We often get caught up with our technology and gadgets and take for granted what they can do.  Two MIT students accomplished an amazing feat when they managed to get photos from near-space for $150 worth of items.

Their photos are actually pretty impressive from the inexpensive GPS/Camera equipped cell-phone.

This is a really neat discussion that I’d love most clients to see.  For some reason, the fact that we’re a “service” business working in a “knowledge” industry seems to give clients the impression that they can barter/bargain more than in other situations.

Really interesting that these situations seem highly unacceptable to people, but we hear this kind of stuff all the time…check it out:

Probably difficult to believe I can be impartial about this since we’re clearly trying to convince prospective clients that we’re a sound choice to be their web development partner…so rather than take too long myself here is an impartial third party’s viewpoint on “Selecting a Web Designer or Developer.”

This is specifically focused on people who are building E-Commerce websites, however the advice does translate pretty well to most situations.  I think at times the pricing discussion goes a bit out of bounds in terms of the upper limits (wouldn’t we love to be charging those rates!?) but the lower to mid-range pricing discussed seems to fit with my view of the web development landscape.

On thing missing in this discussion is the concept of Intellectual Property and who owns the output created by the company you’ve hired.  Always make sure that is stipulated up front in all contracts because the answer to the question is often a surprise to the individual or organization paying the bill.

I love it when the web development world comes up with a cool name for a new interface element…this one may not qualify as being all that original.  I’m starting to see these types of elements alot more often on websites and a recent post in Signal vs. Noise was my starting point for looking at this a bit further.

So…what makes a drop down “MEGA”? According to Jacob Neilsen, a Mega Drop Downs are:

• Big, two-dimensional panels divided into groups of navigation options
• Navigation choices structured through layout, typography, and (sometimes) icons
• Everything visible at once — no scrolling
• Vertical or horizontal form factors when activated from top navigation bars; when activated from left-hand navigation, they might appear as mega fly-outs (not shown). 

I’ve been struggling with this for many years in this business, and I’m sure will continue to struggle with it for years to come…if I had the proverbial nickel for every time someone asked me “How much does a website cost?” I’d be a rich man. After being posed that question I launch into my semi-rehearsed diatribe of how we figure out what the heck to charge someone for the services and development which we intend to provide to them.

I’m sure by the end of the speech, they wish they had just asked me how business was and received the boilerplate “going well” response and moved on to the next topic.  To be really simplistic, in work that we do for clients that is project based, we need to make enough money to arrive at an hourly rate that delivers some measure of profit for us, and results in the client feeling they paid a fair price and receive what we hope is outstanding work and results.  Any less than that, and we start “chewing” through our own profit to the horrific point where work we’ve promised to complete in a given time and budget goes so over our expected time that we’re into actually paying to get this work off of our plate.  So…you win some, you lose some I guess, hopefully resulting in a profitable company overall.

Working on a fixed price presents many challenges that often lead to negative results.  What “fixing” a price means is that you’re gambling on your ability to deliver a completed project, with a vague sense of requirements, within often an arbitrary sense of time driven often by a client’s perceived need for the application.  If that sentence doesn’t drive fear into your heart, read it again recognizing that although there is a fixed number in the proposal, and a fixed time in which to deliver the work, nothing else is actually “fixed”!  Working on an open ended basis is equally scary to clients, and rightfully so.  What generally ends up happening is something somewhere in the middle where we’re fixing to a budget, but not necessarily guaranteeing the output given that it really never is truly “defined” early on in the work.

So…if you asked a builder to give you a fixed rate on a house, and to get it done in 3 months, and said that you need “3 bedrooms, maybe an open concept kitchen and family room, nice basement…yeah that’ll do it”  How do you think they’d react? Quite differently than if you presented them with detailed architectural drawings and materials specifications for all surfaces.  So certainly a web application with highly defined technical specifications presents a more likely chance that you’ll know what you’re getting into, but as we often say, building something technical like a web application isn’t like building a house.  We are often faced with technical challenges that can easily force work with a previously known timeline to bulge 50 percent or even more at times.  

In addition, the concept of Agile web development methods (popular approaches these days) suggests a more iterative and collaborative approach that emphasizes and implies minimal planning and definition.  The bottom line, is that forecasting an accurate fixed cost for even the most well defined application is a big challenge.  Even the best project managers can be challenged with resources and scope through these projects because the reality is that the initial vision and the final product are rarely identical and often are radically different.

So…How much does a web application cost? You’d think after reading this the best answer I’d be willing to give is “I don’t have a clue”!  However the best way to describe it may be that it needs to be based on the time and effort required to build the desired outcome…just that the desired outcome is harder to predict at the start than you’d like it to be.  Others are applying more innovative approaches to their work in this field which are very interesting and suggest that some creativity is required to truly meet the needs of the new consumer.

Interesting to find out that Windows7 enables the concept of “Multitouch”, assuming you have a device that supports multiple touching like a touchscreen.  I’m sure you’ve seen the demos of Microsoft Surface that shows some amazing potential for user interaction in its various demonstrations. Its nice to see that some of these capabilities will make it into the next version of Windows so that users can start experiencing some user interface enhancements that may truly make it easier to interact with computers.

The iPhone already has some multitouch capabilities that allow you to zoom on maps and images simply by placing your fingers on the screen and spreading or closing them.  While Surface seems to extend far beyond that in its applications, it will be interesting to see if some of these abilities can make it into websites and web applications in the near future.

While there have been some very impressive enhancements in web and application development that have seen major advances in interactivity and information sharing, not to mention ease of use for users…I still believe that using computers effectively is often out of the reach of many consumers today who simply don’t have the basic skills and understanding to operate computers…or who never truly seem to learn concepts and skills and are continually frustrated or unable to perform the functions they need to perform.

I hope that this is one of those advances that can truly make the interface of common programs and applications easier to use and more powerful.

I heard on CNN’s American Morning today and at CrunchGear that there will be three (3) NFL games broadcast in 3D at select theaters in three US Cities next weekend.  This is really interesting news…we’ve seen so much in the movies and on TV about the future of entertainment and TV viewing, especially when it comes to sports.   I find it interesting that it really does take a long time before these ideas actually become viable products and are available.

I remember watching the first 3D movies when I was a kid with those crazy glasses you picked up at the local convenience store (this was pretty weak and barely worked for me).  Then watching Jaws in 3D was also a neat experience as are the multitude of 3D videos and exhibits and theme parks and museums.

I’m really interested to see how this works on the weekend and what people think of the NFL in 3D.  In reality, TV has become slightly more interactive and picture quality has definitely taken a leap forward with the advent of High Definition Programming, but essentially I still look at the same old box (well flat-panel now) on the wall showing the same old two dimensional output.

On websites, we’ve tried for years to incorporate designs and interactivity that is more 3D…yet are always challenged by the fact that we have to make these designs and systems work on the good old 2D flat screen.  I wonder how far away we are from websites and web applications that have a bit more depth?  Will we shed the confines of the flat 2D screen anytime soon?

It looks like there are already some examples of real-world implementations of this as you can see here:

After reading the story this week that NASA and Google are working on a way to extend the Internet beyond the confines of our planet was intriguing.  Of course I love hearing about anything that has to do with space exploration, and the concept of extending the Internet into space is interesting and strange at the same time.  Of course, if that first manned mission to Mars ever does happen, the journey is no doubt going to be a long one (several months at least), being able to browse the Internet would be nice .

Now…according to the article in the Ottawa Citizen about this, it will take nearly three minutes for the signal to travel from the earth to the source.  I guess instant messaging and real time communication are somehow out of the question.

What was interesting, is that the key technological hurdle needing to be overcome is the ability for a signal to be smart and be able to deal with disruptions and connection problems.  The new concept is called “Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN.  If a signal is blocked, the server can sense this, can save the content and send it on when the way is clear.”   We are constantly building web applications that rely on communication with other systems, sometimes asynchronously.  While there are mechanisms that can deal with disruption to a certain extent, this concept is interesting in that one could be sure that a transmission would arrive eventually, even if the system accepting the message isn’t available immediately.

I’ll be interested to see if this is one of those space program advances that actually helps us on earth, or if its just a cool idea that doesn’t yield any practical application.

Just in case you were worried whether spammers could still make a buck these days, a new study has found that even a response rate of 1 in 12,500,000 can produce a healthy income — potentially $7,000 a day. Now all we have to do is track down the 2 or 3 Canadians who are buying herbal libido enhancers and take away their email accounts…