The Webby Awards is the leading international honor for Web sites and the innovators behind them. New York Times proclaimed the Webby Awards "the online equivalent of an Oscar." This year's winners have been announced in 69 categories.Organizers also announced recipients of this year's Webby Special Achievement awards, including the following:
Monster.com lists the following opportunities:
The best training value this month is to download the following FREE software:
Then, make an investment in one of three new Dummies books:
The most important factor driving the consumer segment is content-on-demand -- the desire by consumers to listen and watch what they want at the time and place of their choosing.
The practical implication for Web developers is that clients will increasingly seek to differentiate their Web-based offerings via streaming media content and designers and developers should become knowledgeable and proficient in educating clients on the available options.
To learn more about streaming media access University of Wisconsin's Understanding Streaming Media tutorial series. Then visit the Creation and Production section to learn more about the five most popular streaming media technologies.
To understand the specific HTML code you would use to add rich media content to a Website access Embedding Streaming Video in a Web Page available from Media College. In particular, check out the technique used to enable video to be displayed in both Internet Explorer and Firefox. Code is available in the following formats:
As the Web evolves so must a Web professional's skills. And rich media content development is a skill consistent with the recent increase in demand for Web Marketing skills.
So, what does it take to succeed at a fast growing high tech company? According to CEOs their success can be attributed to the following qualities:
Making a lesser contribution were factors such as technical knowledge, upbringing, luck, personal relationships, and education.
A press release of The Technology Fast 500 CEO Survey can be found at the Deloitte Website. To access the websites of the 50 Fastest Growing Technology Companies in New England visit the Web Apprentices Career Center.
A quick search on the "e-commerce" keyword reveals the following job listings in the greater Boston area (number of listings):
According to an annual survey of 250 e-commerce executives conducted by the e-tailing group, "e-commerce is becoming an important, stand-alone sales channel and websites are increasingly seen as revenue generators and important profit centers." A summary of the survey can be accessed for a limited time via eMarketer.
According to the survey the top three Web-related initiatives planned for 2006 are as follows (percentage of executive responding):
If your skill-set includes knowledge and experience in these areas then your skills are in demand. To obtain knowledge and experience in these in-demand Web marketing areas consider the following FREE training plan that focuses on two popular Web development technologies that can be used to develop and maintain a company's e-commerce strategy:
ASP.NET focus:
PHP focus:
The Best of Show winners for 2006 are as follows:
The survey also found that an improving economy and an impending labor shortage combine to raise the following concerns among large corporations:
You can review the highlights of the marketing survey in a press release or obtain a free copy by contacting Kelly Shumaker at Aquent Marketing Staffing, a Boston-based a global professional services firm.
The SXSW Web Awards is an international competition that attempts to uncover "the best new websites and celebrate those who are building and implementing tomorrow's online trends." The awards focus primarily on sites that went active or were redesigned in 2005.
The following four Web development-related skills all were mentioned as being in-demand by at least 20 percent of CIOs:
Structured Query Language (SQL), the common language of database access, is the single most valued technology skill with more than 1000 listings!
In the skill set of Web programming Java Server Pages (JSP) holds the lead:
So, adding SQL Server and ASP.NET skills to your resume will significantly enhance career prospects.
Late last year Microsoft launched SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005. Along with these tools they announced the upgrade of ASP.NET to ASP.NET 2.0. Two new books are now on the market to help learn the Express (FREE) Editions of these two products:
Amazon offers both books together at a discounted price of only $42.88. There might not be a better training investment out there this month, except for this one . . .
Attend three Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Webcast Series seminars (FREE) and you will receive Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition software ($299 retail value) and other training materials FREE! If you have prior experience with JSP, PHP or ColdFusion, Microsoft wants to introduce you to ASP.NET 2.0. (If you have no prior experience with these technologies select the PHP option.) Webcasts begin Tuesday, March 7.
Now, if you are really into it, you can catch a 17-minute interview with Bill Gates as he discusses these and other technologies that Microsoft is building its future on. Note that this is an in-house interview from Channel 9, Microsoft's own news channel. The interviewer is not a threat to challenge Katie Couric for the coveted CBS Evening News assignment.
Microsoft has received the focus of attention this month simply because I have found no other vendor committed to providing resources to helping Web professionals develop their skills at little or no cost. If you are aware of other vendors -- Adobe (Macromedia), Oracle, IBM, Sun, to name a few -- that offer low-cost, no-cost software and training to help develop skills that are highly valued in the marketplace, then please let me know. I'll be glad to spotlight their offerings in future articles.
Rankings were based on the following criteria:
Wouldn't it be interesting if we had access to a Most Admired Employees list! Workers who made the list would be prize candidates for the best assignments. Job satisfaction would improve. Recruiters would call. Compensation would skyrocket.
While no such list exists, Ajilon Professional Staffing offers these five tips to elevate your admiration ranking in your current position:
All of these Websites are based on the concept that by developing a network of like-minded peers who have their own network of contacts, you can expand your network exponentially. The concept has been made popular by the trivia game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
Once you are registered here's how you can use ZoomInfo to position yourself in the marketplace:
These three competitors combined control 85% of the $15 billion database market [1]. The marketplace provides a snapshot of their relative value. The number of job listings for each of The Big Three when searching by keyword are as follows [Monster.com listings]:
The common language of all databases is Structured Query Language (SQL). So, the more you know about SQL the more you'll be able to manage data regardless of which relational database management system (RDBMS) is being used.
According to a recent BusinessWeek article, Taking On the Database Giants, open-source database products are gaining ground. Of these MySQL appears to have the most momentum.
So, how does one get experience using these products? Here's a two-step plan:
Step #1: Learn SQL
Step #2: Learn one of The Big Three (SQL Server)
Why select SQL Server? Quite simply, I have not been able to identify any low-cost alternatives to learning Oracle or IBM DB2. Both products are expensive and so is the training. Microsoft, on the other hand, wants technology professionals to learn its new SQL Server 2005 product so that it can capture market share from its competitors.
[1] reference: Taking On the Database Giants
So, what is the one skill that is most in-demand in the technology arena? "Developers who are expert users of Microsoft's software programming language .NET can make between $75,000 and $85,000 a year in major cities when they're starting out," according to the author of this staffing analysis.
Here is a six-step, zero-cost plan to introduce yourself to Microsoft .NET:
