Technology

After an unsuccessful attempt to attend the San Francisco DrupalCon back in April due to erupting volcanoes, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the next one in Copenhagen in August. I spent a week in the beautiful city of Copenhagen amongst the cyclists and the Vikings! The conference was held at the fantastic and environmentally-friendly Bella Center, just outside the city centre.

Since our last newsletter AWS staff have attended numerous conferences: DrupalCon in Copenhagen, DomainSpain in Valencia, Web Congress in Malaga, Business Constituency in Washington and ICANN in Cartagena.

To understand Drupal we need to know that a Content Management System (CMS) is an application that you to make changes to your site without the need for expensive web site editing tools. 

As many of you know, Microsoft has announced that it will be releasing Internet Explorer 7.0 this summer to those who are on the XP operating system in a project code named "Rincon". The move is reportedly being done to improve the security of the IE browser. However, with browsers such as Firefox gaining market share, many people speculate that the new Internet Explorer will come with more than just security enhancements. Features such as tabbed browsing, built in anti-spy ware, and RSS aggregating are all features that appear to be coming with the Rincon project.

If you have been paying attention, you certainly have noticed an increasing number of websites that are employing CSS and an increasing number of resources talking about how great CSS is. If you have not yet jumped on the CSS bandwagon, you may want to consider doing so immediately.

CSS has many different benefits for website owners. The most obvious is the pure, raw design capabilities CSS brings to websites.

Google has recently implemented a program where any webmaster can create a Sitemap of their Site and submit it for indexing by Google. It is a quick and easy way for you to keep your site constantly indexed and updated in Google.

The program is appropriately called Google Sitemaps.

Everywhere you turn online these days you hear the word "podcast" or "podcasting." No, it's not some broadcasting method used by Martians, even though it might sound like it. A Podcast is just an audio file that is syndicated via an RSS feed, that you download and listen to with your computer or a portable device such as an iPod.

What makes it different from an ordinary RSS feed is the audio component included in the "enclosure field." Think of it as a feed that talks to you.

Google is working on its most ambitious project to date, the creation of a global data transfer network that could effectively serve as a private Internet. Since the introduction of AdWords three years ago, Google has become the world's largest media company and advertising vehicle. It has grown to rival Microsoft in scope and scale. The process has made it a fully globalized corporation.

We all know that Google is the dominant search engine, and controls a large percentage of online advertising. But many of us -- even regular Google users -- are not aware of some of Google's other services. Most of them are presented as new ways of listing and categorizing the universe.

Just like spring cleaning a house, the html code of your web pages should get periodic cleaning as well. Over time, as changes and updates are made to a web page, the code can become littered with unnecessary clutter, slowing down page load times and hurting the efficiency of your web page. Cluttered html can also seriously impact your search engine ranking.