I could not help put quickly respond the main article in this month's Wired magazine, which proclaims the death of the Web. Wired’s proclamation is based on the rise of applications that now invade our daily lives which use the Internet, but do not require browsers. Most of this being sparked by the rise of the iPhone and its app store. And there is no doubt applications that use Internet technology as a platform have gained serious traction with the increased use of smartphones, social media, the iPad, and web enabled DVD players and TV's that can stream the Internet. But I am not about to bury the Web just yet for various reasons. It seems any new service that bypasses a Google search is considered that new new thing. Sure it might be, but the Web still has a plenty of staying power.
I am a bit late in getting this out as I have been pretty busy the last few days, but the first Tuesday of every month is the
NY Tech Meetup. This is a chance to see what is going on inside the NYC start-up scene. Which of course has spurred a whole
East Coast/West Coast feud as the NY tech scene has
received more attention due to success stories like
Foursquare and
Drop.io (and I could name a few other potential winners). I do not want to enter that whole debate, but it is refreshing to see young entrepreneurs who are going to school here in New York devout their energies to changing the world, creating jobs, rather than working on Wall Street dreaming up derivatives. Not to mention the enthusiasm in the room is infectious and extremely positive -- which is something we all need in what are extremely challenging times.
Since launching our site some of our friends have asked if Barrow means anything other than the fact it is the street I live on here in New York? We thought about a lot of names, but for some reason Barrow kept sticking out at me because it is such a unique and beautiful street in New York -- with townhouses dating back to the 1800’s , original cobble stone streets, and actual remnants of an old village square where it intersects with Commerce Street. It does not get more vintage New York than that.
As we discussed names for our enterprise, it also turns out a prominent landscape artist named
John Dodgson Barrow lived here back in the 1800’s . While I am not sure if this is who Barrow Street is named after, it is clear he did have some influence. Then it was a few weeks ago I was reading “
The Universe on T-Shirt: The Quest for the Theory of Everything”, by
Dan Falk an excellent book on the history of physics, where the book opens with the following quote from the physicist
John D. Barrow.
“The longed-for Theory of Everything promises to provide the final discovery after which all physics will become the refinement of its content, the simplification of its explanation....Eventually, it will appear on T-Shirts."
In essence what Barrow was trying to do was explain physics in simple terms, which is our goal with designing and managing websites. So maybe with choosing the name Barrow, we were on to something, due to some pretty interesting dudes with this last name, that just happened to represent our philosophy when it came to digital. Coincidence, I think not. And it is far better than saying that we named it after
Barrow, Alaska one of the northern most cities in the United States, isolated from pretty much everything.
One thing I am probably guilty of doing is getting a bit too technical when I speak with clients. Not all the time, and it is not because I want to confuse people, but I get really excited when I can show someone how all this stuff works. I remember having that ah ha moment when I discovered how websites work and are developed. As a result I always have a habit of showing people what the source code looks like for a website. To do this in your browser (it does not matter which one, they all have this feature) just go to View > Source. This will bring up all of the web code for a website.
I know most people do not care about the source code of a website (that is something for us to worry about), but at the same time having a basic understanding of how a web browser renders your website’s code can go a long way into gaining a good idea of how the web and search engines actually work. The reason this is important is so you can understand how people can find your site when they are searching the web. The code that sits behind a web browser not only tells the browser how to display the site visually, but that code is what is crawled/indexed by the search engines, not what you see the browser displaying.
Most of our clients and friends have been telling us for quite some time, "You guys need to have a website." And I keep saying, "I know but we are really busy." Well it does make sense that we have a site, since that is what Barrow Concepts specializes in.
As we launch this site and bring Barrow Concepts to life online, we would to like start by thanking all of our supportive friends and clients. We have had fun creating and working with our clients and look forward to building future blogs and websites that will contribute new ideas and inspire others.
