Our skills in web programming, graphic design, marketing, technology and business management, training, and multimedia productions play vital roles in collaboration about projects. Furthermore, we believe the best way to grow our business is to ensure satisfaction on the part of our clients. Involvement on the part of our clients in every stage of development is expected so that we can ensure we are on track in delivering that satisfaction. Beyond these principles, however, the exact methods we use are influenced by the nature of the project itself.

Highly complex work will require us to use the SDLC model and principals of project management to plan, price, and control projects. A good example of this kind of work would be a multimedia production. Planning for such a project would include the following:

1. What is to appear on screen at a given moment
2. Audio (voice and or music) that is to be heard
3. A determination as to who does voice-over (VO) work (Voice actors are independent agents)
4. Zoom and pan movements
5. Presenter embedding (picture-in-picture)
6. Callouts (pop-ups containing annotations)
7. Flash hot spots (things people click on within the video)
8. Inclusion of other video content not produced by us
9. Quiz or Survey methodologies as well as SCORM-compliant learning management integration
10. Transitions between segments
11. Organization of output (table of contents, menus, chapters, etc.)
12. Production output (web, CD, DVD, etc.)

On the other hand, projects involving a small number of well-established tasks at the outset may not need this kind of process. An example of this kind of work would be someone asking us to prepare what we refer to as a web product (a template, theme, or for a particular content management system). The tasks for such work are well established, and most of the programming aspects for the work may even exist. An involved research and planning process is, therefore, not appropriate.

The content for the description section of a Yahoo Group home page should be written in HTML, with the possible combination of CSS if paragraph styles are going to be used repeatedly. Keep in mind there is a 2,000-character limit Yahoo sets for that information, which includes coding to apply changes for fonts, color, size, etc. Yahoo further restricts the use of certain HTML tags within group descriptions as well as messages sent through their system. (Read more…)

There many excellent tutorial sites on writing HTML code on the web. Here are three we recommend:

W3Schools - Good tutorials as well as online test for HTML certifications

EchoEcho - Excellent short lessons on several web-coding languages with quizzes.

HTML Code Tutorial - This site is an excellent and easy to use reference on HTML tags.

As to how to write the description, use a good quality text editor such as the open-source program Notepad++ is the easiest method. If you are more comfortable doing you are writing within a word processor with spelling and grammar checking support, copying and pasting the content into the text editor is an easy task. What makes Notepad++ so attractive, are its color-coded source code functions:

In the HTML document shown, notice how all the HTML tags are blue, with parameters for the tags shown in red. Spotting errors within the code becomes much easier, such as a missing closing tag, or improper construction of tables or lists. (Have you notice any of the minor coding errors showing in screenshot above?)

The TextFX menu section deserves special mention as it contains a number of handy tools for HTML writing. For example, there are certain characters such as quote marks, greater-than or less-than symbols, copyright symbol, and the like that are considered special characters within HTML. Simply select the character and use the encoding tool under TextFX Convert to change it. A handy word-count function under TextFX Tools will help ensure you stay within that 2,000-character limit.

Most groups have at least one image file associated with their description. A while back, Yahoo removed the need to store that image "logo" file at a separate location. Even better is how Yahoo will resize the uploaded image used for this purpose as needed in its directories, etc. In general, an image file sized to 320 pixels by 200 pixels has been found to work well. Keep in mind that the image should not be so complicated that becomes hard to read or recognize when reduced by 50% or more. The "old" method of storing an image file elsewhere and using the HTML <img> tag is still an option. However, those files will not be re-used within Yahoo system.

There reasons as to why a discussion group on Yahoo or Google can be considered orphaned are diverse. The owner could have died, simply gone missing, or someone could have stolen control of the group through deception, theft, etc. If the situation can be resolved, the key is to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the service (Yahoo, Google, whatever) the wishes of those within the group as to who the owner should be. In every situation where such a resolution has occurred, a preponderance of the documentation of those wishes existed within the group itself. The exact process used has varied, but those are some of the most common successful practices.

Some other tips heard from those involved:

1. Use specific keywords within the subject lines for all message postings on the situation. This will certainly help the supervising service agency locate message posts from members, which will probably be made over an extended period.
2. Within all message posts to everyone involved, be civil, polite, patient, and persistent!
3. Set reasonable deadlines for actions to occur, but stick to them. The more important an action is, the more time those involved should be given.

Here is the break down on a suggested course of action that has worked. Adapting it for the situation involved is highly recommended!

1. In situations where the group owner has gone missing, document attempts to reach the listed owner for a group. Yahoo provides a special address for reaching the owner of a group on the home page for each group. Google’s is a bit harder to find, but start on the group home page. Click on the
   ‘about group’ link, and then the link for ‘send e-mail to owner.’ Within the message, give the owner a decent timeframe to respond. Post copies of your correspondence into the group itself, along with any responses received.
2. Assuming all attempts to reach the owner have failed or the owner has stated they no longer wish to manage the group, a notice calling for candidates for the owner position is next. (Unless the group was ‘stolen’ from the present owner.) Be sure to set a deadline for when this call for candidates will end. Ask each person to post a short statement as to why he or she should be elected owner. They can describe their qualifications for the job, or explain what sort of future they see for the group itself.
3. If someone within the group has access to polling functions, conducting voting amongst candidates in this manner. As an alternative, ask members to cast their votes in the group itself. Note that this will remove any possibility of a ‘secret ballot.’ Someone will have to act as the vote counter, posting a daily tally of votes to date for each candidate.
4. Setting a deadline for voting to be completed by is vital! An active group should have the voting finished sooner than a more laid-back type. A deadline of two to four weeks is quite reasonable, and should be included in the first notice about voting and within any reminders about voting.
5. Once the voting period has ended, post another notice in the group stating this and announcing the winning candidate.

At this point, a fair amount of documentation as to the wishes of the group members should now exist within it. Below are some ideas for how to notify the service agency involved about what has occurred. A reminder, again, about patience and persistence is in order! If unhappy with the response (or lack thereof), contact them again.

Yahoo’s Message Boards for Yahoo Group’s Technical
Issues

Yahoo Group’s Abuse and Help Forms

Google Group’s policy statement on owner
restorations

Please note that the above links are not under the author's control and may change at any time. Feel free to post additional ideas for where people can go for help in comments!

Without a doubt, there is value to be found within a successful discussion group housed within Yahoo or Google’s system. Unfortunately, this does make them a target for theft. Those managing such discussion groups must do all he or she can to protect the security of their system from malware (virus infection, key-loggers, and spyware), their login information, and the integrity of the group itself. A variety of good articles on protecting a computer system and choosing good passwords have been written already, so herein the focus is going to be on techniques to protect the integrity of the group itself.

One method of protecting a group is to have multiple owners (managers, administrators) of the group in question. Yet, that very same practice presents a high degree of risk. This is because there are no guarantees as to how a person will behave once they have been made co-owner.

Taking a prolonged period to get to know the person is one way to mitigate the risk, as is a process of slowly granting them more and more access to group controls while trust levels increase. Where possible, look at how long a person has been a member of a group before considering any kind of elevation in their status as well as their own messaging behaviors. Have they shown respect to group members with diverse viewpoints? Has their post reflected a history of good behaviors in support the rules established for the group?

One of the big flaws within systems such as Yahoo and Google groups is the lack of a means to document behaviors of members. However, an owner can easily create one on their own within a plain-text file, spreadsheet, etc. Most likely, an owner will not want to track every member in a group, but only those falling at the two extreme ends of the behavior. In other words, those who behave really badly in support of moderation or banning actions, or those under consideration for moderator or above access to controls. Such records will become invaluable decision-making aids over time.

Within the group itself, post announcements whenever someone access to control functions has increased or diminished. Keep in mind that explanations behind such actions are not necessary, and are often inappropriate. If you write ‘bad things’ about someone in a public venue, it could become grounds for a libel suit.

At some point and time, however, the point will come where someone will be elevated to co-owner status. Prior to doing so, make a backup to the membership list as it exists in the system at the time. Think of this as ‘just in case’ insurance. If things should go very badly (old owner demoted down to normal member status or banned) options still exist. With those records, the original owner can still contact the members of that group. Recovering ownership of the group may not be possible. (Read “How does one recover an orphaned discussion group” for tips on this subject.) However, creation of a new group under a new name is still a possibility. Invitations can then be sent out to those in the old group.

METHOD #1

Must be used by those who do NOT have a Yahoo ID

1. Leave the group by sending a message to the unsubscribe address using the old e-mail.
2. Join the group, again, by sending a message to the group using the subscribe address. Watch for the confirmation message, and respond.

The join/leave addresses for a given group are always shown near the bottom of a group's home page. Manager (Owner or Moderator) of group may need to remove old addresses if member no longer has access. Address to reach those managing a given group is also shown at bottom of a group's home page.

METHOD #2

Assumes person is adding a new address to Yahoo ID

1. Sign into Yahoo's system using your Yahoo ID credentials.
2. Click on the MY ACCOUNT link showing under your Yahoo ID at the top of the page.
3. Under the MEMBER INFORMATION section, it will show any e-mail addresses you have associated with that ID. Click EDIT.
4. Under the EMAIL ADDRESS section, add the new address in as another alternative. Click FINISHED.
5. Yahoo will verify the new address by sending a message. Watch for it and follow instructions to complete this step. (IMPORTANT!!!)
6. After the new address has been verified, log into Yahoo's system again, and follow same steps above to reach the EMAIL ADDRESS section.
7. Change the default e-mail address to the new one. Remove the old address from whatever entry it is in. Click on FINISHED to update.
8. Edit membership for group(s) to use new address. (See below.)

METHOD #3

Bulk Yahoo Group membership changes. Assumes addresses have already been added and verified as outlined above.

1. Sign into Yahoo's system using your Yahoo ID credentials.
2. Click on GROUPS link.
3. Click on the MANAGE link showing at top of list. This will show either a simple or expanded detail list of all groups this person has joined.
4. Click on EDIT MY GROUPS. Use drop-down lists supplied to change profile in use, address, etc. Click on the SAVE CHANGES button when finished.

METHOD #4

Edit MEMBERSHIP settings for individualized groups. Assumes addresses have already been added and verified as outlined above.

1. Sign into Yahoo's system using your Yahoo ID credentials.
2. Click on GROUPS link.
3. Click on group name.
4. Click on EDIT MEMBERSHIP link showing at top of page near Yahoo ID.
5. Make changes to apply to that group only. Click on SAVE CHANGES when done.

Within the information technology (IT) world, the term CRM stands for customer relationship management. In defining what this term means, however, that provided by Webopedia (n.d.) is the best; "CRM entails all aspects of interaction a company has with its customer, whether it be sales or service related." Perhaps a better way to state this from the perspective of Design COMP's customers would be this, "Web application software designed to connect organizations ongoing strategies to consumer-buying behaviors and to personalize their online experience."

This stands for Systems Development Life Cycle and is a model used within the IT world to break project development down into clear phases, with certain kinds of activities associated with each step. We use this model extensively within our project planning (all types) and proposal writing as it organizes the work into seven stages: analysis, design, planning, development, testing, implementation, and maintenance. The exact nature of what occurs within each stage will vary, as does the nature of projects. In general, however, here is what occurs in each stage:

Analysis - Detailing the business requirements for a project, or what it is expected to do. This stage places a great deal of emphasis upon stakeholder involvement in drafting, reviewing, and approving the requirements. Those requirements are then prioritized in discussion amongst stakeholders so that the critical success factors (CSF) can be defined. We consider this type of involvement essential to how we operate and 'build' toward successful and satisfactory results. The term stakeholders refer to anyone involved in creating a project as well as those expected to use it. When working with larger businesses, representatives from key departments most involved with using the end results of a project will act as stakeholders. Messages between stakeholders are stored within a private, dedicated project message board on our site. This becomes an essential component of our change management process to analyze such factors as they occur to control costs and avoid delays.

Design - Detail the technical architecture and model of the system to be created. That is, define what elements are needed concerning hardware, software, or additional services needed to support the type of item defined in the requirements. We often model some of the aspects of a project using diagrams and charts.

Planning - Define the system or production to be developed; set the scope (summary of what we are creating); create a Gantt chart summarizing tasks, resources, and estimated timeline; and identify risks to project. Within most references on SDLC, this is listed as the first step. However, we list planning as third so it is clear that this does not stop until all of the analysis and design aspects of what is entailed in the project is completed. The end of the planning stage also marks where all of the research about a project can be assembled into a proposal.

Development - Create the production, technical architecture, databases, and/or information system. Weekly updates on project progress appear in revised Gantt charts. At the same time, weekly summaries of environmental scanning factors (external and internal) are shared to identify emerging technologies that could speed project development, improve capabilities, or cause delays.

Testing - Draft test conditions and perform tests. The critical success factors (CSF) identified as part of the requirements of a project is usually restated as the test conditions. Web development projects, for example, under go extensive usability analysis. Whatever problems are detected through testing, they are corrected and then tested again.

Implementation - Created item is deployed, detailed user documentation and training (as appropriate) is created.

Maintenance - Create an environment to support system changes. We post summaries about important patches on our forum, in addition to e-mail message notices. The dedicated, private message board area also takes on the roll of a help desk in documenting any problems that may be found so that corrective action can be taken.

A feasibility study, in our work, refers to an examination of what sort of information system is currently in use by an organization and how it serves its needs.

This phrase refers to the collective set of rules established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) about how code used to create and interpret content within web pages should be written. Although the people within these organizations hold diverse viewpoints from within the world of IT, collectively they are guided by these factors:

• What will provide the greatest benefit for the largest number of visitors?
• Does the method help ensure long-term viability for the document and/or content?
• Will the method make the content more accessible to more people using different
  types of browsers, software, devices, etc.

Within the business world, the value of such practices and their connection to return on investment (ROI) is quite clear. The time needed to write code is reduced and simplified, thereby resulting in lower development costs. Furthermore, the need to rewrite older code is reduced as software and devices used in connection with the Internet evolve.
Design COMP became an active supporter of web standards through the auspices of the Web Standards Project (WaSP) in the later half of the 90's. Independent validation tests are performed on code written by Design COMP to ensure standards compliance is a normal part of our operations. The results for such tests are captured into PDF documents that are made available to our customers as an integral part of our development projects.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, or Real Site Summary, depending on whom you ask. Both terms are accurate in that they refer to a communication protocol for an XML-based method of distributing small amounts of text content across the web. Sites often refer to these as Syndication or Feed technologies. RSS is one of the oldest methodologies of this kind around, but there are others. Podcasts, for example, refer to one of the newer variants in that it can include audio and/or video content in addition to text.

How is RSS used?

RSS has been around for more than a decade, and embraced by bloggers, webmasters and large news portals as a means of distributing Information, in a standardized format. Detecting the presence of a feed, depending on the operating system in use and browser type, is simply a matter of looking for the appropriate icon on a page or within the browser itself (address or status bar). The icon most sites use today is an orange square with white ‘radio waves’ like this:

Other indicators can be found, such as colored rectangular ‘buttons’ with lettering on the face to indicate the type of feed (RSS, Atom, XML, etc.) or reader system in use. (Adding feed links into personalized pages within Yahoo, Google, etc.) With popular browsers, e-mail programs, IM clients, etc. providing support, or the ability to augment or add it using third party products, following a feed is easier than ever!

Why use RSS?

RSS grew out of the desire to come up with an alternative way to inform interested parties about fresh content added to a site, while avoiding the issues related to e-mail technologies. E-mail, after all, is burdened with blockage issues where messages may be deleted or filtered in efforts to deal with floods of junk mail. There is also the related issue involving viruses that could prevent legitimate messages not reaching their destination.

Users love them because, unlike list technologies, they follow clear opt-in/opt-out methodologies. Those following a feed can join or leave it at any time. Another desirable factor is how it saves people time as they can quickly scan multiple content streams choosing to visit only those to be of interest.

In addition to the above, business finds RSS attractive in that it is a proven technology for increasing site traffic and exposure. RSS can also diminish privacy issues of concern to visitors to a site in that those following a feed rarely have to provide any details about themselves. These technologies are, therefore, vital parts of building sustainable relationships utilizing the best practices in marketing.

What is RSS used for?

Common uses for RSS include:

• Blogs – summaries of daily blog posts
• New Content Summaries – synopses of new content added to a site
• Weather Alerts – notification of severe weather
• Press Announcements – new product announcements
• Specials or Discounts – weekly deals or discount offers for customers
• Calendars – listings of upcoming events, deadlines or holidays

Industry specific usages include:

• Information Technology Industry – notification of viruses or security alerts
• Real Estate – listings of open houses or new homes on the market
• Schools – homework listings
• Restaurants – lunch or dinner specials
• Law Enforcement – announce sexual predators in area

How can I follow an RSS feed?

Following a feed is simple, simply locate the web address and add that into a reader to track it. Keep in mind, a feed will always have a dedicated web address linked to it much like regular web page content. Depending on the site, or reader in use, automated functions to assist in the location of feeds may be available.

Due to the diversity of reader products available, find one to match someone’s tastes may take some time. Here are some of the characteristics of better readers:

• Organization tools to group feeds into folders or directories
• Method to backup and/or restore stored feed links easily
• Sync capabilities between various mobile devices, such as cell phones, PDA's, etc.
• Individualized control over feed properties as to the timing of when it is checked for new content

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.