SiteCrafting, Inc.

Leave it to Disney to get it right. We've all heard the stories. We all know about the legendary service, cleanliness, and fun. This story is a bit different as it is about all of those things, but more in my area of interest.

Here's the set up. I spent a week at Disneyland with my family. Fun was had by all. I enjoyed seeing my kids enjoy the rides, the characters and the fun that is Disneyland. All in all, I took over a thousand photos and a lot of video. Where the story gets interesting is in the photos I didn't take.

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Today marks the first day Stack Overflow opens its doors to the public. In case you're not in the know, Stack Overflow is essentially a Q&A site geared towards developers of all kinds. It takes a language/technology agnostic approach and simply provides a framework within which the community can ask and answer techincal questions. Think of it as ExpertsExchange.com except free and much more community driven.

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Today I discovered a very powerful addition to the PHP world. Phar is an archive extension for PHP that allows an entire PHP application to be packaged into a single file. It's basically PHP's answer to Java's .jar archive format. Don't get excited yet, it gets better...

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Though adding another browser to our already rigorous bevvy of website testing doesn't appeal to me, having new such programs help drive web innovation is always welcome. Case in point: today's beta release of Google Chrome.

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As mobile access to the web increases, it is becoming more and more important to ensure sites are usable on mobile devices. iPhoney attempts to address the iPhone camp with a desktop application that renders web pages within a virtual iPhone.

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So I have a new car. Well three months old and I've been taking advantage of the FREE installed satellite radio. I have to say I was pretty certain that I'd let the system expire once the trial was over, but after commercial free radio with good music, I have to say I'm hooked.

So, when the extend your service email arrived in my Inbox Saturday, you bet I clicked to extend my service.

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Changing the way an entire industry works is never easy. It can take a lot of time to get people used to doing things in a new way. Fortunately, during the past few years we have witnessed entire industries become disrupted by innovation. The Internet has changed the rules in so many industries - digital music, travel, banking - the list goes on and on. So one of our customers asked, why not Letterman jackets?

We all remember (at least those of us that were jocks) receiving our letter and going to the nearest sporting goods store and ordering our jackets. Typically, we chose from a limited set of styles, got measured, paid some money, and then waited 4-6 weeks for delivery. It's a process that still plays itself out in most of the country. Enter Lettermansclub.com...
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I am amazed how many people are willing to ignore email solicitations from some mysterious contact in Nigeria that needs your help to get access to $15,000.000. All they need from you is for you to help. Your reward, you may keep two-thirds of the money. Yet these same people receive an email or phone call from someone they've never met promising search engine nirvana and they take it, hook line and sinker. Do these same people buy the stock picks recommended when they get an unsolicited FAX or email?

Look, we all want to be noticed. If we didn't we'd never buy flashy car rims that spin, add exhaust pipes that sound like F-16s, or wear perfume. Your website is no different, it wants to be seen and you want it be seen. Which is exactly what most Search Engine Optimization firms are counting on.
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I recently had the opportunity to work with one of Google's latest search applances, the Mini. Having no previous experience with any of Google's search hardware, this seems an excellent opportunity to offer a newcomer's first impressions.

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gotAPI.com is one of the most useful online resources I've come across, primarily because it places resources spread all over the internet into one simple site. I've been using this for quite some time, and have for the most part I have taken its usefulness for granted. Then it occurred to me that I might not be the only one that could find this tool useful (I know, it was a big 'DUH!' moment). So now I will share this gem with others...

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I stumbled upon a fantastic PHP class today and felt compelled to comment on it. Originally written by Tyler Hall, this class allows you to send notifications to any system running Growl from a PHP script. For those of you that don't know, Growl is an application written for Mac OS X that is intended to act as a universal notification tool (much like the taskbar notification bubbles we've all come to know and love in Windows XP/Vista).

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I've been a Facebook user for quite some time - even before they had the facebook.com domain. One thing that I absolutely love about it is the control they give you to limit what other people see about you. I've adopted a very serious set of controlls that limits only people I actually know to see anything about me. However, this is a false sense of security. Everything I post online that anyone besides me can access is inherently public. This is what initially drew myself and countless other people to Facebook.

However, their new advertising platform - Beacon - throws all this out the window. Beacon is a system that allows Facebook to track what you do on other websites. Let me reiterate that: Facebook tracks what you do online. They don't just track what you say you like on your profile, for example what movies you like; with Beacon they can track what movies you're actually renting.

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Having stumbled upon RescueTime, I feel compelled to share my discovery as this concept is just too useful to keep to myself. The basic idea behind this website is to make it easier to keep track of where you spend your time while at your computer. If you find yourself filling out your timesheet at the end of the week only to realize you can't remember what you were doing all that time, this tool was made for you!
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So, I'm pretty much online all the time. I'm constantly looking for innovative applications and web services. I thought, "I'm going to have a look at what the 'big guys' are doing."

We all know Google is creating some pretty great web applications like their maps or spreadsheet apps. Seems decision makers at the big "G" have squarely set their sites on building innovative tools for web users. Surely, I thought, Microsoft has its plan and it's called Windows Live.

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