In February, I was invited to speak at an
event organized by the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business school called
"Business Across
Borders Summit: On the Ground in Emerging
Economies". The event's purpose was to expose students, local entrepreneurs and
business professionals to the nuances of working in developing
economies. The prevailing ethos of conference speakers was a "how to"
for folks seeking to replicate, export, install and propogate one's
brand abroad. Calculated, tactical, profit-seeking and Anglo-centric.
DDD, on the other hand,
sees it in the exact opposite. What looks like a global outsourcing company (we provide digital conversion and publishing
services for US and European based companies) is actually a
mission-based, locally run and self-sustained enterprise. So unlike many
of our competitors, DDD is by and for the local population (and our
North American presence exists to serve SE Asia ... not the other way
around). I could see heads spin as I explained how a small job-training
program in Cambodia is now Cambodia's largest technology employer,
drawing $4+ million in business revenue and still growing. Great fun and
I met a lot of very interesting people!
New photos from my trip to Laos
Finally posted my photos from last trip to Laos with my work. Amidst setting
up a new eBook service offering, I also got to sneak out and have some
fun with friends (local and foreign). Enjoy!
First post on Ericgold.net
Hello friends, family & web-surfers. I present to you the brand
new {EG} Ericgold.net! I've spent many months teaching myself (X)HTML,
CSS and web design. I studied C++ & Java in college, so I
thought "hey, this should be simple." I was 100% wrong! Even "simple"
web design is not so simple. So much goes on behind the scenes, and only
from having actually taken on this project do I realize just how
powerful products like WordPress are.
I learned the down-and-dirty of how web design used to be done, but to
keep ahead of the curve, I decided to encode my website using HTML5 standards and
even a little CSS3.
Features
What it does
<section>
<article>
<header>
<footer>
<nav>
<aside>
<time>
Pure, semantic HTML tags that describe the nature of the
content. Avoids overuse of div and
@class tags found in most (X)HTML. This
makes my website code easier to read (go to View > Page
Source to see this page's (X)HTML code), easier for the web
community to use/share and much more accessible to
non-standard web consumers (such as website readers for the
visually impaired).
<!DOCTYPE html>
Specifies the current, catch-all doctype for (X)HTML
documents. Simpler, cleaner, flexible for older browsers and
complies with the strictest form of (X)HTML.
border-radius
CSS style which created the rounded curves on the top and
bottom of this page
@charset
Defines the character-encoding for the page. Avoids seeing
weird characters like this ���� when instead you should
actually be seeing Chinese characters ... like this 欢迎光临
("welcome!")
In the coming weeks, I intend to slowly add in even more advanced HTML5
and CSS3 features, including:
color gradients
advanced forms & validation
embedded audio & video
canvas (for drawing 2D elements)
I am heavily indebted to A List
Apart for invaluable CSS and design tutorials. For the HTML5
mark-up, I have been reading Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into HTML5. Elizabeth Castro's book, HTML, XHTML & CSS has been extraordinarily helpful. I highly recommend this book.
