Website Approaches

I once earned my living as a website designer and database programmer and, though I wouldn't now choose to work in such hectic environments, I still maintain several leading websites, where I'm responsible for:

· Content

· Editing

· Webmaster duties

· Web design

 

Ecommerce-Digest.Com

 

 

How companies succeed in the challenging world of ebusiness is the information provided by this site: the business models they adopt, the programs and services they employ, and how the mix of theory, technology and business skills works out in practice. All types of ebusinesses, large and small, are covered, and the emphasis is on the practical: what specifically is done, how, and using what tools and services. The pages grew from an ebook previously sold to some sixty countries across the world. The major update of 2011-12 was a more detailed, practical and far-ranging text than the standard work of Laudon and Traver, but failed to generate sufficient academic interest to be worth immediately pursuing. Currently, therefore, and for free, the site enables students to:

1. Satisfy the requirements for many business studies courses that cover the digital economy.

2. Grasp the underlying principles on which all digital transactions are built.

3. Read with the necessary insight the articles and studies appearing in the business and academic press.

4. Appreciate the extent and power of the evolving ebusiness revolution.

5. Assess, improve and extend any ebusiness they may be required to manage.

6. Build their own ebusiness with some likelihood of success.

TextEtc.Com

 

 

Text Etc is a plain guide to the craft and theory of poetry: composition, analysis and improvement of literary work, including translation and the creation of good copies of well-known poems. In the divisive and often self-mystifying world of literary theory — and of course unpopular in some quarters for those reasons — the site:

A. Broadens the meaning and scope of poetry, beyond what now appears in publisher's lists and the small presses, which caters for a diminishing portion of the reading public.

B. Shows that the poetry that was once well known and well loved is equally supported by aesthetic theory — that brain-functioning, metaphor theory, linguistics, hermeneutics and aesthetics do in fact provide new avenues for writing and appreciation.

C. Suggest why serious poetry has become an institutionalized subculture, the preserve of contending and somewhat autistic communities.

D. Provides worked examples of craft and theory demonstrating the depth and continuity of the art form, through the centuries and across cultural divides: poetry as it was once written.

Though begun as a writer's workbook — notes, references, arguments that need thinking about — the half a million words plus has been organized into seven sections:

1. Traditional: what commonly appeared in poetry textbooks, including the elements of verse, and what is wrong (and right) with amateur poetry.

2. Modernist: essays on various phases and styles of Modernist poetry, some snapshot views of the current scene, and an extended sociological analysis of the avant garde.

3. Theory section needed to understand contemporary poetry, and to explore some tangles into which it seems to have fallen. Literary theory from a wide perspective.

4. Criticism: here I look at a poem from various critical aspects, some traditional and some less so.

5. Workshop: sets out the steps and considerations which I have found to be the most useful in composing and shaping a poem. The focus is on practical matters, and the belief is that by actually writing poetry, the reader will learn more than by wrestling with literary theory or criticism..

6. Exhibits: serves to complete poems started in the Workshop section, and exhibit pieces that illustrate peripheral matters.

7. Resources: provides extensive listings — once the fullest anywhere, but probably now overtaken by other sites, which are also covered — of poetry magazines, publishers, events, competitions, bulletin boards, critiquing services, and sites providing dictionaries, thesaurus, guides to style and rhetoric, etc.

Oil-Painting-Techniques.Com

 

 

 

Oil painting techniques was an effort to repay the kindnesses I'd received when an amateur painter — something I'm far too busy to continue now. From selecting materials, laying in, working out color harmonies . . . to selling the finished work, the sixty-odd pages provide an overview of the painter's craft.

Oil painting techniques covers practical matters, but advice is backed by references to books and Internet sources. The underlying principles are not neglected, however, and may help readers to understand and learn from the acknowledged masters, whose work is indeed featured.

The usual approaches are covered — including direct painting — but space and copyright considerations restrict what can be convincingly demonstrated. As the site emphasizes, the essential need is for painters to try and see for themselves. And practice: the coordination of hand and eye, a dexterity with pencil or brush, a knowledge of composition and aesthetic harmony, of how paints mix and their properties may be modified with oils and balsams — none of this can be learned from exposition.

Clases-Ingles.Cl

Patricia's little site, which I wrote to help get her started in the English teaching business. Most of her work now comes from personal recommendations, but the site is still something large companies scrutinize before asking her in for interview. It gives them her background, which you may also find interesting.

Note

Writing and editing are complementary activities, and it often helps in the more extensive rewriting to command a decent English, if only to cast what the author probably intended in a more effective manner. You might want to look through these sites, therefore. Their many thousands of words (probably a little over a million now) should tell you that I practise what I preach, and am not likely to ruin your masterpiece with faddish or unnecessary corrections.