We are looking for a web designer with creative flair to join our team at our Digital Hub office, Dublin.  Get full details on this position in our Careers section.

The recent FOWA Dublin event, held by the Carsonified team was a fantastic day, with great speakers providing lots of very useful information on web applications and development.

Web App Survival Tips (by Ryan Carson from Carsonified)

The day started with some tips from the man himself based on their experience in building DropSend web application.

• Billing & Invoicing (e.g. don’t bother building your own billing system, save time and use an existing one)
• Marketing - get marketing your product early - create a buzz
• Usability testing - very important!
• Selling your web app

Web Conventions

Eoghan McCabe & Des Traynor from Contrast gave a very engaging presentation on Web Conventions, including looking at page layouts, best practices, building software vs. building websites.

Accessibility

Robin Christopherson from Ability.net (a UK charity) showed us how inaccessible some websites can be and how frustrating this is for users with disabilities.

He estimated that about 10% of the population have some sort of impairment in accessing the web e.g. reading/writing difficulties, age related conditions, blindness, dyslexia etc. so as web designers/developers, we need to bear this in mind when creating web sites/apps.

Robin mentioned Aria (Accessible Rich Internet Application Suite) - which is definitely something worth learning about if you are designing with accessibility in mind.

To see an example of a web site designed in Flash - Robin recommended checking out JK Rowling’s official website.

How to Build Amazing Web Apps - Lessons learned from building Twitter.com

Next up was Blaine Cooke - an ex developer from Twitter.  He forsees richer integration between social networking sites e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr.  Some sites he recommended reviewing include:

• Ravelry.com
• Flickr developer community

The Future is Ruby without Rails by Emma Persky (Trampoline Systems)

This well-received talk was definitely aimed at web developers, but unfortunately, being a mere web designer, I was a bit lost on Ruby and Rails etc. so can’t do Emma’s talk justice here, but the feedback given by web developers in the audience was that she knew her stuff!

€10,000 Prize for Best Business Plan for a Web App

Morgan McKeagney from IQ Content surprised even Carsonified with their announcement of a prize for the best business plan for a web app.  This is your chance to win €10,000 - no strings attached, if you have the winning business plan for a web app.

How to Build Desktop Apps that Help Your Web App Succeed

Matthew Ogle from Last.fm gave a great insight into how Last.fm works, privacy issues relating to desktop applications and also explained how to make money from web apps.  Some sites worth looking at include:

• Tripit.com - Online travel itinerary and planner
  
• Dopplr.com - online service for smarter travel
• Adobe Air - for building rich internet applications
  
• Google Gears - A Firefox and Internet Explorer extension that allows to navigate on compatible websites offline and synchronise when going back online
• Songbird - Open source music player
• Last.fm Boffin - generates tag clouds of your music collection

Web Application Horror Stories

Now this was a scary talk! Simon Willison filled us in on some useful tips and things developers should be aware of e.g.:

• Never allow a user to inject JavaScript into your web pages (JS could even be pulled in via the CSS files eg. (background: url(…js));
• Always set a character set.
• Don’t use crossdomain.xml - see Adobe website for more info
• Clickjacking

Start-ups Pitch their Ideas - in 120 Seconds!

Three people got the chance to pitch their web apps to a panel of judges.  This was a great idea as we got to see how best to present your web app pitch (always state what your web app is about), if you have a website for it - put this up on the screen!

The pitch that stood out for me the most (and I think for the panel too) was - one by Robin Blandford, from ByteSurgery.com, on their Decisions for Hereos application.  This is just such a great idea - rescue teams can file reports via web and mobile and the information gathered can really help in future rescues. Plus there is the added bonus that the stats gathered can be sold to insurance companies.  So this is a real example of a web app with the ability to make money!  Very inspiring.

David Heinemeier Hansson (37 Signals)

Finally, David Heinemeier Hansson from 37 Signals gave a fantastic talk on setting up a web app company.

Round Up

Overall, it was a really great event, well worth checking out if Carsonified come back to Dublin - or if you are able to make it to any of the other FOWA/Carsonified events being held - I highly recommend it.

Wow, the New Year seems to have only started and already we’re in March! So time to do a quick update on what’s been going on in the world of clickstream!

Like a lot of businesses, we faced 2009 with a lot of uncertainty. Compared to other years, it was very difficult to make plans around budgets, staffing, expansion, consolidation so there’s been a certain amount of treading water to see what way the market is behaving before making any major company strategy decisions.

With 2 months gone by, I’m pleased to see that new business enquiries are strong which is encouraging. Unfortunately for some of the businesses making enquiries though, the need to develop or improve their web presense is being triggered by a downturn in their fortunes and a change of online strategy is being adapted to try and stimulate their own business.

Hopefully, a lot of companies now approaching us will benefit from the knowledge we’ve built up over the years and we can help them ride out the current situation. Certainly, we would very much believe that any investment in web holds the best potential for business development.

In terms of existing clients, we’ve tried to be proactive with as many as possible by sitting down with them and discussing their web strategy for the year ahead - these discussions always tend to be productive. In a strange way, the difficult environment has made our clients more focussed on their web goals and it almost makes our life easier. When the client has very clear goals, we tend to get very clear direction and as any designer or programmer will tell you, that is exactly what they like!

One interesting development with one major US client occurred last week when I took a phone call from a New York-based Executive Director. We had developed a major project for his Institute during 2008 which launched last Summer. The project had a global educational audience and the launch was a great success. However, due to 2009 budget constraints, the decision to outsource the task of site maintenance to India was taken at the start of the Year.

But following 2 weeks of site crashes, domain names being pointed at virus-ridden servers, lack of response to urgent communications and so on, the phone call came asking us to take back control of the site.

It was heartening to see that this client belatedly realised what they were getting when using an Irish company - and that Irish companies can compete globally once they are offering a premium service!

So with the assurance that if you offer a quality service, your business can still prosper in difficult times, and so we face 2009 with cautious optimism!

PS - We hope to bring you news of our Birmingham operation soon. More pieces of puzzle falling into place each week with an April launch of operation expected