Skimmer. The next Adobe AIR app and the hard work of many individuals over the past 6 months. It has been amazing to see this application turn from design into reality. This is a summary of the technologies used and some of the lessons learned throughout the development of Skimmer:

Skimmer

The first decision was easy. Use an MVC framework, more specifically PureMVC. This application was estimated in the thousands and having a backbone was very important. We spent the extra time upfront developing a solid structure which ended up helping out immensely when it came to bug fix and adding new features. Creating new views became a snap when the data providers that accessed third party API’s were completed.

The second major decision was to use a SQLite database to store content locally. This allowed for fast filtering of data and pre-processing of information. It also greatly improved the load time of the application since we only needed to gather new information.

Thirdly, we decided to use image caching for all of the commonly used images to improve load times. This increased the application start up and allows for fluid transitions between images in slide shows. By extending a bulk loader class Skimmer is able to first check the local cache before making any requests to the internet for images.

One of the major challenge was working with the third party API’s. The API’s for Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, TwitPic, Facebook and Blogger had varying levels of documentation and support. Flickr had the most feature rich API while Facebook had the most difficult API to work with. Many of them had third party AS3 libraries to use for interfacing with the service that we used as a base.

Another challenge was in skinning the flex components. The application was not designed to look like an AIR application, which is a good thing This, however, did create some interesting problems along the way. We used a combination of CSS, class inheritance, overrode drawing methods, and even created some custom flex components.

You can download skimmer here:
http://www.fallon.com/skimmer

A shout out to everyone that made this happen:
AL KELLY, BRENDA FOGG, CHRIS WIGGINS, DAVID SCHWEN. EXTENDED TEAM: ANDY GUGEL, SIERRA BRAVO, ANDREW WATSON, BEN DOLMAR, BLAGVOST DACHEV, CLAYTON SMITH, JON REXEISEN, KARSTEN LUNDQUIST, KONR NESS, KRIS SZAFRANSKI, MARK SEEMANN, MANISH SHRESTHA, MATT TONAK, MICHAEL WOODS, MINH VU, ROBB THOMAS, THOMAS O’NEILL.

Feel free to post any comments or questions you have about Skimmer.

http://mashable.com/2009/03/24/skimmer/

Enough ranting for one day. Back to the topic at hand. Ten things you can do to improve your online presence. Before you read any further write down the type of business your in. What do you do? Who is your target market? Will an online presence even help you? These are things you need to figure out on your own or pay someone to figure out for you. This list will not help you until you know the basics. And there is not a pre-prescribed method for determining the basics.

1. Obviously, Get a Web Page
Or is it that obvious? Why do most people fail at this simple step? Think about this: You have a company with 15 employees who all sit at a desk. Would you buy an office building that can hold 1,000? Not unless you know something I don’t. Simply put, start simple. Build a static page, make it look professional and grow your web page with the company over time (for example PSDTemple). Facebook didn’t start with apps, photos, and videos. They started simple and restricted the user base. Don’t assume it’s a one time cost. The more you try to do at once the higher likelihood that it will fail. Grow your web page with your business. As always there is a friendly web development company near you.

2. Get a Twitter Account
It’s easy, it’s free and will improve your SEO tremendously if used correctly. Post company updates, links to press releases, or even just random tidbits. Link your twitter page to your web page. Take advantage of Twitters strong online presence to help out your company.

3. Get a Facebook Account, Right? Wrong!
Next logical step is to move to the next social networking site? NO, at least in most cases. Facebook is for people. Unless your a Freelancer it really doesn’t benefit to have a Facebook page (if you are a freelancer or working for yourself than get a Facebook account, now!). Maybe a Facebook app though? (for example Sacrifice Your Friends). Maybe your company needs a Facebook fan page? Look at your target market list. What would they want? What would they use?

4. Start a Blog
A regularly updated blog will improve traffic to your site, you can be pretty much sure of that. Again, who is your target market? What would they be interested in hearing? Check out Sierra Bravo’s blog for a great example of marketing towards your customers: Nerdery Blog. Most blog services are FREE. I personally recommend WordPress. Using WordPress, your blog could even be your website. Save some time and money but still get professional results.

5. Track Analytic Data for Your Site
How will you ever know if any of these steps are working? Google Analytics, it’s free and easy to use. Find out what keywords your getting, and which ones your not. Determine how many people are visiting your site from Twitter or viewing your blog. Don’t just stop at Google Analytics. Most hosting companies provide AWStats or WebLog as well. I find that AWStats is better for tracking unique hits / bots and Google Analytics is better for keywords / data presentation.

6. Help People
If your company makes web pages, join a web forum and answer peoples questions. Create an account on Yahoo answers and help people with problems. Join Linkedin and participate in the discussion groups. Nothing says online presence like helping someone else in need. Just make sure to put a link to your webpage, twitter account, or blog at the bottom. It helps you and will let them find out more about your company and services. If you helped them solve a simple problem for free who do you think they will call when they need a complex problem solved?

7. Contribute to Open Source Projects
This one is more IT related and I must admit I have not participated in any open source projects to date. I do, however, see the value in them and plan to contribute in the future.

8. Buy Some Ad-Words
Notice that most of the items I’ve listed so far have been FREE. It’s amazing how few people realize that online presence has very little to do with money. This one is not free but very useful. Buy up some keywords in Google Ads. You will probably never see the light of day on a search result for ‘pet food’ unless you pay for the advertisement. Facebook advertisements are a great way to target specific people based on their profile information.

9. Time
Only time will build your online presence. All of these items will help expedite the process but as with everything in life, there is no guarantee. You may be in the business of making money but I assure you that time will be on your side if you truly attempt to help the internet community. If you are nice to the internet it will be nice back to you.

10. Don’t Assume Design Patterns will Always Make Your Life Easier
You can’t have a top 10 list without this one Please just read this wikipedia article.

I would love to hear any other suggestions on improving online presence. Here is your chance to help out others and start promoting your online presence today! How cheesy did that just sound? I feel like I’m selling a book. This is what I get for creating an ordered list blog post…

A few companies highlighted in this post:

Twitter
Sierra Bravo
Facebook
PSDTemple
Burger King
Google
WordPress

Related Posts:
101 Tips to Improve Your Web Presence