I have to say, these guys do a good job with their light sabers. Remembering my own high school days, I can only hope the girls in their class appreciate the dedication this took.

Watch video.

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The first website I ever designed and built, I built 7 years ago for a friend with a custom stained glass business. It had more nested tables than a furniture store, and enough spacer gifs to shore up the structure…and since it was a freebie I hadn’t updated it in years. I finally told her that if she would commit to a real domain name and get set up on something other than her “free” ISP server space that I would rebuild it.

Well, she got the domain name and I did as promised and rebuilt the site using mostly CSS. I took into consideration the things I’ve learned over the years from our SEO folks here at flyte.biz, and I was SO EXCITED when I googled it this weekend using - maine custom stained glass - and even without using her name one of the pages came up ON THE VERY FIRST GOOGLE RESULTS page!!!

So if you are not sure it’s worthwhile to have us redo that older site structure, consider the possibilities of having your site move WAY up the Google results. Oh, and if you want to see the revised site, and some absolutely GORGEOUS custom stained glass, go to http://www.tamarascustomstainedglass.com

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Sometimes the best vacation days are the unplanned ones that you take on a whim (something I do a little too often!) This week on Tuesday I decided to take Wednesday off and managed to wrangle a couple friends into going up to Windjammer days in Boothbay Harbor. It was one of those ideal days where we laughed ourselves silly all day long, had ice cream for lunch (It was about 80 degrees, sunny with a nice breeze off the water).

We overheard some people talking that there were far fewer people for the festival this year….perhaps a reaction to the high gas prices? Somewhat ironic to have high gas prices keep people away from something that celebrated the old days of moving people and cargo by the the power of wind…..

We had great fun touring the ship Friendship of Salem which was docked at the Boothbay Harbor Shipyard. Originally built in 1797, it was a merchant ship, and I think my favorite pic of the day is the one looking up from the cargo hold through the deck to the mast - the glass in the door just caught the reflection of the flag flying high above in the wind.

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In these tough economic times, here’s an e-commerce site that provides a little free entertainment.

http://producten.hema.nl/

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Having trouble coming up with that perfect Web2.0 sounding company name? Well worry not, for the Web2.0 Company Name Generator has arrived!! Some of my favorite results (so far)

Ainoodle
Twidel
Wikimba
Gexo
Jabbercube
Quible

Once you’ve got your name picked out, just toss it in the Web2.0 Logo Generator (with optional “BETA” crest).

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Please don’t use tables even though they work fine,
When it comes to indexin’ they give search engines a hard time,
Make it easy for spider to crawl what you provide,
Remove font type, font color and font size…

If I heard it right. From m0serious.

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About a year ago, I was introduced to the great free library of original recordings at Daytrotter.com. Recorded in Rock Island, Illinois (halfway between Des Moines and Chicago), the music acts “..use borrowed instruments, play with their touring mates, utilize an often unkempt toilet, eat some food and then cram back into their vans for the last half of the drive. What they leave behind is a pile of ashes, sometimes a forgotten stocking hat and four absolutely collectible songs that often impart on whomever listens to them the true intensity that these musicians put into their art, sometimes with more clarity than they do when they have months to tinker with overdubs and experiments.“

Some of the standout acts that have passed through the Daytrotter studio are: The Cold War Kids, Of Montreal, The Walkmen, The Rentals (Weezer Alum), Presidents of the United States, and a couple hundred less notable acts.

Each totally legit mp3 comes with original cover art. Check out Daytrotter for something familiar or something new!

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www.WhoIs.sc/flyte.biz

I’ve never found a more efficient way of looking up WhoIs details, nor have I ever found another site ending in .sc

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It’s not a new topic, in fact it’s at least a couple of years old (according to conflicting reports on the topic), but Drawball still strikes me as something that is ahead of its time. Drawball is fairly straight forward - it’s a huge digital circle which users can draw/write/scribble on with digital ink. The ink is rationed out in small amounts after a user completes a simple puzzle. Much of the murkiness that surrounds the history of Drawball is due to the retaliatory nature of the international canvas. Even the Wikipedia entry has been vandalized to the point of collapse under the weight of controversy. For sometime a huge South Korean flag adorned the upper region of the ball - the efforts of countless dedicated souls who put an enormous amount of time (and digital ink) into the icon. The flag was turned into a Pepsi logo by vandals and is nearly undecipherable today behind all the layers of graffiti.

In essence, Drawball is a living artistic expression of people all over the world. It’s arguably the largest collective canvas the world has ever seen, and from what I can tell, still fairly obscure. Check it out if you get a chance. The Hall of Fame is especially fascinating.

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(From the desk of a photo-nut) The Library of Congress has recently started digitally archiving and uploading thousands of brilliantly-detailed images from their collection onto Flickr. The images offer a crisp glimpse into early to mid 20th century America, and cover a number of topics, mainly the war machine and the vibrancy of American industry. Don’t tell my boss, but when I’m not working on 120+ different websites, I will often drift into a digital daydream on Flickr, recharging my batteries with countless user-added images (10,444 of which are mine, forever preserved and wherever I want them). If you haven’t Flickr-surfed before, a good place to start is the Flickr World Map.

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