Have to admit that I was less than impressed with my own online image from 2007. Forget how it ended up being slapped together this quickly, though it’s likely the same reason that I haven’t done much with it since. Been busy investing my time into other projects. So I’ve decided that June will be the month to publish the overhaul in the making promoting more green values, offering more free value through tips and tricks to easily promote your business, and implement simple automation.

If you are just finding this site then please leave a comment regarding anything you would like additional details about regarding my services, past projects, and/or ideas that you would like me to explore in future blog posts. Since I’ve been writing to several different blogs for the past couple years while practically ignoring this one it seems time to provide more value here.

I appreciate your patience during this time and look forward to serving you.

An e-commerce web-site has 2 main factors to determine it’s success1) Traffic – how many qualified people are finding your site2) Conversion Rate – of the people that find your site how many will become customers. Running an e-commerce web-site holds a great deal of opportunity if enough research and planning it put into those 2 areas. If you are targeting a small niche of people then you will likely find it easier to promote your site, partially due to lower competition and partially to the value of a niche itself. If you are looking to buy a new chair for your office, do you want to buy from WeCarryEverythingUnderTheSun.com or from OfficeFurnitureDirect.com? Where do you think you will find better selection and support?
If you are working with an ez-build web-site company where you create everything using a form builder within your browser your ability to tweak how someone goes from finding your site to filling in their payment information is a bit limited. You will likely have less control over tweaking the layout and process. What you can control is the information that is on your site, without getting too in-depth using positive imagery to describe individual products and anything that sets your company apart from others (you do have a Unique Selling Point don’t you?).
My greatest advise to anyone getting started is to ensure that you have access to quality analytics information such as Google Analytics so you can keep on top of how many people are finding your site, how they got there, and what they are doing once they arrive.
Unless you have a fairly large ad budget it is best not to expect to be selling in large quantity right away, though starting small and practicing continual improvement with focus on the 2 items listed above you can create a great new business or additional income stream.

We are approaching the 10 year mark of living within a new millennium. As we become a largely knowledge based economy the cost of ownership of your dreams is shrinking. More ideas are being implemented faster due to access to knowledge thanks to companies like Google.

So I am left to ask, what is your great idea and how can you share it with more people? What is the platform that you are building?

A new plugin has been released that will soon be included with most sites I and others create. Chrome Frame. When visited by an Internet Explorer browser it will spawn a full screen frame with a copy of Google Chrome running inside it. If you are a developer of any sort you will recognize the time this will save, no more creating 4 different versions of a site to support all the different “features” of different versions of IE. If you’ve never heard of this then this news will likely mean very little to you, one day you will be asked to install a plugin to properly view a web-site and it will go from looking rather funky to a correct layout.

Google THANK YOU!!

Very brief background on the joys of this new plugin: IE 6 displays web-pages different than most every other browser on the market, unless you do one of 3 things:

1. use a very limited and ineffecient method of structure code
2. make a version of the page that will load ONLY for IE 6 users
3. use a hack such as IE-7.js to make it behave a little more like others

Now rinse and repeat for IE7, and if you want to use a new technology such as the HTML5 tag Canvas (which make very cool eye candy & interfaces possible) IE8

Since all other browsers draw their base from one of 2 sources Webkit (think Apple Safari & Google Chrome) and Gecko (think Firefox). That makes a potential of 5 different versions of a web-site being built so that it will display properly for everyone. There are standards that have been established by the World Wide Web Consortium which both Webkit & Gecko follow fairly well, including keeping up with new standards as they are released. IE…. well they pick and choose, and sometimes just play their own way, so chances are you are building 4 versions of a site to be displayed properly.

Now enter Google Chromeframe which you will be asked to install once through a single click and BAM… instant standards compatible displayed web-pages without the need to build 3 extra versions. For Web Developers the world over this is a happy day indeed, if you are looking to have a new web-site built then you can share the joy as the costs to build and maintain a site will be reduced to anyone that wants to use this new tool.

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Original Post by Seth Godin:

What should not-so-busy real estate brokers do?

Why not start a local newspaper?

Here’s how I would do it. Assume you’ve got six people in your office. Each person is responsible to do two things each day:

• Interview a local business, a local student or a local political activist. You can do it by phone, it can be very short and it might take you ten minutes.
• Get 20 households to ’subscribe’ by giving you their email address and asking for a free subscription. You can use direct contact or flyers or speeches to get your list.

Twice a week, send out the ‘newspaper’ by email. After one week, it will have more than 500 subscribers and contain more than 20 interesting short articles or quotes about people in the neighborhood. Within a month, (if it’s any good) every single person in town who matters will be reading it and forwarding it along to others.

It will cost you nothing. It will become your gift to the community. And it will be a long lasting asset that belongs to you, not to the competition. (And yes, you can do this if you’re a plumber or a chiropractor. And yes, you can do this if ‘local’ isn’t geographic for you, but vertical).

Own your Zip code. The next frontier is local, and this is a great way to start.

This is a short script I built for a project, ended up opting to use individual AJAX uploads rather than multiple uploads at once. Yet a script this useful deserves to see the rest of the world so I give you.

Multiple File Uploads with JQuery and Code Igniter

To get it running extract into the root directory of a Code Igniter installation, included are:

• example Controller
• Multi-Upload Library
• example view form & success page with results
• jquery multi-upload plugin

The upload library is based upon the CI upload library, it will check for attacks, and check whether the files uploaded are images or something else. You can restrict the files to any extension(s), if you need more security than that then I’ll assume you know enough to add in the function you need.

The beauty of this script is the simplicity, with a few lines of code you can allow for multiple uploads from a single page, then let this script handle the uploads and pass on information about everything that happened.

If you are not familiar with Code Igniter it is a rather lightweight PHP MVC framework. Which is a geeky way of saying that it is a programming framework that can save you time without eating your server. Of course the same goes for JQuery, which is for Javascript framework that will save you time.

If you have any questions please leave a comment or ask me through the contact form.

That idea evolved into a research project, that research project evolved into a “for-benefit” company which has joined forces with a wide range of scientific research and non-profit organizations for compiling data from specific ingredients and their effects upon you, the environment, their surrounding community, and on and on.

If you are still reading this post then hop on over and take a look, while the site is still in Beta I see it becomming a rather large success, especially being able to send in UPC codes via text message with your phone and get a rating back. Thinking it through this idea seems so obvious it’s amazing that no-one has done it yet, so my hats off to the guys at GoodGuide.com

The server powering this web site and all web sites that we offer hosting to is now certified to be powered by Texas wind farms, and it gets even better, this server is powered 130% by texas wind, so it’s not just carbon neutral, it’s carbon negative. This was done with the help of 3 Degrees a supplier of Renewable Energy Credits, which is a fancy way to say they work with renewable energy producers (Mostly Wind Farms) to offset the initial price of creating clean energy as opposed to using… coal or other fossil fuels.

Great… So that means what exactly? In this day in age you’ve probably heard of climate change, if not feeel free to visit google, wikipedia, the World Bank, or to quote the International Monetary Fund

Most scientists agree that the global temperature is rising as a result of man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, and that the earth’s climate is changing.

While this small step is just that, powering an average server takes the equivilient of a 15mpg SUV in terms of carbon emmissions. Not too shabby, and merely a beginning. While I have made a conscious effort to leave as small a footprint as I can for several years, I also seek to make a big impact. As time goes on I will be publishing more resources to help you reduce your own footprint, for now I offer this quick list;

• 3 Degrees – Provider of Renewable Energy Credits
• EPA on Renewable Energy Credits – In case your wondering what those are
• Carbon Tracker – A few simple tips with the ability to measure your own carbon footprint
• EPA: What You Can Do About Climate Change – Quick tips for Home, Office, School, or on the Road

This is a beginning, though I must admit that sharing my views feels better each time I write. All to often we get in the mix of holding back our beliefs to avoid creating controversy. Taking a stand will get you snubbed out of a nubmer of invitations, trust me you probably didn’t want them anyway. So go make a stand for yourself and share your belifs, those that listen will be far more in your favor for it, and you will feel better for aligning yourself with your truth.

Too good to be true (the overnight millionaire scam)

Times are tough, and many say they are going to be tougher. That makes some people more focused, it turns others desperate.

You may be tempted at some point to try to make a million dollars. To do it without a lot of effort or skill or risk. Using a system, some shortcut perhaps, or mortgaging something you already own.

There are countless infomercials and programs and systems that promise to help you do this. There are financial instruments and investments and documents you can sign that promise similar relief from financial stress.

Resist.

There are four ways to make a million dollars. Luck. Patient effort. Skill. Risk.

(Five if you count inheritance, and six if you count starting with two million dollars).

Conspicuously missing from this list are effortless 1-2-3 systems that involve buying an expensive book or series of tapes. Also missing are complicated tax shelters or other ‘proven’ systems. The harder someone tries to sell you this solution, the more certain you should be that it is a scam. If no skill or effort is required, then why doesn’t the promoter just hire a bunch of people at minimum wage and keep the profits?

There are literally a million ways to make a good living online, ten million ways to start and thrive with your own business offline. But all of these require effort, and none of them are likely to make you a million dollars.

Short version of my opinion: If someone offers to sell you the secret system, don’t buy it. If you need to invest in a system before you use it, walk away. If you are promised big returns with no risk and little effort, you know the person is lying to you. Every time.

Care to join in to help gather donations for Kiva a micro loan group that funds entrepreneurs in developing nations. Enabliing many families to support themselves.