The bigger screen makes all the difference particularly when rendering web pages. You get a better experience compared to a smaller mobile screen and you get a full browser experience as you would expect from a laptop, without having to drag a laptop along.
twitter integration. twitter is integrated into safari which means that I can easily share web content. Herein lies a caveat in that I don’t like the fact that I have to add the page title to the tweet, it does not automatically populate the tweet. I love how the twitter app makes my browsing experience between tweets and web content easy.

Should you still be doing it? Not such a simple answer really because the one constant in my daily life has become quite apparent – no matter what you do you are either going to succeed because you accept failure, or if you don’t accept failure and you keep things at the same level for a long period where you don’t lose. You will not improve whether you are a programmer or a writer. Think about it this way, if you are a chess player and you play to draw and not to win you can claim a “victory” against a stronger player if you draw but you didn’t win, in more than one way.

Programming is tough and you can never truly say that you have written perfect software unless you have failed and struggled. Struggling means getting dirty and exposing yourself to the hardest and toughest ways of doing things and accepting that you will have to try and try. I often fail at accepting the fact that to succeed at the tough things you have to develop a patience and desperation on the same sort of level. You need patience to know that you may have to try again and again and the desperation to tackle each attempt with as much intensity as you can give.

Talent alone is not enough.

Passion and a willingness to forego the immediate monetary awards and focus on pursuit of building something that you can be proud of. Pride is a sentimental thing and you would think that it wouldn’t have much place in a subject area as clinical as programming. Yet if all programs were written in the same manner pride and sentiment couldn’t be identified in the code you write.

I am writing my first blogpost from my ipad2 that I recently got from my bank. I also installed Ubuntu for a family member on an unused laptop and even though they will be the primary users of the laptop I couldn’t help but feel excited to use Ubuntu simply because it offers a totally different experience when compared to Windows. I also don’t support piracy – if I cannot afford it then I simply don’t buy it, but I also don’t look for a pirate copy from a neighbour. After installing Ubuntu it got me thinking that in my everyday usage I am exposed to various devices running various platforms and it feels as if you have to change your thinking when you switch from one device to the next. The iPad requires little effort to use and it’s real value becomes obvious when you quickly want to view a web page such as wikipedia without having to sacrifice the viewing experience as you would when reading a website on a mobile device such as a blackberry. Reading websites on a blackberry is less than optimal. Reading websites on a Windows Phone 7 device is also a lot better but not as nice as on an ipad. So I have three mobile devices, a blackberry, an iPad and a windows phone 7 and of the three devices I use the blackberry the most the iPad the second most and the windows phone the least. I use services like facebook and twitter on all three and honestly the iPad provides the best experience because I can view url’s much easier on quicker within a twitter feed and the websites render quite well. Twitter on blackberry uses über social and it’s good in the sense that you can create a tweet almost anywhere in the user interface. Facebook support on the blackberry is good with its Facebook app which is good, but my initial feeling is that the iPad app is better. Windows phone 7 has Facebook baked into the operating system and is incorporated into the wp7 interface and does not reflect the interfaces provided by the iPad and blackberry. I would say I prefer the facebook experience on the iPad.

So I use three mobile devices, but I also use several operating systems on desktops, laptops and servers (virtual and physical). Both at home and at work I use various flavours of windows and at least one flavours of Linux. On all these devices I also experience the same or similar services, like Facebook and twitter.

I don’t feel overwhelmed at all, in fact each new experience is just another experience to know.

The fundamental question I guess is, how do I get my product to my existing customers and furthermore how do I convince my potential customers that my product is right for them. So now that you have that question answered how do you start answering the next question, what do I need a website for (is that a relevant question today)? Do you need the website to advertise product only or do you need to advertise product with a value proposition? The two are fundamentally different approaches to selling product. Selling a product as a product where your customer already knows what it is requires no real upfront up-selling but if you are offering something of tremendous value that needs to convince the customer – well you have two different types of websites really. Its also pretty clear to me that there is a significant difference between a service-related vs product-related website, especially when it comes to its design. A product-related website has a shorter point of action, or call to action whereas the service-related website has a slightly longer one. Generally service oriented websites offer a service and with that service comes a portfolio and I generally look at a portfolio before I contact the owners. A product related website goes from homepage to product in a matter of one click, two at the most. A simple example comes to mind, Takealot, which I use to look for DVD’s and electronics. If I hit the homepage it generally takes me two clicks at the most, often one, to get to the product I am looking for, but that is because I know what I am looking for.

Another important question is one that addresses your current brand footprint – if you have little influence or footprint how are you going to make an inroad into those that do have a bigger brand footprint. How would you as the customer requiring the website measure that brand footprint? What other activities do you plan with the exercise of promoting your brand? Often PR activities and activities on the web run on separate budgets and often with separate teams of people, at least in my experience. How do you bring the brand footprint of your website closer to your other PR activities? Are you going to create a blog on your website to promote pre- and post PR activities? Once you have established that how will you ensure that there are continuous activities to promote the content on the website and to keep it current.

I think from the above a few elementary questions can be formulated to possibly help drive someone with no real knowledge of what goes into building websites make an informative decision.