GOOGLE CHECKOUT VS PAYPAL

In My one of my many economics classes in high school, we did a profile of the different market systems that were practiced around the world, Europe had some socialist systems, the former USSR had communism, China followed suit and so on. However one countries system stood out. The United States of America.

The USA has long practiced a free market system which is regulated by the government and is supposed to promote competiton (although not always effective it enhances product quality and services).

Paypal is a collosal online money transfer company (that i would describe as that annoying entity you just have to deal with if you are into Ecommerce.) that was purchased by the juggernaut ebay after they realised their own online payment service could not compete with paypal.

Google's announcement of its online payment system "GOOGLE CHECKOUT" is the best thing i think has happened to ecommerce in a long time. The only thing that aggravates me as the writer of this blog is that fact that google doesnt want to come out and say they are in direct competition with paypal which i think is what they should do.

Paypal has enjoyed an almost monopolic advantage in the realm of ecommerce as they have dominated the market and have been promoted by ebay as its preferred if not only accepted form of online payment. It has however ruined lives and businesses with their judge, jury and executioner approach of doing business. I'll freeze your account and tell you why later. REF: look at paypalsucks.com. It is high time someone put them in check. They have about 100 million users world wide and i am sure they have just as many pissed off former users.

I am yet to see what Google's policies will be in dealing with their customers but one thing is for sure if you get slammed by paypal you will always have a different and hopefully better alternative to do your business with.

They say absolute power corrupts. A quote i would prescribe as best to describe paypal. I hope it is what will be written in paypal's last chapter as what brought them down. I'll have to wait and see but that would be one refreshing chapter.

Once you go MAC there is no coming back.

I am a recent Mac convert and I can't help but say how pleased I am that I jumped on the Mac band wagon. I used to have sony Vaio that ran windows XP. That was just a big mistake. I remember once someone hijacking my browser and simply laughing at me on the other end as I tried helplessly to redirect the browser to another web page. And the viruses, oh yes the viruses; there was a new case of trojan every week. It was like my computer was some playboy who didn't understand the concept of condoms when having his rendevous with several women. The final straw came when I upload antispyware software on my computer that was supposed to delete spyware that I picked up as I browsed the Internet. However, it ACTUALLY deleted files my computer needed to run properly.

That was it!! I had had enough. I found one of my FRENEMIES (slang for someone who pretends to be your friend but would stab you in the back at the slightest opportunity they get) and I sold it to him for $700.00. I took that and added another $700.00 and bought myself an iMac G5 that ran OS X. Now how is that for killing 2 birds with one stone?

Dreamweaver 8 a Web Tailors Dream!

Coming Soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

iweb an inot for web designers

What was Apple thinking?? That was the question I asked myself when an older friend of mine (a true progressive I tell yah; she has Parkinsons and she is not slowing down at all) asked me to help her upload a website she needed to promote her photography collection which she intended to have on display at an upcoming art show in January. First of all, the idea of using only Mac-created templates, that were so rigid in design that you had no other options, is absolutely absurd. You have no choice but to give up and realize that you just completely wasted your $79.99 (Hey, Steve Jobs, the old lady wants her money back!!!) Who would have thought, with the success of the iPod and iMac lines of products, that iWeb would be so disappointing. One would have thought iWeb was going to be Apple's answer to Adobe's golive and dreamweaver. But, with no room for integration with other languages, no forms, no room for personal creativity in terms of design (you have only Mac templates) and strict server options (you need a .mac account to use iWeb and you can't easily store it on another server of your choice using ftp), iWeb is nothing more than a waste of hard drive space. To try to figure out what possessed Apple to distribute the product, I went to the Mac store in La Jolla, CA. I asked one of the fine Mac store agents how exactly to get around using the software and he told me that Apple is still experimenting with iWeb and that better versions will come out later. At point I thought to myself, "Keep that s**t in your lab until it has some use to the general public." In conclusion, my personal verdict--iWeb is definitely an iNot for web designers!!!

Annoying E-commerce websites!!!!!!

Hello Folaolumofin.com blog viewer,

So I recently decided to diversify my web design portfolio by creating an e-commerce solution that will be called www.teesontheweb.com (Its my tshirt company that will launched soon). I figured since my web design skills have increased in stock since my last 2 posts that I go ahead and tap into the ever-expanding goldmine of online retail.

I went online and started researching different online retail websites to see what I was going to be up against only to find out how hard it was to actually buy products from a majority of online retail stores, especially some of the online giants. Too much flash, crazy navigational schemes that made me scared i might be hallucinating from speed, meth or acid (not that i indulge) , excessive and distracting graphics. In my opinion, They all totally missed the point of what an online retail store is supposed to be. In our increasingly impatient and fast paced society there is no time for me to see what some flash happy designer can do with graphics. I just want to buy my products in 2 or 3 clicks, have it shipped to me (if possible for free) and get on with my day. If i wanted to see graphics jumping at me i would go to Cedar Point amusement park in ohio and pay 10 bucks to get scared by animated characters.

I promise you my dear reader that when www.teesontheweb.com is done it will have the neccesary elements that give you a pleasant shopping experience. I have listed below some of those elements that in my opinion constitute a good ecommerce website.

1. An easy, straight to the point interface with navigational schemes that wouldnt confuse you.

2. A user friendly website that wouldnt make you head for the exit button after 10 seconds on my website.

3. A website that lays emphasis on the products that are on display and not my ego as a designer.

4. Quick access to price comparisons, Concise information about the product and Great quality service.

I guess we will have to wait and see if these goals for my online clothing store can be truly achieved, in the meantime please flashy ecommerce solution designers leave your egos at the door because there is one fundamental rule to consumerism, which is: THE CUSTOMER IS KING and you want satisfy the KING and not confuse him.

If you have any comments feel free to email me at info@folaolumofin.com or just post them.

Thanks for hearing me out.

Fola Olumofin

Website Marketing for Small Businesses

You just had a website designed for you, what next?

I once had a client ask me why their business hadnt seen any increase in volume since i uploaded their website for them? I asked him how much have you marketed your website and he had this blank look on his face. He had fallen vicitim for what most people who create an online identity fall for.They never market their website they just sit back and let it float around in cyberspace.

As much as the internet has the ability to reach millions of people at once in so many countries. Your website has to be put in a position to be reached by your audience. This is done by properly marketing your website.

How do you market your website?

There are many ways to market your website while still not burning holes in pocket or spending excessively on advertising.

1. Word of Mouth: Myspace.com succesfully used this method of marketing to gain popularity for their website. This method is often underestimated and overlooked. When you first launch your site be sure you tell everyone and anyone you know to tell anyone and everyone they know. There is no marketing weapon as powerful as a satisfed customer telling friends and family about your product.

2. Site Submission and page Ranking: Search engines such as Google, Ask.com and Yahoo are databases used to hold most of the worlds internet files. This is also a major method with which most online surfers find the sites they are looking for. They simple type in keywords relevant to the website they are looking for and the search engine displays the websites according to their ranking on their engine. A websites ranking determines what position on the generated results list your page will be on. The higher your rank, the better positioned your website will be. If you want to learn more about page ranking go to WIKIPEDIA there is alot of information about the topic on there or consult a search engine optimization specialist.

3. Guerilla Marketing: This is a perfect method of marketing for small businesses.

HTML FOR BEGINNERS

INTRODUCTION

My first advice to anyone reading this blog is that you should not be scared of the way acronyms that are used to describe computer languages sound. The first time i took on any kind of computer programming the sound of languages and programs like HTML, PHP, FLASH, MYSQL, CSS.... and so on seemed like they were out of space and that my thinking faculty was never going to be able to process this kind of information. I however found this to be very untrue as i embarked on learning all the languages and programs need to become a web designer. I however must warn you that learning this language will require some smarts, some consistency and alot of patience and microreading.

HTML stands for "Hypertext Markup Language" and is one of the languages required to communicate with your browser to display the information you code into that browser. Seems complicated? On the computer you are currently reading this blog from, go to the view button on your browser window and click on it, on the drop down menu that is displayed, click on view source and it will show you all the HTML code used in designing this particular webpage.

Another thing you have to know is that learning HTML would be like learning a new language like french, german or english. The difference is as opposed to using a regular language to communicate with other people. HTML is used to communicate with your browser.

Note: There are 3 majors browsers used on the internet:

1. Internet Explorer (A Windows Invention used by a majority of the Internet browsing population).

2. Firefox ( Created by an independent entity tired of all the bugs and viruses that internet explorer is associated with).

3. Safari ( This is the browser used by Apple computers).

The one major downside of using HTML as a method of designing your webpage is the fact that it is not consistent across all browsers which means sometimes Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari all render HTML code differently on each browser which means in one browser a particular result could be achieved and be non existent in another browser. There are other languages that are consistent across all browsers like PHP ( Hypertext Processor which is a server based scripting language that you script on the server itself to render a webpage but it is out of the scope of this blog).