Kat Skinner

Legal Risks for Businesses Integrating Social Media

Kat Skinner — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 06:25:23 +0000

Although not an entirely new concept, social media has started to become significantly noticed within all industries – no matter the organisational size. As more and more companies are turning to the internet to advertise their products and services they beginning to use more than just Google Adwords to advertise: Facebook and Twitter have the power to reach millions of people, targeted by the power of retweeting (at no cost to the business) and groups (such as followers and hashtags on Twitter).

In most cases a business will hire an employee to be the social media manager, someone who will … Read the rest

Benefits and Risks of Enterprise 2.0

Kat Skinner — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 06:01:57 +0000

In previous posts we have discussed how to create a successful blog and how businesses (even you!) can use crowd-sourcing to source cheap or free labour and maximise the potential of any product you provide. What we have not yet considered is what risks pose a business functioning online; can the benefits outweigh the detriments?

Operating for 116 years, IBM is one of the world’s most successfully companies – practically everyone has heard of them. Lesser known is the company’s integration of social media (such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook). However the company’s move towards encouraging employee’s to share via the internet … Read the rest

Crowd Sourcing in Enterprises

Kat Skinner — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 05:26:00 +0000

Businesses often use the internet as a means of advertisement and marketing. More and more businesses are turning to the internet – and the people now accessible over the internet – to source solutions; improve products, services and advertising; and increase profit. These businesses are utilising what is known as crowd sourcing. This post will analyse what crowd sourcing is, how it is used, and how you can use it yourself.

What is crowd sourcing?

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary (2011), crowd sourcing is “the practice whereby an organization enlists a variety of freelancers, paid or … Read the rest

How to Create a Successful Blog

Kat Skinner — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 03:12:06 +0000

As many of my readers may know, I am still a university student. A fledging in a world of long-time practicing professionals. Yet that does not mean that I lack experience, nor do I lack the ability to part with my knowledge. In today’s post I will be reflecting upon what makes a “successful” blog, and how any other “fledglings” can start their own.

What makes a successful blog?

Blogs can be considered successful in a variety of ways – depending on the aims of the creator (note that a creator isn’t always the author of content found on such … Read the rest

I’m Still Here!

Kat Skinner — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 10:59:53 +0000

My blog has been rather inactive the last few weeks. I just wanted to let all my fans know that I am still here, I have just been rather busy.

First, I have just started university exams for the semester, and unfortunately study takes up quite a significant part of my time.

Secondly, I have actually begun converting my theme from CarringtonTheme to ThemeHybrid. This is taking a bit longer than I first expected – my initial theme design didn’t utilize all of WordPress’ default classes and ids. Also, some of my CSS formatting was just horrible… This convert is … Read the rest

New Commenting System

Kat Skinner — Wed, 25 May 2011 04:43:51 +0000

Over the last few days I have been implementing the Disqus commenting system across all my websites (KatSkinner.com and Des a Dev). As a result there will be some temporary styling issues with the commenting areas, but do note that as soon as I get time I will be fixing this.

Why did I change the commenting system?

There are a number of reasons for my move from the traditional WordPress commenting system to the Disqus commenting system; mainly the reasons are:

Improved security and administration,
Integrating across a number of social networks,
Integrating commenting and user accounts

Read the rest

Lightweight Models and Cost Effective Scalability

Kat Skinner — Tue, 17 May 2011 06:48:34 +0000

A growing trend within the web development industry is utilizing light-weight models and cost effective scalability. But what does that mean exactly, and how can the everyday web developer capitalize on this?

Introducing Frameworks

Frameworks, sometimes also called Content-Management-Systems, can really take the load off a developer. Most often these frameworks will have pre-packaged, and pre-enabled, content that is either ready to be called in your own scripts, or is already running in the background.

The framework Ruby on Rails (more a language than framework really), does exactly this.

Ruby on Rails has functionality such as Ajax pre-built, ready to be called through what … Read the rest

Use the Long Tail To Extend Further and Make Money

Kat Skinner — Sun, 08 May 2011 06:31:22 +0000

What is a Long Tail?

In theory, a long tail is the effect of moving a business from a number of smaller mainstream entities towards a significant number of niches.

Thinks of a lizard. The “head” of the lizard is the brains of the operation (the main corporation or business), whilst the “tail” is where such business has extended their products into a number of niches.

How You Can Use the Long Tail

The most typical way for a business to extend their products into niche markets is through affiliate services. Affiliates allows external businesses, blogs and hobbyists to advertise your business … Read the rest

Perpetual Beta Can Be Good

Kat Skinner — Sun, 08 May 2011 05:11:25 +0000

When mentioning beta, most people think of new, incomplete features, constant crashes and instability. However, beta doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Some software and web 2.0 apps even have the option to opt into what is known as “perpetual beta”. Most users won’t even notice how their favourite websites are in fact constantly in beta.

What is Perpetual Beta

Commonly speaking, perpetual beta is a piece of software that is in constant development – although complete features and lack of bugs may be found, new features and consolidated scripts are continually being added.

In fact, some people believe that agile software development … Read the rest

Multi-Platforming to Simplify Your Life

Kat Skinner — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:20:38 +0000

As I have mentioned in a number of other articles, there are an increasingly large number of applications that blur the line between desktop software and a web-based software. Most web 2.0 applications have, if not are starting to, integrate across a number of devices: tablets, mobiles, computers (desktops and laptops) and so forth. Desktop software is increasingly sourcing data from online databases, whilst online software is increasingly appearing with interfaces similar to desktops (or even offering a “lite” version of the software through an online interface).

Following this trend, it is only natural to consider how different kinds … Read the rest

Should we call it Desktop2.0?

Kat Skinner — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 03:45:51 +0000

Traditionally Web2.0 Apps are based on the internet, however today’s technology has increasingly blurred the lines between the internet and the desktop. Think Google Chrome OS where the entire “desktop” is based online.

The most notable by-product of a web2.0 environment being merged with a desktop environment is the number of Apps being made with API (although the number of online Apps using API’s is also prolific).

What is an API?

API stands for Application Programming Interface.

A program can follow a set of predefined rules in order to access and utilize services and resources provided by another software program … Read the rest

Is Data the Next Intel Inside?

Kat Skinner — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 04:56:11 +0000

Several years ago Intel launched an advertising campaign that essentially stressed that their hardware was the most powerful part of the computer as it was able to interact with data. Have you seen the Intel Advertising Campaign video?

There is nothing more important in today’s society than data.

A user will willingly explore a badly designed website if it contains the information that they need.

Website owner’s stress the importance of subscribing to feeds and becoming members – all for the sake of gaining data from the user (such as email addresses, names, postal and billing addresses, and a lot … Read the rest

Inspiration and Sketches for KatSkinner.com Design

Kat Skinner — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 06:02:59 +0000

A couple people have asked me, “how did I come up with my new site design”? What was my work process, inspiration and thoughts as I was creating my current website theme?

I thought I would share them with you.

Know Your Topic

I didn’t just dive straight into the design and coding to be honest. A few times I had tried coding straight away, but without any real thought as to where I was going with a design I often gave up.

Prior to this site I actually had very few skills. This was the first major project I … Read the rest

Harness Collective Intelligence

Kat Skinner — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 10:59:35 +0000

Many websites today consist of a simple idea of community – users upload, download, share and discuss content. Over the last few years in fact these types of websites have exploded with popularity. The very principle of an online “community” at its very core is the principle of collective intelligence.

Many businesses and corporations are now harnessing collective intelligence to drive informational and interactive websites. Diverse, varied and often high quality content is created at lower cost by thousands of people than a website controlled by a smaller number of employees.

One example of a website harnessing collective intelligence is … Read the rest

How To Install The Carrington Theme Framework

Kat Skinner — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 10:08:45 +0000

Today I will provide a short step-by-step tutorial (with screenshots!) on how to install the Carrington Theme Framework.

What you will need:

WordPress. At time of writing this article the current WordPress version is 3.1.
Your own hosted server and domain name.
FTP Program, such as Filezilla, to upload the Carrington framework.
Carrington theme framework.

Step One (1): Install WordPress

WordPress has a famous five minute install.

Unfortunately I won’t be providing the step by step details of how to install WordPress. If you haven’t set up WordPress before, I suggest you read the official documentation on … Read the rest