When you’re talking about web development, you’re talking about software development, and then some. My boss and director of the Interactive group I’m a part of at P+N agrees that “web development is software development.”

I’ve been working on a pretty big blog. That’s a part of it. Every day I’m at P+N, I realize that a true (and successful) web developer must also be a software developer.

Why? Well, I’m currently working on a Google-like search capability for a client’s site, except it has to search a database of client-uploaded documents. It has to:

• Be a weighted search. Meaning “microsoft software” returns different results than “software microsoft”, because the order of the terms determines their weight.
• Ignore noise words such as “and, but, the, a, in, or, for” etc.
• Sort the results on some kind of scoring; more relevant results must be at the top. Meaning, a scale of relevancy has to be dynamically determined based on the returned result set of the search. 10 results needs a different relevancy approach than 1,000 results.
• Understand expressions, like Google does. Meaning “this phrase” denotes an exact phrase, the + sign indicates a required term, and the – sign indicates a term that should not be in the results, anywhere.

Add to this, the search must include document metadata; which involves the joining of 10 tables or so. Yes… it’s rather insane… And I wouldn’t be prepared for it without my advanced DB classes from RIT.

But… more on all this soon. Just once I have the time to finish the actual blog…

A great article by the Seattle Times titled Media to move to Web, Gates says discusses how traditional forms of media are dying. And with them, goes traditional methodologies of advertising. A few memorable quotes:

“We’re saying newspapers will go online, and there will be massive innovation that comes out of that,” Gates said. “We’re saying that TV, the biggest ad market in the world, will completely go online and have the kind of targeting interaction that you only get out on the Web today.

He said Microsoft’s challenge is to link all of those platforms to give advertisers a comprehensive profile of a consumer — her preferences, what ads she viewed in the last month and which ones she acted on.

“That’s the code that they’re trying to crack, and if they do, they’ll be unmatched,” Cohen said.

It makes Microsoft’s rivalry with Google for online advertising more interesting, he said.

Google dominates the search-advertising industry by drawing so many more people to its search engine.

“Google is obviously a great, fierce competitor,” Cohen said. “They’re doing lots of stuff right, but I think you can argue that they don’t have nearly the range of assets that a Microsoft brings to the party.”

More and more, companies are investing big advertising dollars into venues like Facebook and MySpace, and beyond.

Full Article.

ERADICATION STERILIZATION RE-POPULATION RE-INFECTION

This movie trailer… is amazing. If it were a person, I’m pretty sure I’d be attracted to it.

There’s also this nifty flash game on Fox’s official site, whose URL just happens to be http://www.foxinternational.com/28weekslater/viral/. Huh, that’s funny. I’m reminded of a post from the Brains on Fire blog which asserts that “it’s not viral until it goes viral.” I’d agree with that. And I think that URL is pretty goofy, actually. Why not /game? (Oh and P.S., if you play through the simple game, you get a very worthwhile extra and extended clip of the movie).

The storyline is an extension of 28 Days Later. The last of the humans infected with the Rage virus have died of starvation, London has been secured and sanitized, and families have begun to be reunited. Thanks to the U.S.’s military presence in London, all seems to be going pretty well. Except, didn’t they mention in 28 Days Later that there were reports of infection in New York City? Hmm.

Anyways, clearly the plot turns when somehow, the virus begins to spread again. Mutation? A hidden zombie? Biological warfare? We’ll have to watch the movie to find out!

Unless you’re like me… and read the plot line spoilers online. Oops.

Yeah, I’m a sellout. I’ve actually gotten kind of fond of the show. I mean, people show up, do nothing for less than an hour, and get paid tens of thousands of dollars for it. What a sweet deal and, how do I get on the show?

But the show’s producers did a pretty cool thing: they gave the “Banker” of the show a blog. Although it hasn’t been updated in a while, his prior posts are pretty amusing and interesting to read. And from a marketing and word of mouth perspective, it’s damn clever.

To digg this, click here.

Dan Lev has setup a free website by which RIT students can buy and sell used textbooks amongst themselves. It has, by all accounts, been a complete success. It was featured in RIT’s print magazine, The Reporter, and was also voted by RIT’s very own MBA students to be the subject of discussion in graduate-level courses. Its gained popularity within RIT’s student population, and Dan’s excellent coding and design skills have only served to facilitate this dissemination.

Yet, success at RIT is unacceptable. In a letter to Dan, RIT has accused him of trademark infringement, and has demanded a cease and desist of the usage of “RITBook”. This is my favorite part:

RIT will allow you to use the registered trade name “Rochester Institute of Technology” to inform visitors of your website that your endeavor is not affiliated with RIT.

Check out the full letter, and leave Dan your comments. I’ll be posting an update with further info later this week.