In The Sphere: Whales, Weddings, and Canadians

For my fellow Canadians, we ended up with what feels like two very short work weeks. Since Canada Day fell on a Wednesday this year, it’s like we worked two days, got one day off, worked two more days, and now we get two more days off. For our neighbours to the south, you guys get to have a great Independence Day tomorrow. Either way, we’ve got another collection of blog posts for your reading pleasure. It’s got a little bit of everything.

Tyler Ingram took a short trip over to Vancouver Island with Robyn and they decided to go on a whale watching tour. It’s very rare to see the orcas on the ferry routes, so these little tours are definitely worthwhile. Check out some of the terrific shots that Tyler was able to get on his DSLR. That massive lens must’ve come in handy.

Daily Writing Tips has noticed that the MLA standard has been updated to better reflect the way that we access information these days. You all remember the MLA Works Cited rules from high school, right? Well, you no longer have to provide the full URL of a web resource and there are official abbreviations for when you can find the publisher or the publishing date.

Buzz Bishop and his fiance will be exchanging vows tomorrow on their very special day, but this isn’t Buzz’s first time at the dance. He was married to someone else a few years ago and he had to make a decision regarding what to do with the wedding photos. How would you handle the “evidence” of your first marriage? Buzz chose to hit the delete key.

Darren Barefoot may not be from Alberta, but he is still mindful of some of the issues that surround the people who do live there. For example, there is an ongoing debate surrounding Edmonton’s airport. The international airport is just fine at about 30km away from downtown, but the City Centre Airport (a couple minutes outside of downtown) may soon cease to exist in favor of developing the land into commercial and residential property.

Copyblogger noticed that old school marketing techniques no longer seem to work. You can’t just yell at your customers to buy your products anymore and he blames Canada for the change. You see, Canadians are far too friendly to be pushed around like that. You need to provide value and be nice to be a successful marketer with us.

Marketing 101: Claim Your Google Maps Listing

Many small business owners feel that all of their marketing efforts must originate from within. They feel that they have to launch their own websites, market those websites, advertise in the local paper, and so on. While these are all very suitable and very valuable ways to market your company, you also have to realize that potential customers can come from a variety of avenues and one of these is Google.

This goes well above and beyond search engine marketing and search engine optimization. As it turns out, you can get some “free” advertising through Google Maps. Many of us have come to rely on Google Maps for directions, as well as information about local businesses. In this way, you want to make sure that the information Google Maps has on your business is accurate and up-to-date. Thankfully, the process to claim your local business listing is quite simple and straightforward.

The first thing you’ll want to do is search for your business in Google Maps. Assuming that you are not too new, there is a good chance that you have already been indexed. Say, for example, that you own John Doe’s Coffee Shop in Vancouver, BC. You’d search using something like “john doe coffee shop vancouver” as your search term.

When you see the result, click on “More Info” and this will likely bring up your mailing address. On this page, you’ll see an “Edit” link. Click that. The resulting page will a link to “Claim Your Business.” Upon clicking on this link, you can log into your Google account (Gmail, Google Adwords, etc.) and edit the information related to your local business. This can include a mailing address, phone number, website, business hours, accepted forms of payment, and so on.

Even if you don’t expect a lot of business to come via Google Maps, you should claim your local business listing if only as a defensive tactic. You don’t want someone else to claim your business, right?

Thanks to SearchEngineGuide for the inspiration and information for this post.

WordPress Wednesday: AVH Themed By Browser

When you go about choosing a theme for your WordPress-powered blog, you should probably go through the process of testing compatibility in a variety of browsers. Some themes may render perfectly in Firefox but look like a jumbled mess in Internet Explorer. One theme may look fine in Google Chrome, but it could be completely unreadable when viewed through the Nintendo Wii or PlayStation 3. What can you do?

One possible solution is to tweak the code in your existing blog theme so that it is compatible with all of these different browsers. Another possible solution is the unique AVH Themed by Browser WordPress plug-in by A Virtual Home. The idea here is that a different theme is automatically selected when a certain browser is detected.

In this way, someone viewing your blog from a PlayStation 3 can see your blog through a different theme than someone viewing the same blog content through Internet Explorer on a laptop. Some browsers may not be able to handle Javascript or iFrames, but you don’t want to take away those features from people who can view them. By using AVH Themed by Browser, you can really have the best of both worlds.

The most recent version was released on June 21, 2009. For more information and to download the free plug-in, check out AVirtualHome.com. The installation process seems to be relatively straightforward.

Everything PHP: Creating a Database

Now that we have gone over database structures and field types, we can finally create our database. Once we have created our database, we can begin to go over how to interact with the MySQL server using PHP.

The process to create a database will vary depending on your host. However, the basic premise is the same. You create a database along with a MySQL username and password (choose a strong, randomized password). You then associate the MySQL user with the database. Once you have done that, you MySQL database now exists.

However, your database is basically useless, as you currently have no structure to store any data in. To begin adding in your structure, you’ll have to move over to a different tool, which is usually phpMyAdmin. Once you’re in phpMyAdmin, you can begin creating tables and fields in your database.

If you ever get stuck on what field type you should use, refer to the MySQL documentation for an explanation. Get your database all setup and ready for next week, when we’ll be getting into the integration between PHP and MySQL.

Business 101: Narrowing Your Brand’s Focus

While driving yesterday, my brother pointed out a new Acura TL and asked me what I thought of it. I said that while I don’t really like the styling of the newest model, I do appreciate what Acura is doing by trying to differentiate the higher-end luxury sedan from its less expensive TSX stablemate. This conversation led to what the Acura brand is trying to represent and how it differs from some of its competitors in the marketplace.

My brother mentioned that most sedans in the Mercedes-Benz lineup look very similar and I said that’s because Mercedes has already firmly established what its brand represents. Even though they have less expensive offerings today, the Mercedes brand is still one of prestige and luxury. That distinctive three-pronged emblem immediately tells you that this is a luxurious vehicle. While not quite there just yet, I feel that the Lexus marque has also achieved a similar level of prestige. You see that “L” logo and you know you have a premium vehicle.

With Acura, the branding isn’t quite so clear. For a while, Acura (which is owned by Honda) was trying to brand itself as a performance-minded premium brand. It was from there that we saw vehicles like the NSX supercar and the Integra sports coupe. These were certainly higher up than their Honda counterparts, but they didn’t immediately speak to being a prestigious premium brand. All the while, Acura was also being marketed as a premium brand through its luxury sedans. The branding got confused.

So today, what we see with Acura is a brand that is at once trying to offer reasonably priced performance and a sense of being upper-class. To give the public a clearer image of what it is trying to achieve, it may have been better to focus on one aspect or the other, like how Lexus did. Lexus certainly has some performance-oriented vehicles, like the IS-F, but the first priority has always been to develop itself into a premium brand and I think it has achieved this.

In working on your company’s brand, you should spend some time to narrow that focus and know exactly how you want your customers and potential customers to view you. What are you selling? What does your brand represent?

Web Development: Understanding GET and POST

Before we can get right into working with Ajax, we need to understand some concepts. When we’re talking about sending and retrieving data from the server, we’re talking about HTTP requests. HTTP requests is an important part of the web, it allows us to exchange data with external or internal hosts.

There are two distinct types of HTTP requests that you need to know: GET and POST. While they may seem similar, they both have their specific uses, and being able to decide which is use is important.

GET requests essentially just request a file from a server. However, it is also possible to pass parameters and values along with the request. If you’ve ever noticed question marks and ampersands in a URL, then you’ve noticed a GET request. GET requests use the URL to pass those parameters and values to the server. This makes GET requests an insecure method of sending the server data. However, since not all data needs to be secure, GET requests are still useful. Take a search query, for example. A search query is not something that needs to be transmitted in a secure way (compared to a password, which should always use a secure method), so a GET request will do perfectly.

POST requests essentially send data to the server. Unlike GET requests, POST requests are secure because they don’t use the URL to transmit the data. POST requests also transmit a URL, just like GET requests. As well, just like GET requests again, it is possible to receive data back from the server with a POST request. Because POST requests send their parameters and values in a secure way, it is more suitable for transmitting passwords and personal details (from a form or otherwise) than GET requests are.

Another difference between GET and POST requests is that GET requests are, by default, cached by browsers, while POST requests are not cached by browsers. This is because POST requests can contain sensitive data, as well submitting the POST data more than once could have negative side effects with poorly programmed websites.

Now that you’re aware of the differences between GET and POST HTTP requests, we’ll be able to begin with the basics of Ajax next week.