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Change your address books and check the map because we’ve moved!

575 Anton Blvd. Suite 1150
Costa Mesa, CA 92626

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Here’s a 30 second office tour, and ignore the moving boxes as we’re in the aftermath of the move.

Way more complex than you need

Ok, so you’re tacking a blog onto your site to (1) quickly get breaking news about your products and company online and (2) boost SEO.  We all know that (2) is the REAL reason you’re adding that blog onto your corporate site.  You want to get on the first page of Google for certain search terms.  Good plan!  In fact, it’s such a great plan that EVERYONE else on the internet is doing the same thing.So what can you do to get in front of your competition?

First off you can use the latest version WordPress.  WordPress does optimized URI rewriting and about a hundred other little things that rocket it to the front on the long list of blog platforms.  Next, you should automate site map submission to Google, Ask, Bing, Yahoo, and 5 or 10 minor players plus the new challengers that pop up weekly (and get shot down almost as quickly — anybody remember that massive market changer, Cuil?).  You can line up your Twitter feed to stream to the main page of the blog.

In short, simple layouts rule.  Make your blog  as visually simple as possible.  Any fancy tricks (like the java tag cloud over there on the right which we are in love with) are just going to slow down your blog and MAY prevent it from getting indexed.

That leads me to my next point.  Get it live and online ASAP.  If you are building or re-building your main site, get the blog up and indexed before all the main dev is done.  It’s gaining search engine traction while you’re testing and making final mods to your site.  Even if you decide not to take the blog live, you can always line up 15 or 20 posts.  With WordPress 2.6 & newer, you can schedule your posts to auto-magically go live on a specified date.  So you drink two or three cups of that crazy Vietnamese coffee that has quadruple the caffeine and write them all in one mad literary sprint.  Then stagger out the publish dates.

If you keep the blog layout simple, you’re going to get it online faster.  You won’t waste time debugging complex interface issues.  The simpler the layout, generally the more compatible it is with blog platform upgrades and plugins.  I’ve worked with some very complex WordPress themes.  After we add some plugins, the really crazy animated multi-columns themes will inevitably break — and that is just during the initial build.  Complex themes and heavily customized layouts limit forward compatibility.  Weigh that carefully.

Finally, use your blog.  Post to it consistently.  Especially at the beginning, daily posts that are rich in relevant keywords are the key to success.  You can slow down once you have a couple hundred posts.  Seriously.

Now with all that said, do you REALLY want that fancy layout???

About 6 months ago, we launched a very interesting project.  Now that it has been in production for awhile and been slammed with traffic, I feel obligated to let the world know about a particularly BADASS piece of technology that is out there — and not just the part that we built!

The Challenge:

Ever wanted to track your conversions from an offline marketing campaign?  We were contracted to develop a system for making thousands of simultaneous inbound and outbound calls which are routed to end users’ phone lines, based on business rules.  Users pick a custom 800 number from a pool.  Then they use that number in their print ads or on their billboard.  When the line picks up, it can run callers through a verbal survey and records their answers, routing them to certain reps based on those answers.  Or the users can create custom menu systems (for example, press 5 for a Korean-speaking salesperson).

The Technology:

How to handle the load?  After a ton of research, we eliminated Asterisk as a viable solution because it lacks cost-effective scalability.  Asterisk can handle hundreds of simultaneous calls per server and, it functions as a fully-functional PBX.  Impressive, but we needed something more.  And it was then that we came across the open source telephony platform, FreeSWITCH.  FreeSWITCH was originally developed from the Asterisk codebase by a splinter team that wanted to see exactly how much performance they could squeeze out.  By rewriting the stack from scratch, they managed to get about TEN TIMES the performance.  Yes, FreeSWITCH handles thousands of calls at one time.

The Result:

At this point, we contracted with a SIP trunking service (their service is awesome, but their support super-sucks, so I won’t mention any names) to provide VOIP service.  We built in the ability to detect busy signals and answering machines.  And then, after a tremendous amount of testing, the beast was born.  The system is currently in place and tremendously reliable.  In fact, in about 6 months of production use, the server has only crashed once.

If you would have asked me 5 years ago if such a system could be built, I would have probably looked confused and babbled semi-coherently about insane 7-figure budgets and 12-month development cycles.  But having helped get this amazing system in place, I am a pleased to say that custom telephony solutions can be had for not much more than your typical social networking site.  We truly achieve great things by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Next up … voice recognition.  Oh yeah!

EDIT (03-22-10):  I wasn’t sure if this client was keen on having me post up details of the technology that their app runs on, so I left their name out of the post.  However, I just got permission to link to their app.  I know this sound like advertising, but it isn’t at all … I’m just very proud of what we’ve accomplished.  Call Tracking It’s free to give it a test.

This one will be short & sweet.

Are you the CEO /CFO / Director of Some Department?  Then read on.

Last night, I talked with some bigwigs who had questions about “The Google” and “twittering”.  It occurred to me that these were people that were bigshots in business, but absolute Luddites in the world of tech.  These individuals are often responsible for making the final call on the web strategy for their corporations.  Why?  Because nobody dares tell them the truth:  (sir) you don’t understand this.

The best advice I had for these guys, especially in dicey economic times, was to stand the *bleep* back.  It takes a big man to realize that his opinion, though tremendously powerful in certain scenarios, is damaging in areas in which he is ignorant.  Yeah, your dumb ego could put you out of business — hence the picture.

I think I shocked one guy when I told him (a little too enthusiastically) “You don’t HAVE to have an opinion!”  Sometimes you just need to put the trust in the developers and marketing people.  Hell, you’re paying them to do the job.  They live & breathe this stuff.  Trust your experts.  These are the people that really know how to get the job done and they will.

When project milestones are delivered to your desk, feel free to give direction, but don’t let your opinion be mistaken as an order.  LISTEN to the WHY certain decisions were made on the project.  If the presenter is too wary to offer you the WHY, then maybe you’ve fostered an environment that is more of an dictatorship than a presidency.  So guess what, big man?  You need to ask these people WHY they made the decisions they did on the project.  Asking questions can even make you seem smarter than delivering orders.  Analyze, consider, and then offer your opinion if you think it will help.  Otherwise, nod quietly.

The stand back and be amazed at some of these people’s innovative genius.

Google Wave, a social experience that combines e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking, recently added additional invitations for guests of its users. topLingo is a user, i.e. we have FREE invites!

So, we’re giving away invitations to the first 6 topLingo blog readers to leave a comment on this post.

Comment away!

We’re migrating and so is the rest of the development world.

So I bite my own tongue by saying this, but it’s true …

“jQuery is killing flash!”

jQuery is a lightweight JavaScript library that emphasizes interaction between JavaScript and HTML.  It allows developers and artists to create animation and interactive features that previously “only” looked good in flash.

For example, a year ago topLingo handled ALL requests for eye candy such as homepage animations solely in Flash.  But now, we’re about 80% converted to jQuery.

Why the transition?

Besides the obvious reason that we’re a “B2B” development firm who focuses less on eye candy and more on usability i.e. a group who would decline the opportunity to redevelop BritnaySpears.com, jQuery pros versus Flash are as follows:

Small size. Lightweight means fast web page loading times.

Free. Hundreds of previously produced animations, transitions, are easily accessible.

Easier to learn. Have you seen someone’s face when they launch Flash software for the first time? Eek!

Dull elements look better. Visually enhances non-exciting web elements.  Boring forms are now slightly more exciting.

CMS synergy. In the example of a homepage flash animation, for the content manager to make updates it’s highly likely they’d have to produce a Flash .SWF file themselves or pay someone to do so.  It’s much simpler to code the CMS for jQuery modifications where the content manager can simply change a line of text or upload an image … and BAM! The homepage animation changes!  (Sidenote, and to be fair, this can also be done in flash but does take more development time/cost).

SEO, SEO, SEO. Text is text in a jQuery animation and the engines love it!

Web Consulting for Every Business

Irvine, CA, November 10, 2009 – topLingo Development, Inc. (www.toplingo.com), a Web-based design and application programming services company specializing in the technology, finance, entertainment/media and other industries announces an expansion to its services; personalized web consulting for businesses.

This new service is targeted towards businesses professionals who require immediate website or web application advice and/or solutions.  Within 24 hours topLingo puts you directly in touch with Mike Glezos, an accomplished web solutions architect and topLingo’s President, to assess your web issues and provide answers.

Titled “Web Consultant,” this new service has spawned from frequent “consultation-only” requests by topLingo’s current and potential clientele and will be operated by Mike Glezos.

Robert Bertucci, certified public accountant and startup business owner states, “Mike understands the business processes behind the technology and knows what it takes to be successful online.  He designs solutions that drive real results for his customers and his firm topLingo is THE web development company to hire for a project.  And now if you just need the answers, with this new consultant offering you can still receive his invaluable advice.”

Mike Glezos, topLingo Development’s President states, “I’ve previously helped hundreds of entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 companies solve an array of web issues in the areas of design, technology, marketing to sales.  We’re now formalizing that end-to-end help with lightening quick responsiveness and in an affordable manner.”

For more information visit the recently launched:  www.MikeGlezos.com.

About topLingo Development, Inc.

topLingo Development, Inc. ( www.toplingo.com), headquartered in Irvine, CA is a leader in Web-based software applications for the technology, financial, entertainment/media and other industries nationwide. For nearly a decade, topLingo Development has provided specialized expertise to create efficiencies, reduce costs, and generate customers and profits for its client base. Clients include Chase, Fidelity Investments, HSBC, Silver Hill Financial, ZyXEL Communications, Miles Davis, Inc. and many others.

A client recently needed some help on setting up video tutorials on her website. I realized that this info is probably of value to just about everybody, so here it is. Disclaimer: these are my opinions as to what constitutes an effective tutorial and this is by no means authoritative.

• Initial capture:
  1. Script out the mouse clicks and screens that you want to hit in order (sometimes I do this in PowerPoint)
  2. Capture that workflow in a video with Camtasia or Captivate (possibly run the PowerPoint in another window for visual queues OR just print it out)
  3. Edit LIBERALLY to get tutorial down to final runtime
  4. Play video and record VERY rough voice over to get the basic structure down
  5. Replay voiceover and transcribe into a script, editing for brevity
  6. Read your script while the final video is playing and capture audio
  7. In Captivate or Camtasia, marry the audio with the video
• Stay away from the post-it style popups that are so popular in Captivate … people are way too impatient to read in a video, so these are not effective (example: subtitled films don’t do well)
• Instead, to highlight content or actions, perform a ZOOM in the video editing software
• When doing the VO, keep a consistent distance from the mic. I’d say 12 – 14 inches if you have a standalone mic. If it’s clip on or headset, then ignore this.
• I like audible clicks and typing sound effects in tutorials.  In Camtasia, this is one click box.
• Make sure the volume is fairly loud, but not blaring on the final version … people always have their speakers wayyy too low
• If this is an intro-style of video, it should be really fast, like 30 – 45 seconds (you are telling your audience that your service or product is as easy as 1-2-3 … so REALLY make it as easy as 1-2-3)
• Unless you have an insanely complex form (and if you do, you might consider redeveloping it), when demoing a form being filled out, show the beginning of filling out a form, then do a blur transition to “fast-forward” to the completed form.  If you must, fast-forward blur to the challenging parts of the form and in your voiceover, give users clear, concise direction.  Or, like I said, redevelop.
• Break non-intro tutorials into 1 minute to 1:30 chunks
• Use an SEO-friendly player like Longtail

That’s a messy, incomplete set of guidelines to making an effective tutorial.

I may have figured out how  Lala works their licensing mystery.  When synching your music collection, the service somehow matches mp3 tags like artist, album, and song title.  I think song length may also have something to do with it.  If it finds an “approximate” match AND the song is licensed for Lala’s use, the song gets dropped into your online music collection.  I bet this is somewhere in the FAQ on their web site, but I never read that nonsense … do you?

Why did I only find this out 6 months after I started using Lala?  Very good question … glad I asked it.  It takes forever to upload songs, so I only uploaded the first 20 gigs of my music collection.  I never processed the whole collection because I have 500+ gigs of music.  Because of how I originally converted all my CDs, my music collection is organized in an odd manner.  It’s very complex, but let’s just say I uploaded the most mainstream music first.  All my music matched and so I blissfully used Lala for 6 months.  Now that I am so enamored of Lala, I’ve decided to upload the rest.   Much of this current music that I am uploading is eclectic and indie.  So it’s not really matching.  See, I may be uploading a live or demo or rare version, and Lala mismatches it with the production studio version of the tune!  If it doesn’t match, Lala omits it from the album entirely.  This isn’t so bad, except you don’t know until you go to play an album and the last track isn’t there or track 5 is not what you’d expect or way too loud compared to the rest of the album.  I’m obsessive about music and my spidey sense tingles when something is out of whack.  However, I breathe deeply. count to 10, and then move on.  Oh … the other issue is that on CDs with unnamed hidden tracks, I’ve edited out the silence and re-saved the track under a new name.  Green Day’s “Dookie” has that with the “All By Myself” song.  Lala doesn’t recognize this sort of thing.  Bummer.

So consequently, my Lala collection is incomplete and mismatched.  Probably 10% of my Lala collection is askew.  I have an enormous quantity of weird music, however.  So although my OCD has been tweaked a bit, I am willing to overlook the slight problems in favor of the enormous convenience.  For the great majority of the population for whom Meatloaf’s “Bat Out Of Hell 2″ (you know “I’d do anything for love, but I won’t do that!” … you have it on your iPod and you LOVE it) is the weirdest thing in their iTunes, this won’t matter.  All the Kanye West, Christina Aguilera, and Black Eyed Peas that you need is covered with Lala’s library.  Enjoy it!

Aviary has an impressive suite of web-based software that is free to use.  They have built scaled-down versions of Photoshop, ImageReady, and Illustrator that run within a web browser in Flash (not Air, for the techies).  In addition, they have a multi-track sound editor that has the same core functionality as Apple’s Garage Band.  Although Aviary is pushing the limits of what Flash is capable of, their execution is outstanding.  This software suite works and works WELL!

Although these apps are lighter in features than their desktop counterparts, they are some of the most advanced web apps I’ve yet used.  All are incredible models of how web-based software should work.  These are the prefect tools if you have to do a little photo editing on an underpowered laptop or netbook.  If you’ve ever had to edit some photos when you’ve been on vacation with your old junky laptop, I’ve got the solution to your pain.  Photoshop on a crappy laptop just grinds your productivity to asnail’s pace.  But these apps fire up in about 30 seconds and you’re ready to go.  Working with large graphics files is nearly instantaneous because all the heavy lifting is being done on Aviary’s servers.

I highly, highly recommended Aviary as both a top-notch tool and an example of how to build web-based software.  Check it out here.

There’s a great music website called Lala which I have been using for about 6 months now.  It allows you to upload your music collection and listen to it anywhere that you have a computer (or iPhone) and an internet connection.  You can set up playlists and share them.  And, of course, you can sort your music collection any way you want.  [ Example:  Show me just the Heavy Metal albums ... yay!]   The web application is absolutely phenomenal.  It’s drag & drop and very, very visual — a model of “complex simplicity”.  It’s more or less a web-based iTunes before iTunes tried to do everything.  I’ve stopped liking iTunes because it’s doing too much — Genius, video, and now Facebook integration … why oh why?  Call me a curmudgeon, but I kinda tolerated it about 2 or 3 years ago when all it did was organize and play music.  It did that well.  Lala reminds me of the happy, friendly iTunes of 2006.

I’m not going to sit here and describe every aspect of Lala because honestly you should be using it right now.  I have not a single complaint after 6 months of daily use.  Normally I am very critical, but this just kicks ass.  Seriously, stop reading this crappy blog post and just sign up at http://www.lala.com.  Download the tiny desktop application.  Pick three or four albums to upload.  Although the upload process is automated, it takes a long time to upload all your albums (I have 180 gigs of music!!).  So at first, limit yourself to those few albums.  It took about a day to upload 9 gigs / 1800 songs, but it did all that nonsense in the background.  Anyway, if you like it, then endure the lengthy upload for the rest of your music.

One of the coolest features that I cannot get over is that I can be listening to some ridiculously long playlist here at work.  Then I turn off my computer at work, go home, boot up the home system (workaholics, unite!), and pick up the playlist right where I left off.  It’s awesome.  I giggle to myself every time I get to do that.

The big mystery that lingers over this whole utopian system is how Lala gets around licensing.  Will the RIAA axe fall as heavily as  it did with Pandora?  — By the way, Pandora, awesome bounce-back.  Y’all have a godlike CEO over there. –  Apparently, Lala gets around licensing issues by comparing your music files with albums that they already have legally in their library.  Then Lala uploads only the music that they don’t have.  Yeah, I know, if you do the math, it doesn’t really add up.  Shhhhh!

I’ve been using this FREE tool, DropBox, for about a year now (since they were in beta).  I use it on a daily basis and, at this point, could not live without it.  Whenever anything gets to that stage, I cannot help myself, I get a little excited about it, so bear with me.

DropBox is a web service for synching up files across one or more machines.  At it’s simplest, it’s a web-based service for backing up files.  There’s been tons of these services over the years (X-Drive, AllMyData, Mozy, and Box.net come to mind).  But DropBox takes this to a whole new level by adding a program that runs on your desktop, PC or Mac.  This creates a folder on your computer that is automatically synchronized with your web folder that is hosted by DropBox.  The service even allows you to roll back to previous versions of your documents.  Everything can be done from the web interface or, amazingly, right from the program that is running on your desktop.  How many web services have that level of desktop accessibility?  Only a handful.

Ok, cool, now you’ve got a backed-up versions of important files that you can access through the web from any computer.  But if you add the desktop app to another PC, then you’ve got AUTOMATED synching going on 24/7.  Next, you can set up a shared folder with any other DropBox user.  You drop files into it and they show up in the user’s folder on their desktop.  The other user even gets a popup alert after the synch completes.  No more fooling around with FTP just to get somebody a file that is too big for email attachments.  It’s also nice for dropping 500 megs of files into before I leave work, having them synch during the commute home, then having them all ready when I arrive home. Now I don’t have to shuffle through my man-purse for the USB memory stick, wait 10 min to copy files, work on files at home that night, and then forget the USB stick at home the next day .. ugh!  I just work directly off of the files in my local DropBox folder all the time.  Every PC I work has a copy.

DropBox has a couple of extremely minor issues.  I have limited experience with the Mac client, but from the 10 minutes that I played with it, it does not seem as polished.  However, with the rate at which DropBox is improving their features, I’m sure this will be addressed in short order.  Also, I’ve experimented with running my huge Outlook PST file from DropBox to get automated Outlook backups.  No dice.  But that is really pushing the envelope and nobody provides a good system for that yet.

DropBox keeps their site and application VERY simple.  Like crazy, google-level simple.  That makes it easy for the rushed, imaptient crowd and the oft-ignored low-tech crowd like my parents (who absolutely love it).  In fact, for a second, I just want to elaborate on my parents’ experience with DropBox.  My mom uses it to synch files between her laptop at work and her laptop in the house.  My dad, the single-finger typist, used to have a terrible time getting photos to me.  He used to Kodak’s fairly complex photo-sharing service … a good service, but lacking in ease of use for non-tech-savvy peeps.  Now we have a shared folder into which he can throw his photos and I get a little popup when they arrive OR even get updated.  Smooth.

All this for free!  It’s 3 gigs free, with paid options for up to 100 gigs … beautiful.  I’ve been using the free version without issue.

Use this link to signup and you’ll get an extra 250 megs of space for free.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke, “Profiles of The Future”, 1961

Dozens of press releases, countless emails and calls to editors then sometimes you just get lucky.  Like my photo and a topLingo shout out on the OC Metro homepage type of lucky.

Hi I’m Mike.  Co-owner of topLingo and meet me on OCMetro.com’s new social network for Orange County business professionals.  Recently launched,  this network is a hybrid between LinkedIn and Facebook and proof that “niche’s” can work.