Web Design Jobs

Posted by Beth Still on October, 2nd 2009

If you are both artsy and a bit of a computer geek, you may have a future in web design. Web design jobs can be very lucrative if you commit yourself to learning the tools of the trade. So what tools and skills do you need to get a web design job? One is creativity and basic artistic ability; some design schools require students to take basic art classes before ever touching programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator.

Many people in web design jobs know some programming languages like HTML, C, Perl, PGP, Java, Flash, and/or ColdFusion. The Adobe software suite is the most widely used, so take the time to learn these applications. Take classes, read books, do whatever it takes for you to learn how to use Adobe. Dreamweaver is also an industry standard in web [...]

Facebook Connect Goes Mobile

Posted by Beth Still on September, 30th 2009

Facebook Connect was launched in part to replace the ill-fated Facebook Beacon, which caused great alarm because it tracked and gathered users’ information from third-party sites and then shared it with the users’ Facebook friends without their consent. For instance, if you bought something from Fandango.com or Overstock.com, your Facebook friends would be notified of this purchase whether you wanted to share this information with them or not. A lawsuit ensued, and earlier this month Facebook announced that they are shutting down Beacon.

With Facebook Connect, website users will be able to authenticate, connect their account in a trusted environment, and maintain control of any and all permissions. Facebook users’ personal information and privacy settings will follow them wherever they go on the web. Facebook Connect allows outside applications to access a user’s profile information when they register for or use a service. It makes signing [...]

Google Services for Websites

Posted by Beth Still on September, 29th 2009

Earlier this year, Google introduced a new package of tools designed to help web design specialists / hosts improve their own sites and to pass on to their customers. Let’s take a look at the new tools and how they can help your business.

Webmaster tools
• Help make sites more Google and SEO friendly
• Optimize search engine crawling
• Show Google’s view of any site
• Help to diagnose problems
• Improve site visibility in Google search results
• Enhance and increase traffic to your site
• Automatically inform Google when you update your pages
• Show how users are reaching your site

Custom Search and Site Search
• Offers search functionality on one or more websites or specific web pages
• Embeds search directly on website
• Customizes look and feel of results to match their sites
• Displays relevant ads alongside search results
• Drives revenue through AdSense for Search
Custom Search for your [...]

Catch the Google Wave

Posted by Beth Still on September, 28th 2009

Those smart folks at Google are about to unleash a new communication platform called the Wave in web developer preview mode. So what is Wave? Basically, it is part document and part hosted conversation. Wave is live. Wave is shared.

In Google Wave you create a Wave and add contacts to it. Everyone on your Wave can see anything you post, even feeds from other sources on the web. They can reply to your message or edit the wave directly. If they have Wave open concurrently with you, they will see on their screen what you are typing in your wave almost instantly. Therefore, Google Wave functions as an IM application, allowing your contacts to see what you type, character by character without your ever having to hit a “send” button. You can choose to turn off the real-time [...]

Twitter: The Best Business Model EVER?

Posted by Dave Wiltshire on September, 25th 2009

Is Twitter a paper tiger?  Sure, it’s wildly popular, fast-growing, and set to secure $100 million in funding, which is a neat trick for a company that has no business model and generates virtually no revenue.  Apparently a lot of people are willing to bet that Twitter is going to become even bigger.  Descriptions like “next big thing”, “unlimited potential”, “poor man’s email service” are bandied about as evidence that Twitter can’t fail.

Some business owners live by the adage to “be wherever your customers are”, ergo, if they are on Twitter, so should your company be.  It’s easy to see how Twitter could help certain types of businesses, e.g. real estate agencies, reach customers and potential customers at a moment’s notice.  Some companies either have or are planning to have a Twitter “Czar” to interact with customers, making sure that the company is never far from their minds, sending them [...]

New Web Copywriter Joins the Team

Posted by Beth Still on September, 19th 2009

Juno Web Design has a new team member, a talented web copywriter called Beth who will be helping with our day to day website and SEO copywriting. Welcome Beth!

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Paypal Officially Launches Student Accounts

Posted by Karen May on August, 12th 2009

Paypal introduced Students Accounts, a program designed to balance convenience for parents and their kids with financial responsibility. The program is centered on the use of a debit card. It was first presented in beta version back in December 2008, and has taken several months before being officially launched to US consumers.

Just in time for the school season, Student Accounts gets rid of the hassle brought by everyday exchange of money between parents and their kids. Paypal aims to foster good spending habits among teenagers through being responsible for their own money.

With the program, parents can create a maximum of four sub-accounts with fund transfer capabilities on a one-time or recurring basis. Parents will be able to monitor and control their teen’s account activities.

Paypal could highly benefit from the program through expanding their market to young adults. Debit card transactions also boost Paypal’s revenue, through the sellers honoring the cards.

A [...]

Digg Continues to Dig Traffic

Posted by Karen May on August, 11th 2009

Digg has been gaining a few more visitors lately, thanks to its new feature, Diggbar. The site is estimated to have 8.8 million unique visitors in the US,  a whopping 31 percent increase from that of the last three months.

Digg has been recently making web design tweaks, all of which contribute to the site’s growing popularity. One thing that’s become quite notable is the addition of Diggbar. Following its launch, Digg saw a significant lift in the number of visits, attributed to the short links people have been passing around.

Digg is a user driven social content website. After a content is submitted, other users review and “Digg” it if it suits their taste. If a story gets enough Diggs, then it goes up to the front page where visitors could see.

Kevin Rose, Digg’s founder, saw a great potential in publishing stories before anyone else did. Digg rose [...]

Yahoo Becomes New Owner of OMG.com

Posted by Karen May on August, 11th 2009

Yahoo has been consistently acquiring and selling domain names for the past few months. Just very recently, the firm has bought OMG.com for $80,000.

Yahoo went through a tumultuous year in 2008 and is slowly gaining back its pace this year. OMG.com is touted as TMZ’s closest rival, and Yahoo’s acquisition of the domain might add some spice to the company’s lackluster repute. Yahoo could possibly shift its OMG portal to omg.com, though it could have something else mapped out for the domain.

Yahoo’s OMG! Is a celebrity and gossip website, run by the firm’s News entertainment arm. It debuted in June 2007, with little highlights and a press release published in Yahoo’s corporate blog. With a new web design geared towards luring the female demographic, OMG! became the second most read gossip website across the US. Still atop is TMZ.com, owned by rival company AOL.

Web traffic analysis accounts 1.575 [...]

Amazon Gets a Freebie with Zappos Acquisition

Posted by Karen May on August, 8th 2009

Amazon hit the jackpot when it acquired electronic commerce company Zappos for $940 million in a stock and cash deal. With the acquisition, Amazon got a little giveaway, the Clothes.com domain.  It appears that Zappos bought the domain last year for $4.9 million.

Zappos acquired Clothes.com from IdeaLab as shown in SEC records. The purchase was made in May 2008. The domain is currently redirecting a Zappos web page seling clothing products.

Clothes.com was the second-highest domain bid last year. The sale never made news proving that a lot of major domain acquisitions go off the radar each year. However, it also shows that top brass companies consider generic domain names in increasing their sales and supporting their brands.

The launching of Zappos in 1999 made way to a major breakthrough in the web industry. The firm became the top online store during its peak, back when eBay and Amazon were still struggling [...]