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.

Business' future on the web

It has been interesting to watch the trends of the web flow between business applications and personal entertainment. The two have in many ways driven the technology overall. Web 2.0, a buzz word by most people's standards, was a way to talk about all of the websites created around social networking for individual use. Enterprise 2.0, a way of talking about how web 2.0 is applied to business cases, represents a much larger mindset that business managers must understand to be successful.

For example, let's say your company is in an M&A situation. Why do most M&A's fail? Culture! Connecting people and their cultures is no simple task. An Enterprise 2.0 intranet created for the culture can really make a difference. Knowledge sharing, another major corporate challenge, can also be facilitated with enterprise 2.0 applications. 

To learn more about Enterprise 2.0 click here

Google Sites Debate

This is a very interesting article exploring the new Google Sites Application. The application aims to help teams and companies collaborate. The same thing CWD does. However, there are things to be cautious about with Gsite. The basic debate is around IT, content protection and features. Read some of the comments (the 3-4th one) in this article. I see a niche in the middle between totally open google sites and IT bogged down feature rich applications.

AMA Max Awards: Moon Boot Give Away

At the AMA Max Awards, CWD offered up a free pair of Moon Boots for booth passers by. It was a hit! Obviously, this must be one of the best Swag items ever created!!

Winner:

Karen Gibson, Creative Director from Orange
Karen can't resist anything orange! It seemed almost fate that her card was pulled out of the Moon Boot by a passer by from Angel Vision. Have a look at this attached image. Most marketing campaigns don't integrate this well!! On top of it all, Karen does great work. It was a pleasure getting to know her and the Orange Creative work when she dropped by the office last Friday.

The AMA Max awards was a blast for us. The Vibrant Table Event application, nominated for Best Web Campaign, created a lot of buzz. The depth and functionality of this tool blew most people away. It is amazing how these tools can transform a business process!

The AKT brand and web project was also a huge success for Cascade Web Development. We would like to publicly thank our partner YRG Communications for doing such a pro job on the message and brand design.

Visit our website or contact us for more information about Cascade Web Development or Evergreen Content Management!

Web Applications for College Students

Last week I gave 2 presentations at the Art Institute of Portland.  The first to a project management class, the second to a technology class. 

The talk went something like this: What is software as a service? Think about it as running the same software as you use on your computer at home, but faster and better because the computer you have at home is nothing like Blue Genie or the servers companies like VMware are using these days. See how much more you can do if you harness the power of web applications? As college students you are using web applications every day. Google docs, Facebook, Del.ic.ious (which none of them used by the way), Blogger, IM, and many more. These are all forms of SAS or hosted applications. Now what does that mean to help you communicate and collaborate with others? Let's think about it from a business perspective. As project manager, I need to work with people in remote offices, I need to find a way to bring everyone on the same page. Make sure they know what is happening and have access to information they need. 

As students you can start to use these tools in class projects. Use google docs rather than passing a word doc around with a crazy version code. Use del.ic.ious to store links and resources to project research. If you put these tools to use, then once you get into the business world, you can create and use these same tools, but in a closed business extranet or intranet. 

Then I exposed them to web project management applications to see how this was implemented. MS sharepoint, Basecamp, Whitepass from Cascade Web Development, and Vibrant Table Events.  I think it really hit home when they saw how similar these tools can be. In the end it is all about working with people, finding opportunities to make them shine.

CWD - Best Web Campaign of 2006 by AMA-PDX

After rave reviews in industry publications such as "Internet Retailer" CWD was recognized for their work with Nordica USA!

In January, Cascade Web Development was selected as a finalist by the American Marketing Association for their annual MAX Awards (Marketing Award of Excellence) . Our work for Nordica USA is up against Freightliner and Kettle Foods for the Best Web Campaign of 2006. Watch this video to see a preview of all finalists.



More about the project:
When Nordica contacted CWD to help them evolve and innovate their web efforts, the term web 2.0 was just hitting mass media. Web 2.0 has since become a buzz word of sorts, but the philosophy behind it speaks well to some of the technology used in our development process with Nordica.

Nordica has over 1700 dealer locations throughout the US. They turned to CWD looking for a better way to communicate with their key stakeholders. We helped Nordica realize the opportunity for creating a community on the web. By analyzing their current communications strategy with their dealer network, we were able to identify aspects that would prove efficient and effective in keeping with Web 2.0. First, we created a design that encouraged a "lounge" look and feel for the site. We wanted the user to experience the site and not so much navigate through it in a liner fashion. Second, we asked user to create their own user profiles, to which we could attach rewards when the user completed a technical training quiz or recorded their in store sales. Finally we developed the Nordica sales incentive program and integrated it into the web. Nordica realized an immediate ROI on their investment. Understanding that the users on this site could be major influencer's of the bottom line, the experience we created for them was highly valuable.

Evergreen Content Management

Cascade Web Development has been working diligently on the evolution of our content management system, Evergreen. Many of our clients have put this technology to use, saving them time and money! If you have not used it, the tool is simple and easy. If you have, you know what I am talking about. Check out this screen cast to see just how easy it is to build a link into your website.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW SCREEN CAST

If you have additional questions, please contact CWD at info@cascadewebdev.com

What did you do this morning?

At CWD this is how we do it. Seamless to our clients and invaluable to our lifestyles, we strive to achieve new challenges and reach new heights. Metaphors aside, we love what we do...

Bussiness Partnerships for the Future

Developing real, trusting partnerships is essential for any growing company. At CWD it is our life blood. Organic growth is what we are all about. We are building relationships with our clients that instill trust that, will be around when they need support or advise. Today, we feel fortunate for one relationship in particular, www.dccconsulting.com. We connected with DCC Consulting years back. The relationship has grown over the years. We have gone out of our way to put our tools in their hands, helping them do business better. In return they have been incredibly appreciative and generous in their reference to CWD as a top notch resource for everything on the web. CWD just launched the new DCC Consulting website. It is best to let the client speak to the success of the project.


“It’s crucial in our line of work that we remain competitive and fresh,” stated VP of Marketing and Operations, Chrissy Kelley. “Not only did we feel a new company brand would enhance our potential new business opportunities, but we have worked to design our new site to be informational and useful for our current customer base as well.” Working closely with the team at Cascade Web Development, you will find a fresh, modern website that demonstrates just how technology and image are crucial in the growing business world. The expansion of the DCC Consulting website will allow clients to continue seeing advanced technology implementation, updated technology news, and will provide clients with the opportunity to participate in quarterly contests.


Thanks to our clients and friends, Dave Chapman and Chrissy Kelly!

Team Work

There is something to be said for power of the communication tools we have in our hands these days. I work with a group of people that I have spent about 20 hours with, EVER. Yet when we got together for our Holiday party this year it was like a group of good old boys. That is amazing and I always laughed at people that said they met their partner on the web. Well I met many of my coworkers on the web and I am cool with all of them. Not to say that I want to date them, but I am happy to keep working with them.

If you want to connect with your friends, family and coworkers, try the following tools:

SKYPE
GOTOMEETING
Flickr

El Camino

We are just hitting our stride in the internet revolution. The best is yet to come.

In 1908 the Ford Motor company put out the first Model T and in 1913 the assembly line was first used. These two moments changed our lives and allowed the World economy to grow exponentially. About 40 years later, Chevrolet, a brain child of the Ford Motor Company, developed the El Camino. The El Camino was a revolutionary production; utility and style all in one. What a great thing?

Google, My Space and salesforce.com are the El Camino of the internet era. Like Ford, the internet has changed our lives and allowed the World economy to grow exponentially. But where are we now? Just hitting our stride. The above mentioned websites seem like the Holy Grail right now, but they are not. We have a world of innovation ahead. Just think if we had stopped at the El Camino?

Companies that realize this future are better equipped for growth. Don't allow your company to satisfy for a web presence that simply tells your story. Use the internet to create business, do business and maintain business. Take what you do today and see yourself doing it better, faster and more efficient; that is what the Toyota Prius does.

Experience Marketing

Cascade Web Development developed the site for the Portland Action Sports Film Contest this summer. www.oregonsports.org/action the contest was created to give local filmmakers and athletes the opportunity to get involved with the Dew Action Sports Tour, months before it even arrived.

It is amazing what can happen when you give people the opportunity to engage in something they care about. Today, marketers are feeding us millions of messages from all mediums. What really sticks are the things that give you a real experience. One that means something.

Last week, I sat in a lecture about this very topic, experience marketing. Something dawned on me as they were feeding us red bull and ice-cream to "show" how experience marketing really worked. Experience marketing can easily become the same thing that TV or 2/3 advertising magazines have become. In your face forced marketing. At this point it is not an art it is a formula that tends to work over time.

If done right experience marketing can liberate the individual and the brand. The result is a life long relationship worth more than any marketer could ever dream of!!

Google Trends

Some web sites shed thousands of dollars every month on SEO and specific keyword campaigns, but what if nobody is searching for that specific keyword or search term? How do you know which ones to optimize for?

It's generally been the domain of SEO experts to tell you, for a pretty penny, which search terms were actually worth optimizing your site for. Google Trends is a tool, launched back in May according to TechCrunch, that allows any user to compare how often specific terms are searched on Google. The results can be broken down by time frames as well as geographic location.

While you may still want to go to the experts for fine tuning, Google Trends is a great starting point for web sites looking to beginning focusing on SEO.