NCET, TBAN and VegasFoo are joining forces to bring the wildly popular Wi-Fi Wednesdays to Las Vegas. Each Wi-Fi Wednesday features:
- The very popular “Speed networking,” a twist on the “speed dating” concept that facilitates numerous one-on-one introductions in a short period of time
- Drink Specials
- Free Appetizers
- Great Door Prizes
Downtown Cocktail Room
Las Vegas Boulevard
Las Vegas, NV 89101
(702) 880-3696
RSVP ONLINE or to Emily Lowe at 775-337-3328
Co-Sponsored by NCET and TBAN, the Technology Business Alliance of Nevada
]]>When
Friday, January 11, 2008 at 6:30 PM
Where
The Downstairs Bar at Viaggio
11261 S. Eastern Ave Suite 200
Henderson , NV 89052
How to find the organizer(s)
“If you don’t see our group and don’t know anybody, please ask the hostess or bartender. I’ll let them know where we’re at and where to send group members”
Details
I’m changing this event to later in January since the holiday season is so hectic for most folks! I’ve moved this month’s event to the Downstairs bar at Viaggio on Eastern. I’m told it has a more cozy and quiet atmosphere that may better allow for folks to chat in larger groups.
– Lynn
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- goal is great product / happy users
- unachievable without good usability
- great product / happy users = maximizing user experience
- do task analysis up front
- design, implement, test, design, implement, test …
task analysis
- what does a user need to be done?
- need dictates design, not system elegance
- what does the user need to carry this out?
-
- what are the steps involved?
- give users feedback through loading or saving indication
- reduce the chance of errors “undo” — where can errors occur?
- disable double click, use white space
- let the user be in control
- human attention
- 0.1 perceived as instantaneous.
- 1 second - maintains the feeling that a single task is being carried out.
- 10 seconds - limit for keeping the attention of user.
- start fast
- reduce # of http requests
- cache aggressively
- construct ui incrementally
get ui events done in under 100 miliseconds
- do it the web way
users do…
- hit the back and forward buttons
- copy url’s and paste them to emails
- right click on pages to get a context menu
- use visuals effectively
- animation
- some good uses:
- changes not made by user
- reinforcing diret manipulation (drag and drip)
- progress indication
- code red level attention grabbing
- bad uses:
- trying to impress
- consider folks using assistive technology
- use native widgets
- WAI-ARIA
- focus and keyboard support
- test in a screen reader (JAWS)
- update state appropriately
- test now or later
- use professional testers - they pay for themselves
additional ajax resources:
]]>I had a blast at Downtown .. rapped about mybloglog with Robyn, real estate and seo with Bill, all sorts of foo with Matt, cold fusion and vegas web news with Thomas, and some cool podcasting stuff with The Smidgits Guys.
]]>Stop by booth 233 at the Blogworld and New Media Expo to pick up an invitation.
VegasFoo is a group of Las Vegas web professionals. Discussions at our mixers range from blogging to web app development and all the FOO in between :)
Learn all about Zappos.com here: http://www.zappos.com/about.zhtml
Here is some information about the venue from
http://www.vegas.com/nightlife/bars/downtowncocktailroom.html
Not all the lights are bright in downtown Las Vegas.
Inside the Downtown Cocktail Room, you’ll be shielded from the blazing neon outside. Inside this sophisticated and swank gathering place there’s a low, inviting glow. It’s filled with stylish modern design and interesting art — and a clientele to match.
Downtown Cocktail Room is a place about conviviality. It’s where Las Vegans in the know come to enjoy a down-tempo musical soundtrack to their upbeat conversations.
The bar, along with cool neighbors like The Griffin and Beauty Bar, is in the leading wave of the revitalization of downtown Las Vegas. It’s a part of the new Fremont East District, a large-scale entertainment development that promises to bring new life to downtown.
The Downtown Cocktail Lounge is definitely a place to become acquainted with.
– Review by Greg Thilmont
]]>If you are a “Do-It-Yourselfer”, you are going to need a web hosting company to host your wordpress website. All you basically need is a web host with support for php and mysql. 90% or more of web hosting companies out there offer php and mysql support and quite a few of them have ways to auto-install wordpress. Here are a couple of hosting companies that are cheap and reliable:
- StartLogic - Free Setup/Domain
- HostGator - Unlimited Domain Hosting - $9.95 a Month
- ServerPronto - Very Affordable Dedicated Servers
- Mediatemple - $20 per month - simple administration
If you don’t feel comfortable installing scripts, you can head over to wordpress.com and start blogging in seconds. I like the ability to have more control over the site. If you feel the same way…keep reading.
Ok, so you have picked out your hosting company and now what? Go ahead and Download wordpress (.ZIP). The application should only take a couple minutes to download. The next thing you will need is an FTP program. Here are a couple free FTP options:
The next thing you need to do is set up a database through your hosting provider. I mostly use phpmyadmin to manage databases through the browser. Your host should provide you with a GUI interface to create a database. If you go with a dedicated box and don’t know mysql’s command line, get cpanel/whm or plesk.
All wordpress needs you to do is create the database, a user for the database and a passsword for that user. The installer will create all the tables and you really won’t need to do much with the db after that, well, except for backing up.
Once you have the database setup you are almost ready to upload the system to your server. You are going to need to extract the .zip file and make a couple of changes.
- Rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php
- Open wp-config.php in a text editor (do not use Microsoft Word or Wordpad)
- Enter the information for the database you just created and save the file.
Depending on what you want to use the application for, you may give some consideration to where you place the app. If you plan on only having at the domain, then you can just upload the system to the root of your domain (http://www.yourdomain.com) For most web hosts this is the public_html or www folder. If you have both the public_html and www folders, don’t stress, the www is a symlink to the public_html folder. The other option you may want to consider is installing in a subdirectory or as a sub domain (http://blog.yourdomain.com or http://yourdomain.com/blog).
Whatever you decide, you need to upload the contents of the wordpress folder into the location of your choice. After everything is uploaded, goto your browser and visit http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php. Follow the instructions and thats that should do it for installation. If my instructions threw you off… here are a couple more resources:
Now that you have it installed, you are well on your way to building a great site. The next things you need are a theme and some plugins. Choosing a theme can be a chore. My favorite theme to work with is Sandbox. If you aren’t familiar with xhtml/css, the best theme, in my opinion, is Cutline or Copyblogger by Chris Pearson. These are some great themes, well structured, easy to learn from and easy to modify. If you want something prettier out of the box, head over to the wordpres theme viewer and pick one out.
Once you have chosen your theme, you will need to download the zip, extract it and upload it to the themes folder (/wp-content/themes). After you have uploaded the theme login to Http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/ and click on the presentation tab. Click the theme you want to use and bam..its there. Gotta love the simplicity of that.
Ok, now we have a theme and things are going good. Stay tuned for the next post where I will get into more of the functionality of wordpress. Happy Blogging!
]]>Here are a couple videos I shot at barcamp up in SF a couple months ago:
Part 1
Part 2
For further reading checkout these resources:
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