A good online presence is key to the success of modern businesses.

Or is it?

There’s a new movement brewing up in the business world: Companies no longer want to have websites, mobile apps, social media accounts, or any sort of presence on the Internet.

Businesses are shutting off their websites, powering down their servers, pulling out their apps from app stores, terminating their Twitter accounts and Facebook pages, and firing their web developers.

I managed to talk to and interview one such entrepreneur in the front lines of this latest trend.

His name is Buck Cooter — one of the many successful CEOs on a mission to usher their companies back offline.

Here’s my Q&A sesh with Buck.

So You Took Your Website Down?

Buck: Yes, we deleted that thing a while back.

Our developer, web designer, UX/UI designer, usability analyst, information architect, server engineer, and IT staff — a guy named Larry — has unfortunately been made redundant.

No more sites. Or mobile apps. And tweets are for twits.

Seriously: Your Business is Completely Offline? On Purpose?

Buck: Yeah. The Internet — we decided we’re not doing that anymore.

What is the Reason for Going Offline?

Buck: As a business, you have to continue to innovate and iterate on your unique value proposition (UVP). You have to apply the Agile method to your business model.

Our company is now on stealth mode and we’ve brought it back to a minimum viable product. Our innovation here is that usually tech startups do these two things in the beginning, but we’re pivoting in the late-stage and disrupting the startup template (with support from our VCs) because we believe it’s really going to get us some good traction and a great termsheet if we ever get aquahired by Facebook (which did wonders for Oculus Rift, their early adopters love them even more because of the recent acquisition.)

What Are the Benefits of Taking Your Business Off the Web?

Buck: As the leader of a company, you have to promote that passion for innovation and you have to mix things up.

One of the key advantages of taking down our site and social media accounts is we’re able to focus on exploring new ways to communicate our brand and getting our message across to our target demographic.

For instance, sending them our message via mail through the postal service, telegraph, fax, the like.

Or cutting a hole at the bottom of two tin cans and attaching them together with a string and then giving one can to our customer and then our PR manager and marketers are speaking on the other end of this device. This is really fun.

How Has This Changed Things at The Office?

Buck: Not sure I understand the question. Has my office changed? No, not really.

Here’s a photo of my office:

I still have my custom-built PC (it’s by the window) and my ergo chair.

No. This is What I Meant: How Has This Changed Your Company’s Culture?

Buck: Our employees are spending less time on Facebook. In fact, they spend no time on Facebook because I got our ISP to shut off our office’s Internet connectivity.

If you’re going to do something, you gotta go all out son.

Any Parting Words?

Buck: You can’t end a business interview without somehow mentioning Steve Jobs or Apple.

So I’ll end with a Steve Jobs quote, but just pretend in your head I’m the one saying it to you:

"We have an environment where excellence is really expected. What’s really great is to be open when [the work] is not great. My best contribution is not settling for anything but really good stuff, in all the details. That’s my job — to make sure everything is great. "

The Buck stops here. I’m out.

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About the Author

Jacob Gube is the founder of Six Revisions. He’s a front-end web developer by profession. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page or follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

The post Businesses Don’t Want Websites Anymore appeared first on Six Revisions.

It was seen as the future of the Web and mobile devices. Google Glass was the thing we all saw in movies about the near future. It was a TV, phone, computer and all in a very personal device. It opened the door to a virtual world of augmented reality, instant information, facial recognition; but is, according to rumours leaking onto the internet, a device with serious unforeseen drawbacks.

Google planned on making a huge splash with its latest and greatest life-changing product but a competitor jumped in, shipping over 50,000 units of the VuzixM100 headset in November of last year. Figures for sales from both manufacturers are placed at close to 1,000,000 units shipped or in the process of shipping at this date.

As early as December of 2013, just weeks after the products were in use among the consumer public, there were some tragic incidents leading to the discovery of a single thread linking fatalities and serious injuries; all victims were Google Glass users.

Product problems arise

It wasn’t until there were survivors of some odd and heinous accidents, such as walking into open holes, off cliffs, into traffic and other situations caused by the glass distraction that officials started drawing a corollary betwen the tech-glasses and the incidents.

“The number of fatalities is what’s so disturbing,” commented Dick Roundtree, the New York City Safety Commissioner. “People are just walking out into traffic and getting run down at full speed. The drivers can’t stop in time and it’s not just at cross walks. People are appearing from between parked cars and even just walking down the middle of busy streets, oblivious to what’s going on around them.” 

“I was searching out local restaurants while walking down 3rd Avenue,” explains a male victim who asked not to be identified. “The view was blocked by all the responses posted by my glass and I walked toward an augmented reality panda, who was waving me toward the restaurant, when I realized I had just been hit by something big and I was flying through the air. It turned out the field of flowers and rainbows the augmented reality panda was standing on was actually 3rd Avenue and the flying unicorn that hit me was actually the express bus. If I hadn’t been able to tweet that I’d been knocked down, I don’t know if the emergency services would have reached me in time.”

Changing the ability to focus 

Other survivors, as well as users that have not been injured, report that using the glass device for more than a couple of hours a day has affected their depth perception. 

“I thought the truck was just getting bigger, not closer, and then it hit me,” said one emergency room patient. “The other day I went to open the front door of a little cafe in front of me and put my hand into a fire instead. The front door was 20 yards away!” 

There is a lesser fatal side effect that has users and opticians alike very concerned. According to a recent statement by the president of the Opticians Association of America (OAA)), there are more and more cases of Giant Cell Arteritis (Oculous Gigantis) being reported by Google Glass users. 

“It was common in scientists and lab workers before electronic microscopes,” commented Dr. Shirley Earley, HFOAA. “People who would sit at a microscope for hours every day would create an eye that was dominant to the other and after time, the lesser used eye would shrink a few millimeters in diameter, while the most used eye swelled from arterial strain. It can be serious but it’s also disturbing to look at!” 

Accurate figures on the ratio of users getting injured are limited, however, as many users have not emerged from their apartments and homes since receiving the products, leading to what may be further disaster caused by rotting corpses of people who forgot to eat, bathe or couldn’t stop indulging in augmented reality porn. 

At the center of many of these problems is the new app, Nude World™ (Briefly released under the name, “T & A Parade”). As with facial recognition software, Nude World™ relies on algorithms of body parts being assigned to certain scans through the Google Glass camera, and then it assembles a library of nude body parts that match the scanned subject’s height, approximate weight, measurements of the chest, waist and hips so the subject whom you are viewing appears to be truly naked—including body jiggles and bouncing. The app for nude males uses the same algorithms except it assigns one of four set penis sizes depending on skin tone. 

There are reports that another app firm is about to launch eHance™, a blocking app that allows you to program in selected body parts from the library so you will appear slimmer, taller or more endowed in all the right places when others are viewing you through Nude World™. AnimalHance™ is another hacker app that allows one to program in animal feet, tails and even genitalia from certain “gifted” species.

Overcoming the stigma 

One of the primary problems with Google Glass is the stigma users are under for wearing the device in public. In a recent article by Becky Worley, Why Google Glass Will Never Be Okay, people share some of their uncomfortable experiences from being ticketed while driving, having to take them off before entering a public restroom and being suspected of recording conversations. At SxSW, a vote was held as to what panel discussion should be presented. Google Glass Makes Me Want To Punch Your Face lost out to Glassholes: The Cultural Dissonance of Technology. Two equally bad choices for Google Glass aficionados.

Expect legislation 

Although legislation on the use of Google Glass and other similar models is expected, most lawmakers have cited that they believe, almost in unison, that “these big-eyed cyber freaks SHOULD walk into traffic, open pits, open fires, off cliffs. That will solve the problem as fast as it arose.” 

“Augmented reality and these demon tools belong to the DEVIL!” commented a usually quiet, former Alaska governor, Sarah Palin.

Google has not responded to calls and emails, requesting further information. Neither has Sarah Palin.

[ Update: thanks for all the great feedback, in case it wasn't clear, this article is an April Fools' Day prank. ]

Featured image/thumbnail, Google Glass image via Héctor García.

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Watch the wages go up, up, up! 

But no thanks to the squabbling squealers in Washington.

The states have realized that if they want the minimum wage raised any time soon, they’re going to have to do it themselves.

Connecticut just endorsed President Obama’s proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 last week. It will be phased in through 2017. 

A few other states are already scheduled for increases, and others are likely to see legislative proposals in the near future. The District of Columbia will be at $11.50 by July 1, 2016, a whole six months before Connecticut. 

Meanwhile, states like Alabama and Louisiana have no state minimum. While other localities want to go above and beyond.

In the state of Washington, the city of SeaTac has raised their minimum wage to an eye raising $15. Citizens are now fighting businesses that don’t want to comply, and a court ruled that the airport, one of the biggest employers of workers in the town, is exempt. 

Other cities have thought about following SeaTac. Neighboring Seattle is seriously considering the raise. After all, Australia has a minimum wage around $15, and their Big Macs are not all that more expensive than ours.

U.S Fast food workers have been putting up a fight for better wages since 2012. Some cities and states finally appear to be listening.

The wage race is under way. Who’s next and who will get left behind?

The Home Health IT Summit 2014 will be held on Thursday, May 1, 2014, 11:30 am - 4:00 pm, in ITE 456, which is on the fourth floor of the ITE (Information Technology and Engineering) building at UMBC. The summit brings together the movers and shakers of information technology in the home healthcare industry in Maryland. The attendees will discuss the current status and future of health IT in Home Health Agencies. Lunch, coffee, and pastries will be served.

Directions, maps, and parking information

Targeting Specific Devices in your Style Sheets set the stage for targeting different mobile devices using CSS3 Media Queries properties such as max-device-width and orientation. In today's follow-up, Rob Gravelle describes how to strategically apply CSS3 Media Queries to give us the very best chance at layout mastery.