Maybe a better way to go about this subject is how I arrived at my chosen framework. I used to be all about Mootools by default, maybe it was the name, maybe the fact I like beef, maybe that I really dug their web site. I eventually (after sporadically testing different frameworks) arrived at JQuery as my default. So what made me choose JQuery over the countless others? Plain and simple it was the community support. Having a great framework or script is all well and good, but when you have a great user base out there that shares their innovations and discoveries then it makes it all the better. It probably didn’t hurt that in my employment we write in .NET technology and in that technology Microsoft decided that it would embrace JQuery as it’s default framework for Javascript going forward, so for me that’s a Win/Win. I program in .NET at work but do a lot of PHP stuff in my offtime, so a framework that appeals to both androgynously really perked up my senses.

So what is your preferred framework, and why?

Localhost: XAMPP
Language: PHP
Database: Sequel Pro
Editor: Coda
OS: Snow Leopard

I usually set up my sites in the Default ~/Sites folder on my Mac, just to keep things in one area mainly and for this demo we'll be using stardup.com (a domain I own and have never really done anything with due to time restraints).

I found this tutorial online a while back by Arron Wolf and it was a really good way to keep my logical file structure instead of duping directories back and forth from XAMPP's native htdocs folder. This is not super intense a process even though some people may shy away from Command Line. Follow along with the instructions on that site if you want to get it set up for your latest project. Go ahead, I'll wait…

…Okay great, you're back! Now let's begin with one really dead easy trick to keep your configuration files working on both sides, without having to change them every time you commit many site changes.

This can be done in any other programming language, however the if/else syntax changes a bit. I've also begun taking this a little further, including other bits in my code like $header and $footer stuff that will help me visually determine which one I may be looking at (as I'm often too lazy to look at the address bar).

So my next tip is related to running a lightweight version of XAMPP (because you really don't need all of the features for local development). I write a very simple Applescript that launches XAMPP with options, and then placed it in my System Preferences > Accounts > My Account > Login Items

Now I know a lot of the more hardcore programmers are probably wondering why I have to do the username/pass with administrator privileges twice, the answer is because I know only as much Applescript as I need to, and nothing more.

Just a quick note/update for Mac users.

What exactly do these terms mean? The M and W stand for your working platform by way of Macintosh or Windows and the AMP stands for Apache, MySQL and PHP. These simple apps can start and stop the full suite of hosting tools at a moments notice without you having to muck around in your system and install all sorts of tools that require more in depth configuration. I've found that overall this can speed up programming and testing because you will not need to constantly upload files to an FTP server and check them that way, instead you would just save and refresh your browser.

And it would be sort of open-source blasphemy if I didn't mention XAMPP mainly used for Linux, but also containing flavors of Mac OS X, Windows and even Solaris.

All of these software packages are free, or have a free (lite) version available for you to use in your programming endeavors so have at it!

*Windows & WAMP makes the assumption that you are developing a PHP/MySQL Web site and not a .NET Solution

Update: I have moved from MAMP to XAMPP for local development, it's a little more flexible for my usage.

A few tips to consider:

• When someone enters a meeting room, stand and greet them
• When in a room of strangers, extend a warm handshake and introduce yourself, especially to those standing solo
• When dining, don't chew with your mouth open
• Don't chew gum during meetings
• Never put your bags on the conference room table; sit them next to your chair or on your chair and unload from there
• Always bring paper, writing utensil and your calendar to ANY meeting
• Always arrive a few minutes prior to a meeting — don't make everyone wait on you
• Hold the door for others — male or female
• Clean up after yourself; don't expect someone else to pick up your dirtied glass or trash
• Send a handwritten thank you note after meeting a new person and enclose your business card … not only good etiquette, but also good networking!

For more great tips, check out Emily Post.

One type of client may want to have their website up by the end of the week so that they can be ready to "make money" over the weekend. But I have found that if you sacrifice your time in testing and ensuring proper usability the website will initially flop. It is best to have a good plan of action and stick to it. The client like this I have found will normally want a large project done and wait until two days before their desired deadline to get you essential project information.

Say your job is print related, staring at the MAR+APR 2008 Create magazine sitting beside me I can see a ton of work going into some of the ads placed in here. So if I was designing for something like this; where obviously deadline is an issue. I may have to steer the client out of the target issue if their overall brand or idea wasn't properly portrayed, suggesting the following issues print deadline for a more successful campaign.

How do others handle clients like these?

Who are these "emerging" consumers flying under today's marketing radar screen? Why, they're just our Baby Boomers. Consumers age 40 to 70, nearly 100 million strong, with annual spending power of more than $2.1 trillion — seven times the spending power of Generations X and Y combined.

Recent studies prove Baby Boomers still have what it takes in the spending department:

• People over 40 spend 65% more than any other age group
• The average household buys 13 cars in a lifetime — nine of them after age 40
• One of Nintendo’s fastest growing new products is Wii Bowling. Their biggest customers? Retirement homes. They call it "Wii-habbing"
• The 45–75 age group spent $97 billion in household furnishings and $32 billion in the drug category in 2004, 14% and 148% more, respectively, than consumers age 44 and under
• The average age of a Harley Davidson buyer is 48

Enter thirdgear, a Chicago-based marketing consultancy with a fresh new focus on the Baby Boomer generation. thirdgear, in partnership with Millennium, a UK-based advertising agency, is committed to its mission of bringing marketers closer to the millions of consumers over 40 who helped set the tone for today's consumer landscape.

thirdgear has created a proprietary panel of consumers over 40 called gearheads. These active, highly involved, highly opinionated think tankers are not shy about sharing their ideas and opinions on about everything from product design to packaging to advertising.

And, in response to this booming market, thirdgear co-founded IMMN, the International Mature Marketing Network. The association’s mission is to champion mature marketing around the world and currently has members from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, England and the United States, including noted marketing consultants and authors such as Marti Barletta and Dick Stroud.

To learn more about thirdgear, check out their Web site, www.thirdgear.com or reach out to Jenna at 773.715.0879 or jenna@snackboxlabs.com.

DO

1. Have other quality, relevant sites link to yours
2. Submit a site map using your Google Webmaster Tools account
3. Submit your site to quality, high authority directories in the appropriate category
4. Make a site with text links and a clear hierarchy, and make sure every page is reachable by at least one static text link
5. Create useful, unique and clearly written content
6. Make sure your title tags and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate
7. Maintain clean HTML code
8. Keep the outgoing links on a page under 100
9. Make it easy for search bots to crawl your site without error
10. Make use of the robots.txt file to limit crawling on pages that aren’t useful to visitors
11. Make pages for users, not search engines

DON’T

1. Don’t include broken links on your site
2. Don’t use hidden text or links
3. Don’t cloak or use sneaky redirects
4. Don’t load pages with keywords or phrases a.k.a spam
5. Don’t send automated queries to Google
6. Don’t create duplicate content
7. Don’t create pages that install Trojans, viruses, etc.
8. If you participate in an affiliate program, don’t provide duplicate, run-of-the-mill content
9. Don’t participate in linking schemes – bloggers are watching you!

Source: seonoobs.com

Agility Recovery Solutions, a Snackbox PR client, offers great information regarding business interruption planning. Read on to learn more.

Paul Sullivan has seen it all. A 25-year veteran of disaster recovery and business continuity management, Sullivan witnessed the growth of continuity planning among the Fortune 1000 in the 1980s. He watched, first hand, the successes and failures of business continuity plans following the events of September 11, 2001 and in 2005 throughout the most active hurricane season in recorded history. Today, Sullivan is helping small and medium-sized companies plan for and recover after significant business interruptions.

“Continuity planning has always been associated with big business,” said Sullivan, Vice President and General Manager, Agility Recovery Solutions. “We’re using the same knowledge, strategies and tactics we developed with the Fortune 1000 and implementing them among small and medium-sized businesses across North America.”

Agility Recovery Solutions, a former division of General Electric, focuses planning and recovery efforts on small and medium-sized businesses, though the company continues to do work with giants such as IBM and HP.

Why Business Continuity? Why now?
According to Sullivan, business of all sizes and industries need to think about continuity planning. Beyond the business as a whole, owners and managers should take into account the future of their employees, clients or customers, stakeholders and beyond.

But, the majority of small business owners have numerous responsibilities and continuity planning usually falls off the radar, according to Sullivan.

“An organization’s leadership team typically doesn’t know where to start in planning for business interruptions, so they decide to put it off. Or, there are more visible issues that require immediate attention, allowing disaster planning to fall to the wayside,” said Sullivan. “The initial planning process is an excellent opportunity to bring the leadership team together to discuss your business, your needs and objectives.”

Misconceptions About Continuity Planning
Many business leaders hold misconceptions about continuity planning. In response to lack of knowledge and planning, Sullivan compiled a list of the top-ten misconceptions:

1. “We can get by with what we have” – Business leaders do not make an accurate assessment of what is necessary for recovery planning and response. Many think working from home is a suitable recovery tactic. This may be acceptable for a day or two, but there are reasons why a business has an office, including the need to collaborate and have a central point of operations.

2. “We can get by without an operating front office” – Accounts receivable, customer service and beyond must be running full-force at every type of company for business and service to continue. It takes an operating front office to make money and keep clients happy.

3. “We have multiple locations and don’t need a recovery plan” – An office for 10 people will not accommodate 40 employees easily. The strategy behind opening multiple offices is there for a reason and if one or more go down, it creates a kink (or kinks) in the entire system.

4. “As an executive, we can solve problems as they happen” – If they haven't planned in advance to recover their business, they don't take all aspects and results into reasonable consideration. During a crisis it is easy to move too fast and miss important steps along the way, such as identifying the best interests of employees, the need for basic technology and activating the most critical functions of the business. A well thought-out plan is the best solution for ensuring the fastest, smartest and most economical recovery.

5. “Data backup is plenty” – Leaders forget that they will need technology to access the backed-up information, the people to recovery the data, as well as a place to use the technology. Something as simple as a pipe burst can wipe out servers, computers, printers, fax machines and more, not to mention the office space itself. A recovery plan identifies all aspects of getting the business back up-and-running in a timely fashion.

6. “A disaster or significant interruption will never happen to us” – It’s actually the little things that can create chaos. A fire, a storm, an electrical outage. Business interruptions can’t be predicted, but you can prepare for them. According to Rough Notes, an insurance trade publication, businesses are more likely to experience a significant interruption due to power outages and technology failure than due to weather-related events.

7. “We don’t need to have a plan in place because we’re hundreds of miles from a hurricane-prone area” – A disaster is any type of event that can interrupt a business, including something as common as a power outage, fire or failed server to something as large as a hurricane, tornado or terrorism.

8. “Our insurance company will cover everything” – The insurance company will make sure you have the money to get up-and-running in weeks or months after the interruption occurrence, but what happens to your business in the meantime? Unless you’re up-and-running, your customers or clients will take their business elsewhere.

9. “We created a backup/recovery plan years ago. We’re fine” – Continuity planning is an evolving process. Part of the process is to test the current plan and to ensure it is up-to-date and executable. Without testing, there’s no assurance the plan will work.

10. “The planning process is time consuming and wasteful” – Continuity planning can be completed in segments, over time, with a group of people. There’s no set timeframe for the planning process and it can be as flexible as you need it to be. Resources like those available on Ready.org make establishing a plan simple and painless.

Sullivan encourages every business owner and manager to learn more about continuity planning from resources such as Ready.gov and the American Red Cross.

About Agility Recovery Solutions
Agility Recovery Solutions is a leading provider of business continuity solutions to small and medium-sized businesses across North America. At time of business interruption, Agility provides its members with the space, power, connectivity and technology needed to resume operations. The company has a 100-percent success rate in recovering its members after interruptions. Agility responds to interruptions caused by hurricanes, fires, floods, power outages, server failures and more. Visit AgilityRecovery.com for more information.

So how can you manage information better? As a project begins, the information flow is reasonable; you ask questions and get answers to help you develop the project scope. Email is a great resource because you are given a digital paper trail; however, a lot of time can be spent on the phone gathering information. How do you keep that portion straight? This is where I used to jot notes on scraps of paper and text files, but ended up getting the information jumbled at some point, which usually left me with egg on my face.

When I started following the David Allen methods of "Getting Things Done," I realized that I had to start controlling my information flow a whole lot better. Today, my methods still utilize notes on paper and a few spread out files in a project folder; however, after I have gathered some information via phone or face-to-face conversation, I sum up the information and email it to the client. That gives them the opportunity to tell me if I have a full understanding of what they're looking to achieve. And, I have a concise trail that I can refer back to if I get stumped on a portion of the project (or if the client questions the direction). This has turned me from the "Absent Minded Developer" to "Dr. Development" so to speak.

I have been focusing on website work lately will explain a good portion of my initial information gathering requests as seen by my clients. But I think this method can be tailored to meet any type of project needs.

PROJECT – WebsiteXYZ

SECTION:Homepage

• What you need this section to do
• Why you need this section to do that
• What you hope to accomplish in this section

SECTION:Register

• What you need this section to do
• Why you need this section to do that
• And so on and so forth

I know, it's dead simple methodology. The point is: I have found it to be quite successful when working with new clients. When you ask, "What do you need me to do?" you leave the door wide open to a wealth of potentially unhelpful information or even unrealistic expectations. By asking specific questions, tracking answers and reporting back to the client, you begin to manage expectations and create an open information flow that protects you both in the end. Create and follow a method for each project you get involved with. It will help your sanity and efficiency ten fold.