scrumpyjack

A friend recommended me to Easyspace (a web hosting company based in Glasgow, Scotland - part of the iomart group). Their prices looked good, they were UK based, and I could handle almost everything online...

I've just been on the phone with a potential client. From our brief chat it's clear that they have experienced problems with "web" people before now. This has affected their view of our services at FlipStorm, even though they know nothing about us. So, how do you overcome that kind of prejudice? You could turn to the salesman's pitch... tell them all the guff they either already know or don't want to know and spin it to make it sound like you're the best. If they buy in, they've got to spend some more money and they might just get lucky. If they are smart though (and your client is always smart , no matter how stupid they are!), they won't go for any of that. So you need to toss them a bone. Prove to them that you are prepared to go that extra mile. Give them something for nothing... a favour! Some of you may see this as flaring up the spec work debate , but before I start a urinating competition, I'd like to mention that there are absolutely n...

I've just started using the google.load() service to fetch my favourite javascript frameworks and was wondering if anyone else is doing this? According to all the hype from a couple of months back, end users should start to see an increase in surfing speed because of centralisation of these frameworks. Of course that depends on one thing: uptake. It's no good when some of the more common apps use Microsoft's AJAX framework (eBay) and others write their own frameworks. The other problem is that Google won't necessarily host the version we want. If you want to use betas, forget it! Even the latest stable versions won't be available straight away. I guess it's a trade-off. For all the sites out there that want MooTools or script.aculo.us, aren't bothered about running the latest version and want the possible benefit of a fractional decrease in load... this is a great way to go. If you can minify and host these packages yourself though, it's probably safer!

Dear Tanya, Google Friend Connect was officially announced last week. It has since come to light that this is no ordinary social network. In fact in the truest sense of the term, it isn't a social network at all! Friend Connect is a social tool. It seems the lovely people at the big G have been working their socks off finding a way to help us all connect a lot more easily. This fantastic tool is still only in preview, but from the fairly sketchy detail proffered by Google, it seems that even now it has a very wide appeal. In order to place a perspective on what Friend Connect allows you to do, imagine: you are the only software developer on the planet. You, and you alone, have developed each and every web site in the world and you had to build each site from scratch. So that means no code sharing. No data sharing. This means for every user who visits a web site that requires authentication they will have to register and verify their details. Then they will have to maintain them....

Dear Dorothy, Small-ish software houses (like the one I work for) suffer terribly when we get a big project. You see when a company is started, the guy running the show (my boss and MD of the company) usually knows how to manage everything himself. He has all fingers in all pies. However, this poses a problem when you then have to start sharing knowledge and resources, creating stable, trackable communications, testing and reporting. Even worse when the client gets all "hands-y" and is all over you like last Sunday's gravy accident. The key factor above all else is cost. For a small business it's just not an option to go out and spend thousands on just-what-we-need bug tracking, centralised communication system with permissions-based remote access, project management software. Even if you can piece these bits together from really handy 'freebies', it's still at a cost of time - installing, configuring, and getting all these separate and disparate parts to ...