Babycakes in Melbourne were this morning featured on Inside Business on the ABC.

View the video here:

http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200811/r309209_1357357.asx

Sometimes other people put it so much better than us.

http://www.flyingsolo.com.au/p270655949_The-role-of-great-website-photography.html

My love of computers is only rivaled by my intense hatred of cables.

Needless to say, ditching the modem cable for my first wireless network was one small step for geekind, but one giant improvement in my lifestyle. Suddenly TV viewing and computing weren't mutually exclusive concepts. My laptop became recipe book and would be perched on the kitchen bench while I cooked. There is no great joy than sitting in a cafe, latte in one hand, wacom pen in the other.

Then came bluetooth. It can be problematic, but it allows my phone, computer and headphones (with in built microphone) to all talk to each other sans cables. The day my old keyboard gives up the ghost, I'm splurging on a bluetooth one to talk to my laptop. That just leaves the wacom...

USB is at least step in the right direction. This small wonder allows my mobile phone to piggyback on my computers power source. If you're looking for more fun than function, you could always plug in a USB powerd lava lamp.

Our network at zfweb is wireless, as are the phones. But with each computer and peripheral device needing it's own power source, that leaves a lot of electricity cables to contend with if nothing else. When we operated out of an art deco apartment, this meant an unhealthy dependence on power boards.

My dream of course is for wireless electricity (yes I know that's technically what a battery is) and that internet access is free and everywhere. But in the meantime there's this clever blog post that gives some good ideas on how to not trip over them at least.

Does it look good?

Does it look like YOUR website, your products, your label your brand, your shop. Does it at lease feel like your website?

Does it read well?

Does your website read like a CV of your company? Or does it start a conversation? Does it inform or just bore?

Is it interactive?

Is the strutcure logical or just heirachical? Does it do the best job of showing you off that it can?

Is it functional?

Or is it a dead end, the virtual equivilant of a brochure getting soggy in the letterbox? Or can your customers search it, buy from it, contact you or register for your newsletter?

We've begun our new video podcast on Software-as-a-Service

Not much more to be said. I have no idea what it's advertising or even what language it is, but it's a lot of fun.

http://producten.hema.nl

zf

What software is installed on your computer?

Four years ago when I started zfweb my morning routine would be

   1. Start up my G3 Macintosh laptop
   2. Dialup (yes it's true)
   3. Start the 5 programs that I used daily
   4. Make coffee while they took their time to load
   5. Check the Sydney Morning Herald website on a web browser
   6. Start work

In a day I could easily use 15 programs that were installed on my computer. The more I had running, the slower my computer ran Too many and it would crash.

These days my daily start-up involves:   

   1. Opening my MacBook Pro laptop to wake it from sleep
   2. The internet is of course already running, at over a thousand times of dialup of old
   3. Email, messenger and skype open of their own accord
   4. Check Facebook and SMH on my "personal" web browser, Safari
   5. Open Firefox my "work" browser and start work.

This is because 90% of the programs I use are now are on the internet. These include:

• Saasu - online accounting software (no more MYOB)
• Salesforce - online client database (no more filemaker pro)
• 88 miles - online time-sheet software (no more excell)
• Brainkeeper - online wiki that we use as an intranet (no more doccuments storeed on hard drives)
• Google Analytics - from which I track all the movement through our websites
• And of course Typepad, from which we write our blog posts

So what does it all mean?

• I can be on any computer with an internet connection and be able to access all our business applications.
• I can generate an invoice for a client from their office and not my own
• It means I can be going to a meeting, and look up the address via the web-browser on my mobile phone.
• That (heaven forbid) if zfweb were to burn down tomorrow, we could all camp out in an internet cafe and carry on as normal.
• Our staff can work at home without needing to cart a laptop on the train
• That I could be posting this blog post from my desk, the airport or even the beach

Online software is not stopping there. This website was the inspiration for this blog post - a website that allows you to design and then download your own fonts.

In the future I think traditional software will continue to die, so that soon a computer will be simply a terminal onto the world. Personally I think it's great but by all means beg to differ.

We've become fans of the corporate blog, and now have our very own facebook profile.

But don't take our word for it, read what the Sydney Morning Herald has to say on the matter.

Can online social media help your business?

Whether you love it or hate it, facebook is here with a vengeance.

And you can now become a fan of zfweb! What more could you want in life?

Just click here

And simply click the "become a fan" link on the top right.

A few years ago I started to comment on the fringes of a "boys only" blog that some old colleagues and friends were authors of. One of them worked out who I was, and managed to get me a login. Like sneaking someone under 18 into a bar, we picked a handle that was suitably androgynous, and I proceeded to post away, simply stripping the gender out of my rants and stories before publishing them.

Someone cottoned on a few months later, the game was up and I was outed. Kindly they still let me play. I am grateful to say I am still friends with my fellow bloggers but the blog itself is long dead.

Why it died I'm not so sure. Through the blog we all became friends - why try to impress someone with your wit and skepticism online when you could do it over a glass of wine?  Maybe we just got bored. Was the internet just too full of people telling us what they thought to compete with our own brand of cynicism?

It wasn't just our little blog that died you see. Darwinism reigned and decent blogs now are the reserve of decent writers. Thankfully. Did the bleeding heart look-at-mes flock to myspace and the everyday readers to facebook?

But the corporate blog is also on the rise, and blogs work well as a way to keep news on a company up-to-date. We like to practice what we preach when it comes to web strategy which is why we're starting this one.  It has also been recommended to help with our google rankings. I'm skeptical of it's effectiveness, not to drive traffic but to convert that traffic into cool clients! But more on my soap box issue of choice later. *

Hopefully we just find something to say that people want to read.

zf

* I need to save up rants and theories for actual posts