Search Engine Friendly AJAX Navigation

AJAX is an excellent technology for providing interactive responsive websites. Most popular websites today use AJAX in one form or another. However, AJAX is an organic technology that has grown out of a need to lever more interactive techniques into a system that was never designed to work this way.

The fundamentals of the world-wide web are quite simple. The web is composed of web sites which in turn contain pages. All these pages are linked together in various ways by interconnecting links between each other. The address of a web page describes its exact location, and returning to that address should give you the same page.

The problem comes because AJAX moves significantly away from that paradigm. With AJAX, pages are modified on the fly by a combination of client side code and requests to the server for additional information. Obviously this means that the page available at a particular URL is fluid and constantly changing. This moves us away from the original World Wide Web idea of static pages linking themselves together.

So the problem we need to address is, how do we make our page's URL reflect the contents that our user is seeing? Firstly, if the modifications are slight and down to a user selecting various options, it may not be important to you that users returning to that URL see exactly what was on the screen when the URL was recorded. For example, a holiday site allowing users to select dates, times, number of people travelling, etc., would wish to have users start afresh without seeing the data that another user had entered.

However, if a site made fundamental modifications, for instance navigating between pages using AJAX, then it would more than likely be preferable for someone following that URL to see exactly the same page. For example, you may have designed a site where navigation between the pages uses some funky client side code that requests the page and fades it into a central area on the screen. In this instance, for all intents and purposes the user experience is one of having navigated to a different URL.

Ways To Learn Coding IOS Apps

There are tons of great ways out there to learn iOS these days. The great thing is that most of those resources are free and available instantly online!

In the early days, the only resources out there were books that you had to buy and read through. In fact, that's how I learned iOS. I wouldn't recommend learning this way today because one of the greatest learning resources available today are the Stanford iPhone Programming Course videos that are free on iTunes. There are about 50 videos and they are basically the course lectures taped and provided for free so that you can download them and watch them as if you were sitting in the classroom at Stanford University!

Even with this great resource, make sure that you do some actual coding and practice exercises throughout watching the videos. When I learned iOS development, I read through the whole book from front cover to back and realized that when I sat in front of the keyboard to write code, I didn't know where to start!

Just like reading the book front to back, if you watch all the lectures without ever doing any exercises, you won't absorb the material and at the end of the lectures, you'll have a deceiving confidence in yourself.

Only when you sit down in front of XCode (the development environment where you write code to build iOS apps), you'll realize that watching video lectures is not the same thing as actually doing the coding!

Everyday Heroes and the Theatre of Cunning

In Timothy Findley's novel The Wars, a young officer, Robert Ross, defies orders and releases horses and mules confined in a barn. It is WW1 and he is in an area of France being shelled by Germans. Releasing the animals is a way of saving them as the structure is an obvious target for the enemy. Ross is with the CFA - the Canadian Field Artillery - and it's his love of animals and justice that motivates him. It's also his last act before desertion. Afterwards, he tears the lapels from his uniform and goes AWOL.


Days later Ross is walking along train tracks and he discovers a lone mare and her companion, a mixed-breed dog. When they lead him to a convoy of boxcars carrying horses bound for the western front, Ross releases them too and travels north, leading them all to safety. When he passes a military encampment and a private tries to stop him, Ross shoots him. He is not court-marshalled, however. In the following standoff, he sustains burns so serious he is deemed unfit to be tried. He dies six years later, in England, of complications from those injuries. Having brought shame on his wealthy family, none save his father will ever visit his grave.

The point of The Wars, of course, is to assert that Ross' actions were heroic in context. His liberation of the horses is cast against the shadowy psychopathy of WW1, a psychopathy so hideous it kept high-ranking military men from touring the front. Had they done so, the carnage of the Somme, Ypres and Passchendaele might not have materialized. More soldiers, from all forces involved, might have made it home.

I taught Findley's novel for many years and the poignancy of its message was rarely lost on my students. Its depictions of war are rendered through the voice of a historian calmly sifting through documentary evidence. Via transcripts, interviews and photographs, Findley's characters come to life and we see that war's damage, its pathology and momentum. These forces are felt as far away as Toronto and are powerful enough to cause Ross' mother, a society matron, to stomp her way out of a "bloodthirsty" sermon to sit in the snow outside her church. To the dismay of her companion, she gets out her flask and starts sipping.

Mrs. Ross adjusted her veil but did not put the flask away. "I was afraid I was going to scream," she said. She gestured back at the church with its sermon in progress. "I do not understand. I don't. I won't. I can't. Why is this happening to us? What does it mean-to kill your children? Kill them and then... go in there and sing about it! What does that mean?

Top Six Trends That Will Power The Travel Industry In 2013

Consumers are evolving and the travel industry will need to keep up with their evolution with respect to the demands they have, their changing interests, and the technologies they are using to make certain travel decisions.

So, let's take a look at the top trends that I believe will define the travel industry in 2013.

Increased Digitizing of Marketing

The travel industry will digitize their marketing efforts. Not that they aren't already doing it, but now their digital marketing efforts, will get even more pronounced. More importantly, the travel industry will start using the power of mobility to target their customers. So, you will increasingly see in-app travel ads staring right at you out of your mobile devices.

This is just a small example of how marketing will and can get even more digital in its outlook.

Innovation will be about the Consumer

Again, this is something that has been happening in the travel industry for quite some time now, but now it will become even more so. A consumer like you and me wants a lot of choices; he wants the ability to make that choice in an environment of his choosing, and he wants to make that choice backed by solid information. What's more, he also wants to know whether he is making the right choice or not and the kind of travel choices others are making.

Well, for this consumer, focused innovation will be the key and more importantly this innovation needs to be convenient and integrated with social media. 2013 will be about going all out to meet the customers through a platform or channel of his choosing.

The Best Way To Find An IT Support Company That Suits Your Needs And Budget

Questions To Ask When Choosing An IT Support Company

Choosing an IT support provider that can provide solutions to your business needs can be quite complicated, especially for the uninitiated. It will help to have a checklist or a list of questions to ask the provider prior to hiring:

1. Do you offer a wide range of IT Support services that are adaptable enough to suit our needs and cater to our company's potential growth?

2. Will our business be entitled to unlimited support, or any discounts to any of your services?

3. Will our network be constantly monitored and will there be other relevant services offered to us, such as updates, server administration and maintenance?

4. Can we expect to receive a guaranteed response times whenever we encounter issues with the IT support you provide?

5. What industry standards, competencies and accreditations does you IT company have and are they certified by Microsoft?

These are but the questions that you need to ask the company you are considering to hire.

A prospective IT company which is in tune with clients' expectations is one that has been in business long enough and has been trained well in relevant disciplines. It should also have worked with both large and small enterprises finding viable solutions to their every need.

How Outsourcing IT Support Can Benefit Your Business And Turn In More Profit

Why Outsource Your IT Support Needs


When running a business, it can be tough making a decision regarding whether to hire an in-house IT support department or outsource instead. There are instances when it is far easier to just hire an in-house IT department, but as you will see within this article, there are more benefits in outsourcing IT support.
At a glance, here are some of the outstanding benefits in outsourcing your IT needs:

• It is easier to find experienced and cost-efficient technicians via outsourcing
• Outsourcing allows call sorting which gives more time in dealing server side and smaller side aspects
• Higher saving potential, as there is less overhead in outsourced IT support, compared to the financial downsides in supporting an in-house team and the equipment necessary
• Outsourced IT support teams may be able to provide 24/7/365 support

While it may not seem like a logical choice from the get-go, outsourcing IT support can actually do a lot to transform a business for the better. Below are much more concrete examples on how it can do that.

Cost-Efficient

Outsourcing IT services can mean a huge reduction in operational costs for the business. Today's outsourcing trends usually involve outsourcing work to countries abroad, who, more often than not, have lower costs of living. Because these countries do enjoy a lower cost of living, then it will mean that the company who pays for these employee's jobs end up spending less, while still being able to give them fair rates. This is where companies who choose to outsource can save a lot. One can employ an IT team abroad with the exact same number of workers, but spend significantly less on their salaries.

Microsoft Windows Evolution

MS-DOS 1.0

On Aug. 12, 1981, IBM introduces its personal computer with Microsoft's 16-bit operating system, MS-DOS 1.0. The "Microsoft Disk Operating System" or MS-DOS was based on QDOS, the "Quick and Dirty Operating System" written by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products.

Windows 3.0

On May 22, 1990, Microsoft launches Windows 3.0 with GUI graphics, VGA support, and 3D effects similar to those in current versions of Windows. The OS introduces Program Manager and File Manager and is the first real OS success for Microsoft.


Windows NT 3.1

Microsoft launches Windows NT Advanced Server 3.1 on Oct. 24, 1993 as a continuation of its NT project under architect Dave Cutler. The OS launched the company into the LAN server market and introduces the Win32 API. "Windows NT represents nothing less than a fundamental change in the way that companies can address their business computing requirements," said company chairman Bill Gates when the OS was released.