It’s ok – you have my permission, not that you needed it anyway. I was asked to build you a website, help you with setting up your server, hosting, boosting your search ranking and “doing the magic” that is web development.

But free, online services like WebMatrix and wix.com seemed so easy because the $200 I was going to charge you for my time was too much.

It’s ok, no hard feelings. When you realize there’s 10,000+ other websites out there exactly the same as yours and you spend 8 hours trying to float the image to the right or left of your biography text-block…. I’ll just refer you back to the mighty Wix!!

Good luck and carry on!

Well…after much humming and hawing and threatening to go off of Facebook I decided not to. Those who follow me on Twitter already know why and if you don’t manage your FB privacy settings, perhaps take a look at a few articles regarding how Facebook views how they “own” your data…

Based on the feedback I received from friends, RSS subscribers, twitter(ites?) I decided to leave Facebook as the catch-all for the feeds from (mainly) Twitter, this blog, Tumblr, YouTube, Blip.fm, Last.fm….etc. The way I use Facebook however has changed. I very rarely, if ever respond to messages, or comments on the Facebook site. I simply respond to the notification email, and Facebook is smart enough to append that to the relevant post… I don’t actually have to go onto Facebook!  If I get a direct message in my inbox, I will respond to you either with a phone-call or an email – and not through the FB inbox.

This is probably just me being paranoid, but the way things have been going with Facebook’s privacy becoming more open and “shared” there will come a day that those “inbox messages” eventually become, searchable, sharable and LIKE-able….Not cool – especially if you talk about stuff with friends that you don’t really want on your wall one day….or sold to the highest bidder.

All said and done, I haven’t ditched Facebook yet and after looking at the data as it pertains to sharing, discussion and re-posts of things I’ve posted, Facebook is the king of sharing. Almost 90% of the stuff I post is viewed, shared, “liked”, and tweeted from Facebook – so I’d be silly to kill that channel.

So – for those who follow, expect more crazy links from me on wherever you might live online!

As many people have noticed, the new trend in both the box-office and home-theatre is 3D technology. The largest grossing movie of all time, Avatar, was the one that everyone had to see on the IMAX screen in full HD 3D glory. I for one didn’t experience that (I wish I did), but the result of the success of that film was the new glut of 3D-HD TVs that are now available for the home.

What you might not know is that the technology behind what you may have seen at the theatre is quite different than the 3D technology you’d have at home. This means that the glasses you stole borrowed from the Avatar screening will not work with your new glorious 3D-HDTV… Let me explain:

There’s a little science involved here so be forewarned – If you purchase a LCD 3D-HDTV, it is likely to have polarizing filters built into it. The glasses you would use in the theatre ARE the polarizing filters. “So what?” you might ask? This leads me to the main reason I will never own a 3D Television. The glasses required to view 3D on a LCD or Plasma TV (LC Shutter Glasses) have what are called “micro-shutters.” Small shutters inside each lens that open and close at a rapid rate to create the 3D effect with televisions with polarizing filters. Those glasses…. $300-$450 for each pair. That means that for a family of 4, you could be paying up to $1000 just to watch TV with a 3D effect. These glasses are breakable, can get lost or stolen and in my case, I paid $3000 a few years ago (laser surgery) to NOT WEAR GLASSES to watch TV…..

3D is made possible by a visual effect called Stereopsis. The eyes of an adult human lie about 2.5 inches apart, which lets each eye see objects from slightly different angles. The two images on a 3D TV screen present objects from two slightly different angles as well, and when those images combine in the viewer’s mind with the aid of the glasses, the illusion of depth is created. The old 3D glasses had red and cyan colored lenses which create two different colored images. This image, called an anaglyph creates the illusion of depth when a stereoscopic image is viewed.

3D requires people to sit directly in front of the screen to get the best, rewarding 3D experience. Viewers of Avatar who were far off to the left or right of the screen did not have the same rich experience as those who were lucky enough to sit in the middle of the theatre. Perhaps the best review of this was Wilson Rothman’s (from Gizmodo) review of Avatar. Unless you have a home-theatre room which allows for all of your guests to have a perfect head-on view of the screen – the majority of people (myself included) will not enjoy the 3D experience.

If I am ever back in the market for another TV, it’ll probably be a 60″ Plasma or something that makes watching hockey (or Avatar) more epic than on my current 42″ Sony…. 3D just doesn’t add up for me.

Yep, I’ve seen the signs posted all around town. “We build great websites”, “Custom Web Design – $300″, “Your business, Your Website – Call us today!!” There’s an influx of people trying to take advantage of the entrepreneurs in our city by building cheap websites and providing even cheaper design and brand development. We’ve all seen the templates you can buy online for $20 and you might be thinking, “Yeah! – that’ll do! That’s all I need and I don’t need to spend “X” dollars for some professional to build me a website….”

You can even get full flash templates online for less than $100 that are like the shiny, sparkling toy in the store window – that one you just HAVE to have… So, say you buy one…what now? Say you hire one of these guys who posts flyers on the signs at turn-signals and on your neighborhood’s telephone poles? What then? What is your brand? What colors or fonts or phrases, keywords and symbols describe YOU or YOUR BUSINESS? Whether or not you know the answers to those questions still begs the question: How do you know the guy with the flyer is going to deliver what he promises?

The answer to that question is “do your homework.” Would you take your car to be fixed by someone posting a bill in your neighborhood? You might – but you’d find out if they were a mechanic – whether by asking them directly, through neighbors or judge by the car(s) in his/her driveway (most ratchetheads have at least a 70′s era Corvette or 40′s era hot-rod in the driveway to tinker with). It’s the same thing with trusting your business’ website to someone. Find out if they’re someone who has at least a portfolio (eg. – that 70′s era Corvette in pristine condition) or if they’re that guy who just returned “learn HTML in 24 hours” to the library and is an expert at Googling “how to build a website”…

There’s an old fable about a man that had a very successful barber shop offering $10 haircuts. One day another shop opened across the street advertising “$5 haircuts”. The established barber, after watching the results of his competitor, over a few days, erected a sign stating “We fix $5 haircuts”. This is what I find myself doing on a consistent basis after my freelance clients have been sucked into one of these quick website-in-24-hours schemes and end up having a shit website they can’t do anything with.

I don’t pretend to be the best web developer out there. I don’t tell everyone I have the best portfolio either. My strength is customer service. I find out what exactly my client’s goals are in having a website and where they want it to be in the grand scheme of their business. A lot of what I do is education. Most of my clients don’t know what SEO is, why a good hosting company is important, whether a CMS is a good thing for their needs or not, should they be blogging?, Twitter?, Facebook?…. These are all things I can help with because I’ve made the mistakes, seen the successes, and have applied the lessons to help promote some really big brands. Almost all of the sites I’ve developed over the past 4 years came to me via client-testimonial or simply by word-of-mouth.

When a client asked me “Why should I pay you for a custom design and a full custom website when I can buy a template and drop my own words and logos into that.” Aside from pointing out the obvious (because 100000 other people are using the SAME template) – I take the time to educate them on how their business *could* benefit from a Search-engine-optimized architecture, keywords, color palette, icons, font-treatments, full motion (flash) and even social media integration. People like it when they learn something new – especially if it’s technology based – it makes them look good! (This is quoted from a client – I can’t make this stuff up…)

Every single URL I checked for “Web Design Company X” that I’ve seen posted around the city DID NOT have a portfolio linked on their site. NOT ONE. Don’t believe me? Next time you see that sign around town, take the 2 seconds it takes to memorize the URL and check it when you can. I’ll wager they don’t have links to any sites they’ve built, any case-studies they’ve completed or any reviews from current or past clients showing the results of their work. This is because the crap they deliver is BRUTAL. I know — I see it every time I pick up a new client.

The best Web Design Companies don’t post bills around town. They may even have a very simple site of their own at best. The reason why? They’re too busy making life BETTER for the small guy. They’re too busy helping entrepreneurs or enterprises build their business online, designing brands and making the web work for them!!

The next time you see that ad for “Custom Web Design” posted somewhere in your town – think about how you might find that Web Designer who is too busy ACTUALLY WORKING to advertise. When you find them – you’ll know you’ve made the right choice.

Simplicity \Sim*plic”i*ty\, n. [F. simplicit['e], L. simplicitas.

The quality or state of being not complex, or of consisting of few parts; as, the simplicity of a machine. [1913 Webster]

Freedom from artificial ornament, pretentious style, or luxury; plainness; as, simplicity of dress, of style, or of language; simplicity of diet; simplicity of life. [1913 Webster]

I was tired of the same old theme on the site. Tired of people saying they couldn’t find stuff, tired of cropping/photoshopping header images. Here is the vanilla version of the site. Clean, clear concise and to the point. Old school tabs, Old School fonts…. Simplicity!

Enjoy.

So here’s the deal on Microsoft Word being yanked from shelves by January 11, 2010.

i4i, a database company back east that developed the first XML plugin for Microsoft Word claimed that Microsoft infringed upon their patent(s) regarding how XML is used and parsed in Office Documents, specifically Word (.doc) documents. i4i actually updated the USPTO database to work with Word 2000 and specifically developed an algorithm on how applications read and write custom XML.

In case you haven’t noticed, when you save a file in MS Office 2007 or greater, it saves it with an extension like “docx”. If you attempt to open this file with another application other than Office, you will actually open a zip file of xml files instead of “one file”. What Microsoft did was change the file type so that there is the actual “data” or text in the file, and an XML file to describe to Office how to present it. It is almost the same relationship CSS has to XHTML.

Essentially Microsoft took i4i’s method of applying XML to files and tried to make it their own….sound familiar?? In May a Texas jury found Microsoft: …willfully infringed on the patent and on Tuesday, December 22, a Federal appeals court upheld the patent ruling that Microsoft stop selling its Word program and pay i4i $290 Million for violating a patent.

Of course I love you. Now get me a beer! (GCBF 2007)

Nowadays when you ask someone to define “Social Networking” it usually brings out a string of words like “Twitter”, “Facebook”, “MySpace”, “YouTube” and the list goes on. To me social networking doesn’t happen when you’re sitting at a desk behind a computer or on the train with your cell-phone. This happens when you’re out – far away from the desk and anything to do with technology, social media and the like and enjoying time with friends or colleagues.

For me this is when we hoist a cold frothy brew and toast each other’s health and the good times we’re about to have. Spending time with those who matter and enjoying life is what Social Networking is to me. I’ve made more business connections and met more friends over a beer than fishing for contacts on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Think about that next time someone asks what Social Networking is. My answer is – let’s go grab a pint and talk about it!

Cheers.

Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter is launching a new venture this week called “Square”. The business model is quite simple in that it will:

enable peer-to-peer and merchant credit card transactions in the real world far beyond what’s capable today in most countries.

What you get is a small dongle (which I can only assume is the “Square”) and the scanning application to process the transaction.

The idea is if you are a Square merchant and someone wishes to purchase a product or service from you, all they need is a debit or credit card, a finger (to sign for the purchase on the touchscreen phone) and an email address to receive the receipt. From the article on Wired:

Square is targeted partially at small business owners who don’t want to sign up for full-scale credit card merchant accounts through the usual venues. One perk for them: a built-in loyalty program, so that customers don’t need to remember to bring along their stampable card in order to receive a free eleventh coffee, sandwich, bottle of wine, and so on.

Signing for a purchase using Square

The Square receipt

I’ve always been pretty good at interviews. Mostly because I’ve done my homework and know:

1. what the company does,
2. how the company makes money,
3. what my job would entail,
4. what my weaknesses are and
5. how to show confidence in my skills.

Aaron Swartz has a very different interview process which entails a very simple, casual atmosphere (coffee shop etc.) and small talk. No interview style questions in the least are asked during the discussion. His main goals are to find out:

1. Is the person smart?
2. Can they get stuff done?
3. Can you work with them?

I think this is an excellent way to conduct an interview because as the post states:

Programming isn’t typically a job done under pressure, so seeing how people perform when nervous is pretty useless. And the interview questions usually asked seem chosen just to be cruel. I think I’m a pretty good programmer, but I’ve never passed one of these interviews and I doubt I ever could.

I’ve never been involved in the interview process at my work but one day – when the time comes – this is totally how I’d like to conduct interviews to hire developers.

An Italian doctor may have found a very simple cure to Multiple Sclerosis by unblocking restricted bloodflow out of the brain. Two years after the surgery, 73% of the patients [have] no symptoms. Dr. Zamboni’s thinking could turn the current understanding of MS on its head, and offer many sufferers a complete cure.