My brother recently reminded me of our first home computer and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share something from the vault of antiquity and personal history. Not to mention, while computers are getting more powerful – though on a line-curve it’s slightly plateauing with the new frontier making them smaller and smaller – the computer has been been around long enough to be, well, common. At one time they seemed so new, mysterious, and like something from the future; now with computers being so ubiquitous that one can tweet from your refrigerator they seem everywhere to almost not be noticed. I’ve an iPhone in my pocket, an iPad, my car has a simple yet more powerful than the entire Apollo spacecraft system built into it’s dash, not to mention laptops, etc. There was a time, not too long ago, this would all seem like science fiction.

I should note that, by the time our family had our first home computer, at our school we were already writing programming and designing on the venerable Apple ][ which had been around since 1980, but to be able to have this in our home, and hooked to our television (as was the case back then) it was so... futuristic!

Enter the Timex Sinclair 2068 with a whole 72K of RAM! Whoa, enough an entire game to load from a tape cassette or cartridge with room to spare – though a current text doc I just worked on wouldn't fit on the Timex Sinclair's ROM+RAM, at the time, that was HUGE!

There were games, like flight simulator that had creative naming like "Big Airport" and "Little Airport," not to mention "Round Lake," "Square Lake," and "Long Lake." As a long time airplane buff and pilot wannabe this was fantastic, though I had to use my imagination for things as terrain or change of time of day. Another game was a clone of Apple Defender that you could edit your own missions, drawing your own caves to fly your spaceship through. There was another game I recall that was a bit like Starcraft, a space military strategy game, it was, for it's time, rather addictive, fantastic really. Simpler times in gaming but many hours spent playing and, in fact, learning.

Though in hindsight it was mindboggling inexcusable as a selling feature, the Timex Sinclair did allow you to code and develop in a rather watered-down form of BASIC programming language which, at the time, was widely used. I had tried my hand at FORTRAN and Assembly languages but BASIC had an english-ease to it. Mind you now wrapping my head around things like Objective J and Objective C make BASIC seem, well, basic. Still, a real craftsperson doesn't blame his tools for his job which, at the time, I hit through ground running writing and programming all types of text-based adventure games (known as interactive fiction) about dragons and knights and dungeons. It's amazing how immersed you, and then in kind your friends, can get in a game where your only inputs are typing N, W, S, E and things like "get sword" and "fight monster" etc.

In a sense, as a person who owns a Playstation 3 and has gamed on PCs since there was graphic games, which included simple ones on the Apple ][, I bemoan and miss simpler times when you could read and pick your adventure and use your imagination I suppose in the same way people read books for entertainment. Sure writing each program to a cassette and running to your friend's house seems odd in the days a flash drive can hold a million-times the info a Memorex cassette could. This isn't to say I'll give up my iPad any time soon, but there is a type of innocence lost in computing these days, from programming languages, back when really almost anyone could get into them (trust me, learning Objective C or any C-based language is steep), to the sharing of information. Mind you this is all pre-interent everywhere so I subscribed to magazines and would hit up computer stores of the era for the latest tricks for my trusty Timex Sinclair 2068.

In hindsight, without having something like the Timex Sinclair at my disposal, I'd have most likely never developed my curiosity and interest in computers. This would mean ever gotten to work for Adobe, maybe though this is arguable due to my lust and rapid embracing of the first Apple Lisa our school got and how I saw the future of design was using a mouse and a program. Never perhaps fully understood how HTML + CSS can work to design for the internet or been fascinated by interactive programming for portable devices. Overall it was not even arguably an important cog in the early gears of my life.

So here’s to you old Timey, thanks for feeding my love of computers and what you can do with them, helping me with the career and life I’ve had to date. I’m not sure where you are, maybe hidden in my mother’s attic, maybe in a landfill (which would make me sad), but you helped me become who I am today. For that I’ll be forever grateful!

With the potential success of Adobe Muse (code name, not final name) which will be released with a subscription service, there’s some whispers being leaked that they may go to subscription services for ALL their products.

Adobe has billed a subscription model for it’s software as being a good thing “you’ll only have to pay for the months you use it,” which, if you’re like me, or if you are an agency, with almost every design program that is every month, hence, not sure how that’s really a good thing.

Secondly, all programs will need to phone home, like Adobe Muse does, to even launch and run. This, right here, is NOT a good thing. I’d love to say I work from remote beaches all the time when I design and, in fact, this has happened, not often enough, but has. It’ll do me no good to be far away from humanity wanting to do some uninterrupted design only I can’t because I can’t launch the program I need. In fact as plugged in as we are in 2012, truth be told, not everything always has an up and working internet, I know from friends at agencies and other freelancers, connections aren’t guaranteed. And in fact during my beta testing of Muse I’ve had connections in cafes drop off and suddenly the program goes unresponsive, a very unnerving feeling to think “am I going to lose this work?” The ramifications certainly won’t sit well any older school designer who’s conditioned to love one’s hard drive no matter how good cloud computing is.

There is, in fact, something to be said still for owning physical copies of your software or, at the very least, a file on your hard drive that is yours to back up and will run regardless of if your computer is on the ‘Net or not. Not to mention, forcing people to upgrade seems to be Adobe’s business model of late, which seemingly only proves they’ve run out of creative ideas, certainly most new features aren’t necessary, most the good things have been thought up during the heyday of Adobe when I worked there.

It’s like selling a highly reliable Toyota Corolla, why would someone buy a new car when their old one can last seemingly forever? Not connecting the dots saying Adobe is as reliable, a Corolla doesn’t crash because you’ve run a design with placed raster image beyond the pasteboard. Among designers some feel the best Adobe versions are in the past, some swear by Photoshop 7, I’ve a pretty solid argument Adobe CS 3 was the pinnacle of the suite from a coding standpoint. A problem comes in that  many service providers and designers can’t necessarily afford to upgrade every version. With the potential of how files created in a subscription environment work you’d really be locked into your versions, but of course, this is exactly what Adobe is banking on, literally.

Adobe’s brass seems to be more interested in appeasing stockholders than their user base with quality software, not the good decent people trying to make good products but the top people it’s about how do they capture sales and make money. I will defend one upside to this model, though there are always those with the skills to work around it, piracy will be greatly curtailed if the programs need to phone home and handshake at every startup. Just the same again, those wanting to work without the applications having to authenticate with Adobe HQ will be frustrated and look elsewhere, only sadly there isn’t a lot of competition for Adobe, at least, not yet, and maybe it’d work out as Adobe needs a new Macromedia, maybe then

they’ll stop writing such bloated pieces of… software.

Mind you, none of this is set in stone, probably not for Adobe Creative Suite due out this year, but potentially soon. Subscriptions are best left for magazines, online or in print, than for software. Some of us like to buy our tools and keep them for as long as we want. If I want a nice hammer I don’t buy one wondering if I may need to pound nails next month I’ll have to pay to use it next month and, next nicer model hammer comes out, I’ll need to pay for that too. Software is a tool for the job, let us choose how we want to use those tools Adobe.

Create compelling content relative to your business. If you’re trying to draw views from local audiences, on your page and in your social media outlets, utilize content and links from local audiences, attractions, or happenings. Search engines more and more hone in on specifically the nature of what you write and what you connect to and who connects to you. Also (sadly unlike this site sometimes) keep up with content, create new content regularly with relevant keywords written in the posts and linking content to relevant sites.

2. Hone Your Message(s)

Want to bolster your site in search rankings without dropping a ton of change on Google Adwords/other online advertising, keep your message concise in a way that various search engines will see a clear pattern with what you’re saying. This gets back to your cross-linking as well, if search bots see a very concise pattern between the words you use, your social pages, and pages that link to you be they reviews, recommends, testimonials, or similar organizations in your industry, this will help your page ranking immeasurably. Know your message, repeat it in creative ways.

3. Links Matter

Can’t be repeated enough. Make sure you have links that are coming from relevant sources. Don’t just link to and/or accept links from anyone and everyone, accept and link only to those that stay on your message if you’re a business and ultimately you want to be found for a very specific niche. You can link from everyone but search engines are smarter than this, if you sell t-shirts and you accept a bunch of linkbacks from a company that makes chairs, that won’t necessarily help your ranking, in fact it probably will hurt it.

4. Use Only One Domain

I know it’s temping to have multiple sites for the same things but in 2012 search engines frown on this, it’s as played out as juicing meta data in the code in the old days. Search engines are built for people, people shouldn’t need to be duped to come to your site if you have only one that does all the business, resist creating a bunch of backdoors and push links. In fact some search engines will lower your ranking now if you use multiple similar ones that redirect. Less is more, it always is. Always.

5. Encourage Reviews

Search engines really like reviews, it usually will add word optimization for you to have a client or customer drop some facet of your business in a comment section, even if it’s negative, for page ranking it’ll still be a positive. And while I can’t condone it, at ALL, if you have to, ask people you know to review your product or service or whatever it is, maybe with a caveat, only if nobody has seen/gone to/reviewed your product or service yet so your reviews are a ghosttown. I don’t recommend deleting bad reviews on your site either, rather, answer them personally on the site, unless it’s someone trolling, actively engage your reviewer in the public on your site apologizing and saying you’ll try harder, it beats ignoring and is better than deleting a commenter who may take that as proof you’re just not a nice organization and will go tell others.

6. Use Titles on Pages

Most CMS systems are great as it’s built in. If for whatever reason they’re not, title the pages (if you don’t know, that’s those words at the top above your browser bar), create a title for each page that makes sense. Make those titles relevant to whatever your product, service, or what you do, and be consistent with them. If many use the same wording or of the same topic search engines recognize the pattern and will improve ranking and send views your way. Keep the naming simple though, try not to write a sentence.

7. Text and/or Alt Tagging is Still Your Friend

It’s not just for pictures, use alt-text tagging for video, audio, and if for some horrid reason you’re stuck putting some awful outmoded outdated bad idea on your site called Flash anywhere, alt tag/text it with a description. Search engines still read these and they still matter. [And note move as quickly as possible to kill all Flash anything anywhere on your site and move to something relevant to the internet since 2000 like jQuery or anything Javascript, HTML5 and CSS3+ compliant, your user-base and all who go to your site will thank you]

8. SEO of Yore May Be Dead, Keywords Aren’t [Quite Yet]

While search engines get smarter so SEO is snake oil unless it’s someone helping you craft actual relevant content an messages, aim for approximately three targeted keywords per page, which is to say, three words VERY relevant to what you do, who you are, and what’s your message.

9. Use Google Analytics

It’s free. And it can break down your site in ways where you can dig fairly deep to see how people are getting to you, where they’re going, how long they stay, and where they leave to. It’s not an exact science, however what you see that you’re not doing may tell you what you should be doing.

10. Don’t Stress Too Much About Page Ranking

You heard me. You can drive yourself batty thinking in 2012 with literally quadrillions of web pages out there and your site isn’t number one. Don’t buy into supposed “musts” or be sold a bill of goods by anyone saying they can increase your site to the top ten results, not unless they have a “or we’ll pay you one million dollars” guarantee. Search engines are always being tweaked and ultimately their mission is to return what the user most likely wants to see, not something that can be bought and sold, well, not by much. Keep doing whatever it is you’re doing, experiment, try, keep creating content be that on your page, your social media pages, stay engaged with your clients and customers, enjoy what you do, learn every day, and spend every day online actively seeking what works and what doesn’t.

If you run into any issues or need any of the above broken down or explained further, and/or you need professional help you can contact me, colin at colinnekritz dot com. Otherwise just keep doing what you’re doing, keep on message best you can, be real, be honest, and you’ll be doing better service than many on the internet. Best of luck.