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• Quality, deliver consistenst high-quality websites (by that I mean in both design, coding and client service), making a name for yourself
• Quantity, deliver lots of websites fast. Maybe not as unique and “good” as others but you do it and you do it quick.
• Specialized client industry, specialize in websites for car rental companies, or sock manufacturers, develop a functioning business process to cater to this industry’s needs and eliminate competition that way
• Technological specialization, find a programming language, database system, etc. that you like and stick with it. And more importantly: advertise it. Often a company will want a specific language for their website, such as PHP or ASP.NET, and by advertising it they know you can do the job.
• Controversial design, do it different. Go horizontal on a website that would usually be vertical, put the logo in the bottom right corner, you know that a site like that will sometimes say more than 1000 referrals, you’ve seen those sites before and you’ve stared at them open-mouthed.

1. We scrapped the "who we are" page and included it on the homepage
2. On the homepage we added four boxes with the main services we offer linking to descriptive detail pages (which are new)
3. We replaced the "who we are" tab with a portfolio tab, now displaying our work
4. We changed what we do to the aforementioned 4 service areas
   
5. Each area has its own detail page with tables explaining exactly what services we offer and even prices

In Carr’s article “The End of Corporate Computing” the former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review outlines an industry-internal prophecy of the end of computing as it exists today.

Companies therefore had to buy expensive power production equipment, employ electrical engineers and maintain these internal plants, creating massive redundancies and overcapacities. But in the beginning of the 20th century Samuel Insull realized the potential for centralization, saving companies massive fixed costs and creating a new industry. He went to found the first large power utility, Commonwealth Edison, which would go on to provide electricity to large companies all over. This shift from electricity being an asset the company generated to a service it purchased meant power went from being a fixed cost to being a variable cost. Companies would now pay for what they used and no more.

Another advantage of this centralization was the economies of scale. With alternating current there was virtually no limit to the expansion of power utilities, as they could provide electricity over vast distances. The limit was purely their production and selling capacity.

What Carr is playing to in his reference to this paradigm shift in the electricity industry is the rising of a new industry in the computing world. Software as a service, cloud computing and worldwide high-speed telecommunications infrastructures are allowing for a possible future centralization of computing power.

As I have discussed in my own essay, written in 2008, “The Future of Personal Computing”, a worldwide shift to centralized computing is indisputable.  We are facing an industry of computing suppliers. Since Carr’s publication in 2005 Amazon has introduced it’s cloud storage solution, Google has introduced Google Apps, allowing the use of word processing, presentation and spreadsheet software on the web and is also developing an open-source operating system based solely on web-based services (Chrome OS).

Carr predicts that computing “utilities” will own huge data centres which will run virtualized processes for their clients, who access these from pure terminals. All that will be necessary to access are the basic input devices, a screen, keyboard and mouse, while all the actual processing hardware will be based in the remote data centres. This allows for the distribution and maximization of processing power, elimination of redundant data and capacities, as well as huge cost savings on behalf of the companies, who will no longer be required to buy desktop units, servers, employ maintenance staff and constantly upgrade this infrastructure. The “utility” will own the terminals, which will be leased by the company. Utility engineers will resolve most issues remotely or alternatively an engineer will visit the company to resolve hardware issues with the terminals or communications infrastructure.  For companies computing will no longer be an asset and painful distraction from daily business but a service purchased similar to electricity. They will henceforth only be paying for actually used capacity

I largely agree with this prognosis but actually go a step further as to predict a world in which we will face unified terminals available everywhere from which we log onto our online presences, completely sidelining existing operating system manufacturers such as Microsoft, Apple, Cannonicle, etc. Of course the data centres we run our entire computing world of will be running on operating systems and there will undoubtedly be various “utilities” providing these services. As Carr mentions possible candidates as leading centralized computing suppliers are Google, IBM, Microsoft and Amazon, amongst others. Personally I see Google and Microsoft as the ideal candidates as a market leader, but there will be many competitors once the trend begins, including many new startups.

For this centralization the new “utility” will require massive capacities: large state-of-the-art data centres, huge software engineering departments, hardware production and distribution infrastructure, as well as high-speed connectivity to internet backbones. These prerequisites basically put existing, established Software as a Service (SaS) and Cloud Computing providers in optimal positions to put up shop as the future computing providers. These are precisely Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

Another issue to consider is what impact all this will have on private computing and especially high-end computing needs, such as video editing, games and other processor-heavy tasks. Will cloud computing solutions be able to offer intensive graphics and processing power for these uses and just as importantly will the infrastructure be able to support these data streams?

Every sign in the industry is indicating ventures in the direction of massive centralized computing. Likely large companies will take the lead by beginning to outsource their computing as described by Carr, paying as they go for the resources used and eliminating fixed costs. Eventually small to medium enterprises (SMEs) will follow and then private users. But until Windows, Mac OS, Ubunutu and all the other operating systems will disappear, until hard drives, motherboards, CPUs and graphics cards become completely discarded from offices and homes another decade or more is likely to pass. Not only are we (South Africans) currently missing the necessary infrastructure to support the connection uptime and stability, as well as the bandwidth required, but the public mindset is not set for such a massive shift. People will not be able to comprehend the elimination of desktop computing overnight, nor will companies be able to implement this. As we stand at the moment no solution is in sight that can service all the needs as Carr describes.

Carr does not outline a timeframe for his vision, but it is certain that while many requirements must still be met this is the future of computing.

References:

1. Nicholas G. Carr: “The End of Corporate Computing” (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2005).
2. Michael Hubbard: “The Future of Personal Computing” (http://mikehub.net/show.php?id=82, written 2008, published April 2010).

• client's objective/point of the site
• what exists, i.e. logos, corporate identities, designs
• what content is wanted on what pages
• type of navigation/site structure
• must some or all of the content be editable by the client (Content Management System)
• are other administrative backends needed
• timeframe
• client's budget
• existing domain and/or hosting and features (PHP, MySQL, etc.)

• Make sure you don't upload the index page yet, keep that placeholder there for now.
• upload all the image directories
• make sure all the internal references are correct (images, databases, links)
• go through the pages all quickly (except the index) to check its all functioning
• NOW overwrite the placeholder with the index and BOOM! you're live.

• As you know we are incorporated in the Republic of South Africa now (as PanzaTrax (Pty) Ltd, as we used a shelf company, we are in the process of changing the name).
• We have been operational as such for a month and a half and just completed our financial year ended 28 February with very good results, appropriate to our new beginning
• We have introduced a 10% Referal commission for any referals. This means if you refer anyone to us which results in a sale you are entitled to 10% of that revenue once the transaction is complete.
• We are planning to diversify our services: We offer, apart from webdesign and development, full hosting as a retail product (servers in Germany or South Africa) and intend to build our social media marketing front, in the form of blogging and tweeting. More specifically to blog and tweet in proxy for a company, i.e. run the services for them, freeing their capacity.
  
• We are planning on rolling out some website/application projects of our own in the next months, so watch this blog for updates on that. We have a very exciting one already in the design and development stages.

MMORPGs, Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, have come to the public's attention largely due to the vast success of World of Warcraft. I myself have never been a fan of MMORPGs and never really played any.

If you have Facebook chances are that you have seen the advertisements for Evony, also an MMORPG, which is similar to Age of Empires. The ads are everywhere and I always got the impression that the game was a clone of Age of Empires and you'd be asked to pay within days of signing up.

But I was proven wrong as a friend convinced me to sign up and try it out two weeks ago and since then I have been hooked. I enjoyed Age of Empires II and thought well then this can't be so much worse but actually it is quite different and I like it a lot more.

In Evony you create a town, and in the town you have to build and upgrade your farms, buildings and fortifications. This concept is the same as in AoE, but the big difference is, that Evony has a very strategic orientation. You never actually see your workers or soldiers and you can only build one building at a time. Some buildings take hours or even days to complete but the goal is to protect the town. After the first seven days the "Beginner's Protection" that protects you from any attacks expires and you must fend for yourself.

This is where the Alliances come in. In Evony one joins an Alliance of players and in an Alliance you protect each other and help each other out, which is great and gives Evony the social touch making it both a chat as well as a game.

Now, how does one progress through the game? The basic measurement of progression is Prestige, which is a point score that rises when you build or upgrade and conquer things. But then there is also honor which you gain when killing other players' troops. And ultimately the actual indicator is the rank. The higher in rank the farther you have moved through the game, conquering valleys and towns, building more cities and attacking and plundering other players.

I have been playing for 12 days and have a prestige of somewhere around 22.000, struggling to protect my second city from attack as it isn't as advanced as my first, which I have now stocked with a few thousand archers and hundreds of Archer's Towers.

Evony is a game requiring advance planning and a strategic mindset. Teamwork is important in the Alliance to protect each other and defeat the enemy and gain honor and new titles.

I don't see my addiction for this game wearing off anytime soon yet, as I am adamanet to conquer some cities and get a prestige of over 50.000. Why don't you come and join me?