Overmortal Technology Blog.

How Much Does a Professional Web Site Cost?

by Michael on 2010-01-29 14:39:03 tags: ui, user experience, user interface, ux, web design, web development, wireframes

Web designers and developers the world over cringe when this question is asked. Why? Because most often the person asking the question doesn't understand the importance of the "professional" part. We live in a world where people are advertising full web site packages on Craigslist for $199.00; yet potential clients don't understand the difference between those low-end cookie-cutter templates with a little flair and a professionally built web site that actually enhances and compliments their business. We've lost quite a few contracts here at Overmortal because buyers didn't understand why our web design ran 5-6 ...

Django Settings Aren't Accessible from Models

by Michael on 2009-12-04 11:08:59 tags: django, django-tagging, models, python, settings, tagging

We ran into an interesting problem yesterday. As any good programmer knows, you never hard code path information into your code. You use properties files, external XML, etc. In Django, you use the settings.py file.

The settings.py file is a python file like any other. It's all python code. This means that you can add your own stuff in there too - like file and directory paths.

Yesterday we were working on some model code for a client's e-commerce application and the strangest thing happened. It wouldn't let us access the variables from the settings file ...

Web Design Inspiration and Morphogenesis

by Michael on 2009-11-27 08:51:10 tags: overmortal, web design, web design inspiration

In the world of web design, nothing stings worse than when somebody else rips you off. But unfortunately, we're talking about technology and the Internet, and in this grand ol' age of openness, easy access, and millions upon millions of web pages, eventually somebody is going to do things that look similar to your accomplishments. It happens - whether with web design or some neat new AJAX functionality.

As designers and technologists, we accept that. Coming from a writing background, I've had the luxury of being plagiarized by a major city newszine in the past. It was a blatant ...

Social Web Design: Joshua Porter and Bokardo Design

by Michael on 2009-11-20 08:46:01 tags: bokardo design, joshua porter, social design, social web, ui, user experience, user interface, ux, web design

Over the course of my career, I've dealt with many different web design firms and web design freelancers; and in a growing market where anybody who can customize a MySpace page thinks they can sell their services to companies as a web designer, finding the right web designer for your company is paramount.

At Overmortal, we have a great team of web designers who really know their craft and perform very well. We work with customers to make sure the design accomplishes it's goal and adds to the overall value of the business.

Sometimes, however, Overmortal isn't ...

Welcome to Overmortal Michael Szul

by Kathleen on 2009-11-06 08:18:16 tags: chief technology officer, cto, michael szul, szul

Overmortal would like to give a warm welcome to our new Chief Technology Officer Michael Szul. Szul has spent since 1998 working in the computer industry, specifically on web sites and web application development. He is a skilled enterprise level developer with advanced JavaScript and AJAX capabilities. Szul is adept at multiple languages, and is a keen problem solver, taking charge when the unknown rears its head. He has spent time consulting at previous employers, as well as working in the insurance and (most recently) the travel industries.

More than just a new hire, Michael Szul is a valued member ...

GrokThis: Powerful and Reliable Web Hosting

by Michael on 2009-10-23 08:29:58 tags: cloud computing, grok this, grokthis, vps, web hosting

Before this sounds like an advertisement instead of an article, let's state right at the outset that we don't use GrokThis' services. One of our higher-up employees did - prior to working at this company - but Overmortal itself has never used them. This blog post is being written as an examination of offerings and past services rendered. Take it as you will.

One thing that you can definitely say about GrokThis is that they try their hardest to accommodate all the latest frameworks, supporting ASP.NET (through Mono), Catalyst, Python/Django, FastCGI, HTML::Mason, Jiffy, Plone, Ruby on Rails ...

When to Quit Your Job

by Michael on 2009-10-16 10:26:59 tags: career planning, jobs

Whether you're happy or not at your current place of employment there always comes a time when you have to make a decision about your future. That future most often entails moving on to a new job. But when should you do it? Many people struggle with this question day-in and day-out, until they're finally pushed to the point where their stress levels are too high and they do something rash.

This isn't the way to quit your job. This solves nothing and often causes you more grief than anything else when you finally let off that ...

Windows Vista and Django: Permission Denied Error

by Michael on 2009-09-09 07:32:54 tags: django, permission denied, uac, user account control, windows vista

We recently upgraded the office to Windows Vista machines and the transition went pretty smoothly. It wasn't until we needed to make some modifications to a few Django projects that we started to run into issues. Namely, while attempting to start the development server for Django (via "manage.py runserver"), the server would seem like it was starting up, but after printing the standard Django output in the command window, it would print out another line giving us "permission denied" and then returning back to the "C" prompt.

In an attempt to fix this, the first step was to ...

How To Interview a Programmer (Dos and Don'ts)

by Michael on 2009-09-04 15:11:48 tags: computer programmer, headhunter, interviewing, software engineer

I've been on both the giving and the receiving end of interviews in my long career as a software engineer, and I've been privvy to a great many styles of interviews. There are interview questions that completely turn me off as a potential candidate and there are interview styles that make me want to jump at the chance to work for a company. In any event, interviewing programmers can be a tricky process, and I wanted to lay out some of the "dos" and "don'ts" that companies and human resource departments should follow to make their job ...

Aptana Studio Profession 1.5 on Windows Vista

by Michael on 2009-08-22 11:00:43 tags: aptana studio, google app engine, windows 7, windows vista

Two important upgrades occurred at the office in the recent weeks. The first was the release of the latest version of Aptana Studio (1.5) codenamed Andretti, which was built on top of the latest Eclipse open source build. The second was an office upgrade to Windows Vista.

The upgrade to Aptana Studio 1.5 was not as smooth as we would have hoped. It required a complete reinstall. There was no upgrade option available because of the differences between the underlying Eclipse builds. We had to first uninstall the previous version of Aptana Studio and then reinstall the new ...

Imagine Your Reality: Talks on Social Media

by Michael on 2009-08-14 10:12:57 tags: imagine your reality, life coaching, social media, social networking, taylor ellwood

Following up on my "bully beatdown" of the social media expert meme, I wanted to examine some of the business practices and ideas of an actual social media consultant: life coach Taylor Ellwood of Imagine Your Reality. Taylor is a noted author and speaker who a few years ago opened up a consulting service to help people through life coaching. Most recently, he has been consulting with businesses on their social media initiatives and training people and businesses alike on the advantages and practices of social networking and social media.

From his web site:

I teach businesses and writers how ...

Napkee: From Mockups to Reality

by Michael on 2009-08-05 10:10:18 tags: balsamiq, mockups, napkee, web design, web development, wireframes

We've been very clear in the past with our enjoyment and use of Balsamiq Mockups. It's a fantastic product that has helped us out greatly with our day-to-day wireframe needs. It wasn't long ago that we were followed on Twitter by a user named Napkee. We check out all of our followers to see if we should follow them back (or block those that look like spammers).

Napkee, as it turns out, is a new Micro-ISV, building a sister product to Balsamiq Mockups. With Mockups having an open format that readily allows developers to manipulate the resulting ...

The Emergence of the "Social Media Expert"

by Michael on 2009-07-31 15:01:36 tags: sem, seo, social media, social media expert, social networking

There's been a trend recently in LinkedIn profiles, Twitter accounts, blog posts and marketing buzzwords. It's a trend that reminds me of the days when SEO first started to gain ground. A trend that was relived when AdWords started ripping through most company's marketing plans. This trend is now rearing its ugly head again; only this time, it has taken the name "social media expert."

Now I'm not attacking people in the SEO or SEM field; however, I will say that those supposed "experts" that came crawling out of the woodworks with their "I can get ...

When to Call it Quits with a Client

by Michael on 2009-07-17 18:50:28 tags: client relations, entrepreneurs

Young entrepreneur and freelancers often fall victim to insecure thoughts of "what if no other work comes my way?" As a result, they often try to obtain every client large and small, and do even the most unnecessary things to keep a client happy - even if that client is unreasonable. The sad simple truth is that oftentimes it's clients such as these that can drag a company down. Sometimes you just have to know when to call it quits.

The first rule of service-oriented business is that you don't have to accept a client. The fear is that ...

The Power of Twitter and Emergent Technology

by Michael on 2009-07-10 08:58:54 tags: blip, songly, spaz, summize, twitpic, twittelator pro, twitter

Twitter has been a wonderful tool and surprisingly fun and viral piece of technology. It's caught the world by storm, inserted itself into the world's lexicon and caused politicians to start pretending they even know what it is.

Twitter, itself, however is not a complicated piece of technology, nor an incredibly original idea. In fact, Twitter's power and popularity are the result of the ideas and ingenuity of its user base - not its developers.

The concept of Twitter was to have an application where you could tell your friend what you were doing at that moment. It ...

Teamwork PM for Project Management

by Michael on 2009-07-07 09:42:43 tags: basecamp, project management, teamworkpm

Here at Overmortal, we've been programming with Ruby since before the days of the Ruby on Rails framework. Needless to say, we were well aware of Rails and the project it came from (Basecamp) from nearly the beginning. Basecamp is a fantastic project management solution that is well-deserved of the attention it gets, but at the end of the day, we use Teamwork PM in our company.

There are two major drawbacks that prevented us from staying with Basecamp - both of which were addressed by Teamwork PM. The first was that time tracking was only available in the $49 ...

Balsamiq Mockups for Wireframes

by Michael on 2009-06-29 09:14:40 tags: balsamiq, mockups, web design, wireframes

Every good web designer knows that wireframes are a must in the develoment cycle. Well thought out wireframes establish a solid layout and workflow for an application and are a primary means of ensuring client expectations throughout the project.

At Overmortal, we've dealt with clients in corporate situations where we've been the development house, while another company was brought in for design. Without question, the teams that used wireframes prior to designing elements of an application contributed much more to the overall satisfaction of the client.

A few month ago, I came across Balsamiq Mockups - an Adobe AIR ...

How to Get Your Site Unbanned from Google

by Michael on 2009-06-19 09:48:50 tags: google, overmortal, search engines, yahoo

Getting banned by the search engines is something that every webmaster dreads. No web site can survive without being indexed by Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. If, however, your web site does get banned by the search engines, there are certain steps you can follow to get your site on the fast track to being reinstated and re-indexed.

The first rule is to NOT GET BANNED. This sounds silly to list, but the reality is that the team here at Overmortal has been building web sites since 1996 and the rarity of seeing and/or hearing about banned sites in our ...

Extending Django's Flatpages

by Michael on 2009-06-12 10:38:46 tags: admin, django, flatpages, meta tags, python, seo

If you're a Django developer and you've had to deal with static content, you're very familiar with Django's flatpages application and middleware. Most developers are content with implementing this solution and leaving it "as is" for the content site editors who handle those pages. However, in any company with an SEO employee, or a marketing employee with SEO knowledge, you'll often run into a situation where meta tags need to be managed along with the static content. Django's flatpages don't have this ability by default, but it is something that you can easily ...

Aptana Studio's Nokia WRT Plugin

by Michael on 2009-05-08 09:47:09 tags: aptana, nokia

A few months ago I was invited to view a webcast of the Nokia WRT plugin for Aptana Studio. At first I was skeptical. The last thing I needed was to learn another programming language for mobile devices. Upon getting involved in the webcast, however, I learned that the Nokia WRT is web standards-based and not based on some proprietary programming language.

While everybody is all "ga-ga" over the iPhone and iPhone SDK development, Nokia decided to base their development in a similar vein to Adobe AIR - HTML, CSS & JavaScript. That alone is extremely refreshing for any software development company ...

Development: Database Creation Dos and Don'ts

by Michael on 2009-03-25 08:12:36 tags: database, database conventions, legacy database integration

After you've been a software programmer for a certain number of years, you often take the little things for granted. You get so used to working within a set pattern that you don't realize how dependent you've become on that pattern until something (or someone) comes along and makes your day-to-day programming tasks just a little harder than they need to be.

Database programming is one of these areas that often gets muddled. Unless you work for a large scale company, chances are there aren't any people on your staff whose sole purpose is to interact ...

Are You Getting Login Prompts When Debugging Code in Firefox?

by Michael on 2009-03-11 13:54:11 tags: debugging, firefox

Have you ever been debugging code in Firefox when suddenly you're hit with a login prompt for certain elements referenced on the page?

We've run into this issue a couple of times and decided to investigate what's actually going on. It's an annoying little occurence that can make a programmer want to band his or her head against the wall.

Many thanks to Martin Crockett for this fix. His was the first web site we found the solution at. We will repost the fix here for archiving purposes.

In the address bar type "about:config" (without ...

Making Multi-Column Tables from a QuerySet in Django Templates

by Michael on 2009-02-17 10:23:19 tags: django, django templates, multi-column, python

When I first got started programming in the Django framework, Django was still relatively new. As such, documentation was scarce. It look long hours of searching to often find complete solutions to complex problems. Sometimes, it even took a large chunk of time to find simple solutions to small problems. One small problem new Django users often run into is how to create a multi-column table structure in a template page. Django's template language is very strict and does not want you injecting code galore in your markup. As a result, this strictness often forces you to find a ...

Ring in the New Year with Overmortal

by Michael on 2009-01-02 09:02:00 tags: overmortal

2008 became a tough year for many companies because of the economy, but where many wallow in the despair of a recession, the companies destined for success use it as an opportunity to become the breakout companies of the next few years. Those that spent wisely and built strong foundations will excel past the successful marks of companies from 2-3 years ago.

In 2009, Overmortal has a ton of new technological work coming down the pipeline. From advanced Python & Django applications to Adobe AIR to iPhone SDK development, 2009 looks to be a year of technological advancement for us and ...

Installing Aptana Jaxer with Apache VirtualHosts

by Michael on 2008-12-15 12:09:46 tags: apache, aptana jaxer, javascript, virtualhost

Aptana's Jaxer is a server side JavaScript framework that allows you to code entire applications (frontend and backend) in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, while using AJAX to postback data from JavaScript events. Sound interesting? We thought so too so we went about installing Jaxer on our server. We realized right away that the default installation wasn't going to work for us, as we wanted to integrate things directly with our current Apache configuration. After some searching and trial and error, we managed to get the setup to work the way we wanted it.

So here you go:

We ...

Security: Cleaning a Virus Infected Network

by Michael on 2008-12-09 09:06:33 tags: anti-spyware, anti-virus, networking, security

When a company's network gets compromised by a virus, it can set off panic throughout the workplace; and with Internet access a “must” for most company employees (specifically for email and company Intranet work), a network infection can happen in the blink of an eye.

In one particular case, Overmortal was called in to help one of our clients fight a company-wide infection that had crippled their network. The infection was extremely bad. Every single desktop computer was infected with three separate viruses and each time any one computer was clean, the virus was pushed back out to it ...

Software Development: Aptana Studio 1.2

by Michael on 2008-12-04 08:40:19 tags: adobe air, ajax, aptana, django, iphone, php, programming ide, python, ruby on rail, software development

When Java was the primetime language of choice for most companies, it wasn't hard to come up with an IDE or two that would more than suffice in development. A lot of the projects that I worked on fell into one of two categories: IBM or open source. Many of the large-scale big companies working with Java were either backing IBM or Sun Microsystems. If you were an IBM backer, you used IBM's Visual Age for Java as your IDE of choice. If you were a Sun or open source backer, you more than like used a variation ...

Overmortal: Choosing a Name

by Michael on 2008-11-27 09:55:39 tags: branding, overmortal

Some people have asked us over the years why we chose the name Overmortal for our company, and what exactly the term means.

Overmortal is actually a play off of the Friedrich Nietzsche term "overman" from Nietzsche's concept of man versus overman.

When thoughts on a name for this company began to circulate, "overman" was one of the suggestions. Most of the domain names using "overman" were already taken, so we started to think about variations of it. I'm not exactly sure how we got to "overmortal" but when the name was first spoken, it had a nice ...

Search Engine Optimization: Pizza SEO Biting Back?

by Michael on 2008-11-03 16:30:09 tags: pizza seo, pizza seo project, pizza seo wars, search engine optimization, seo

We found some link-backs to our blog in our server files this week and were surprised to see some traffic coming from a Pizza SEO Blogspot account. No, not the Pizza SEO Blogspot blog of SEO pirate Justin Boland, but a decidedly different one. I went to check it out and discovered that the Pizza SEO team, whose brand name Mr. Boland highjacked, had not only started a brand new Blogspot blog of their own, but also proceeded to attempt to knock our company thanks to our deconstructive essay about the Pizza SEO Wars.

Strangely enough, this SEO company rips ...

Using Django Models without Using Django

by Michael on 2008-11-03 11:08:03 tags: django, orm, python, web site development

Not all of the web sites we do are full-board software applications. Some of these web sites are simple brochure-ware for local area businesses. Although we could overcharge for a full-suite content management system and hand out chainsaws to cut butter (like some of our competitors), that's just not our style. We try to fulfill our clients' actual technology needs, and sometimes, that need is just a plain old web site with a handful of pages.

Some brochure-ware sites do require a bit of dynamic coding though - such as a web site that requires newsletter signup functionality. This functionality ...

Search Engine Optimization: The Legacy of Pizza SEO

by Michael on 2008-10-14 12:05:27 tags: pizza seo, pizza seo project, pizza seo wars, quality content, search engine optimization, seo

Search engine optimization (or SEO) is one of the most misunderstood practices in the technology industry today. It’s misunderstood by business managers. It’s misunderstood by technology people. And many times, it's misunderstood by the very people that presume to be experts in it.

Looking at the services section of our web site - under SEO – you'll read the following passage:

With the hush-hush nature of the search engines' "secret" search algorithms, not many technology jobs are more mystifying than search engine optimization (SEO). Unfortunately, the mystique of this field of study has also left the business world ...

Technology, Security and Business: Finger Pointing Loses Money

by Michael on 2008-09-18 15:53:32 tags: consulting, hacking, security, technology

With advances in technology being so profound over the last few decades, security has become an important issue for every business taking the steps to bring their company to the next level. For those businesses relying on consulting companies to handle their technology needs, security becomes an even bigger issue.

Putting your trust in a consulting company to ensure that your technology is secure is a two fold application of trust. You're not only assuming that the consulting company can provide you with said security, but you should also be assuming that the company will future-proof your technology from ...

Ruby on Rails Development: Death to all Hobbyists

by Michael on 2008-09-16 11:50:14 tags: hobbyists, php, ruby on rails, script kiddies, software architecture

Ruby on Rails is the most hyped about technology in modern programming since the days that XML started passing the lips of CEO's who just "had" to join in on the latest round of buzzword bingo.

I didn't believe the hype initially. By the time Ruby on Rails started to gain traction, I was hip deep in Mono development (the open source version of .NET, which could run on Mac OS X and Linux), and really had no desire to pick up "yet another" framework to master. I was familiar with the Ruby programming language, having programmed with ...