By reading the above, you can understand that I am a person with a limited amount of free time. When I do get some free time, I like to spend it doing creative things with my family or doing some sports.

Why am I writing this post?

The other day, I got a call from a guy that wanted a website. This guy, was located 60km away from me. I told him about our starting prices (on the phone) I explained the technologies we used (on the phone) and asked him if, now that he knew this information, if he was still interested. He said “Yes! Please come to my Hotel so we can talk business!”.

So, I arranged a meeting that would take up at least half of my working day. I would need one hour to reach the place, I estimated I would be there for another hour or two and I would need one more hour to get back. Ok, no problem. Since the guy is so enthusiastically interested, why not!?

So I went there, I met the guy, amongst other things I repeated what I had mentioned on the phone (price ranges, technology, etc) and then we shook hands and I went all the way back to the office.

One day later, I sat down to write up the offer. It took me half a day to do so. I used our offer template of course but even so, each client is unique. After I finished I reviewed it with my business partner. We managed to bring the cost down to the minimum, to the number I had already told this client twice already, once on the phone and once in person. We brought the offer cost down to the number that he (the client) was happy with, as (I know I repeat my self but…) expressed on the phone and at our meeting.

I sent the offer.

Silence.

I called. Nothing. I called again. Nothing.

Silence.

Two weeks past. I finally got him on the phone.

He said “Your offer is very expensive, it is way above my budget”.

I said thanks and I just hang up on him. I couldn’t talk to that guy. What was I suppose to say? You tell me?

I wasted 1 full working day on him because he said he was interested, twice. I had told him the number twice already, so he knew and then he said that my offer was too expensive.

I could have spent that full day of wasted work time by working on a deadline or even better swimming in the sea with my two daughters, who cares? What I am saying is, why don’t clients get that my time, your time, all of us, service provider’s time, is valuable and you can’t just waste it, especially if it is not your time to waste?

Thanks

Image by http://el-grimlock.deviantart.com/art/ZEUS-18576381

Fellow Web Professionals,

Sometimes I wonder why we focus so much on White Hat SEO when I see that my competition uses Black Hat tactics and is not penalised by Google or Bing.

Does an algorithm that is so awesome and complicated but at the same time is fair and just, really even exist or is it all about marketing?!?! Is it all about “the fear” of the algorithm, just as once people lived in fear of the wrath of the gods? Have the SEO Gods managed to make as believe that we will be penalised if we don’t behave when in truth we will not? How can this be real when I see with my own eyes others that get great results by defying them?! 

How can my competition with 300+ words in Meta Titles and 500+ words in Meta Descriptions rank better? How can the same competition that stuffs keywords everywhere rank better than pure White Hat strategies? Why do directories and how-to websites dominate the results again?

If this is the way Google and Bing do their search then maybe SEO is still as it was 10 years ago.

Maybe nothing has changed! I remember those days! Things were easy. You stuffed your web META and Content with keywords and you ruled the SEO Universe!

Have you had similar experiences or am I just having a bad couple of months here? It is easy to turn to the dark side, but I can’t take chances with my clients. Can you?

I would love to read your comments.

Thanks

Dear friends and fellow Web Professionals,

I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Have fun and enjoy your selves. Relax with your loved ones, share with them these beautiful days and make a wish, you never know it might come true.

And to all of you out there that are not having a Happy Christmas, I hope next year will be better for you. I have had a couple of black Christmases my self and I understand how contradicting things might feel inside of you. Just keep going and take care.

I wish health, love and happiness to everyone.

Thanks

You might have noticed that I like Google+ as a Social Network, even if there are not so many active members on it. Well, a few hours ago, Google introduced Google+ Communities. This is a great new place where people with the same interests can connect and talk about what they love! Isn’t that great?

This way you know that the people you are talking too are into what you are saying and you also know that what the people in your Community are saying is going to be of interest to you.

If you would like to connect with me on Google+, all you have to do is visit my profile page and add me to your Circles.

Cheers Google+, thanks for the new Communities feature!

Friday, 23rd of November 2012

18:15

The taxi cab was getting closer and closer to “The Hub Events”, the venue that was about to host the TedxAthens “Warm up” day. As the Taxi pulled up outside the entrance I felt a small excitement starting to build up inside of me. I was happy to be there finally and so was Vicky (my wife). We got out, took a few steps, flashed our iPhone passbook tickets to the doorman and walked in. Once inside we were welcomed by a very polite girl, which we later met and her name was Themis. She took care of us by registering our names and giving us some bracelets to wear. These bracelets were suppose to be on our wrists from now until the end of Friday’s Warm Up event. Ok, cool.

We were told to go upstairs, so that’s what we did. Once on the top floor, we saw many people talking, laughing and enjoying them selves in anticipation of the Tedx Talks. The space was minimal, and had a few seating places and even fewer tall tables for groups of people to gather around and talk. I almost instantly spotted my friend, Manos Hatziefstratiu. Manos and I both live in Crete. Manos in Chania and my self in Rethymno. I must add that once the place got packed it was hard to spot your friends amongst everybody else. So, meeting was kind of cool.

Manos told me that Nescafe was the official sponsor that night. They offered Nescafe coffee as a welcoming beverage. I had my self a nice Frappe. I must admit it had been several years since the last time I had drank a Frappe. I liked it. As time went by, I met more people I knew, some friends, others acquaintances, but the most fun was meeting people in real life that I had only known on line. It is so funny when you meet a person you have talked to many times but have never actually met. I have had tons of previous experience with meeting on line friends but each time it excites me just the same as it did the first time. Amongst the many people I met that day was Bindi Karia. My friend Amalia Agathou introduced us, but it was only until the next day when I saw her on stage that I realized who I was talking to the previous day. You see, the introductions were made on a first name basis and Bindi Karia in person looks different to her photo. My personal opinion is that she looks much more real up close. So we talked about Crete and life in Crete. At least I can say that I had the honor of meeting her, even if I didn’t even know it at the time.

The TedxAthens volunteers, all enthusiastic, energetic people wearing red T-Shirts with the word volunteer on their back, began asking all us guests to slowly make it towards the presentation room. So, Vicky, Manos and me, went inside. We found some nice seats, in the 6th or 7th row, on the left hand side of the stage. People were gradually pouring into the presentation room until it was packed. The TedxAthens team was there, amongst us, working and organizing the event. They did a great job, from the first second to the last. The lights went dim, everyone stopped talking and the event started. During this “Warm Up” event we witnessed presentations by the Athens Human Grid Team, Gerasimos Kouvaras – Director Actionaid Hellas, Paul Loeb – Author & Researcher on Active Citizenship, Nikos Charalambidis – Executive Director Greenpeace Hellas, Sofia Athanasiadou - Supermom blogger and Ada Alamanou – Co-founder Klimaka organization. The “Warm Up” event was focused on Volunteerism, Activism, The Environment, Human rights and more inspiring such topics.

After the end of the event, we all moved out of the presentation room and headed to the welcoming room. This was the room I mentioned before that had a minimalistic decor, remember? The place seemed like it had more people than before. I guess the +1′s had started to show up. The 1+’s were friends of Tedx attendees that didn’t have access to the Friday night Conference, but had the right to come to the party. I had a +1 also. Natasha Oikonomopoulou is a talented Web Designer that works for my company. So, Vicky, Manos, Natasha and my self all headed downstairs to the Hub’s club. The music was rocking on, people were talking, laughing and discussing what they had just been a part of. The power of volunteerism had touched most of the attendees hearts already. I was lucky to see more friends there, friends from the OpenBeer Event and others I know as business connections. I saw Eleni Miliou, Niki Sotiropoulou, Nektarios Sylligardakis, George Anagnostopoulos, Dimitris Kalavros Gousiou (TedxAthens organiser), Maria Mouzakiti (TedxAthens Social Media guru), Spyros Vathis, Amalia Agathou, Christos Loufopoulos and his wife Catherine Lambrou, Aspa Tsamadi “Aspa Online” and more. I had the pleasure of meeting Maria “MsKoyot”, Alexandra Kalouta, Giorgos Vareloglou, Themis Economidi and more.

During the party, Papercut performed. They are a really cool group. I was very impressed with their live performance, so impressed in fact that it made me want to buy their album. So I asked the violin player, Matina, if they had their music online. She told me about their facebook page, a little about their music and how to find them. By the way, I purchased their album just before starting to write this post. I have been listening to it over and over again while writing. I find it great music for writing, great music for relaxing but also great music for listening to loud. So, “going back” to “The Hub”. I finished my conversation and then went back to my friends.

We noticed at this time that more and more people were moving outside. Smokers… Anyway, if half the people move outside then the other half follow, so we all went outside and had great fun. The whole setup, people in the street while the club was empty, reminded me of English pubs and it felt familiar in some way. Anyway, it was late. I don’t remember how late, I think it was 02:00 am. The thing is that by this time Vicky, Natasha and me felt hungry. Manos had left and most of the people were leaving too. So, the three of us decided to go to Ciao in Pagrati, a 24h place that serves Italian food. Natasha gave us a ride and we got to Ciao and had pizza! Ciao makes the most amazing pizza. If you live in Athens or you are ever visiting Athens, try and find Ciao and eat pizza there. Anyway, after the pizza we decided that it was time to call it a night. Vicky and my self, said goodnight to Natasha and we headed back to our place. it was 03:15 or something like that.

Some photos from Friday:

Saturday, 24th of November 2012

08:15

My eyes would not open. Vicky’s too. LOL! But today was the official TedxAthens day and mind conquered over body and we managed to wake up. Personally I had to have a nice Scottish shower to wake up. That did the trick and I felt “brand new” again. In case you don’t know what a Scottish shower is, it is a shower that has sudden large temperature changes. From cold to hot and vise versa. It is the best way to wake up! As soon as I was ready, I went and got us some coffees from our local Everest and we called a cab and headed to the event.

Natasha was already there waiting for us. We all walked to the event main area and it was full of people registering at the counters. We registered also, using our iPhone Passbook tickets again. We received a bag of goodies and an identity card with our name and job title on it. We went inside and the Talks had already started. I asked the girls if they were ready and they wanted coffee or something, so I said “bye bye” left and went to check out the presentations. All presentations were fantastic! Some of them were better than others, some were amazing but all 35 of them (if I am not mistaken) were great! If I had to choose 3 out of the lot, I would have to say that my personal favourites were David Shing, Lars Rasmussen and Sam Conniff. The presenter of the show, Thodoris Anagnostopoulos was amazing! He was funny, he always had something smart to say and was full of positive energy. In other words he owned the crowd. Good job mate. During the events, everything went as planed, so there isn’t much to tell really. I sat and watched in total silence one by one the talented speakers talk about what they do best and listen to their personal messages towards us. It was a fantastic experience. Dimitris Kalavros – Gousiou and his team really did a great job. A grand job!

Some of my personal best moments of that day was:

1. Meeting Lars Rasmussen in person, that was a tremendous honor, also
2. Meeting more people I knew from my on line interactions but I didn’t know in person (until then),
3. Meeting more friends I knew and sharing some beers with them and also
4. Getting a chance to hang out with the team of The Human Grid.

All in all my TedxAthens experience was a great one. It was a unique and beautiful experience that was made possible because of the TedxAthens team and it’s volunteers.

Cheers for that guys and girls!

Below, I have uploaded some screenshots of the website as seen on the iPhone and on the iPad. Just click on each image and you will be redirected to the appropriate page.

iPhone Screens

iPad Screens

So feel free to navigate through the website’s content, checkout Alpha Marine’s portfolio which is very impressive and have a look at what they have to say about naval architecture, by visiting http://mobile.alphamarine.gr.

Let me know what you think in the comments below. Your opinion is highly valued and much appreciated.

Cheers!

Thanks

2008

2009

2010

So for all these years, we had nothing notable on line, nothing but a single page that had some links to some of our projects. Nothing special. Surprisingly it did the job though. I don’t know how well it did it, but we got enquiries and new business. Naturally I am really looking forward to seeing what this new website we created will do for us.

If you visit our URL www.x2interactive.gr and have a look at our website, you will notice that we have focused mainly on 3 major things. Our Services, Our Clients and the technology used. Other points which we have touched upon, are our Partnerships, which we consider very special and our Team. Every thing starts and ends with the team of Web Professionals of x2interactive.

Currently the website works on all Browsers and all devices but it does not have a responsive layout yet. Even so, you can fire it up on your Smartphone or iPhone and view it with out any problems using pinch and zoom. Below I have attached some screenshots of some of the most important pages of our new website. Each screenshot leads to the relevant web page if you click it.

Check them out and let me know what you think.
Thanks

Home Page

Team Page

Methodology Page

WordPress Technology Page

Clients Page

Kassandra Bay Client Page

Contact us Page

Check it out at www.galaxy-hotel.com and let us know what you think!

To reach the final outcome we followed all the creative/development processes by the book. When I mean by the book, I mean by our book!

It all started with an analysis of the idea. Every functionality, every user interface idea, was written down on paper. Well, on a document file to be precise. On a Google Doc file to be exact. Using the collaborative powers of Google Docs we got the idea to the point where we could move on the the next step, the Wireframing.

Wireframing was very interesting. The process was smooth with small changes along the way. Everything fell into place easily and both we and the client enjoyed the process a lot. By the end of the Wireframing, we all had an idea of how the website would work and we were all on the same page. After the Wireframes we moved on to the Screen Designs.

The Screen Designs were based on the Wireframes. The functionality was already decided upon and so was the general layout, so things were quite easy. After only 2 skin selections, our client chose the one they liked and all screens were designed based on that. Images, buttons, menus, banners etc, every thing was designed and agreed upon instantly. Our collaboration with the client was great! Once the screens were finished and approved, we proceeded to author them.

The HTML / CSS Authoring was one of the most challenging of the project, because we had to make sure that cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility was established. Due to the size of the project and the complexity of it, this was a tricky part. But the most challenging and hard part of all was the Web Development process.

The Web Development process, started right after the HTML / CSS files were completed. The development team had to turn the HTML files into a working and installable custom Joomla Theme and then that Theme had to be modified and customised in order to meet the client’s needs. This was very hard indeed and time consuming, but thanks to the collaboration tools we used and the fantastic help and support we had from our clients, we managed to overcome every single issue and to deliver a completed, new Casial.net.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

Thanks!