrade adds layer upon layer of disguise to try to look like an elegant machine.  All you get is a window to a vista of sophistry.

Looking forward I have decided to replace most of my PCs with Apples.  Apples are not perfect, by any measure, but at this point in time, their elegance, design, reliability, performance and productivity outstrips the PC.  Those funny adverts are true – that's why they work so well.  Microsoft are running scared.  The era of forcing people to bend to your will and hand over all their money for something that will give them more trouble than it's worth is over.  This is the Apple/Google era.  Software in clouds, not shrink-wrapped.  The Internet is complicated enough – managing our lives these days is hard work – the last thing we need is for the devices we use continuing to be the bane of our existence.

I'm switching back.  I'm going home.  Apples are good for you.

By Stefan Sojka

It's like... the numbers never added up.  When average house prices went up by more than an average person could earn in a year, something was terribly wrong.

If everything is over-priced and everyone over-borrows to pay for it all, the only way to keep up is to rip the resources of the planet off.  No-one factors what nature provides – they just take it for free.  Nature is the only real input that feeds the system – minerals, human toil and animal/plant harvesting.  But even pillaging the planet can't be done fast enough to cover the ridiculously stratospheric numbers conjured up in financial circles.

The worker is not much better off than the planet – the debts can't even be covered working 20-hour days, 7 days a week.  Not even interest payments on the house can be covered at that rate, it seems.

You can't dig enough tin ore fast enough to feed the beast of the stock market, no matter how many guns are pointed at the poor Congolese peasants.

So of course the system will collapse.  Thankfully it was the financial system first, not the natural system – you can't eat money.

New models must arise – and are arising.  It's just that governments, business and the general public are hypnotised into thinking "this is the best system we have."  The faulty logic being that communism failed, therefore we must have the best system in the universe.

Just because we have Mac and PC operating systems, doesn't mean there is not a far better way to run a computer than both of them.

That's my socio-political rant for the day! :-)

By Stefan Sojka

Can you believe that it is nearly Christmas – AGAIN??!!

Here we are half-way through November.  The Christmas decorations are up – the parties are being planned – and some have already been held!  Is it just me, or is time really speeding up?  We have a bunch of Websites on the go right now – and of course everyone wants everything finished before Christmas – so we can all sun ourselves on the beach, sipping cocktails, knowing that our Websites are working!

Fortunately we have a new Website building and management system, with Content Management, CRM, blog, news, FAQs, statistics, templates, newsletters – everything a business needs in a single Website to get up and running, attract new business and manage existing business really well.

So, yes, Christmas is fast approaching, but we are steadily working away on designing, building and managing a number of great new Websites, ready for a huge 2009.

By Stefan Sojka

For those who don't wish to invest in the Internet but still want a small business Website that makes a lot of money...

This was a letter I wrote to a client who wanted to arrange a meeting to discuss the possibility of us building them a one-page Website for as cheap as possible – with the intention of having that Website bring in a whole lot of new business

Dear Prospect,

Hope you had a great weekend.

I am sorry to let you know that I can’t make the appointment today at 11.30.  We might make another time, but I need you to consider this email first.

I had a good think about it over the weekend and really we are a little outside the boundaries of the scope of work you said you were looking for at this time.  This being said, I think you might like to consider expanding that scope, with the following in mind:

We offer a much higher level of Internet marketing and development service which generally achieves excellent results for our clients.  Many of them have turned over $1 million and more as a direct result of the work we do.  The investment required to achieve these results these days is tiny in proportion to any other form of marketing/media.  However, the work is highly specialised, using a mix of senior developers, writers, search engine specialists, etc. and the costs to achieve the intended results necessitates us charging accordingly.

A typical investment for Internet marketing and business development might be $10K–$30K a year, and the work includes:

* Complete business assessment, covering all aspects of the business and the potential for growth
* Development of a detailed proposal, plan and quotation
* Design and development of initial Website, with complex programming devices designed to create new business
* Develop and implement a search engine marketing strategy
* Provide ongoing assessment of the results of the marketing efforts
* Modification of site and marketing strategy as results are analysed
* Ongoing consulting

The reason for all of this is because the landscape of the Internet has changed significantly in the last few years.  There is big potential for growth for any business, but it is a more complex and competitive space now.  It is no longer sufficient to put a page up and wait for the phone to start ringing.  Google is setting the pace and expecting people to pay for every click they receive to their Website.  They do offer some traffic through their free searches, but that is mostly limited to the top 5 or 10 sites.  So, one has to be a lot smarter and proactive, leveraging numerous marketing techniques, including Google’s own systems, to reap the financial gains offered by the Internet.

We can do this for you, but we can’t afford to do it without a reasonable allocation of budget to the project by the companies we work for.  The ones that realise this are benefiting greatly from our expertise.  The ones that don’t invest enough, idle along like everybody else.  It is costly work for us, with very high wages and other expenses (software, hardware, service providers, etc.), and we operate on minimal margins.  For those who are prepared to go the distance and budget accordingly, the rewards are there.

We have many success stories – all in proportion to the amount of in-house effort they put in and the amount they invested in our services.

I hope this explains things enough.  Please consider the fact that a reasonable budget would really benefit the business.  If so, I would be more than happy to set up a time later in the week for a full assessment of your needs.

Kind regards,

Stefan

By Stefan Sojka

Here are a few messages that come up in your Internet Site statistics, and a brief explanation of what they mean.  These are some of the 'hits' to a Web page that don't amount to a person viewing an actual page on your site.

Code 206 (Partial Content) means that only part of the file was transferred.  This error is generated when a user clicks the stop button on their browser while downloading a page, or aborts a file download while it is still downloading.

Code 301 – Moved Permanently – The requested data was found at a different URL to the one given.  301 usually occurs if a user entered the address of a directory instead of a specific file.

Code 304 – Not Modified – This does not really indicate an error, but rather indicates that the resource for the requested URL has not changed since last accessed or cached.

Code 404 – Not Found – Your Web server thinks that the HTTP data stream sent by the client (e.g. your Web browser) was correct, but simply can not provide the access to the resource specified by your URL.  This is equivalent to the 'return to sender – address unknown' response for conventional postal mail services.  This error is easily created if someone tries a URL with valid domain name but invalid page, e.g. http://www.ibm.com/aaaaaaaaa.html.

Code 500 – Internal Server Error – Your Web server encountered an unexpected condition that prevented it from fulfilling the request by the client (e.g. your Web browser or our CheckUpDown robot) for access to the requested URL.
This is a 'catch-all' error generated by your Web server.  Basically something has gone wrong, but the server cannot be more specific about the error condition in its response to the client.  In addition to the 500 error notified back to the client, the Web server should generate some kind of internal error log which gives more details of what went wrong.  It is up to the operators of your Web server site to locate and analyze these logs.

Feel free to Google any of these and other messages that you might receive, for more information.  All servers generate a bunch of these over time for all the above reasons.  If Code 500 happened a lot, there would be something to worry about.

The 404 message count in your stats can get large because it is likely that spammers and hackers run applications that look for possible files to attack, so they might run a script that looks for numerous files that your site might have – ones that have a statistically higher probability of having security vulnerabilities.  "submit_data.html" for example... or "log_in.html" that someone might have embedded the password into the page.  Since they try a few of these on millions of Websites, every site gets a certain amount of 404 messages.  The other reason could be people simply typing in the address wrong, though on our server we have a spell checker that automatically corrects all of these.

By Stefan Sojka

Dear Customer,

I have had a look at your newsletter and images.  There is a problem that needs fixing at your end to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Whether you email a file or upload it, you have to ensure all files are optimised to be as small as possible.

5 Megabytes is usually the absolute limit, this is especially true for email but also can be true for Web uploads.

The reasons are because:

1) Australia’s Internet is very slow and expensive.
2) ISPs will often block emails with attachments with a combined size that exceeds 5MB.
3) Uploading to Websites takes too long and you might get time-outs.
4) People who either download or receive large emails are often on very slow connections and the emails and downloads will either take a very long time, or will time out and fail.
5) All of this is contrary to the way computers and technology is going, where large files are normal, especially photographs.  Your average phone these days is able to take photographs larger than 5MB.
6) Kevin Rudd really needs to get his “Broadband Revolution” happening as soon as possible! :-)

So, for anyone trying to run a club newsletter, Website, email list, etc, the most important thing at the moment is to know how to keep file sizes down, and to do that every single time.

If a photo is going to print, it is OK to be large, as print quality is better with a big file.  But that is only possible if you are taking the file to a printer on a disc.

If the newsletter is being emailed or uploaded you must convert the photos to screen resolution small files – i.e. 72dpi JPGs.  A typical 5MB photo might be able to be reduced to 30–40KB – even less.  Even a screen resolution newsletter will print fine on most people's domestic printers.

So you need to:
a) Prepare all photos BEFORE importing them into the newsletter.
b) Optimise the newsletter itself.  If you are using Adobe Acrobat to generate the PDF, it should give you options for screen resolution and file size optimisation.

That way, you will not have any more problems with file size.

You might also need to look at image file formats.  If you send people EPS files, then whatever program you use should also convert these to JPGs, if you intend to send them to end-users or upload them to the Website.  EPS files are usually for print industry or graphic designers to work with.

I hope this information helps you.

Since this is an urgent issue right now, we can solve this immediate problem for you if you want.  He is the fastest and the best.

He will:

a) Pull the newsletter apart and extract the images.
b) Optimise all the images in the screen size they need to be displayed.
c) Re-build the newsletter with the new images
d) Discover and fix any other potential issues with the PDF file.
e) Optimise the final file.
f) Upload it and email it back to you, ready for distribution.

We will charge accordingly for this work.  /hour + GST.  I can’t tell you exactly how long it will take, because we have to pull the file apart to see what is going on.  As a guide, it might take 1–1.5 hours.

Or maybe you could take the advice above and solve the problem yourself.

Please let me know if you would like us to solve this urgent issue.  Hopefully you can manage things better from now on.

Just to let you know the above advice and research I did looking into your problem is one of the services we usually charge for.  However, I am not charging for this, I am doing it in good will.  I want to see you running things more smoothly and with less stress :-)

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Cheers,

Stefan