For web technology, 2011 was a year of great growth and change. 2012 will, no doubt, call for more updates and new functionality. Let’s take a moment to look back at some of the notable web technology events of 2011.

1. January 1 – Instagram, a popular photo-sharing iPhone app, has an average of 3 photos uploaded per second. By the end of 2011, that number rises to 60 per second, and President Barack Obama gets an account.
2. Feb 11 – President Hosni Mubarak steps down after the uprising of the Egyptian people, who used social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to organize and broadcast parts of the revolution.
3. April 29 – Prince WIlliam marries Kate Middleton. Twitter records 227 tweets per second during the event. Even some celebs, including Katy Perry, were tweeting.
4. July 12 – Netflix announces a change in plan prices – it will now cost more for customers to keep both the streaming and DVDs by mail functionalities.
5. September 20 – Google+ is rolled out to the public. By the end of 2011, it has more than 62 million users.
6. October 4 – The iPhone 4S is released. The new version features Siri, a personal assistant application that allows a person to use voice to send messages, make phone calls, schedule meetings, and more.
7. October 5 – Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, dies, and the Apple community mourns. Apple creates a “Remembering Steve Jobs” page.
8. November 14 – Amazon launches Kindle fire, which has its own web browser, Amazon Silk.
9. December 7 – Facebook releases Timeline, its new profile design.
10. December 29 – After first supporting SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, the popular Web hosting company, GoDaddy, decides to oppose it after losing tens of thousands of domains.

1. Grow your business by attracting new customers
2. Give existing customers tools that will keep them as your customers
3. Attract new talent to your company

The question needs to be asked, is your website working for you? Most answers aren’t cut and dry as they relate back to these three core principles. Including website initiatives should be part of your internal review of procedures and products annually. But what is a website initiative? It should be any planned enhancement to your site, whether that be a new page, color scheme, form or an entirely new site all together. How do you determine if you need to spruce up your existing site or start over? Take this website inventory.

1. Do you feel the colors and design are attractive? Yes / No
2. Is the menu and page system easy to navigate? Yes / No
3. Does each page have its own URL? (Meaning is xyzdomain.com/pagename unique.) Yes / No
4. Does your website work, as intended, on each of the modern browsers (Firefox 3-6, Internet Explorer 7-9 and Safari)? Yes / No
5. Your photos: Are they in focus? Do you see a finger? Can you see your images load on the page? Yes / No
6. Is there background music? Yes / No
7. Do you have a website visitor counter in the public areas of the site? Yes / No
8. Is the copyright date in the footer show this year’s date? Yes / No
9. Do you have an unused or underused blog? Has there been less than 1 post a month in the last 3 months? Yes / No

Answers (1.yes, 2.yes, 3.yes, 4.yes, 5.no, no, no, 6.no, 7.no, 8.yes, 9.no)

If you answered no to questions 1-4 it might be easier to start over with a website design. If you answered Yes to only a few of Questions 5-7 and 9, or No to Question 8 then you probably can do with a decent amount of web-sprucing. Congratulations if you answered the questions according to the key. Congrats, your website is modern and easy to use!

There are other things to consider when talking about rework and redesigning your website. Everyone touts social media (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn) integration, but that doesn’t make sense for every situation. Think about your organization and your potential customers and act accordingly.

How do you update or plan to update your website? Adding a content editor is the easiest way to ensure you (or virtually anyone with computer skills) can keep website content up to date. When adding a content editor, like WordPress, scheduling a redesign to correspond is most cost effective effective in the long run. Plan for content updates quarterly, at the very least. Inaccurate or old content will alienate potential customers.

The most important rule is to always keep your website up to date. Your website is a reflection of your company. How do you want to be portrayed?

Flashbelt 2009 is right around the corner. A truly exciting event where local flash designers and developers converge to see some amazing demo’s. A chance to learn what Adobe and flash masters are working on to push the boundaries and maximize the efficiencies of using flash in day-to-day work and play. The event is made up of both presentations and workshops and other events, and is appropriate for all experience levels.

Never been? Check out at least one presentation, you will undoubtedly go back for more. get yourself registered, space is limited.

Learn more about it and see who’s there this year.

Thanks to our friend Dave Schroeder at Pilotvibe, the founder and host

Southview Design came to us several years ago (through our friend Kristin Kowler at Genius to Go) in search of a clean, professional site that reflected the caliber of work which they were producing in landscapes. The new site not only improved their image, but made their team proud to share it. That was the site design “version 1″

Just yesterday we launched the all new Southview Design, while the previous site was plenty good they sought a more interactive and engaging user experience – and to continue to their already strong search engine presence. The new site features a striking new look, continually updated project slideshow on the home page, and intuitive navigation scheme. The project gallery allows visitors to explore by image – or quickly filter the list of landscaping projects by Service or by Price.

With this new site Kristin has again provided powerful and effective search engine friendly content, which will continue to build upon the already strong search engine presence Southview Design enjoys. Coupled with the ultra-clean site code and site optimization techniques employed in this go-around we wish them much happiness and success with the new site.

And just in time for Spring!

The book is great. The concentration of the books content is the philosophy that Yvon holds and used for the development of his company. I could talk about the book and the specifics but you should just read the book. What’s most interesting to me is the idea of the philosophy and how he has put it into action.

There are a million seminars and books out there that give you the top 8 rules and the 5 most effective techniques to achieve “X”. The sad thing is most people take the seminar or read the book and then use what they learned once or twice, if at all, and then move on to the next popular thing. (I’m all for education and continuous learning, but this seems like waste of resources.) They never take the time to think about develop the foundation that they need (the beliefs, values, and ideals) so they can espouse the ideas through actions. Yvon’s admitted overwhelming management technique is “management by absence”. What I interpret from this is that day in and day out while he was out actually using and testing the equipment Patagonia creates he spent plenty of time thinking about and his ideas and building the foundation he needed to live and apply his philosophy in action.

The next time you read a current business or management book or attend a seminar, I challenge you to ask yourself afterward, “What foundation do I need to build to be able to apply this in action day in and day out?” Spend some time thinking about it over a few weeks before you dive into something else. Pick the three most important things that struck you as you read the book and let that be a filter that you use to view your world through. I find that this helps me build a foundation for which to apply and integrate new things into my daily behavior and actions.

Additional information:
You can purchase the book from Amazon or you can read an excerpt of the book at Outside Magazine’s website

Across the world on Thursday, people learned how to “make life easy.” Yes, there is an entire day devoted to ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use. While this year’s theme was healthcare, we are going to focus specifically on the Internet, or as some of us like to call it, the Global InterWeb.

The University of Minnesota Office of Information Technology and Digital Technology Center celebrated the day by organizing a free event in the Walter Library on campus with the help of the UMN Usability Services Laboratory. Yesterday’s event included guided tours of the state-of-the-art usability lab, a presentation discussing practical usability practices and a professional panel discussing an overview of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

So what does all of this mean and why is it important?

Web sites that follow good usability practices and accessibility standards will benefit both the economy and our health. After all, the easier it is for us to find and potentially purchase what we are looking for Online, the lower our blood pressure is and better the economy. The equation is simple:

Usability and Accessibility Planning (>) Well Designed Web Site (>) User Productivity (>) User Satisfaction.

But Carrie’s post about Architect Web sites, shows how hard it can be to develop good design. Usability.gov says “people cannot find the information they seek on Web sites about 60 percent of the time.” In fact, designers – did you know that screen readers do not read hyper-text link titles by default? This should make you think twice about adding a link to the words “click here”, or “read more”.

• Usability, like traditional marketing, forces us to research and understand who we are building our Web sites for. What is our desired user experience and how do we accomplish it? A.K.A User Centered Design.

• Accessibility forces us to make sure we create equal opportunity Web sites. We need to make sure any and all users, including users with disabilities can easily and equally receive our Online message(s).

How do we do this?

My suggestions are to …

1. Review on the Usability Basics and step-by-step visual usability guide on Usability.gov.
2. Read up on the latest Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) The real Web 2.0.
3. Download a screen reader and see how accessible your Web site really is. You may find out that what you see is not always what you get.
4. You can also network with other Usability Professionals by joining the UPA. It’s always good to have a lot of friends when your doing your own usability testing.
5. Finally, as my track coach once told me, “practice makes permanent, not perfect.” The more you implement smart Web design practices, the sooner you’ll develop your own processes and successful user-centered Web sites.

Go to Spock and “claim” your profile before someone else does. Spock uses a technology that automatically generates tags for an individual. This differentiates Spock from the other People Search web sites such as LinkedIn and Wink. Think of Spock’s potential uses – get the dirt on a new love interest, impromptu employer background check, or find out “where they are now”. It seems like Spock has the potential to be yet another Internet time sucker.

By the way, Spock is thrilled with Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3). They are utilizing S3 for storing their photos. They write, “We’re pretty psyched with Amazon Web Services, and we’re looking forward to leveraging other neat services they roll out in the future.” It’s reassuring to know that other companies are having success with this technology just as we are with Wonderfile.

Scientists have uncovered a source of clean power that could generate enough energy to provide over 100 times the current global demand. The jet stream. Duh – rather obvious if you think about it – a massive swath of 310 mile per hour winds blowing day and night…

There are currently several start-ups looking to tap into the jet streams power – there is some hope!