After years of hearing nothing but good things about DreamHost I’ve finally decided to switch to them. I’ve been with my current host, who shall remain nameless, for over 5 years and I’ve never had a problem with them, except that they are kind of expensive.

I belong to several email lists of professional web designers and every few months someone asks the other designers what web host(s) they recommend. Invariably lots of people always recommend DreamHost, and also my current host. After that they recommend various smaller web hosting outfits. But it seems like DreamHost always gets the most votes.

When I compared my current company’s hosting plans to DreamHost’s I realized that not only would I save about 30% per year but I would also get WAY WAY WAY more for my money. I’ll get unlimited databases, instead of just 10, I’ll get 60 Gigs of space rather than just 1.5 Gigs and Ill get 1.6 TBs of transfers per month compared to the 80 Gigs I get now.

Another thing that’s cool about DreamHost is that people that I refer will get a $50 discount if they use my DreamHost Promo Code, which is MWSTUDIO. So if you need web hosting don’t miss out on this deal!

Well golly gee darn but I do love this one. It’s the Pipe Cleaner Dance. You can play one of several musical tracks and then you can make the pipe cleaner guy dance by running your mouse over the keyboard (weird interface there). Play with it a bit, I got pretty good at it and even started breaking a sweat. Sometimes the internet is all about reliving your childhood. Enjoy!

Public action by United States’ citizens is needed now to preserve the existing Net Neutrality of the internet. Until now users have been free to surf the net, visiting whichever sites they want and using whichever services and search engines they chose to. Now that freedom to roam the internet freely and to use the services of one’s own choosing is facing a very real threat. Congress is pushing forth a law which will allow internet access companies to control which sites we can visit and which services we can use.

Net Neutrality is difficult to explain but Public Knowledge, a digital rights advocacy group, has put up an excellent video which spells out, in layman’s terms, what the threat to Net Neutrality actually means.

Take Action
One way you can take action right now is to Sign the Online Petition.

SaveTheInternet.com
SaveTheInternet.com has information on the positions various congress people are taking on Net Neutrality. They also have information on how you can take action to fight the threat to Net Neutrality.

More Net Neutrality Resources

• Daily Kos
• FreePress
• StopBigMedia.com

I attended the 2006 Web Visions Conference in Portland, Oregon on July 20th and 21st. The conference was my excuse for writing off the trip but I didn’t plan my trip around it. Instead I booked my trip dates based on cheap plane tickets, the dates of a Pearl Jam concert (sorry, can’t help myself) and on the schedule of the friend I went there to visit. Once I’d booked my trip I realized that I had no possible excuse for writing off the trip (que horror!) so I Googled and found Web Visions.

It turned out that Web Visions was chock full of great speakers, many of whose books I have read and whose blogs I currently read. Among my attending heroes were Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine, who I consider to be one of the most talented designers working. Mike’s blog is here. I just stare slack-jawed at the screen when I look at his work.

Another of my heroes is Dan Cederholm of SimpleBits fame. Dan is a non-pushy advocate of using web standards and best practices in web design. His book “Web Standards Solutions” is full of practical tips for solving some of the most common problems designers face when trying to use CSS and valid (X)HTML.

There were lots of other notable speakers at Web Visions but plenty has been blogged already and by far more thorough bloggers than myself. One of the most interesting aspects of the conference for me was that, because I opted NOT to bring my laptop to OR (what possessed me I’ll never know), I was off-line so much. The conference was full of folks tapping away at their laptops during the sessions, many of them were blogging as the conference unfolded. And others were working while attending the conference, true multi-taskers. I felt naked not being jacked-in, but lugging a laptop around does suck, no matter how light they get. I eagerly await the day when I can have the internet embedded in my arm, so I don’t have to carry it or forget to carry it (like how I forget my damn phone all the time) or decide it’s too heavy to lug around…

I’ve just released two Golf Tournament sites for the City of Joy Foundation, one is in English and the other is in Spanish.

The City of Joy Foundation is a local charity which has a very interesting mission. They have a large property here in Cancun and on it they have built separate homes which each help a different group in need. They studied the local population and determined where the greatest needs were, right now they have a home is for battered women, a residential home for the elderly, and a hospice. They also have a distribution center which they use to distribute donated goods to the needy here. The City of Joy is planning to build several more homes to help other groups in need, so stay posted.

The City of Joy’s main (non-golf) web sites are slated for replacement soon, hopefully I’ll get working on them this summer.

I just looked at my credit card bills and what did I see? New tires, which I broke in on my trip to Merida, they are rock solid up to 115 mph so I guess they were worth it. And my hotel bill for Merida…and more hotel bills for my upcoming Florida trip (stay posted, it’s next week). And, oh yes, PEARL JAM TICKETS, they cost gobs, but hell Eddie Vedder will be sweating all over us (we’ll be up front), that’s got to be worth money right? And a plane ticket to get to Portland to see my friend who is graciously accompanying me to get sweated on by Mr. Holy Sweat himself. And then there are some clothes I bought, to replace the rags I’m normally seen in. And then there’s some web hosting and a voip phone bill and a booze (and grocery) run to Costco and…some nerdy books about designing web sites…

Well, hell the real problem is this. I’M NOT CHARGING ENOUGH! I refuse to feel like I’m spending too much. I’m not. The problem is that I figure out how long it’s going to take to do that thing my client wants and I DON’T DOUBLE IT! I always figure things will go perfectly and it really will only take that long. I never take into account that clients never email you back when you need them to. And I never take into account that I always try to write nice neat valid “girl code” which takes longer to write than messy invalid “boy code”. And I never take into account that things don’t go according to plan.

I just raised my rates quite a bit 3 months ago. But now I’m seriously considering doubling them. If I can’t get smart enough to double my time estimates then maybe I need to double my hourly rate…

Blogging is “in” right now, and it seems to have hit Cancun with a vengance. Maybe because everyone here and their brother is a web designer…

I was recently approached by the owner of www.CancunMX.com to build a blog site for him which would be decicated to Cancun. That site, The Cancun Blog, was launched this past week and is already a hit with his regular users. I built it using WordPress and couldn’t be more impressed with how configurable it is.

This week I also came across afterwilma.info which seems to have recent info on business reopenings around the area, it is another WordPress blog.

Longtime Cancun resident Brant Boston has a blog of sorts (it uses Cold Fusion instead of blog software) on the site for his famous 2 for 1 Entertainment Card, he writes about life in Cancun and how he came to live here. Brant offers a unique perspective on living here.

Most people who put time into studying web design, and especially those who care about web usability, have heard of Jakob Nielsen at one point or another. Jakob is a speaker, author and a researcher of web usability issues. He is widely regarded as a leader in the field and I always find myself agreeing with the points he makes.

Today I was very happy to stumble across an audio interview with Jakob. I started listening and immediately found myself furiously scribbling notes. During the interview he discussed the most common usability mistakes web designers make, the value of keeping a site simple, the importance of making content scanable and many other wonderful things. The interview may be found on the IT Conversations web site and is about 10 minutes long.

If you enjoy that you might also wish to check out Jakob’s own web site www.UseIt.com. Jakob’s site is not beautiful, or even very usable, in my opinion, but his articles are always worth reading.

Enjoy!

I don’t know how I ever survived as a graphic designer without this one!

It’s a great little batch processing utility for image files called Bimp Lite. Bimp “can be used to create thumbnail images from your pictures, add a prefix/postfix (with meta variables), rename using a sequential number, change the case of filenames, replace/remove spaces & underscores, flip or rotate images and also apply anti-aliasing, inverse, greyscale and bevel effects” and on top of all that it can stamp a text watermark across your images. The best part is that it can process lots of images at once. Honestly I think it’s too early in the day for a find this good!

Bimp Lite is free to download and you can find it here. Enjoy!

I just came across this most awesome of sites. It’s called Don’t Meet Your Heroes and is a compilation of CSS and Web Standards related news feeds. Many of the sources are ones I check regularly but there are also some welcome new ones. And having all of them in one place just rocks!