Recently I've just installed the Quantum DB plugin for Eclipse. So far, in my limited usage, it seems great. Being able to work within the same IDE for different types of development is great.

We primarily work with MS SQL Server 2000+ and MySQL databases and there are JDBC drivers available for both of these.

I thought I'd blog about the installation (in case I need some help again in the future)

To try out Quantum DB yourself, the first thing you need to do is install the Quantum DB plugin for Eclipse.

The following instructions are based on Eclipse 3.3+

To install Quantum DB, you first need to install the GEF plugin for Eclipse

To do this: 1. Open Eclipse and go to: Help -> Software updates -> Find and Install... -> Search for new features to install

2. Select the checkbox next to the Europa Discover Site and click next.

3. Select the default mirror to check.

4. On the result page that lists the new features, expand Graphical Editors and Frameworks and select the Graphical Editing Framework option (you don't have to select the SDK, but you could select that as well if you want).

5. Go through the rest of the installation process and restart Eclipse.

Now you are ready to install Quantum DB.

To do this: 1. Open Eclipse and go to: Help -> Software updates -> Find and Install... -> Search for new features to install

2. Click the button for "New Remote Site", then type the update URL as follows: http://quantum.sourceforge.net/update-site

3. Click next and go through the rest of the installation process.

After the installation and Eclipse restarts, you now have Quantum DB installed.

To get Quantum DB working with MySQL and MS SQL Server I had to download and install the JDBC drivers.

For MySQL, you can download the MySQL Connnector/J from: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/ You don't need to register to download the connector, just click the link at the bottom that says "No thanks, just take me to the downloads!"

For MS SQL Server, you can download the SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver from: http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/jdbc/

Download and extract these to their respective folders and put them somewhere on your hard drive. I put them in the root of the Eclipse folder.

For MySQL, you should find a file called like: mysql-connector-java-5.0.7-bin.jar For MS SQL, you should find a file called something like: sqljdbc.jar

To add support for MySQL, you need to do the following:

1. Go to eclipse and switch to the view "Quantum DB" by going to Window -> Open Perspective -> Other..

2. Add a new bookmark by right-clicking inside the left "database bookmarks" panel and selecting "New Bookmark"

3. Now click "Add driver", from the dropdown list called "type", choose MySQL.

4. Now click "add external jar", point to the file mysql-connector-java-5.0.7-bin.jar (or whatever your jar file is called)

5. Click the "browse" button for the class name "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver", then go on clicking many "OK" buttons.

So, now that you have the driver installed, you need to add a bookmark for the database you want to connect to.

1. Right-click in the "database bookmarks" panel again,

2. Select the MySQL driver and click Next.

3. A dialog will be shown for you input the connection information for the database you are connecting to. Enter, this information and click Next.

4. Now enter a name for the bookmark and click Finish.

The MySQL bookmark for your database is now setup.

To add the MS SQL Server driver and bookmark, repeat the process above for adding a driver and creating a bookmark using the appropriate MS SQL file and database information.

Hope you find this useful!

Apache server provides a great feature to help webmasters with SEO. This feature is htaccess file. This file is located in the root of websites and provides additional setting information to server. Webmasters have access to this file and can easy adjust it for specific needs.

Let's take a look how htaccess can help optimize website hosted on Apache server.

1. There are many discussions about non-www and www versions of websites. What version is better for SEO? Neither is better. Just choose one version and stick with it. It will help search engines do not index the same pages under different URLs (with and without www).

Example below redirects from domain.com to www.domain.com

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Please note that Google Webmaster Central has a tool to select preferred version of domain (with or without www).

2. Many websites have internal links pointed to homepage of website as http://www.domain.com/index.html . At the same time homepage is accessible under domain as http://www.domain.com . As result, search engines could index homepage (the most important page on website) under 2 different URLs. One line of htaccess code helps avoid or fix it.

RewriteRule ^index.html http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

3. What to do if you want to move a web page in different directory or rename file/directory? Think about that twice. Do you really need it? It's better to keep URLs of all pages stable and don't change it. In case you have to move/rename page or directory make sure you setup permanent (301) redirects from old URLs to new ones. Code below shows an example of this redirect.

Redirect 301 /old_file.html http://www.domain.com/new_file.html

Code below shows an example of htaccess file that includes all lines we reviewed above

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^index.html http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Redirect 301 /old_file.html http://www.domain.com/new_file.html
Redirect 301 /old_dir/file.html http://www.domain.com/new_dir/file.html

Make sure you test website after any update of htaccess file. Wrong code or any mistake can put down entire website.

Attention Ecommerce site owners!

A U.S. District Court ruled yesterday that:

• The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies to the Internet: Ecommerce websites must be accessible to the blind.
• The class-action lawsuit launched against Target by the National Federation for the Blind (NFB) may proceed to trial.

The NFB claimed that Target's website is not properly accessible to the blind, in violation of the ADA (as well as two California statutes). Yesterday's ruling was a huge step forward in their case.

This should serve as a wake-up call to Ecommerce site owners: make your sites accessible to the blind, or face expensive consequences.

What's a site owner to do?

The good news (to site owners) is that making sites accessible is something they should be doing anyway. The simple fact is, many features that make websites accessible to the blind also make them more accessible to sighted users. For example:

• Proper use of alt tags to describe images
• Simple layout, easy to use navigation
• Direct and concise copywriting
• Minimal forced device switching (keyboard/mouse)

Also, in the long-term, it's now more cost effective develop an accessible, properly built-site. Inaccessible sites using spacer gifs and clumsy table layouts end up being enormous headaches for developers, and get progressively worse with updates.

In comparison, accessible sites that separate code and design into different HTML and CSS files are much easier to update and redesign.

The bottom line?

The latest Target ruling makes it clear: website accessibility to the blind is not just "the right thing to do". It's a legal requirement.

However, making websites accessible is not as onerous as it sounds. It's something you should be doing anyway, for reasons beyond accessibility to the blind.

Previous post about Google's My Maps explained new online tool to create personalized or customized maps.

Google is still updating this My Maps tool. There is a new great feature that allows you to embed your custom or personal maps into your website. You can just copy/paste a string of HTML code to have your map on webpage. And this map will be totally interactive with zoom in/zoom out, different views, etc.

Google provides HTML code that shows map in iframe. That means you can customize of the embedded Google Map such as size, frame border, scrolling, etc.

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Most articles that you find these days that mention web analytics talk about how valuable and indispensable the information is that you get from web analytics software. This information helps businesses identify the profitability of their marketing campaigns, where users are falling off, the effectiveness of goal funnels,...

For online businesses this is great information and should be paid close attention to. This same information also has a benefit to firms other than the company being measured. A good online marketing or web firm will always want to make sure that they have happy clients, and web analytics helps you achieve that goal.

As a web service vendor you can use your client's web analytics to create a sense of trust between you and your client as the value of your work can be measured with respect to ROI and breakeven point, as well as you can offer suggestions for improvements that may not have been on the clients radar. Clients want to know that their vendors have their best interests at heart. So when you call up an existing clients and pitch them an idea that will help them improve their users experience, generate more leads/transactions,... and you can back your suggestion up with data, then you've got a much stronger chance of increasing the scope of your engagement with them.

Not all web vendors will have a relationship with their client that gives them access to their clients' web analytics, and not all clients have web analytics implemented on their website. If your clients don't have any analytics software implemented we strongly suggest that you discuss this with them. If they are small and don't have much budget then Google Analytics is an excellent solution that is quick and easy to implement. If they are a larger client that will need more sophisticated data analysis then solution providers like Omniture provide a great solution.

How this has worked for us lately.

Recently we have contacted two clients as a result of learning that has come from reviewing their analytics.

In the first instance we were able to show that our SEO efforts had increased their organic traffic by 10 times. The client was very happy to see these results. They weren't surprised to see these numbers as they had already noticed an improvement to their bottom line. In addition to that we were able to talk to them about their internal site search technology. They had no idea how many searches were done within their site, and what sort of results users were getting. Upon further review it was determined that the search results returned in many case were poor and that this was an issue that needed to be addressed to improve their users' experience. Currently we are looking into SLI-Systems Learning Search to help solve this problem.

The second case is one from a lead generating site. In the past we had pitched them on several ideas to help improve the sites usability with the intention of increasing their conversion rates with respect to lead generation. At that time they weren't interested even though they recognized that it was a high priority for them to increase the number of leads they were generating. With analytics we were able to show them what their lead generation conversion rate was and compare it to another site that had already implemented the same suggestions (the comparison site was kept confidential). This allowed the client see how much room for improvement there might be to forecast an ROI and breakeven point. With all of this information it made for an easy decision, and they decided to go ahead with the proposed improvements.

Adobe has recently released their new Creative Suite CS3.

As a part of this release they have included an application called Device Central.

This application allows developers to test their content, including Flash Lite applications, on a broad range of mobile phones and electronic devices and should help increase the number of developers creating pertinent content for mobile devices.

Device Central will also be able to download updated device profiles on a regular basis so that developers can stay up to date with the devices they are developing their content for.

Internet marketing is a very broad subject. In my opinion at its simplest level it is about: -campaigns that drive visitors to your web site -how well your web site does in terms of conversions & user experience -your ability to measure & analyses your performance so that you can improve both your campaigns and your web site

To date many consultants and service providers focus on one particular aspect of internet marketing. Either driving traffic, or improving conversion rates, or helping you measure and track visitors to your web site or blog. To effectively manage the internet marketing of your web site I believe that one needs to take a more holistic and iterative approach. This is not a simple task; it requires a host of skill sets and tools.

One need would need to have analytics set up on their site (like www.omniture.com) so that they can measure and analyses the current performance of their website and campaigns. Then you will need to have someone who can review the data to determine the ROI that is being achieved by your marketing efforts, the conversion rates of your different success events and where you are losing visitors.

This analyst should have knowledge of marketing and usability, or be a part of a multi functional team who can come up with alternatives to try and improve the current marketing efforts and the user experience of the site.

These strategies will then be handed off to a design and development team or provide to the agency who implements the campaigns or manages the site.

To properly measure the impact of the changes you should take advantage of multivariate or A/B testing so that you can clearly identify the impact of the changes that you have made.

Then the process starts all over again with review the results...

This is an area that I am currently working on. I'm trying to tie together our current service offerings into one holistic internet marketing service. It will take me some time to solidify how we will offer the service, how we will position it... but it is an area that I see huge potential for people to see measured improvements and know what is happening with the money they are spending.

Now that the web has matured a little, we have reached the point where businesses are no longer happy to merely have an online presence or for their sites just to generate traffic. Increasingly, there is a need to convert visitors into sales and an acknowledgement of the fact that in order to attain your (or your client's) target of increased conversion rates, a site must first meet the end-users goals. The site must facilitate rather than frustrate the user and maximizing the usability of site is a vital element in a achieving this aim. Furthermore, in creating a web site or application for clients, the need to meet their requirements on time, first time are imperative. So how do you create a product that neatly meets the need of your client and end-user? Simple: build your design process around them.

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Flash is capable of performing an impressive number of tasks and delivering such a wide variety of different types of information that it can be tricky to know where to start when trying to reign in a bloated application. In an effort to keep a large and still growing Flash application that I am developing under control, I recently did some research into Flash optimization. So, after some experimentation and a little searching around online, I was able to put together a list of tips, the best of which I’ll share with you now. Some of these tips relate to graphics, most however, focus on the nitty-gritty of ActionScript and so are a little technical in nature.

1. Try not to scale images as this can be quite a CPU intensive operation.

2. Avoid using outlines around vector images, this also adds to CPU load without necessarily improving the quality of the vector.

3. Avoid using _alpha and gradients if possible. If you have an object that’s going to be at 0 _alpha for a while, set '_visible = 0' instead.

4. Keep all your code centralized, because code lookups don’t have to go through MCs. It also makes your SWFs far more intelligible if your code isn’t hidden within a multitude of different MCs.

5. Reuse code where possible and practical. Try and avoid repeating routines where a single function might suffice.

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At VKI Studios we are very excited about our upcoming attendance and sponsorship of the National Association of Realtors conference in New Orleans (NARdi Gras). What makes this even more exciting for us is the fact that we will be launching and demonstrating our new mobile web sites for realtors and real estate agents.

These new websites will be specifically created and formatted to be displayed on mobile devices such as, cell phones and smart phones, mobile PDAs, Blackberries,...

The benefit for realtors of having a mobile version of their website occurs when a potential buyer is sitting in front of one of your listings, and they want to learn more about it. All they will have to do is navigate to the realtor's website that is posted on their sign, and then they will be automatically directed to the mobile version of their website via a device detection script.

Once on the mobile site the potential buyer will find the realtors contact information, and information on all of the real estate agents listings. They will then navigate to the listing that they are interested in and then follow the link for full property details.

If they are interested in learning more they will be able to contact the agent immediately on their mobile phone.

These new sites will be created so that they are optimized for search engine compatibility, and so that they don't suffer from usability issues that plague most mobile websites.

To learn more about this new service call us today or come visit us during NARdi Gras at booth 2375.