Heather Hesketh, CEO of hesketh.com, has been named to the RTPnet Advisory Board. RTPnet is a volunteer-driven membership-based nonprofit corporation dedicated to helping North Carolina nonprofit organizations leverage Internet tools to promote and support their missions.

Heather Hesketh was presented the 2006 Women in Business Award by Triangle Business Journal in recognition of her success and dynamic leadership in the Triangle’s business community.  The award, presented at a ceremony on August 10, 2006, comes on the heels of recognition in April as a 40 Under 40 Leader.

This is a great book to introduce business people to information architecture, for architects to reinforce their skills, and for web designers to principles to apply to site design. The second edition has more information and is more in depth than the first, and is well worth purchasing.

With the struggling US economy, many businesses have had to implement steps to curb expenses and pinch pennies. One of the first areas to feel these cutbacks is the web site design and development group. Employees have been asked to fill roles previously held by other employees due to staff reductions. At the same time, these remaining employees are expected to execute robust and efficient mechanisms for their corporate web sites on a tight or non-existent budget. Developers and designers are looking for shortcut tools to get there. It's all about getting more bang for the buck. Web design on a Shoestring is the tool these web site developers and designers need. It reveals all sorts of free or inexpensive resources that are available but unknown. More specifically, Carrie Bickner shows you how any individual can do the things a team of web professionals are often brought in to do. Learn how to create a pennywise plan so that you avoid being nickled and dimed to death later. Find out the best ways to test your web sites efficiencies and functionalities. Understand the most effective content management systems, and the commercial products to use or avoid - all with no dollars being spent.

Web design must mature and accept the developments of the past several years, abandon the exclusionary attitudes formed in the rough and tumble dotcom era, realize the coming future of a wide variety of devices and platforms, and separate semantic markup from presentation logic and behavior.

Find out why standards are good, and how they apply to the Internet.

 
Someone recently asked:
> What is the standard number of characters per line in email. Is it:
>
> A) 72
> B) 76
> C) 80
> D) Something else
Steven Champeon answers!

A competent employee has left your company, and amid the confusion, you realize you've lost something irreplaceable: that person's knowledge and experience. You're facing a knowledge gap that could have been avoided by asking yourself a few questions: How am I encouraging our employees to share their knowledge of products and procedures? How am I documenting it for future reference?

The other day at the local library, I was standing next to a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, as I am wont to do, sneaking drags off unfiltered Gitanes and trying simultaneously to look pained, intriguing, and authoritative. Another presumed lover of language, also standing next to the dictionary, suddenly turned and asked me to define a word for him. The word itself is not important. Puzzled and flustered — nay, incredulous — I replied, "Why don't you look it up? You're standing right next to a dictionary!"

XML looks to be a big advancement over HTML. As St. Laurent writes, "Using XML requires a different focus, demanding that designers examine the way that their documents are built rather than the way they are formatted." Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 already offers some support for XML, and Netscape 5.0 will support XML. This book is geared to the HTML developer who wants to move to the next level of web design and not wait for Microsoft or Netscape to develop the tags and style support they need. A primer rather than a complete guide to XML, this is a great starting point.

The Web Standards Project, founded by an astute and talented group of Web developers, has as its charter the education of developers, users, and the browser makers themselves as to the problems caused by browsers that don't fully support established Web standards.