Chicago Web Designer

The 2008 program features 12 award categories – Best Site Design, Best Health/Healthcare Content, Best Interactive, Best Care/Disease Management, Best e-Business, Best Employee Recruitment, Best Newsroom, Best Web 2.0, Best Quality Communication, Best Overall Internet Site, Best Intranet Site, and eHealth Organizational Commitment.

Organizations enter under one of 17 classifications so that they compete only against others of comparable type, size, and resources. Platinum, gold, silver, and distinction awards may be given in every classification for each award category. An independent panel of individuals familiar with healthcare and the Internet evaluates entries.

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Matt Mullenweg’s recent post about a “bogus” WordPress security breach had me wondering about my own WordPress sites. Unfortunately, it turns out I’ve become a victim of a WordPress vulnerability whose symptoms are detailed here. Took me two whole nights of restoring my files and folders to their pristine condition. (Fingers crossed.) Take note that this is different from the ro8kfbsmag.txt hack, and seems to be a fairly recent attack. Thankfully, there are a lot of tell-tale signs:

Extra code added to the first line of PHP files

Has Your WordPress Been Hacked Recently? | WordPress Philippines

Goddard said that the Java platform already does offer technologies that provide a clean separation between developer and designer tasks. JavaServer Faces, for instance, lets the developer work on the model in JavaBeans and the designer work on the markup with a tool like Adobe Dreamweaver. And although Dreamweaver is an Adobe tool, he said the setup nonetheless let’s people use familiar platforms and “everyone is ultimately working on a Java application making it an even more powerful team.”

Designers perhaps need to be better aware of capabilities within the Java community system, said Goddard, adding that many of them are probably focused on the PHP scripting language, for instance, because it’s “similar to what they’ve already been doing and they know other designers who are using PHP.”

PC World - Business Center: Sun Offers Peak at Internet Apps Plan

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PartyChat adds one of the many missing features from Google Talk: chat rooms. You need to add partychat@gmail.com as a friend and use commands to create a room or join an existing one. To make sure nobody joins your room accidentally, password-protect it.

To enter the chat, IM partychat@gmail.com with the line “/enter drivel.” After that, you’ll receive messages sent in “drivel” from partychat@gmail.com and all messages you send to partychat@gmail.com will be broadcasted to your friends in “drivel.”

If you log out of Google Talk and then log back in, you’re still in the party chats you were in prior to logging out. To leave a party chat, IM “/leave” or “/exit” to the address you were chatting with (e.g. partychat@gmail.com).

useful commands:

/create chat_name [optional_password] - creates a new party chat. If you provide a password, then other users must give this password to enter the chat.

/join chat_name [password] - join an existing party chat. If the chat has a password, you must give the password to enter.

/alias [name] - give yourself an alias; if you do not specify a name, your current alias is removed

/commands - displays the list of commands

Chat Rooms for Google Talk

Companies spend lots of time, money on search engine optimization to ensure their name, products pop up on first page
By Eric Benderoff | Tribune reporter

Matt Moog spends a lot of time thinking about how people find his business on the Internet.

“Something like 70 percent of all Internet sessions start at Google,” Moog said. “If you don’t show up on that first screen, to a lot of consumers you don’t exist.”

The success or failure of Moog’s year-old business, the Chicago-based user-review site Viewpoints.com, may hinge on the art and science of what’s known as search engine optimization, which is the competition to get listed among the first results in an online search.

Words key to grabbing top placement on Google, other search engines — chicagotribune.com

Ebay considers sale of Skype subsidiary
By Richard Waters in San Francisco Thursday Apr 17 2008 13:00
Ebay will consider selling off its Skype internet phone subsidiary at the end of this year if it fails to find ways to use the fast-growing service to support its core e-commerce business, according to the company’s chief executive.

The comments from John Donahoe, who took over at the end of last month, are the most direct indication yet that Ebay is thinking of scrapping the ill-starred acquisition. It paid $3.1bn, but wrote down the value of the business by $1.4bn last year after concluding it would not match earlier hopes.

Ebay originally believed that Skype would oil the wheels of its online markets by making communications easier between buyers and sellers, while also supporting new business models such as “click to call”. Nearly three years after the acquisition, however, Ebay has yet to prove Skype can help its other businesses.

Ebayers don’t wanna talk on the phone?

or to the people they are buying stuff from?

FT.com - Ebay considers sale of Skype subsidiary

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posted by: Michael Hugos in Best PracticesWhat do you get when you mix dance, dreams, a relational database, some web pages, good design and not a lot of money? I got an answer to that question recently at an event where a new website was unveiled. It shows how simple and well done use of technology can be applied to grow audiences and build support for dance companies and dance studios in my fair city of Chicago. It’s a great example of the impact of the Internet on audience engagement.

In the fall of 2005 SeeChicagoDance.com was launched to bring together dance audiences with dance performance companies. By 2007 it was discovered that about 60% of dance audiences are also interested in taking dance classes. So a website called TakeChicagoDance.com is now building on the momentum created by that first website. The synergies created are delivering the kind of growth that we business people yearn for. Website visitors and subscribers are starting to double in shorter and shorter periods of time.

Audience Architects

Artists quickly learn how to get a lot done with small amounts of money and they learn where to use the little money they have to generate the best results. They have to be agile. They don’t have the funding to engage in lengthy studies of the obvious and repeated failed attempts to build overly complex solutions to simple problems.

Link 

(Update4) By Ville Heiskanen and Amy Thomson

March 26 (Bloomberg) — Motorola Inc. plans to split into two companies next year amid pressure from billionaire investor Carl Icahn to break off the money-losing mobile-phone business that it pioneered 25 years ago.

One company will focus on handsets and the other will sell network equipment, cable TV set-top boxes and two-way radios — businesses that are profitable and growing faster. The board is looking for a new leader for the phone business, Motorola said in a statement today.

The decision buys time for Chief Executive Officer Greg Brown to revitalize the handset unit before the split. Icahn has said the division is undervalued and demanded that it be separated with new management. Brown was looking for a buyer after sales slid for four straight quarters as consumers snapped up phones from Apple Inc. and Nokia Oyj.

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

SPRINGFIELD — At first glance, it looks like a Web site with doodles straight from a teenager’s notebook.

The design is reminiscent of “Napoleon Dynamite,” with bright colors, lined-paper shapes and even a section about air guitars.

But it’s not just another MySpace page. It’s an advertising technique being used by Miller Brewing Co. for its alcoholic energy drink Sparks, which contains 6 to 7 percent alcohol, more than most beers.

Now, the product and the marketing behind it are being called into question by Illinois lawmakers.

Daily Herald | The buzz over alcoholic energy drinks