C.O.D. Communications

I took advantage of being snowed in to finish up a site for my neighborhood home owners association. As usual, if you see the lurking typos that I’m missing please let me know in the comments.

On first glance, that is what this article seems to say. No doubt, that is what they want you to believe. But if you think about it for just a minute…what are the odds that somebody hooking up illicitly on Facebook is doing it for the first time? Not bloody likely IMHO.

So Facebook is not causing 20% of divorces, Facebook is making it easier for 20% of married people to discover that their spouse is a lying scumbag.

That, I think, is a good thing for America.

*Note – I doubt the accuracy of the “research” and would bet that Facebook hasn’t been mentioned in 2% of divorce petitions, let alone 20%. Maybe it comes up as evidence frequently though.

1. Cut the tree yourself. You are better off with a fake tree than one of the long dead pre-cut trees at Walmart or at a Christmas tree lot. Those trees were cut 1-2 weeks earlier and probably trucked half-way across the country before you even see it. At that point it is good for tinder, and little else.

2. When you get home, make a fresh cut on the trunk and immediately put the tree in water. This is the key step. The sap starts to dry out and harden in the truck the instant you cut it. If you aren’t ready to put the tree in the stand then put it in a bucket of water. When you move it to the stand get it set up and get some water into the stand ASAP.

3. Keep it watered. Our tree, which I cut 7 days ago, is still sucking down over a gallon a day. It’s starting to slow down, but it will still be green and holding onto it’s needles at Christmas, which is all that really matters.

That’s it. Cut it yourself, make a fresh cut when you get home, and keep it in water. It’s not rocket science.

I’m in the process of doing this now for multiple sites, and I think I have a system down that works well.

On old server
1. Back up. Zip up your entire blog directory and put it somewhere, just in case.
2. Export all posts as a double backup.
3. Export the dB to your local computer
4. Copy your entire wp-content directory down to your local computer.

On new server
5. Upload WordPress to new server. Make sure to follow same directory names and structure as the old server. It will make your life much easier. Trust me on this one.
6. Create new database.
6. Delete wp-content directory that comes with WordPress and replace with yours from existing blog.
7. Edit wp-config-sample.php file with new dB details, and rename to wp-config.php
8. Import dB from old server into the new server.
9. Point domain to new server.
10. Wait. I am doing this within the same ISP, just consolidating some accounts. So the change for me is instantaneous as I don’t even need to edit name servers. It may take 20 minutes to 2 days for your domain to point to the new server. In the meantime it should still load the old blog.

That’s it.

I’m generally a critic of the current higher education system. I think it’s often overpriced for the actual value it delivers. That said, it’s kind of hard to argue with these numbers.

Current unemployment rates as of Sept 09:

Everybody: 8.9%
High school drop outs: 17.5%
High school grads: 9.1%
College Graduates: 4.5%

People like me (white male, 25-44, college grad): 3.9%

You can find the unemployment rate for people like you at the New York Times.

Phase 1 a couple of weeks ago was moving the blog to design.odonnellweb.com. Just about anything that is published on the design blog will also be here. I segregated the Internet business / design stuff for those that are just interested in that.

So now Phase II is done – the redesign of C.O.D. Communications. I used Stacey to do the site, for no other reason that I was curious about it. It was fun to go old school and spend time editing html files in a text editor. It’s been a while since I did anything outside of WordPress. I’m still not sure if I’m 100% happy with the graphic treatment of the home page. I’m not sure what I want to do with the big white space. For now it’s got a couple of screen shots from previous work. Anybody got an interesting idea of what to do with that space?

If you are on Facebook you undoubtedly know those two games. If you aren’t obsessed with at least one of them, you know somebody who is. (For the record, I got bored with Mafia Wars in a couple of weeks and soon thereafter blocked the application. I blocked Farmville without ever playing it, and I’ve blocked most of the rest too.)

The short answer is advertising. Many of those “take this quiz and we’ll give you Mafia hit points” are really a scam to trick you into subscribing to various $10 services that spam your phone. There is a legitimate business model in offering the base game for free and selling the ability to build your character quickly, however at present those offers are crowded out by the more spammy stuff.

So be careful if you are playing any of those Facebook games.

Apparently, some in the Federal government think so. I suspect it’s mostly an issue of ignorance of what open source is. After all, as former Sun CEO Scott McNealy puts it in the article:

“If you think about it, proprietary software is the software equivalent of a planned economy led by a dictators, whereas open source is all about choice, the market economy and multiple competitive players.”

If you can save money by utilizing open source applications in your business, why wouldn’t you look into it?

Ian Lade is wedding DJ serving more upscale and dignified weddings in the DC Metro area. He is not the guy to call if you want a wild and crazy DJ that will overshadow the bride and groom. He wanted a web site that would immediately appeal to the bride or groom that is searching for that more classy approach to running the music at a wedding reception. The site features a WordPress backend that makes updates and management easy, an integrated Calendar so prospective clients can check availability for their reception date, and random header images on all the pages expect the main index page. All the photography on the site was provided by photographers that work with Ian.

A few months ago a bunch of classic Monty Python material was made freely available on YouTube. Sales of Monty Python DVDs are up a staggering 23,000 % since then.

Monty Python is currently #2 on the Amazon DVD sales chart.

How can you use free content to advance your business goals?

Well before rescue crews or any media got to the scene of today’s plane crash into the Hudson river, eyewitnesses armed with an iPhone were uploading pictures of the event. Reports indicate that everybody on the plane is fine. That pilot deserves some kind of medal if he put a plane down in water with no fatalities to passengers or crew!

Have you considered social media as part of your marketing communications strategy for 2009? If not, what are you waiting for?

Every year we get the columns stating that *this* is the year that Linux takes over. It’s sort of like Charlie Brown and the Lucy with the football. Hope springs eternal.

I’m a huge supporter of open source, and if you business is interested in exploring how you can cut costs and improve productivity with open source software, shoot me an email. However, 2009 will no more be the year of Linux than 2008 was. Linux, or any operating system, is just a tool to help you do something else. That something else might be serving customers, selling widgets, or in my case, designing web sites.

Dark Horse, being volunteer run, depends quite a bit on its web site. It is the primary source of new members for the club. It also serves as a PR tool, highlighting the achievements of club fencers. The header banner is adapted from original artwork provided by a club member. I manage the content and updates for the Dark Horse site.

The Virginia Appaloosa Club had an old site that required somebody to hand edit the HTML anytime it needed an update. So it didn’t get updated often. We redid the site utilizing a publishing system that allows club volunteers to easily update the site through any web browser. We also sourced that awesome photo in the header and secured permission for the club to use it. Prior to the redesign, the club’s site was practically invisible in Google. Now they are #1.

When the girls in Junior Troop 613 bridged over to Cadettes, they wanted a new web site. The redesign features rotating header images and a WordPress backend that makes it very easy for troop leadership to manage the site without my help. I rarely hear from them.