I have a weakness for these kinds of videos. Mostly because when presented this way, I remember many of the statistics. Plus they have utility for what I do. (5 minutes and 21 seconds).
JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.
Comprehensive Network Monitoring
As part of its search engine marketing campaign, top 10 Indian IT company*, 3i Infotech, asked me to write a white paper on wide area network monitoring. Network monitoring has changed significantly since my days as an IT systems manager in healthcare. Back then there was a clear demarcation between network monitoring and management systems. But with today’s more complex networks, the lines have blurred.
Although these systems have evolved, the business challenges remain the same: to provide the organization with the highest network performance and availability possible. The best chance for that is to get network administrators the information they need, when they need it so they can make well-informed and timely (even proactive) decisions.
The paper, Comprehensive Network Monitoring, explains the types of metrics these systems should monitor. It goes on to explain the benefits they can and should deliver. For instance, these systems, at a minimum, should provide high-level views of the entire network with the ability to ‘drill down’ to the real-time status of any device. They should report the status of network services such as email, FTP and access to data resources. They should allow proactive reporting of performance threshold violations via email and SMS alerts to the correct responder. Value adds could be easy installation, scalability to support a growing infrastructure and significant cost savings.
The paper intentionally targets a business audience rather than a technical one. I tried to adhere to white paper best practices by providing useful, objective information in a readable length of 8 to 10 pages. I included several graphics to help explain network architecture and the features a comprehensive monitoring system should include. The paper will appear on the CIO India magazine website.
Comprehensive Network Monitoring (PDF)
*according to Dataquest.
Jewish Multiracial Network Site
In May 2010, Tzaadi launched the redesigned website for the Jewish Multiracial Network (JMN), a non-profit project to build a community of Jews of color and multiracial Jewish families for mutual support, learning, and empowerment.
In addition to the redesign, the site incorporates many features to support community building. There is an event calendar that focuses on events of interest to the community. There are bidirectional links to their Facebook and Flickr pages. Any post on the JMN blog can be tweeted. The site has been updated to display on smartphones with total functionality of the web based site. Traffic is tracked in Google Analytics. Editorial, non-technical JMN staff manage the site comfortably.
In the first month, the redesigned site had over 1,400 unique visitors from 45 states and 16 countries. This is a 400% increase over the biggest month the previous site enjoyed. Memberships are increasing slowly and JMN will trend donations to determine if they are increasing as well. Tzaadi is implementing other marketing initiatives to help increase membership activity. One initiative underway is to ‘crowdsource’ the JMN community to help decide what articles it wants to have on the site.
Google, Typekit Join up on the Font Front
Google has announced a new Font API and a collection of free, open source fonts anyone can use in their site designs for free. The Google Font API allows you to embed any of the new Google fonts on your website using CSS.
The fonts themselves are nice to look at, with a range of script, serif, sans-serif and monospace typefaces. They can all be used to style text via @font-face. There are only eighteen fonts available — so there’s probably no need for Typekit to worry that Google is muscling in on its territory.
In fact, Typekit has partnered with Google to announce WebFont Loader, a JavaScript library for improving the web font experience. Typekit will also be adding Google’s new free fonts to its collection, so there’s clearly still a lot of love there.
The WebFont Loader is an open source library of scripts that Typekit developed to help eliminate the “flash of unstyled text” page load hiccup that we’ve mentioned before. The WebFont Loader offers a number of JavaScript events which allow developers more control over when their fonts load.
Even though things have been progressing quickly in the world of type on the web, with advancements in CSS, HTML5 and the rise of services like Typekit, inconsistencies in browser support and implementation have stopped some from making the move to web fonts. The new WebFont Loader gives hope to those still on the fence by providing a consistent way to handle what the browser does while the fonts are being loaded.
Selecting the Right Typeface
The right typeface enhances the presentation of your content. However, selecting the right one often proves difficult. Fortunately, graphic designer Julian Hansen put together this flowchart to help us figure out what typeface to use for almost any project. Click on the image to see it full size on his site.
