Barracuda Spam Firewall Named 2008 Editor's Best Award Winner by Windows IT Pro Magazine

Barracuda Networks Inc. today announced that its Barracuda Spam Firewall was named as a gold medal winner of the "2008 Editor's Best Awards" in the hardware category by Penton Media's Windows IT Pro magazine.

WSG is a reseller of Barracuda appliances, and also deploys our own Barracuda for use in spam filtering for hosted client and internal email.

"The 2008 Editor's Best Awards utilize our editors' product knowledge and subject matter expertise to identify exceptional products that benefit the Windows IT Pro and SQL Server Magazine reader communities," said Jeff Lewis, group publisher.  "Our editors selected winners based on the product's strategic importance to the market, its competitive advantages and its value to the customer.

"Our editors are tough, in-the-trenches critics," Lewis continued.  "They demand solid value and performance from the products they select.  Editor's Best Award winners can feel proud that the products and services they developed have earned the respect and recognition of the Windows IT Pro and SQL Server Magazine editorial staff."

Award for the "WHO had a website?!?"

For as long as he was on the run, and for as long as he was chased by, well, just about everyone, it is really, really hard to believe that Radovan Karadzic had his own website.  (At least, according to the Clicked blog)  What's the opposite of search engine optimization?  What's the call-to-action on his site?  Does one of those crylic tabs mean "Please DO NOT contact us?"

Good question from Venture Beat about Google and bookmarking

This is a good question from Venture Beat about Google and social bookmarking.  One of those, why didn't I ever think of that moments.

Design and Development with the End in Mind

We have started the process of redesigning both WSG.net and RJGile.com.  Even though we put new versions of each site up last year, we decided to put a different emphasis on our web identity.  For WSG especially, this is quite important, but RJGile.com will surely see the benefits of it as well. 

Any web project, including our own, must begin with the end in mind.  At the moment, I'm brainstorming the keywords and ideas that our target audiences are seeking.  Who are they, what are they seeking (through search engines of course), how are they seeking, and what will they want to do once they've found what they're looking for.   This is really the only way to get what you want out of a web site.  Decide up front what your goals are, and gear everything towards that end.

This is just one facet of some different initiatives slated to start coming out of this building in the next few months.  We're not ready to talk about all of them just yet, but we're getting close.  In keeping with our plans to take things to the next level around here, you'll also see a bit of a different tone in this blog.  A more personal, easier, first person perspective on what drives events here in our family of companies.

Domain Name Transfers Gone Wild - ICANN Gets Duped

The headline says it all - Internet addressing agency loses its addresses.  So watch out, readers.  Don't click on those emails or mail in those offers.  Run them by us first, or you could be in trouble.

Make it stop! No more alternative browsers!

Please make it stop, the growth in browsers, that is.  Web Worker Daily felt the need to push some of the fringe browsers in a post today.  Most design and development people will check for usability on Firefox (2.0 or 3.0), IE6 and 7, and maybe Safari, depending on the target audience.  Like we said in a recent post, make it easy on yourself and just use Firefox 3.0.  Check that recent post for why.

The Joy of Tweeting

So Twittering is turning out to be fun, and interesting.  Haven't made the big leap from social networking to business deals, but I did experience the co-mingling of the physical world and Tweet-World this week.  While attending a Search Engine Strategies seminar in Boston, the speaker, search engine marketing guru Jennifer Laycock started talking about Twitter, what the deal is, how to use it, and why it is useful.  

She looked up and said "By the way, is there a Justin here?"

I raised my hand and said "How ya doin?"

A day or two prior, I found her on Twitter and replied to a post of hers which mentioned Boston.

I posted back to her:

justincresswell @JenniferLaycock looking forward to your seminar tomorrow in that nice city in which you're having lunch. 02:35 PM June 23, 2008 from web in reply to JenniferLaycock 

To which she Tweeted:

JenniferLaycock @justincresswell You're going to be in my class? Excellent! Please make sure you introduce yourself. 06:18 PM June 23, 2008 from web in reply to justincresswell 

I felt complelled to post this gem:

justincresswell is sitting at the SEM session listening to http://twitter.com/Jennifer... talk about...Twitter. Kuhl. 01:38 PM June 24, 2008 from web 

So it was funny.  Jennifer, by the way, is very good.  If anyone has the chance, you should attend one of her sessions.  Here's a link to her upcoming Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference this September.

PS - In a follow up email, she was careful to remind me of the essence of Twitter: "P.S. It's not stalking, it's observing. ;)"

Firefox 3.0 Debuts to Good Reviews; 15 Million-Plus Downloads

Web browser Mozilla Firefox version 3.0 was released this week, and not only has it been downloaded over 15 million times since this past Tuesday, the reviews are very favorable.  Here's a sampling of the reviews I found:

Chicago Sun-Times: Brilliant Like a Fox

CNet: Firefox's Wildfire

Washington Post: Building a Better Browser

PC Magazine: Firefox 3

InfoWorld: Firefox 3 Comes Out Siziling

ChannelWeb: Firefox 3 Versus Internet Explorer

SiliconRepublic.com: Firefox 3

If I was to summarize the reasons stated in the linked reviews into one message, it would be that stuff very often works better on Firefox than on Internet Explorer.  When Internet Explorer 7 was released, the reason it appeared so radically different to many users was that Microsoft tried to incorporate many of the productivity enhancing features of Firefox, like tabbed browsing, but did so in a very clunky way.  IE7, and 6 for that matter, is also noticeably slower, and far more annoying than Firefox, especially version 3.  IE version 8 is in development.  I have been testing the beta version, and have yet to see much in the way of improvements.  A number of sites just flat out break, or don't display well in 8, which makes designers and developers (us) nervous...

So download and install Firefox 3, import your bookmarks/favorites from IE, and start having a better web browsing experience.