Category Archives: Commerce Server 2007

Sep 03 1 comments
ASP.NET, Commerce Server 2007, Freelance, Google, Internet, Joe, Lifetime Products, Microsoft, Web Development, Yahoo, education, technology, work

How Lifetime Products Uses Data Feeds on the Web

@markmathson made a simple comment on Twitter. He said “I agree […], RSS is not dead. […]” I replied that Lifetime Products (my employer) is using data feeds today more than ever. He wanted to know more…

What are Feeds? (RSS, ATOM, RDF)

“Feeds” (for the purpose of this article) are an alternately formatted view of some set of data. Take this blog, for example. You can read it in your web browser (like many of you are doing now), but hidden just behind the scenes is a link to an “alternate” way to view the same data.

I’ve written about this before in more detail, but, in short, a “feed” presents the raw information (or “data”) rather than the data dropped on the page. Feeds are especially useful when information can be logically organized onto blocks (articles, products, calendar events, contacts, etc.).

Most people out there “subscribe” to other’s feeds via a “feed reader”. Feed readers these days typically come bundled with your Web Browser and Email clients, but you can get a dedicated program if you’d like.

Subscribing to feeds via a feed reader makes keeping up with blogs and sites easier because your feed reader will go out and grab the new posts every so often and bring them to you, freeing you up so you don’t have to visit all those sites individually.

And, without feeds, video and audio podcasts wouldn’t exist. Yup, feeds are the technology that drive them, too!

How has Lifetime used RSS?

When you’re talking about data feeds, you can do two two things with them:

  • publish (converting or formatting your data in a specific data format)
  • consume (taking a data feed, reading it, and doing something with it)

We started playing around with publishing feeds on our “current employment openings” page and our “press release” page.

Shortly thereafter we launched our corporate blog, and published its RSS feed as well.

We then published an update to our flagship website (http://www.Lifetime.com) to consume and reformat our blog articles in various positions on the site, filtering by category and keywords. We put a feed panel on our home page, our product pages, and on almost every other page on the site. This helps us build cross-site links for SEO purposes, and helps our customers see articles related to the product that they’re researching that they might not have seen otherwise.

We began to think “outside the box” and decided to throw in RSS feeds on our B2C e-commerce site as well.

We didn’t stop there, we used the same code which transforms the product data so that we can turn it into RSS and added additional transforms to publish GoogleBase, PriceGrabber, PowerReviews, and other product feeds to help “push” our products into other’s databases, expanding the breadth of reach. We even wrote a transform to publish a sitemap.xml file for Google, Bing, and Yahoo! (et. al.) to grab whenever we add, remove, or change product data.

While those aren’t RSS per se, they serve to underscore the importance of presenting your data in alternate formats.

Your turn!

What are you doing with RSS (and other data) feeds?

Mar 18 0 comments
Commerce Server 2007, Google, Internet, Joe, Lifetime Products, Web Development, technology, work

No-Follow and Vote-Abstain

The question was asked of me:

When you post links to our sites on external sites, will they have a “no-follow” rule that will end up keeping them from helping us in search engine rankings?

Good question, but the answer isn’t so cut-and-dry…

There are several factors coming in to play in the “external link” scenario. Many of the sites will have “no-follow” or “vote-abstain” attributes assigned to them.

These attributes do not mean what the HTML specification defines them to be. Search engines, particularly Google, will recognize the “no-follow” attribute and will not give as much “Google Love” to those links, so they’re not as good as links without those attributes, but they are still helpful.

What does help is the link itself, and in a few different ways.

First, Google will still see and will still “follow” the link, they just don’t give it as high cross-link value as a link without “no-follow.” Google will, however, see that link and add it to the index (if it’s not already there), and will still add a bit of cross-link value to the linked page.

Second, and this has both Google and “real people” value. This is a link where previously there was none. People will follow the link (“click” on it and come to our site) which means the target page will get more traffic, more traffic equals more relevancy in Google’s eyes, which means the page value will increase.

Also, Google will see the traffic coming from the page with the “no-follow” link to the target page, and will begin to increase the cross-link value for the “no-follow” link.

More real people coming to our pages should equate into more sales (additional traffic to the page will increase the number of sales, given a consistent conversion rate per given page).

Jan 05 0 comments
AJAX, ASP.NET, ASP.NET 2.0, BOWG Advertising, CSS, Commerce Server 2007, Freelance, Geek Speak, Internet, Javascript, Joe, Lifetime Products, SBIC, Totally Awesome Computers, Web Development, finances, technology, wordpress, work

Who is Joe Levi?

Joe Levi was hired by Lifetime Products in November of 2005 to fill the position of Web Application Developer left vacant by their previous Web Developer.

Joe previously worked for BOWG Advertising as their interactive Technology Director developing projects for clients such as 3M HIS, Novell, 3COM, and Sundance Resort. He performed contract work for a local dot com, building their first B2C e-commerce shopping cart solution. He even worked for a local pseudo-celebrity where he wore many hats (including Sharepoint Developer and various technical and management positions).
Joe is a Web of Trust Notary, endorsed by Thawte (a Verisign company), and experienced with x.590 Digital Signature Certificates. Joe believes in the widespread use of PKI Encryption technologies and methodologies as potentially being the “magic bullet” in eliminating online fraud, identity theft, and even casual snooping.

Give Joe a pair of headphones and a can of anything “cold and caffeinated” and he can code for hours on end. He can work efficiently as a solo developer and is also at-home when working as part of a development team.

When asked, Joe tells people that it’s not really that he knows all that much, rather that he’s just really good at figuring things out.
In the years since Joe began his employment with Lifetime Products he has been instrumental in realizing several projects and keeps existing sites and solutions up-to-date and running smoothly.

Although Joe can work inside the constraints and scope of a project, he has a hard time “thinking inside the box” and can often see the larger picture and offer ideas, thoughts, or “what-if” scenarios that can help “future-proof” a given project to extend the value and business-returns.

Resume’ available from www.VisualCV.com/joelevi 

References and Recommendations available from www.Linkedin.com/in/joelevi

Jan 01 0 comments
AJAX, CSS, Commerce Server 2007, Internet, Javascript, Lifetime Products, Web Development, technology, work

How to use Lightbox with Power Reviews

Background: Power Reviews

Power Reviews is a small company trying to make a name for themselves in the product reviews marketplace.

They are relatively new to the scene and scheduled to come out of beta at the end of 2008.

My employer hooked up with them in Third Quarter 2008 while still in their beta period, and we met with some of their growing pains.

Growing pains are to be expected, especially for a small company.

Background: Lightbox

Lightbox is a javascript behaviors library built upon Prototype.js and Script.aculo.us which lets you embed anchor links in your page with a rel= value of “lightbox” or “lightbox[array_value]” and an href= value of an image. The script parses your page onload and dynamically writes in some divs and other containing elements to render the image in a quazi-modal, grayed-out box on top of your page, with next and previous links to let the user scroll through all the images in the array (if using the lightbox[] array notation).

It’s pretty slick, actually, and I used it on this site whenever there is a thumbnail image.

The Problem

Power Reviews renders content dynamically on the page using javascript to talk with the page’s DOM.

Lightbox renders content dynamically on the page using javascript to talk to the page’s DOM.

The two don’t play nicely together.

The Solution

In short, we abandoned Lokesh Dhakar’s Lightbox solution and went with Lytebox by Markus F. Hay. Markus’ version, as he puts it, “was to write a self-contained object that eliminated the dependency of prototype.js, effects.js, and scriptaculous.js. Since the original version of Lytebox (which released with iFrame support), major modifications have been made to improve performance as well as "Slideshow" support, "Themes" support, HTML content support (as opposed to just images) and many more configurable options that allow you to customize the look and feel of Lytebox.” Pretty loft goals, and he really nailed it.

But Lytebox still didn’t work for us, not out of the box anyway, again due to the two scripts (Lytebox and Power Reviews) trying to dynamically write to page via the DOM. Bryan did a bit of his magic jiggery:

  1. writing the dynamically generated divs and whatnot onto the page as static elements.
  2. modifying the javascript to NOT dynamically write these elements.
  3. modifying the javascript to hide the static divs (and whatnot).

Once those changes were made, now all the script has to do is update the already pre-existing divs (and whatnot) and apply the styles and behaviors.

Byran is writing up the details of his magic jiggery, so you’ll have to be patient regarding the specifics.

In the meantime, you can see our implementation here: http://www.buylifetime.com/Products/BLT/PID-6405.aspx

Oct 10 0 comments
AJAX, ASP.NET, ASP.NET 2.0, American Native, Asperger Syndrome/Asperger's Disorder, BOWG Advertising, CSS, Commerce Server 2007, Encryption, Experimentation, Freelance, Friends & Family, Geek Speak, Google, Illegal Immigration, Internet, Javascript, Jessica, Joe, Lifetime Products, Links, MIX07, MIX08, Michael, Microsoft, Natalie, Operating Systems, Paiute, Porter, Prius, Projects, SBIC, Satire, Science, Self-Defense, Silverlight, Spencer, Store, T-Mobile, Totally Awesome Computers, Uncategorized, Video, Web Development, Windows Mobile, activism, apparel, education, environment, family, finances, friends, gardening, health, humor, local reviews, music, photography, politics, religion, scam, solar power, technology, wind power, work, zune

Separation of Topics

I’m trying to separate my articles by placing them on the site that they’re most applicable. Hopefully this will help each site be more relative to its visiting audience.

This means my posts will be split between (presently) three sites:

  • www.JoeLevi.com: “Greener Living through Technology,” local involvement/activism, self-defense, and self-reliance.
  • Natalie.JoeLevi.com: personal and family stuff, Asperger’s Disorder/Asperger’s Syndrome, parenting, raising children, yadda yadda.
  • www.TheBiglerFamily.com: family history, genealogy.

So, there you have it. If you’ve been coming to www.JoeLevi.com for what is now “off-topic” please visit the other sites and subscribe to their feeds.