Online Observations

Choosing the right web development agency

Listed below are the main points that you have to consider when selecting an agency. You should evaluate all your options on at least the following points:

• Creative Design – you want to engage an agency which has good capability in UI design and creativity. A website should look interesting for the visitors, it should attract the visitor to spend time on it. When choosing an agency ask for live examples of websites that they have created. Visit these websites and evaluate them.
• Information Architecture – the agency which is creating your website should understand that it is very important to construct the website so that it is easy to navigate and provides intuitive ways for the visitor to find the information that they need from the website. This requires good analysis of the information that the website is going to provide and organizing it in the right manner. Once again an analysis of their existing work should help you take decisions on this front.
• Usability – An often overlooked component which goes hand in hand with the earlier two points is usability. Have you designed the website so that it is efficient for the visitors to use? Find out the capability that the agency has in the area of evaluating and designing a website from a usability standpoint.
• Search Engine Optimization – this is again an overlooked aspect of website design and is often handled at a separate stage. This has to be considered during the website design. Through an SEO optimized site, you are trying to ensure that you come as number one in search results for the keywords referring to you business. For example, if you were a design agency in Edinburgh which made websites, then you would want to be number one if anyone searched for web design Edinburgh (or web development Edinburgh). The agency which is creating your website should know enough about SEO to make the website optimized for SEO. If a website is optimized in this way, it becomes easier for other SEO activities to be carried out.
• Web development – and finally, the way design is different from development is if you need your website to be more than just a static set of html pages such that it needs to have forms, shopping carts, dynamic content, etc. then you need to get an agency which has resources which can do application development and programming.

The above are broadly the main things to watch out for when it comes to selecting an agency for designing your website.

A work of art, if not more

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of LG Chocolate Touch. All opinions are 100% mine.

These days there are so many options available when it comes to buying a mobile phone. The reason is that there are so many more requirements that the consumer has of their phone – making calls (of course), using the internet, listening to music, taking photos, social networking with friends, and many more. One of the phones that fulfills most of these requirements is a a device by LG called LG Chocolate Touch. This phone has a lot of neat features that have the potential to make this a phone of choice.

Let’s look at some features. If you listen to music on your phone, then you won’t be disappointed because it incorporates the Dolby Mobile technology for crystal clear sound. This means you don’t have to lug around that mp3 player with you anymore. A dedicated key for social network messaging allows easy access to send status updates to Twitter, Facebook or whichever social network that you are active on. The 3.2 megapixel camera and recorder eliminate the need to carry your point-and-shoot as well as your camcorder with you wherever you go.

These features combine with the great software which gives you very beautiful visual displays, great text and voice messaging capabilities, and cute features such as rhythmic vibrations which cause the phone to vibrate in sync with the beat of the music. All in all, it makes a great little package which should be a good option for people on the move who want to stay connected with their friends.

Connect your camera to the Internet

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Eye-Fi. All opinions are 100% mine.

I have always been a fan of the Eye-Fi product. Let me first describe what this gadget is all about. We all have digital cameras these days, and each of these cameras uses a memory card. The Eye-Fi card is a wireless enabled memory card. It basically converts your camera into a wifi device, which can connect to your computer or to the Internet wirelessly through a wifi Internet connection. I could go on and on, but probably the best way to explain what this card does is to show you a video of how it works. Take a look at the video below:

Now that you understand, imagine how useful this can be. I am always misplacing my USB card reader, and looking around for it whenever I need to transfer photos. With an Eye-Fi, you don’t need a card reader anymore. Actually, there are a lot more advantages than this. One of the biggest advantages of modern camera phones (such as the iPhone) is the ability to take a photo and upload it seamlessly to the Internet for instant sharing. The biggest drawback is that a camera phone usually takes poor photos. With an Eye-Fi card, you can take your photos from your camera which is good at taking photos, and then upload the photo to the Internet seamlessly from your camera itself.

The card comes with a software which you can install on your computer to configure how you want the card to work. It allows you to setup automatic backups and organization of your photos.

With the Eye-Fi card you should be able to avoid all the nagging reminders from friends and family for sharing your photos, simply because it becomes so effortless to do it. The Eye-Fi is only available in the SD/SDHC format, and that is probably the only bad thing about it.

Seriously awesome and cool drinks

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Jones Soda. All opinions are 100% mine.

Although this is a sponsored post (disclaimer above), this is one of those things that I would have blogged about anyway had I got to know about it earlier. Jones soda, which allows you to customize the packaging of the soda that it markets, has come out with a Dungeons and Dragons series of their soda bottles. Take a look at the soda bottle to the left, wouldn’t you like to get your hands on one of these bottles? I would love to see them in my refrigerator.

And looking cool is not the only thing that Dungeons and Dragons Jones Soda is good about. Take a look at the flavors: Potion of Healing, Sneak Attack, Dwarven Draught, Illithid Brain Juice, Bigby’s Crushing Thirst Destroyer, and Eldritch Blast. Can you even imagine what these taste like?

Let me try – Sneak Attack will be a drink which starts off mild and you would think, hmm.. this doesn’t taste like anything, but then suddenly as you are thinking that, comes and after taste that takes your breath away, and you want more… heh heh, probably not, but it would be cool if these drinks were something like this – magical.

Anyway, I think they are still very cool, and the names are perfect. This set of bottles is perfect for gamers and fans of the genre. As I said, I would love to have some of these in my refrigerator. Each flavor has a bottle which is potentially a collector’s item, with distinct graphics on the labels. Follow that link to check out each one of them.

If anyone’s tried any of these flavors, let us know in comments what they taste like. If not, then try to guess what each one tastes like (not wild guesses like I did, on second thought, go crazy). Anyway, if nothing else just visit that site to look at the really cool bottles, and have a great day.

A-B-C of Stem Cells

A lot has been written on stem cells, and yet almost no one knows about them (relatively speaking). Since we are going to have a baby in a few months time, I have been going through this topic quite a bit. While the topic is way more than what can be covered in a blog post, here’s a quick 1-2-3 version of it. The purpose of this is to just give the reader a very initial taste of this topic so that he/she is intrigued enough to do more research and get educated on this topic.

What are Stem Cells?

Stem Cells are the basis for all the cells in the body – each cell is created from a stem cell – whether it is a brain cell or another body organ. Scientists are finding new ways to work with these cells so that they can be programmed to convert into the desired cell type.

How do we get Stem Cells?

Well, there are many ways (as there are many sources of stem cells), and by far the easiest is to collect the cells during child birth – the umbilical cord blood of a baby as well as the amniotic fluid both contain stem cells which can be harvested during the child birth and stored for future use and research.

Why should I care about Stem Cells?

The main reason for knowing about this is because initial research has shown a lot of potential in treating ailments such as brain damage, cancer, spinal cord injuries, heart damage, diabetes, etc. to even more mundane things such as baldness, growing teeth, etc. The potential in this research is life changing. A lot of people (such as me and my wife) are opting for harvesting stem cells during the birth of their children and store it so that in case it is ever required in the future, we have it handy.

There is a lot of information that is out there regarding this topic, including controversies, since certain type of stem cells are only recovered from a live fetus or a cloned one. One should be aware of these as well. Some good starting resources for learning about these topics are the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and the WikiPedia Stem Cell page (as usual).

Spread the message, talk to your friends about it, discuss the pros and cons of it, learn more – the normal person on the street should be aware of topics like these. The more people who participate in this, the more momentum research such as this gains (and of course, the cheaper it becomes for the normal person to gain access to research and treatments such as these).

Learn the game before playing it

A couple of weeks ago I had written about online casinos and gaming online in general. When it comes to gaming, there are two types of players (whether playing online or otherwise) – casual-for-fun players and serious-for-money players. The casual for fun players normally hit the slot machines, or roulette, or craps, or other such games. But the serious for money players usually go after games such as poker or black jack. The difference between the two is that while all of them are games of chance, the latter games are also dependent on the skills of the player.

Now, if you would like to be in the second category of the players, then you better learn the game that you are playing very well. You can start out by learning the different types of games. These vary a lot, and even within game types, there are tons of variations. For example, poker alone has a large number of variations, different game types, mixture of game types, and so on (with one of the most popular being Texas Hold’em). What you need to develop and learn are the rules of the game that you pick (which is easy) and the strategies of the game (which is hard, given there is no end), and to develop the quality that makes you a good poker player (which is the hardest, since that is so hard to define).

The good news is that at least for the first two, there are plenty of resources out there which can help you out. I am sure there are guidelines and commentaries about the last one as well. How do you go about looking for these tips? Well, you search for them – for example, for Texas Hold’em, you would search for hold’em tips on your favorite search engine, and you should find a lot of information (and to get you started I have linked to one such site). You will get access to guides, tips, videos, psychology (that third point), various aids to quickly calculate the mathematics of the game, and basically everything that you need to turn you into a serious card player.

These resources will even help you find rooms where you can play, with the various characteristics of the rooms along with reviews. There are people who teach these games for a living (and there are a lot who learn). The teachers are past or current professional players. You can watch games being played by other people and learn from them. And you can get access to a lot of training tools which can help you hone your own skills at the game. I have watched some of these games on TV and to say that these are just a game of chance is totally incorrect. They require serious skill, and consequently require serious training and practice to acquire the skill.

Here’s a video of a poker game going on. Watch it and see if it is exciting (there was a reason that Casino Royale – the James Bond flick – was such a thriller – part of the thrill was in the poker game):

A lot of lives are lost because people just don’t know that they can help

YouTube is a destination for a lot of people for entertainment. It also represent a channel for people who need to reach out to a large audience for help. Sadly, these help seeking videos never get as viral as the entertaining ones. Take a look at the video below:

This girl passed away last year (yup, it is an old video… over one and a half years old). This video has garnered only around 40,000 views. It is very sad. But what can we do about it? What we can do is we can gain some knowledge about what can be done to help.

People donate blood all the time, and it helps save hundreds of lives across the globe. Why do people do that? Because people know that it is possible and it requires no risk to the person donating. Similarly, it is possible to donate your bone marrow to someone who needs it. The only difference is that a bone marrow donation is always needed in a situation where the recipient has no other option left for staying alive.

Read again: The recipient has no other option left for staying alive.

So, how do you donate bone marrow? By being part of a registry for Bone Marrow Donation. Be The Match (the registry I just linked to) is one such place. It is also mentioned in the video above. What they essentially do is act as an exchange between people who are willing to donate, and people who need the transplant. This is the first step that you have to take.

I began by saying that not enough people donate because not enough people know that it is something that can be done, and it is something that can save lives, and it is something that poses little or no risk to the donor. Here are some quick facts:

1. Less than 5% of the donors bone marrow is needed for a transplant. This is replaced within 4-6 weeks by the donors body.

2. In a lot of cases, this amount of bone marrow can be harvested simply from the blood stream. The process involves taking some medication to which promotes release of marrow in the blood stream, which can be harvested.

3. Even in the cases where the marrow is retrieved directly from the bones (which is needed sometimes), the procedure is done under anesthesia, and is not painful for the donor.

4. Most patients are able to get this done without having to stay in the hospital, and a complete recovery from symptoms such as fatigue is achieved within 2-3 weeks.

If you go to that registry site above, you will get answers to questions in by looking at the FAQs. I agree that it is not as simple as donating blood, but on the other hand you are saving a person’s life. And that has to count for something.