Blog for May 2007

We have your new summer job waiting!

Visual Lizard is looking for someone to join our team. If you live and breathe web standards, love looking at the world through XHTML, enjoy defining the things you see around you with CSS while figuring out how to put it all into a PHP array and know how to join multiple tables into a single all powerful MySQL query, we want to talk to you.

Additional things that will help you fit in around here are:

  • you know when developing web sites there is only one person that matters, the user
  • you think that all things that can be digital will be
  • love music in any genre ... well ... except hard-core, flag-waving, fiddlin’ country
  • love working in OS X because it just works
  • enjoy long discussions about the virtues of solid design vs. the latest technology du’jour
  • think that video games are a path to enlightenment, especially Guitar Hero II
  • understand your way around the odd CLI and know what GREP does
  • like solving problems by using technology
  • have an annoyingly persistent attention to detail that drives most of your friends nuts

This position is in our Winnipeg office and would begin as soon as you can. It will be a 3 month term position with an excellent chance for long-term employment. Our company has always been based on people with passion, imagination and desire. We can teach you everything else.

If you are serious about joining us as we work to change the world, please send your resume, relevant URLs and all time favorite video game to hireme [at] visuallizard [dot] com. We look forward to talking to you.

Daily Links

Daily Links

Google drops annoying link pandering sites from search results

In an interesting announcement, Google has announced that they will be dropping sites that display AdSense ads but have no real content from their search results.

AdSense,, for those of you that don’t do what we do, is a form of advertising that Google uses. It allows people with web sites to place some code from Google into their web pages. Google then indexes that web site or web page and matches content from that page to matching ads. For example, if you run a web site about web design and you place AdSense ads into it, you are likely to get ads from companies that relate to web design (web hosting, Adobe, Dell, etc...) and when each of those ads it viewed (loaded into the browser) you receive a tiny payment from the advertiser(s). All the money is handled by Google. They collect it from the advertisers and then pay it out to the web sites with ads in them. Very simple and in fact has been a big part of Google being worth billions of dollars.

In reading the New York Post, the following from their site summarizes this nicely

The search giant has notified a number of Web publishers in the last few days that they will be dropped from its popular "AdSense" program starting June 1.

The cut-off notices jolted the online ad world, where hundreds of thousands of people make money in exchange for allowing Google to place ads on their Web sites.

Google’s AdSense software has made it easy for advertisers to piggyback on any Web site - no matter how obscure - that attracts an audience.

Source: NEW YORK POST - GOOGLE ANNOUNCES PURGE OF AD-HEAVY WEB SITES

By HOLLY M. SANDERS

In a nutshell, this is fantastic news. This means that you will no longer get steered into dead-end, link pandering sites that are only trying to get search results (and the related traffic) in an effort to profit from the Ad Sense placement they have on their sites.

For Google’s users this should be awesome news. Search results for common searches should become much more useable. AdSense placement on legitimate web sites will gain better content as people with small campaigns can see their content get into more legitimate websites and not lost in those annoying, no-content-all-link-type of sites. Doug should be even happier than the average Google user.

 

StarCraft II

StarCraft II

Hell, it’s about time!

Daily Links

Daily Links

Daily Links

Kill the designer?

First off, let’s be clear here, we love our designer friends. We appreciate all of them and what they do so much that we used to believe we ourselves could be designers. Lucky for us we got over that!  However, it does happen that from time to time, one of our friends brings us a design that we just look at and weep.

If you have ever had one of those projects that make you cringe when you see the design? We have and we feel for you. Many designers think designing for print and the web are the same. We know otherwise and so do you!

Visual Lizard has in the works, an outlet for you, the programmer, to vent against these designers. We will provide a community for you to get your thoughts and ideas out so that the design community can feel your pain.

Of course, this is going to go both ways, because we know that designers, at times, hand off gorgeous work ready to be made into the next great web site, only to see the finished product look nothing like the original design. Designers, you will also have an opportunity to strike back against the programmer as well.

When?!? ........soon my friends.........soon!