http://blog.midstride.com Powerful, simple & easy to use. Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:21:30 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I recently participated in an online discussion among higher education web professionals around the topic of launching an internal online community, and while the discussion was focused specifically on online communties for groups like university alumni networks, it's probably fair to say that at a broad level the same principles ... http://blog.midstride.com/2009/04/18/launching-a-successful-online-community/ The New York Times recently profiled a few developers who made it big selling iPhone apps, and while it's becoming tough to compete in what is quickly become a saturated market, we are still in the very early days and there are still plenty of opportunities to be had in ... http://blog.midstride.com/2009/04/06/adding-iphone-apps-to-the-mix/ There's a change happening in the world of web analytics - there's a new kid on the block that's changing the game in subtle ways: real-time data. Where the previously predominant model of data tracking came from once-daily reporting of data, a new breed of analytics is emerging thanks in ... http://blog.midstride.com/2009/03/24/real-time-web-analytics-the-woopra-advantage/ Here is the first installment of our top 10 links for the week - a selection of ten links we see as being very useful and important to the web development/business crowd.  This list covers both technical articles for developers and higher level business ones. 10 Useful RSS-Tricks and Hacks for ... http://blog.midstride.com/2008/12/08/top-10-links-for-december-week-1-2008/ With php becoming a more mature language and frameworks becoming a standard practice, it's increasingly important to analyze your code and test the performance where possible. Frameworks and libraries can speed up the development time and make code maintenance simpler, but it's important you understand how they work.  It's not just ... http://blog.midstride.com/2008/12/01/5-tips-and-tools-to-optimize-your-php-application-part-1-simple/ At work the other day, I was forwarded an email with a co-worker asking for my thoughts to a question. The question went along the lines of: "How many emails in a defined time period should we be sending to our customers? How many emails is too many?" My answer? ... http://blog.midstride.com/2008/10/20/e-mail-marketing-how-many-emails-is-too-many/ A quiet shift is happening in the world of web design and development - one that has been in the works for a few years, but is now starting to come to fruition: the mobile world is mobilizing to point a whole lot of eyes onto our websites. Our canvas ... http://blog.midstride.com/2008/09/21/what-the-iphone-android-and-chrome-mean-for-web-professionals/ Usability testing is a phase in the development process that often gets overlooked, shortchanged, or outright stricken out of project plans. Sometimes usability testing is ruled out because of time constraints, other times it's because of a lack of resources such as equipment or expertise. On other cases, it may ... http://blog.midstride.com/2008/09/14/5-reasons-why-you-should-do-usability-testing/ A couple weeks ago we took a look at some of the first steps to take when selecting an open source publishing platform. From starting off with doing some guerilla market research and viewing source code to figure out what tools others are using, moving on to trying to gauge ... http://blog.midstride.com/2008/09/10/how-to-select-an-open-source-publishing-platform-step-3-determine-your-capacity-for-internal-design/ When web applications like basecamp started appearing, a lot of attention started turning to Ruby on Rails.  Suddenly small groups of technically driven people could release powerful applications in a month or two.  With this awareness, the usability standards for web applications increased and so did the technical challenges for ... http://blog.midstride.com/2008/09/09/5-tips-to-develop-php-applications-fast/