Things to ask before you redo your website

via Seth's Blog by Seth Godin on 9/18/09

I don't do any consulting, but that doesn't stop people from asking me questions. The most common question people ask me when they want a new website is, "If you were in charge of this, who are the 2 or 3 people you’d want to be sure to talk to – to help think through the issues, help us figure out who should do the work, etc.?"

The second most common question people ask me,  "In addition to Apple’s site, are there 2 or 3 that you think are really appealing and work well for their business?"

I think these are perhaps the tenth and eleventh questions you should ask, not the first two. Here's my list of difficult and important questions you have to answer before you spend a nickel:

• What is the goal of the site?
• In other words, when it's working great, what specific outcomes will occur?
• Who are we trying to please? If it's the boss, what does she want? Is impressing a certain kind of person important? Which kind?
• How many people on your team have to be involved? At what level?
• Who are we trying to reach? Is it everyone? Our customers? A certain kind of prospect?
• What are the sites that this group has demonstrated they enjoy interacting with?
• Are we trying to close sales?
• Are we telling a story?
• Are we earning permission to follow up?
• Are we hoping that people will watch or learn?
• Do we need people to spread the word using various social media tools?
• Are we building a tribe of people who will use the site to connect with each other?
• Do people find the site via word of mouth? Are they looking to answer a specific question?
• Is there ongoing news and updates that need to be presented to people?
• Is the site part of a larger suite of places online where people can find out about us, or is this our one sign post?
• Is that information high in bandwidth or just little bits of data?
• Do we want people to call us?
• How many times a month would we like people to come by? For how long?
• Who needs to update this site? How often?
• How often can we afford to overhaul this site?
• Does showing up in the search engines matter? If so, for what terms? At what cost? Will we be willing to compromise any of the things above in order to achieve this goal?
• Will the site need to be universally accessible? Do issues of disability or language or browser come into it?
• How much money do we have to spend? How much time?

And finally,

• Does the organization understand that 'everything' is not an option?

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The hierarchy of success

I think it looks like this:

1. Attitude
2. Approach
3. Goals
4. Strategy
5. Tactics
6. Execution

We spend all our time on execution. Use this word instead of that one. This web host. That color. This material or that frequency of mailing.

Big news: No one ever succeeded because of execution tactics learned from a Dummies book.

Tactics tell you what to execute. They're important, but dwarfed by strategy. Strategy determines which tactics might work.

But what's the point of a strategy if your goals aren't clear, or contradict?

Which leads the first two, the two we almost never hear about.

Approach determines how you look at the project (or your career). Do you read a lot of books? Ask a lot of questions? Use science and testing or go with your hunches? Are you imperious? A lifehacker? When was the last time you admitted an error and made a dramatic course correction? Most everyone has a style, and if you pick the wrong one, then all the strategy, tactics and execution in the world won't work nearly as well.

As far as I'm concerned, the most important of all, the top of the hierarchy is attitude. Why are you doing this at all? What's your bias in dealing with people and problems?

Some more questions:

• How do you deal with failure?
• When will you quit?
• How do you treat competitors?
• What personality are you looking for in the people you hire?
• What's it like to work for you? Why? Is that a deliberate choice?
• What sort of decisions do you make when no one is looking?

Sure, you can start at the bottom by focusing on execution and credentials. Reading a typical blog (or going to a typical school for 16 years), it seems like that's what you're supposed to do. What a waste.

Isn't it odd that these six questions are so important and yet we almost never talk or write about them?

If the top of the hierarchy is messed up, no amount of brilliant tactics or execution is going to help you at all.

Posted by Seth Godin on September 14, 2009 | Permalink

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HOW TO: Organize Your iPhone Apps with iTunes 9

The curtain has closed on Apple’s big event. While we’re still recovering from all the big news surrounding Jobs’ return, the new and improved Nanos, the arrival of iPhone OS 3.1, and the fact that iTunes 9 comes with sharing, we’re now able to actually play with our new toys and we’ve discovered something remarkable.

Amid all the hype around iTunes 9 was one new instrumental feature for iPhone owners — app management. We were thrilled by the possibilities of finally being able to organize and manage our apps via iTunes, and now we’re even more impressed by the reality.

After toying with the new feature, we can officially say that the iTunes 9 application management features are fantastic. Gone are the days of painstakingly moving apps one-by-one on our iPhones. Today we welcome effortless drag and drop app management and syncing, and here we’ll walk you through how to create application harmony between iTunes and your iPhone.

Getting Started

First things first: download the new iTunes, install it and fire it up. You should also update your iPhone to OS 3.1 for a smooth transition (a word to the wise: sync your iPhone one last time before you update to the new OS). That process might not be quick, but it should be rather painless.

Once your software updates are complete, connect your iPhone to your computer via the USB cable. Select your iPhone from the Devices section in iTunes, and then click on the Applications tab. You should be greeted with an electronic view of your entire installed app catalog and your iPhone’s existing application screens.

Application Sync

All the applications you’ve installed using iTunes will now appear in the Sync Applications portion of the page. You can now search applications by name, or sort them by name, category, or date.

You’ll notice that checked applications coincide with the ones you have on your iPhone, while unchecked ones can be checked to be virtually added to the digital iPhone interface. You can also uncheck apps you no longer want on your phone to have them instantly removed from the iPhone mock up.

Of course any and all changes won’t be made until you hit “Apply” and sync your iPhone with iTunes.

Drag and Drop Apps

The real beauty of the new application management feature is the addition of an electronic model of your iPhone’s various screens, with proper pagination, and easy drag and drop functionality so that you can move apps around with speed and simplicity. You can even remove apps from your virtual iPhone, in the same manner that you would remove them from the physical version, by selecting an app and clicking the X.

You can configure your apps in any way you’d like by dragging them around on the current screen, or moving them from your existing view onto one of the screens in the right-hand column. You can also use the command key (use control key for PCs) to grab multiple apps to drag them all at once, or pick up a full page of apps and drag that up or down to alter page order. Changes are instantaneous, and don’t forget that you can select and deselect applications from the left-hand menu to add and remove them from your mock up. Pretty cool right?

Hit “Apply” when you’re good and ready to apply your application changes to your actual iPhone, and you should be just a few minutes away from reaping the benefits of application management bliss.

Tags: app management, apple, apple app store, iphone, itunes, iTunes 9

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Monopoly City Streets: Google Launching Online Version of Monopoly

via Mashable! by Pete Cashmore on 9/7/09

This could be very addictive: Google is teaming up with board game maker Hasbro to launch a Google Maps version of Monopoly. Monopoly City Streets, which launches Wednesday, allows users to compete in a live, worldwide version of the popular game, creating the biggest Monopoly tournament ever played.

It’s an ambitious venture that we’ll confess to being fairly excited about: players will literally be able to buy any street in the world, and compete with every other player on the “board”. You start with 3 million Monopoly dollars, and can build not only hotels and houses but also football stadiums, castles and skyscrapers, reports the UK’s Guardian. Downing Street in the UK will cost $231,000, while Pennsylvania Avenue will cost $2 million.

The preview site reads:

On the 9th SEPTEMBER, a world of property empire building on an unimaginable scale will be launched! A live worldwide game of MONOPOLY using Google Maps as the game board. The goal is simple. Play to beat your friends and the world to become the richest property magnate in existence.

Own any street in the world. Build humble houses, crazy castles and stupendous skyscrapers to collect rent. Use MONOPOLY Chance Cards to sabotage your mates by building Hazards on their streets.

What the coverage doesn’t mention is the level of involvement Google had here: while in theory this could have been built on the Google Maps API with little input from the search engine maker itself, all reports seem to indicate that Google had a direct role in bringing the game to fruition.

And before we start: I get to be the car, ok?

---

Reviews: Google, Google Maps, Monopoly

Tags: Google, Google Maps, hasbro, monopoly

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Posted via email from Yoel's posterous

Posted via email from Yoel's posterous

Here is the link.

For DNN 4.8+  just do the following:


Go to the Host settings page. Scroll down to the Performance Settings and change Page State Persistence from Page to Memory. Now we are left with this little viewstate code at the top of our page:

<input type="hidden" name="__VIEWSTATE_CACHEKEY" id="__VIEWSTATE_CACHEKEY" value="VS_yygiqizjw3n0esegjcoc0mfm_633845295954701056" />
 <input type="hidden" name="__VIEWSTATE" id="
 __VIEWSTATE" value="" />


So now there is no large chunk of Viewstate, the page source is much smaller, and there are no worries about your page's SEO getting screwed up.