Phase 1 – The Emergence of the Web
Company Owners - “What is the web? What is a website? We gotta have one too.”
Website Technology - Flat HTML websites
CMS Techonlogy - No real good options

Phase 2 – Faster Internet Access
Company Owners - “We can put our marketing materials online?”
Website Technology - Better graphical tools produced web based brochure sites
CMS Technology - Some great content management systems, very expensive

Phase 3 – Custom Websites
Company Owners - “We need a custom site.”
Website Technology - Databases and custom developers. Expensive to produce and support.
CMS Technology - CMS still very expensive, developers make most content changes.

Phase 4 – The Emergence of the Affordable CMS
Company Owners - “We can manage our own content and it won’t cost a fortune?”
Website Technology - Many CMS options with lots of available plug-in components.
CMS Technology - CMS are affordable and development times drastically decreased.

We are in Phase 4 now and many companies are realizing the benefits of having a site built around a content management system. It is now more affordable to build a site around a content management system than to build it from scratch. Here are some benefits of using a content management system:

• Ability to easily manage your own content
• Easy to add in new functionality to enhance your site
• Built for tremendous search engine optimization (SEO)
• Social networking built-in, integration with Facebook
• Easy to create a community around your product
• Cheaper to produce and maintain
• Standard technology that can be updated to latest versions
• Easy to add blogs, connections to Twitter, and YouTube video
• Interactive website, no longer just a brochure that rarely changes
• You don’t have to rely on a developer to change your site content

It is a new time for companies and their approach to the internet. It’s time to build a community around your product and capture the flow of information and traffic before your competitor does. It is a different model now and your customers are looking for more than a brochure site to give them basic information.

Other benefits include being able to edit your content in a Word-like application where you don’t need to know HTML or any other web technology formats. It’s WYSIWYG so what you see is what you get on the site. You can also change to a new design and use your existing content. Upgrading to a new site look and feel is easy and painless!

The CMS systems are open source and they are available to use without license fees. Open source means that you don’t have expensive software purchases up front or have to worry about the costs of upgrading to the latest version or yearly software costs! They also mean your time to market is much quicker and less expensive than deploying a website has ever been in the past.

NewSouth Interactive can help you brainstorm opportunities in your industry and build an interactive website that takes your web strategy to a new level. Contact us and we can start planning your new site today.

Now, other industries are dipping their toe into the waters of outsourcing work, and there are many things you can learn from experienced IT managers who have discovered the best ways to outsource work. The future will hold new industries and new countries becoming involved in outsourced work.

Here are a few industries that can and are benefiting from remote teams:

• Translation
• Accounting
• Human Resources
• Marketing
• Auditing
• Help Desk
• Engineering
• Backup and Security
• Consulting
• Drafting
• Architecture
• Legal
• Back Office Tasks
• Transcription
• Medical (including medical tourism)

There are many industries that could benefit from outsourcing repetitive tasks.

Here are some things I’ve learned from working with remote teams of designers and developers. These principles are important whether you are working with technology vendors or with other industries.

1. Not all outsourced teams are equal.

Sure, it’s tempting to consider outsourced work a commodity, but it isn’t. Good developers and designers still work faster and better than average developers and designers. The same is true for other professionals. Errors cost money and lose clients.

2. Finding good teams is more difficult than it sounds.

Having great teams makes all the difference in the world. If you don’t know who the good teams are, find someone who does. It can be even more difficult when you deal with larger organizations because you may not know exactly who will be actually doing the work. And make sure the company is a great partner that you can trust.

3. You need someone who knows how to manage outsourced teams.

Managing any large project can be a challenge, managing one half way across the world requires a different approach. I’ve seen many managers learn this the hard way. I manage outsourced projects a bit differently than I manage local teams because it’s a different type of situation.

4. A cheap hourly rate doesn’t always means the overall project will be less expensive.

If it takes longer to produce the software or do the other outsourced work, it may end up costing you more overall, and you also lose from opportunity costs. You also may end up paying more to support the work after it is delivered.

5. Quality should always be a key consideration.

Poorly developed software can cause lots of headaches down the road no matter who develops it. The same is true for other types of outsourced work. Make sure you analyze prior work from your vendor to make sure that you will be getting a quality product. It is expensive to change vendors to finish a project or support a poorly implemented one.

6. Pay attention to the language skills of the vendor.

Miscommunication is a common reason for failed outsourced projects. Make sure the key members of the vendor team can understand what you want them to do.

7. Time zones matter.

Sometimes it is good to have people working while your local team is sleeping. Having a team in a similar time zone can be nice too when you want to address an issue immediately. Just make sure you understand how the time zone affects the project. I personally like working with Latin American teams because real time communication is a key for me.

8. Consider the types of work that you send offshore.

You should think through the types of work that you prepare to send to offshore teams. Consider if the work is too core to your business, too complex, or too sensitive to send to an outsourced team. In some industries, you also have to consider whether it is legal to send the work overseas. An example is having a offshore team work on a database that stores private health information.

9. Make sure you understand the cultural differences.

Language is one thing, culture is something else entirely. There are differences in customs but also differences in employee law in different countries. This means different holidays but differences in how employees are compensated. This may not affect you if you are doing pure outsourcing but if you are considering building your own team in another country, you should make sure you understand employment law in that country. There are big differences that can become a big “gotcha” down the road.

10. Consider your proprietary systems and information and who has access to it.

Your vendor may be working directly with your competition. Consider what they will know about your company. The vendor may also be able to use your processes to compete directly with you at some point. International law is different in this regard and hard to enforce. Take this into consideration.

As other industries explore the world of offshore possibilities, learn from groups like IT that have been doing it from years. Learning from the past can save you from some of the disasters I’ve seen in the IT world. It can be very rewarding to work with people in different countries but you should also be aware of the downsides and plan accordingly.

The music business has been overturned multiple times in the last few years and new technology advances continue to change how music is produced, distributed, and promoted. Trying to stay up-to-date with all of the different aspects of online music tools and sites is a dizzying tasks with important new sites popping up almost daily.

Music industry veteran Peter Malkin recently released an epic video about the many tools available online for musicians, music lovers, and music promoters.

One of Peter’s final points is to get out there and do it the old fashioned way, but his list of sites is so expansive and valuable that it makes you thinks he favors a blend of the old and the new.

If you aren’t in the music business but love music, there are quite a few gems in this list for finding and listening to music.

Here is Peter’s excellent but mind spinning video. Links to all of the sites Peter mentions are listed after the jump.

Make sure you check out Peter’s Blog too.

While I originally was putting this list together for me, I quickly realized that it was a lot of work and that other people would probably benefit from it too. So, just as Peter shared his knowledge, I’m sharing the list of links. Enjoy.

Donald Passman’s book
All You Need to Know About the Music Business

Music Business Experts
Blazetrak
StarPolish
MusicBizAcademy.com

Find Bands
Sellaband
SliceThePie
BandStocks
Kickstarter
PledgeMusic
OurStage – Fan voting

MySpace
YouTube

Radio Sites
Pandora
Last.fm
Slacker
iSound

Social Communities
Mog
Bebo
Buzznet
Babulous
GrooveShark
Seeqpod (now Sony)

Aspiring Artists
Boomdizzle
Broadjam.com
GetSigned.com
Unsigned
MusicGorilla

Share Playlists and recommend music
Spotify
Playlist.com
GetPlayLists.com
8Tracks
Live365.com
Jango
Rdio

Discovery and Recommendations for your Blogs
SongTweak
TheHypeMachine

Find Sites
StumbleUpon

Artist Profiles
MySpace
Facebook
Friendster
Tagged

Younger Audience
Hi5.com
MyYearBook.com

Rock Bands
PureVolume
AbsolutePunk

DJ Tools
BRT (breakthroughradio)
BeatPort

Christian Music
PluggedIn

HipHop and Urban Artists
HipHopAvenue
Buzzthis.net
DopeTracks

Tools to sell music and grow a fanbase online
ReverbNation
BandCamp
Artistopia
IndabaMusic

Bigger Artists
TopSpin

Blog sites
WordPress
Tumblr
Posterous

Music Widgets
RockYou
TagWorld

Sell Content through the widgets
Nimbit

More Advanced Tools for Social Networks
Pringo

Updating Profiles all at once
Artistdata
Meebo

Tools to Manage and Engage your Fanbase
FanBridge

Mobile Apps
ITunes
Android

Mobile Links
MobileRoadie
Appiction
NetBiscuits

Online Fan club
ArtistArena
SparkArt
AllAccessToday
MusicToday

Places to Sell Music
ITunes
Amazon
CDUniverse
Rhapsody
Napster
eMusic
7Digital

Distribute to online stores
TheOrchard
TuneCore
InGrooves
CDBaby
cdPulse
ioda
SongCast

Sell products through various websites
ArtistsFirst
BlastMyMusic

Get your music in a mobile space
Melodeo
ThumbPlay Music
Mozes

Marketing and Promoting your Act
LinkedIn

Video
Youtube
Vevo

Help with platforms
PhotoBucket
Kyte

Encode your music for various platforms including mobile
Encoding.com

Viral Emails
EyeJot
Pando

Peer to Peer Communities
iMesh
Kazaa
Limewire (ironically, their service was halted today under court order)
BearShare
BitTorrent

Webisodes
Current TV
Veoh
Revision3
MotherBoard (Dell)

Funny Videos
Funny or Die
Jokeroo
Break

Avatar
SecondLife

Fans personalize their devices
DiNG Life

Social Gaming
Zynga
CrowdStar
Playfish
SocialGamingNetwork
Portalarium
PopCap
Mingleplay

Touring
Gigmaven
SonicBids
BandMix (find musicians to tour with)

Artist Presence
CrowdFire
Songkick
iLike

While on Tour
Twitter
Foursquare

Live Streaming from the Road
UStream.tv
Justin.tv
Stickam

Broadcast
BlogTV
FreedoCast

Put up Songs
WeMix
NowPlayIt

PR Buzz
Coolfer
Gawker
Pitchfork
RcrdLblb
BrooklynVegan
Stereogum

Magazine sites
Fader
Paste
Vice

Big Buzz
ArtistDirect.com
MTV.com
Yahoo Music
AOL Music
Spinner

Tracking Artists
Big Champagne
Next Big Sound

This is “Part 1″ in a series of articles about great data visualization tools and applications.

Here are 5 outstanding data visualization tools:

1. Akamai Real Time Web Monitor

Akamai Real Time Web Monitor

Akamai is a company that handles a large percentage of the web’s traffic. As a result, they have an enormous amount of data moving through their networks. They monitor global Internet conditions around the clock in real time. With this real-time data they can identify the global regions with the greatest attack traffic, cities with the slowest Web connections (latency), and geographic areas with the most Web traffic (traffic density).

This is an interesting application because it allows a user to know in real time what is happening all over the world, in a visual manner. It takes a great amount of data and presents it in a very easy-to-view way.

2. Voyage RSS Reader

Voyage RSS Reader

Voyage is a web-based RSS reader that visually displays RSS feeds on a timeline. It’s a great way to explore the different feeds you subscribe in a completely different format.

The application bubbles up content in a timeline based approach. You can surf through and move around the articles with the most important and most recent items getting priority positioning.

Voyage is a good model for future news and information interfaces because it allows for bringing the most relevant information to the forefront as it wades through mountains of information. Adding personalization to this and you’ve got a huge advance.

3. Wiki Mind Map

Wiki Mind Map

The Wiki Mind Map is a tool to visually browse Wiki Content in a mind-map format. It uses the open source “FreeMind” format so you can export your own personal generated Mind Map.

I searched on “Baseball”, one of my favorite things, to create my Mind Map. It created a visual representation that I could click through to find related topics. Topics presented included, stats, the World Series, and baseball history.

This tool is very handy and easy-to-use. It allows you to easily move through relationships of the search words that you’ve entered.

4. Universe

Universe

Universe is a terrific visual application that presents a representation of the “universe” of particular search terms. There are sample terms available or you can input whatever you choose. The visualization given is reminiscent of astronomical charts.

Universe is incredible visual application and a great representation of the enormous amount of data floating around. As a useful daily tool, it may be a bit lacking as the payoff may not be worth the effort. To see visually your interests floating around the “universe” makes it a compelling and fun application. It is certainly beautifully design and fun way to interact with data.

5. Microsoft Pivot

Microsoft Pivot

Microsoft’s Pivot is a great way to navigate large volumes of visual data. It gives structure to data collections and allows for searching sorting and drill down into topics and images.

As other tools, Pivot is geared toward one type of content. In the case of Pivot, the type of content is graphical and is particularly good with large image collections.

The best time to work through these issues is before you start working on the technology. Sometimes it is good to get an outsider that isn’t embedded in all of the issues of the day to help you work through this conceptually.

2. Don’t try to put everything in the dashboard

The dashboard should be the top level view for that person. It doesn’t need to everything imaginable in it. It takes work to get to the real important issues but narrowing it down will pay off in the end.

3. Make sure you have access or can collect the data you want to measure.

This seems to be a no-brainer but you’d be surprised how many things that are important AREN’T being tracked or recorded. Sometimes you need to add systems to get to the data you need.

4. Know the dashboard audience and understand what information they need.

It’s easy to make assumptions about what people need to make decisions. Make sure the people involved have input and a voice in the process.

5. Weed through the data forest to find the right data to use and know how to best present it to the users.

Don’t just throw a bunch of graphs at the decision makers just because they are available. Make sure you keep the concept simple and amount of information manageable. They can always drill down to get more information if they need it. Don’t clutter the top level.

6. Know your data. It’s easy to make wrong assumptions about the data so make sure you know exactly how it is being collected.

Dig into the data and make sure your dashboard doesn’t misinterpret the data that is using for the graphs. Bad data can cause huge issues down the road so spend enough time on working through the data and the collection process up front.

7. Build different dashboard for different departments. And make your dashboard modular so you can do this easily.

Not everyone needs to see the same information. Not everyone is authorized to see the same information. Do yourself a favor and build in modularity and a security model from the beginning.

8. Make sure the people that handle the data are involved in the process. If you don’t expect a few “gotchas” down the road.

When you talk to data people, you will always find out all of the details that most people don’t want to hear. They live there and they know the potential pitfalls of the data. Keep them involved.

9. Create a report to perform checks and balances on core dashboard data to increase credibility. Also, allow for drill down through the graphs for users but also for integrity checks.

Build in dashboard data quality by building a companion report to perform some checks and balances to increase confidence.

10. Track the decisions and changes made as a result of dashboard analysis; attach quantitative and qualitative benefits that result from the dashboard.

We all want to get value from our business investments. Tracking the decisions made using a dashboard and the outcomes from the decision can help you improve the quality.

And always be thinking about new data collections and their value to the dashboard. As business evolves, evolve the dashboard. The last thing the decision makers need is a stagnant out of date dashboard.

So how do you plan to make sure it goes smoothly? Make sure you ask the right questions, have a solid migration plan, and triple check everything. Here are some things to help you evaluate and interview new firms to ensure a smooth transition.

Understand the Technology

Current site:

• Do you have access to the current site’s files?
• Your current site is built on a technology platform. Do you own the platform?
• Is it portable?
• Can you extract your content out of it for use in the new system?

Proposed Site:

• What platform will be used?
• Is the technology platform standard or is it a rarely used platform that only that vendor can support?
• Is it proprietary?
• Will it scale to suit your future needs?
• How much maintenance will it need and who will provide the maintenance?
• Where is it hosted? Is it in a secure facility with redundant connectivity?
• What is the backup policy and cost?

Design and Development Process

Another big issue is the design and development process. Again, know what questions to ask is half of the battle.

Site Design and Development:

• How many revisions are included in the design quote?
• Is it an hourly or a project bid? How will scope changes be handle?
• What documentation will be provided?
• Who will be your project manager?
• Where will the work be done? Does the firm use outsourced development?
• What will the vendor need from you?
• What are the phases and milestones of the project?
• How will the site be tested? Will there be stress testing done (for higher traffic sites)?

Ongoing Support

How will the vendor support the site after it is built?

• Is there a support contract? What does it include?
• What types of changes are considered support requests and what are considered new development projects?
• What type of response time will there be in fixing problems?
• Is there a training provided for the site (content management systems or other site technology)?
• Who will be the lead contact for support?

Beta and Test Sites

Generally, there will be a “beta” period where the client can review the site and the developer will make adjustment and fix bugs. Some vendors will provide testing sites for the client to view before the site goes live. This is very important to ensure a quality site will be launched. Make sure the site is tested on multiple browsers and also on mobile devices.

Launch!

A clean launch is the most important task in migrating to a new site. Again, planning for this day is the key to a successful launch.

DNS – To switch to a new hosting environment, there will need to be DNS changes. This should be planned in advance and discussed because this part can cause other issues in your environment with things like email and internal processes. Keep in mind that it takes time for DNS changes to propagate throughout the internet and both sites will probably need to be active for some period of time. I recommend putting up a maintenance message on the old site first if you have to migrate a database. Having two active sites feeding into a database can cause problems with users caught in between the migration.

The biggest tip is planning. Making sure you know the entire process and it covers all of the bases can keep you from having a major migration headache.

In most cases, this information doesn’t bubble up to the executives that make the decisions and if it does, it isn’t in a format that is easy to decipher. This information could mean competitive advantages and a differentiator for the company if it could be accessed by executives and management while they are analyzing and making decisions.

Part of the problem is finding the important pieces of information. Another challenge is analyzing the data and figuring out what it means to the business. Most developers know the data is there and have an idea that it could be important, but they don’t understand the business from an executive level to know what is important and sometimes don’t have a dialog with the executive that could most benefit from this information. I call this the “Executive Blind Spot”.

Some of the things needed to fix the “executive blind spot” are:

• Understanding the business strategy
• Understanding what data is being collected
• Identifying the data that is important to the business strategy
• Determining what level of data is needed in decision making
• Extracting the important data into a summary data warehouse
• Developing a BI dashboard
• Implementing the dashboard for the decision makers

The end result of this concentrated effort should be a BI dashboard that presents the information in easy to understand graphs. The executive should immediately be able to view and understand snapshot data as well as information gathered over time (trending).

Designing the dashboard takes business and data knowledge. Knowing what data is important and designing components that pull the appropriate data for presentation is key to building a valuable dashboard. Some executives use their dashboard as their default web site and check on it throughout the day/week/month to be on top of the business indicators that make a difference in their business.

Bringing the valuable data to the eyes of the executive team closes the “executive blind spot” and allows them to make decisions in real time. The dashboard tightens the “decision to information” gap and allows for better decisions and quicker iterations in response time to market and industry events.

Here are some examples of valuable dashboard information for executives:

• Financial information – Sales, expenses, overhead, receivables
• Technical information – Errors, users, bugs, alerts, ad programs and results, merchant data
• Project information – Schedules, backlogs, successes, backlogs, workflows
• Client information – Contacts, meetings, new sales, products, inventory, volume, transactions
• Partner information – Leads, sales, inventory, meetings, contacts

All of these dashboards should have drill down links to more information from the summary presentation on the dashboard.

NewSouth Interactive is working on several dashboard projects including client dashboards and executive BI dashboards. We find that it is sometimes easier for an outside group to evaluate and help develop these applications because the company IT staff is overloaded with other projects.

It’s also easier to evaluate business and IT information when you aren’t embedded in it day-to-day. We recommend having the company IT and management group involved in the process because both have valuable insights and stakes in building the dashboard.

Thinking about this, I came up with a couple of interesting ideas. One, advertising on partial keywords and letters will be more important. For instance, advertising on a keyword like “insur” or “automo” will get you shown even before the complete word is typed into the search engine.

Taking that a step farther, coming up on partial searches organically is also more important now.

This changes the whole game!

The SEO holy grail is coming up on a single letter, basically the Google instant alphabet. The instant alphabet shows results of the biggest and most important brands in the world. Having your site displayed on an alphabet search is the height of SEO.

Here are the currently biggest brands based on the Google instant alphabet:

SEO takes time. For one, it takes time for your site to be indexed. Another reason is that new sites generally suffer in things like Page Rank and length of time being indexed so it won’t rank high overall.

This is where Pay Per Click comes in. PPC through sites like Google will bring people to your site based on keywords that you choose immediately. It can kickstart your site into overdrive as soon as your campaign starts. The best things about PPC are:

• Immediate Traffic
• Cost Effective
• Keyword Based
• Great Analytical Tools

Many people make the mistake of not trying PPC because of the cost. The truth is that it can be very inexpensive to try and if you get success from it, it pays for itself. In some ways, it is more cost effective than many SEO programs that you see pitched all over the internet. Paying someone a lot of money for SEO doesn’t necessarily mean you will see returns from it. PPC is sure to bring people to your site and if you pick the right keywords, it will be people ready to buy your product or service.

PPC is a bit of a puzzle to do correctly though. You have to figure out a budget per day, what keywords you want to use, and what is the best way to optimize your budget. I suggest you start will a small budget and analyze it every day to determine what is most successful for you. The tools to analyze PPC are amazing and you can get very granular in the study of what works for your site.

If you don’t know where to start on a PPC campaign, find a good consultant (maybe someone like NewSouth Interactive). A good consultant will help you setup a campaign and start attracting people to your site.

I just setup a new client today with PPC and they are already seeing the benefits of the campaign. The site is new and has no links to it yet so it had very little traffic before the campaign. Continue to work on your SEO too, but if you need to get immediate traffic, PPC is the way to go. Build an integrated campaign of Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click for best results.

Or if you ever just wondered if you could cut it at MIT… here’s your chance to see what they are studying there. Information is great, free information is even better. There is no reason not to educate yourself if you really want the knowledge.

Free MIT Online Catalog

Education is important even if you can argue that a degree has less importance now than it ever did. I don’t think I would make that argument but certainly, in the age of information, content and knowledge is king.

I’m going to check out the history course “How To Start A Revolution” and “Language Acquisition” in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences courses.

Let’s hope you can’t learn too much in the Nuclear Science classes.