Archive for November 10th, 2009
SperoConsulting.mobi
We are happy to announce that we have added a new web site extension, SperoConsulting.mobi, which provides an “optimized” experience for visitors viewing our site on a (mobile) cell phone.
“Phone visitors” who enter the site via either the .com or .mobi extension, are now automatically redirected to a scaled-down, graphics-free design theme. That speeds page loading and reduces data-related costs and should be more legible for those tiny screens.
Computer users on desktops, laptops, etc., can view the new mobi-optimized theme using the “switch site” widget on the left, and phone visitors can use the generated bar code to save the site in their phone.
If you are a regular visitor, please let us know how it looks and runs on your cell phone, including whether the contact form loads and is usable.
P.S. As you can imagine, each cell phone will display each theme differently. Visit ready.mobi to see an cell phone emulator for four or five different phones.
That issue of non-standard appearance permeates design decisions for regular .com sites, too. Consider how all of the different combinations of desktop and laptop and netbook monitors, screen sizes, settings, graphics cards, browsers, and lighting conditions show each web page differently, and then appreciate that designers must produce an optimal-looking site (on the client’s machine), which must be robust across the reasonable combinations of those items. By “reasonable,” we mean that if a visitor is using a monochrome 600 x 400 screen monitor, then they are unlikely to pay our consulting or design rates; so, we’re not particularly worried about their visitor experience.
P.P.S. This is definitely something that we will offer to our web design and development clients.
The Absurdity of Hassling Grandma but not Nidal Hasan
Tonight, we saw an ABC news story and an article in The Wall Street Journal that reported that the FBI and the Army knew that Army Major Nidal Hasan, the accused shooter at Fort Hood, had many contacts with radical Islamic cleric and recruiter, Anwar al-Awlaki.
Nothing was done about it. According to the Journal, “The communications between the men appeared related to Maj. Hasan’s work at Walter Reed Medical Center and his pursuit of a master’s degree…”
So let’s try to understand this. It’s okay to be a U.S. Army officer and contact a radical cleric who tries to recruit for the jihad on his web site…if it’s for “educational” purposes. (We imagine that one “educational” purpose would be, say, “I want to learn more about the jihad and what I can do to help.”)
Geez, we recall when Pete Townshend (and a few others) were caught with kiddie-porn on their computers, and their defense was that they had it for “research” (read educational) purposes, only. Not very compelling there, either.
Think of the billions of dollars and millions (if not billions of man-hours) used to harass honest citizens at the nation’s airports. Folks for whom the prior probability that they are, in fact, terrorists is as close to zero as practically possible. (We ask, how many zeros are to the right of that decimal point for you, dear reader?) Folks who have never contacted radical clerics for “educational” reasons or any other reasons. In fact, folks who would prefer that the government take actions to block or remove such sites – even if it means taking down the power grid in Yemen. Folks like you and us and your grandmother or your children’s grandmother.
As a citizen, Major Nidal has rights, but as an Army officer, he doesn’t have the same freedoms as civilians, yet the FBI and Army are too emasculated and weak-willed (and politically correct) to play the probabilities.
What’s the probability that someone has terroristic or severe anti-Western tendencies GIVEN that they sought out and conversed with a radical Islamic cleric and jihad recruiter?
It seems to be quite a bit higher than the probability that the federal government can effectively manage health care – by at least one order of magnitude.
While we’d like to close with the previous sentence – we think it’s kind of pithy – we must ask: how many other individuals like Major Nidal, have the agencies ignored, deemed harmless, or not bother with? Wonder if any of them live near you, or us?
Oracle, Sun, MySQL and the EU
Who Uses MySQL?
You do every day and every time you visit this site or millions of others on the web.
Not that it matters and not that we follow such matters very closely, but until today we have never agreed with any of the European Union’s anti-trust actions against U.S. firms. However, today The Wall Street Journal reports Deal to Buy Sun Meets Opposition From EU.
While U.S. anti-trust authorities approved the merger, the European Commission is concerned about the anti-competitive effect of Oracle’s proposed takeover of Sun Microsystems because Sun owns MySQL database software, which is very popular open-source software and powers many, many dynamic web sites. (We say my-sequel while other pronounce it my-es-que-ell. Whatever.)
Unlike html-based sites, dynamic sites write pages “on-the-fly” by querying MySQL databases. (Actually, there are hybrid sites, too, that create, cached, html versions of the database calls and queries.) In fact, for many dynamic sites, the search engines don’t actually visit pages, and sometimes don’t query the MySQL database; instead robots are directed a copy of an XML version of the site’s content.
If you see the asp extension on an interactive form or page, then you know it is a MS-based active server page. While there are a few other applications, if you see no extension or a php extension, then there is a very high probability that the page or form was generated from data stored in MySQL, and if it is an interactive form, then when you click “submit” the form entries are being sent to a MySQL database.
Anyway, when the acquisition was announced we wondered how it would affect the future availability of MySQL. Oracle claims that it is not an issue, but we also wonder about future improvement and development, too. Oracle and the U.S. Justice Department have concluded that other open source software will take its place.
We’re not as sure because the open-source and free nature of MySQL makes it the database on the web. It’s fast, it’s free, it’s large-scale, and industrial-strength. What’s not to like? (HTML based sites are sooo second millennium, and Flash-based sites are like stereo-typical blond beauties: pretty, but dumb, particularly with respect to search-engine-optimization.)
MySQL is the “M” in LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) servers/web platforms. All four components are open-source and free and state-of-the-art and permit web hosting services to offer shared hosting sites for only a few dollars per month. (LAMP and WAMP and XAMMP and various other bundles can all be downloaded for free and installed on home or company servers, and all work flawlessly.)
We don’t have much experience with expensive, large-scale databases like Oracle, but in our view, these various AMP packages are far superior to their equivalent Microsoft products (and, of course, far cheaper).
All of our web design and information system design work uses MySQL combined with either free or very inexpensive web applications and form generators. The form generators are very sophisticated and permit writing and querying of the MySQL databases. It’s very easy for small and mid-sized firms to leap-frog large, bureaucratic organizations to obtain affordable, customized, and state-of-the-art web-based systems for both internal and external users.
It’s a great time to be alive and to consult on these issues. Along with other open-source software and applications, MySQL is a large part of the beauty of it all.
