On October 5, 2011 we took the evening off from our computers, TV & cell phones to celebrate our anniversary. Just before going to bed, we decided to look at the Apple web site to watch the latest video on the new iPhone 4s that we are wanting to buy.
I was overcome with sadness & emotion when I saw the front page picture of Steve Jobs. Steve’s death triggered an outpouring of emotion in me, for a man who helped shape the digital age.
While I was aware of his health condition & his leave of absence from Apple, it just never sunk in that one day he would be gone, especially so soon. Several hours after reading & listening to news reports on Steve’s passing, we drifted off to sleep with recollections of how Steve Jobs has changed our lives. Since then, I have not been able to think of anything else and am drawn to write about how Steve Jobs has affected my life.
I did not know Steve Jobs personally, even though I worked for Apple as a service provider & later a trainer, but like millions of people around the planet I knew him through his company & products and have been a devoted fan since 1984.
My first experience with Steve Jobs’ company was when I was involved with a photography studio in Palo Alto where we were hired by Apple to photograph the “Lisa” computer. The people on the shoot from Apple Computer suggested a possible trade for part payment for services. The studio had been photographing computer chips & tech related equipment & packaging for some time. When we asked what we would use the computer for if we had one, someone suggested it could be used for recipes, writing & business purposes. We just could not see ourselves ever needing such a “box”, and passed on the opportunity, not knowing how significant Apple would play in my future. During the next few years, I made many trips to the Apple campus, soliciting photo assignments & becoming fascinated with the Apple company culture.
Just two years later & many more photo shoots with technology products of all kinds, we were inundated with technology examples in the studio’s portfolio. Then I saw the 1984 Apple Computer ad in the Super Bowl. This ad changed my life & I knew then I was going to be a part of this revolution. I was hooked immediately and knew this was the start of a long-term relationship. Little did I realize that it would take me 10 years before I would actually own an Apple computer.
From 1990 to 1993 I was working in Comet Studios architecture studio, designing without computers, yet knowing they were to become part of our future. We knew that when we computerized the studio it would only be with Apple computers.
In 1994 after attending Macworld in San Francisco, we bought a Power Mac Quadra 800, finally transitioning into the digital world. The idea was that my husband & I would share the computer for our work in the architecture studio. After one day of “sharing” we bought our second computer. Sharing a computer was not possible, unless we took shifts while the other person slept. The day our second Quadra arrived we spent 8 hours straight learning some of what the computer could do. After 8 hours I reluctantly pulled myself away for a brief moment to use the bathroom, then rushed back to learn more. We were consumed with our exploration. From then on everything I cooked was burnt, as my focus was on my computer’s ability to multi-task & not on my inability to integrate computer time & domestic time. Time just flew by when we were working on the computer and we learned to eat burnt food. We were addicted and we knew it. Sometime in the weeks after becoming “computerized” & after spending 16 hour days absorbed in our computers, I was showering and accidentally dropped something and exclaimed out loud “Command Z” & was so startled by the lack of response from the dropped item, only to realize that a computer command of “undo” was not possible in regards to dropping something in “real” life (non-digital life). Yes, I was obsessed.
I installed photos of the ocean on my computer “desk top” even thought we lived less than 1,000 feet from the ocean. I spent more time looking at my computer than I did at the view.
During that year we discovered the Internet, not literally, of course. It was 1994 & we were living on the remote northern California coast with online dialup provided by the only Internet service provider, MCN.org
We attended every conference at Moscone Center in San Francisco to see demonstration of Apple products & later just to hear Steve Jobs speak. We learned architecture software, graphic design software, office & bookkeeping software & everything we could get installed in our computers. In 1995 I was learning html from a virtual university where people from around the world would log on & deconstruct web pages in order to learn html (web page code).
In April of 1996 we registered CometStudios.com domain name & built our first web site for the architecture studio. I knew my path was to create web sites. I went on to create many web sites in the coastal community. In 1997 we got involved with an online start up company. I was involved with the web user experience strategy, information architecture, navigation design, interaction design, visual design, production and web training.
After working with companies around the country from a virtual office, we moved to San Francisco in 1998 to be at the heart of the Internet revolution. During the time I started working in the digital world (Apple fans from the start) I knew that I wanted to teach web design and become a speaker at conferences & conduct corporate training.
From the year 2000 through 2004 I spoke & taught at conferences around the country: Seybold Seminars- San Francisco & New York, HOW Design Conferences, Internet World Chicago, ADIM2001, Santa Cruz Technology Symposium and Exhibition, Web2000, Cisco Systems, Adobe User Conference, UCSC- SJ Mercury News Ecommerce Conference, & Adobe /Apple Road Show. I taught web design/usability at San Francisco State University Multi Media Department & at UCSC Extension in Cupertino. I conducted web training for major corporations in the San Francisco Bay Area & around the country for many of the fortune 500 companies. I traveled with Adobe & Apple doing demonstrations of web software on Macs, wrote a book: “Adobe GoLive 6 Classroom in a Book” & worked 24/7. This was the Internet era.
When I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico in late 2004, I was burnt out on traveling and tired of speaking/motivating large groups of people. By then, most designers knew how to create websites and most businesses were online & if they were not, then they would never be. I now viewed Apple conferences online and followed all the tech changes from my PowerBook. I did miss “talking tech”, having tech friends & being at the pulse of “everything tech”, as Santa Fe had a slower pace and I was settling into the city different.
Looking back over the years I can’t imagine a life now without the technology we take for granted: my laptop computers, Skype, the iPhone, iPad, iPod, the Internet. Everything I know now comes from the use of computers via the Internet & everything I do revolves around the products Steve Jobs has created to make it possible to communicate.
Steve Jobs created great products that deliver great user experiences that all interact with one another. He emotionally charged the human/object interface, to create intimacy with an object embedded with emotion, feeling & passion in a technology industry that is normally drab, cold & mundane. His products are about function, quality & great design. Steve Jobs represented by example, a whole world that anything is possible for future generations to build upon.
Steve Jobs was not just a corporate figure-head. He was a true visionary that inspired greatness. He inspired not just brand-loyalty, he inspired a way of life. Mac users have a different kind of loyalty that no other brand has been able to achieve. Those that have the misfortune to not be a Mac user, do not understand the depth of emotion that is carried with the Mac user experience. To them Apple products are just products. But for the Mac fans, it is a way of being, thinking, feeling, doing, while using great products. These “products” are the most intuitive, beautifully designed pieces of mass-market industrial design of our age.
For me, Steve’s death marks a passing as significant as John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King & John Lennon.
Steve was an “insanely great visionary” in my time, who transformed not just my life, but all our lives… forever. He encouraged us to think differently, to act boldly & with passion.
Steve inspired us to become more, to dream, & as President Barack Obama said:
“By making computers personal and putting the Internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun. And by turning his talents to storytelling, he has brought joy to millions of children and grownups alike. Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last. Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world. The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.”
Steve, you are insanely missed, already! You are in our hearts & lives forever. Many blessings to you, Steve, & to all of us.
For more information, visit Comet Studios Web Design & Development, www.CometStudios.net
President Obama, wrote a wonderful statement on the passing of Steve Jobs:
“Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.
By building one of the planet’s most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity. By making computers personal and putting the internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun. And by turning his talents to storytelling, he has brought joy to millions of children and grownups alike. Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last. Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.
The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to Steve’s wife Laurene, his family, and all those who loved him.”
For more information, visit Comet Studios Web Design & Development, www.CometStudios.net
Sad news that Visionary Steve Jobs of Apple computer has died. President Obama said it best:
“Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.”
Steve’s legacy will live on for generations to come. Steve, you changed my world for the better. I will always be a loyal fan. Many blessings to you & to all of us who have been touched by your genius.
For more information, visit Comet Studios Web Design & Development, www.CometStudios.net
For nearly all of Sunday Sept 25, InMotion Hosting’s website customers were showing a hacked web page . It was not just a server hack, actually IMH’s whole data center was hacked. The perpetrator replaced every index file in every major directory of every account including the provider’s official sites. That could have affected as many as 700,000 websites.
The attack was first noticed about 4:00am EDT. Fortunately, this hack attack only displayed some unsophisticated art work and played a rap song. All users web sites were made unavailable.
This appears to be the same hacker who was previously successful with their attack on Google. The Hacker News interviewed the supposed Bangladesh perpetrator, TiGER-M@TE. They claimed to be hacking since 2007, working alone, and only using private exploits and zero-day attacks.
Many hours of removing & replacing files in every folder for every one of Comet Studios’ clients was completed on Sunday at 5pm by Comet Studios web architect, Dianne McKenzie, for an all day effort.
Hackers like these hurt so many innocent people and disrupt lives & commerce, which is their intent. It is unfortunate that someone uses their knowledge for destroying rather than for helping create a better world. Karma is the only justice to injustice. Many blessing to all of us. – Dianne
For more information, visit Comet Studios Web Design & Development, www.CometStudios.net
To all our Comet Studios Clients: InMotion Web Hosting was hacked early this morning. All our clients web sites (& all ours) were compromised and no longer available for viewing. We spent the entire day restoring all the sites & now all are up & running. InMotion Hosting has more information about the cyber hack attack.
Here is the situation:
InMotion Hosting, who hosts your web sites, was hacked at around 4am EST on September 25, 2011. IMH system administration team identified a website defacement attack affecting a large number of their customers, & all of Comet Studios customers. They, IMH, are still investigating, but it appears that files named index.php have been defaced.
Let me explain simply what this means:
Hackers were able to put pages (index.php) in every folder in your web site. All your web sites have pages & folders, some folders just have images & some have both pages & images. This hacking caused your web site to be over-ridden and thus render unavailable with a hacking page in its place.
I did some research online early this morning (yes it was early on Sunday morning when I discovered this and had to re think my plans for the day). I was able to go into each and everyone’s web sites & delete the index.php file from every folder and replace it with a correct file from my back ups. Each web site took approximately a hour for the small 4 page web sites to over an hour plus for most of the larger web sites. If one corrupted hacker file was left in place, it could have re-spread through out the site again, so I had to insure nothing was left behind.
Result:
I did not notify you in advance that I was going to have to make these changes, as there was no time to allow you to respond. So without your knowledge the attacked happened and has been resolved. I have diligently removed all the corrupt files.
Please check over your web site to make sure it is fully functioning. As you can imagine this was a very intense task to restore your web sites, that came up abruptly with little time to contact you all. Cyber attacks have not been associated with InMotion Hosting on this massive scale. Other web hosting companies have also been attacked. One can not take it personally, it is just part of dealing with the internet.
I will be sending you each an small invoice to cover my time for making these repairs. Having talked with several other programmers around the country, they felt it would be swifter for us to reinstall our client web sites than to wait & hope IMH would be able to do automatic updates. Many automatic updates were missing files.
Social media and blogs are a key part to any inbound marketing strategy. Here are 6 ways they help grow your business:
1. Quick to Start. You could launch a Business Facebook page today or get a blog going in a few days.
2. Low Cost. You can get started in social media and blogging for very little or no money. They are among the most cost-effective methods of reaching your audience.
3. Instant Interactivity. Both blogs and social media can give you nearly instant market feedback – good or bad. We get all kinds of feedback through the comments on our blog; people also leave reviews and other comments for us on Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media channels.
4. Search Engines. Surveys indicate that 90% or more of people begin their purchasing process in search engines. Blogs and social media make it more likely that your prospects will find you online when they search.
5. Inbound Marketing. If you read Comet Studios’ blog, you know that we are big fans of inbound marketing. Outbound marketing is telemarketing, direct mail, cold email, TV and print ads – all the things that buyers tend to block out more and more. Social media and blogs are essential inbound marketing tools.
6. First Mover Advantage. For blogs and social media, there is an advantage to moving first. If you don’t jump into the conversation, your competitors will (if they have not already) and then you’re fighting an uphill battle to become influential in these online conversations. Start now to claim that first-mover advantage.
How are you using social media today?
Learn how you can build a successful inbound marketing strategy that combines social media, blogging, lead conversion, and marketing analytics. Get a complimentary Inbound Marketing Assessment from Comet Studios.
The time is now, no excuses, get started. If you need help, contact Comet Studios for your Social Media Marketing. We can design the strategy, build the fundamental social media framework, and create the ongoing content in your social media campaign. Email or call now: 505.603.9300 to find out how we can help you grow your business!
For more information, visit Comet Studios Web Design & Development, www.CometStudios.net
Conversion is where we take what we have spent in time & $ and change it into something valuable to marketing leads… A cost becomes a benefit.
Landing page tips:
Limited navigation
Clear & Simple
Form above the fold
In online marketing a landing page, sometimes known as a lead capture page, is a single web page that appears in response to clicking on an advertisement. The landing page will usually display directed sales copy that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link.
Landing pages are often linked to from social media, email campaigns or pay per click (PPC) campaigns in order to enhance the effectiveness of the advertisements. The general goal of a landing page is to convert site visitors into sales leads. By analyzing activity generated by the linked URL, marketers can use click-through rates and Conversion rate to determine the success of an advertisement.
There are two types of landing pages: reference and transactional.
A reference landing page, presents information that is relevant to the visitor. These can display text, images, dynamic compilations of relevant links, or other elements. Reference landing pages are effective if they meet the objectives of their publishers, which may be associations, organizations or public service entities. For many reference landing pages, effectiveness can be measured by the revenue value of the advertising that is displayed on them.
A transactional landing page seeks to persuade a visitor to complete a transaction such as filling out a form or interacting with advertisements or other objects on the landing page, with the goal being the immediate or eventual sale of a product or service. If information is to be captured, the page will usually withhold information until some minimal amount of visitor information is provided, typically an email address and perhaps a name and telephone number as well – enough to “capture the lead” and add the prospect to a mailing list.
The time is now, no excuses, get started. If you need help, contact Comet Studios for your Social Media Marketing. We can design the strategy, build the fundamental social media framework, and create the ongoing content in your social media campaign. Contact us now: 505.603.9300 to find out how we can help you grow your business!
For more information, visit Comet Studios Web Design & Development, www.CometStudios.net
Search Engine Optimization: Employ SEO from the start.
Metrics: Visitors & Leads… you must track.
Tips to Assessing Your Website
Website Assets = Content
How many pages do you have?
How many will be killed?
Will pages move to a new url?
How many pages will you create?
What is your most powerful content?
Website Assets = Links
How many inbound links do I have?
What interior web pages have links?
Where are my links coming from?
What are my most powerful links?
Website Assets = Keyword Rank
What keywords do I rank for today?
What keywords do my competitors rank for?
What keywords should I want to rank for?
How has my keyword rank changed?
Website Assets = Conversion Tools
What generates most of my leads?
What are my best conversion tools?
How can I increase conversion?
Protecting Your Assets
If you move a page make sure you have a permanent redirect (website.grader.com 301 redirect old url to new url)
Content Drives Visitors
Search Engines like fresh content
People like fresh content
More tickets in the SEO lottery, more content you have better chance you will be found
More chances to build something remarkable
More is always better
Blog = Ongoing Content
Promote Your Blog
Promote your content, leverage social media, build up an audience then your content gets found. The more you promote, you drive back others to you, then more links come to you… other people write good things about you then you promote those articles. Then that authority then validates you.
How to promote a new blog?
Sending out to email lists
Link from your web site & other web sites
Send out messages to social media types, do link exchange with other bloggers, resources, webinars, basic blogging sites
Many Benefits to Blogging
Blogging Helps SEO
Blogging helps with Social News Sites
Blogging helps with Social Networking Sites
Blogging is Permission Centric
Optimizing Blog Articles
Keywords
Meta Description
Tags
Links in & Out
SEO
Is ongoing from the beginning.
Page Title, Keywords, Description, before company name
Clean url
Headers & Content
Description
Media alt tags
Metrics: Visitors & Leads
Web Analytics
Views
New visitors
repeat visitors
Leads
Customers
The time is now, no excuses, get started. If you need help, contact Comet Studios for your Social Media Marketing. We can design the strategy, build the fundamental social media framework, and create the ongoing content in your social media campaign. Email or call now: 505.603.9300 to find out how we can help you grow your business!
Read next weeks article: Website Redesign Tips Part 4: Landing Pages
For more information, visit Comet Studios Web Design & Development, www.CometStudios.net
