Internets, Intranets and Extranets, Oh My!

Some of you are already familiar with these terms. Perhaps you’ve been introduced to them through your place of employment or maybe you’re just more informed than the average Joe. In either case, most of you have probably never fully understood what all of these terms mean and in what ways they can differ. This article is purposed to remedy that lack of understanding and to give you some ammo to impress your coworkers with at the next company BBQ.

Internet(s)

While most of us are familiar with the term “the Internet”, few of us recognize that the Internet (also known as the World Wide Web) is simply the largest in its class. Actually, an “internet” is just a “network of networks” where computers are connected to each other through the transference of data. For instance, an internet could be set up such that only two corporate networks were in contact with each other outside of “the” Internet.

Intranets and Extranets

A website can take many forms. Nowadays, many companies and organizations are finding it more and more important to segment the structure of their website to provide two additional forms: the semi-public (extranet) and the private (intranet).

An extranet is that section of a website which is made available only to a limited crowd outside of the organization itself. Extranets are often created to offer secured environments to suppliers, vendors, partners, or other exclusive-rights customers. For instance, you might setup an extranet for your company’s website to allow affiliated businesses access to semi-private data. Or you might create a section of your site where suppliers can view your current inventory levels and respond with shipping you a new order. In either case, these sections are often highly secured and restricted in access.

An intranet is almost the same as an extranet but with a different group of users. Instead of making itself available to outside members, an intranet is often used to connect internal staff. A growing trend in web development these days is the rise in demand for company intranets. More and more businesses are recognizing the value of connecting their employee base across departments and/or branch offices. Intranets can offer employers a platform through which company announcements can be broadcasted, where employees can connect on work and extracurricular topics in a variety of ways, and where secured internal business processes can be conducted. Some aspects of a company intranet might include forums, staff profile sections, and secured file transfer. The intranet is essentially the “staff room” of the public-facing website.

Cascade Web Development has felt the rise in demand for both intranets and extranets and has responded by producing successful solutions for a variety of company objectives.

One of the leading causes of merger and acquisition failure is the inability to reconcile differing cultures. This observation lead AKT to pursue a solution that would allow its employees—both new and old—to make their merger and acquisition transition as seamless as possible. From the installation of an employee directory, complete with staff profiles and photos, to the staff highlight section where exciting news about recent birthdays, staff events, and new births were reported on a daily basis, AKT and Cascade Web Development worked together to overcome the obstacle of cultural incompatibility.

If you think your company could benefit from this type of web-based communication and coordination, contact Cascade Web Development today to discuss creative ways to handle your specific company situation.

Gas Saving Web Applications

I hate idling on the highway. There are few things I hate more and a ton of things I hate less. Not only is it an absolute time-suck to be sitting in my car going 2 miles per hour, taking what should have been a 20 minute ride from work to home and stretching it out to almost three times that amount, but it wastes a ton of gas—and fast.

Neither of those two observations is satisfactory. That’s why I’ve committed this article to helping you empower yourself with some online applications that will give you and your gas tank, some much deserved relief.

Traffic Monitors

Traffic monitoring services have recently been adopted by Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft in their continued efforts to attract a wider audience. These traffic reports are being piped to and delivered through their respective free, online mapping utilities. I’ll save the in-depth comparison of the three services for a later post, but for now, suffice it to say that Microsoft Live Search Maps is the most up-to-date and accurate free traffic reporting tool out there. For a sample of evidence, here’s a series of images taken of the highway I frequent to and from work every day. The images were taken within a five minute period of each other.

While online traffic reporting is generally still limited to covering freeways and highways, if your commute to work passes through one of these areas it can seriously cut down on your travel time.


BeatTheTraffic.com

Another useful tool comes from BeatTheTraffic.com. While the site works to promote the subscription version of its services, the free tools and information it provides may be sufficient to give you the insight you need to plan the best route.

One feature I like is the travel time chart.

One of the most interesting features of this chart is the 3 to 4 pm interval where traffic congestion almost reaches the highest rate of acceleration of the day. This tells me that if I can hit the highway as close to 3 as possible, I’ll minimize my traffic time.

Another interesting, though arguably useless feature, is the ability to see updated photos of traffic along a highway.

I say useless since its fairly difficult to judge from a photo how fast traffic is moving. For me, this tool is nothing more than a novelty.

Gas Price Index

Interested in finding the lowest gas prices in your area? Try PortlandGasPrices.com. Powered by GasBuddy.com, PortlandGasPrices.com is a powerhouse of information. It will display a multitude of gas prices in your area from all types and sizes of gas stations. One useful feature is the ability to search by gas category (regular, midgrade etc.). Not everyone uses regular, and for those people, PortlandGasPrices.com is an especially excellent resource.

If PortlandGasPrices.com happens to overwhelm you, trot on over to MapQuest for another great resource. Click on the Gas Prices button near the top left and enter in your location. MapQuest will then spit out the lowest gas prices in your area along with their destinations. MapQuest will also sort by gas category.

So that was a primer on how you can tap into some great online resources to help you save on gas and time in your weekly routine. After using these services and fine tuning them to my own schedule and route, I was able to cut my average commute time down from 45 minutes to 23!

What is a CMS?

CMS stands for Content Management System and represents one of the most essential tools for updating and managing your website.

All websites are encoded at some level in a programming language. Unfortunately, most of us aren’t versed well enough in these languages to use them effectively in managing our websites. That’s where a CMS comes in. A CMS provides a gateway between the non-technical individual and his/her website which can require little to no familiarity with programming languages. If you are able to use a computer, you are able to work a CMS.

Whether you know it or not, you’ve probably already used a CMS. Social networking sites like facebook and MySpace implement their own versions of a CMS. When you access the control panel of your facebook account to change your Contact Information or ID Photo, you’re accessing the backend of your personal webpage through their CMS utility. While their CMS tools are relatively inflexible compared to the types of CMS tools being discussed in this article, they still reflect key aspects of Content Management Systems.

Say you’ve decided to launch a website from scratch and say you’ve found a CMS that you believe will be effective and simple enough to use. Once you’ve logged in, you now have the ability to create new pages instantly, add text and images with just a few clicks, and implement a complete navigation system reflecting your dynamically developed information architecture. And now for the best part: it took you just 20 min and little to no technical experience.

That’s the beauty of the CMS. It’s designed specifically to make these tasks fast and easy. Successful developers cater the composition of their systems to your needs—instead of demanding it be the other way around.

We here at Cascade Web Development are successful developers. Our in-house technical team has created what we believe is the most intuitive, easy-to-use Content Management System on the market. We’ve titled it Evergreen, and have proudly garnered a significant number of followers in our clients.

The strength of Evergreen lies in its simplicity. Instead of bombarding our users with unnecessary features and superfluously glitzy packaging, we’ve focused on improving and fine-tuning those aspects of web development that have proven to be truly critical to the content manager (You). We’ve done our best to streamline the process as much as possible and create the most intuitive user experience imaginable.

If you think you’re interested in reading more about our CMS solution, feel free to browse the Evergreen section of our website. Decide for yourself whether you think Evergreen is right for you, then contact us if you’re ready to discuss specifics. We regularly make ourselves available to our clients and interested individuals for technical assistance and general support needs.

So this has been the first in a series of articles discussing the various aspects and capabilities of Evergreen, our Content Management System. Keep a lookout for future articles where I will be highlighting various tips on how you can more efficiently implement Evergreen in your web development routine.