It’s been a long time in the making. Actually it’s felt like an eternity since I was asked by Patrick McNeil to contribute to the Web Designers Idea Book and write the Blog Design Chapter. I’m going to keep this article short so that we can appreciate the photos and that actual book more. I’ll just say BUY THIS BOOK! It’s an awesome reference for web designers, marketers and anyone else in the this industry. The book is brilliant and beautiful. I’m buying a second one to have on my coffee table!

Look Down, it’s my chapter, found on page 45

Look up, on page 60 you’ll see a screenshot of http://blogsville.us one of my proudest web designs

I’ve always wanted to write a book. To have my words published on a high quality paper, bound between two well designed covers and placed on a bookshelf at a large book store.

Well I’m on my way. After working a bit with Patrick McNeil the author of Web Designers Idea book Volume 1 and 2 (these two links to amazon are Affiliate Links but hey you can get a free one if you’d rather do that, read below), I will have some of my words published for all too see. Patrick invited me to write the chapter on Blog Design for Volume 2 of the series.

If you own Volume 1 you know the book is mostly populated by gorgeous screenshots of beautiful websites showcasing layouts and graphics done right.

So I didn’t write 10,000 words on Blog Design but more like a couple hundred. Either way I’m still proud to say that I’m apart of a fantastic book series like this.

Hopefully this will be the first step on the path of authoring.

Want A Free Copy?

I’m going to give away 2 copies of this book. 1 to my 1,000th follower on Twitter and the 2nd to a random individual. To be considered a random individual all you have to is tweet this post or retweet one of my tweets about this book.

Thanks and Good Luck!

3 years ago I, out of no where, decided to go to a small SEO conference in Ft. Lauderdale Flordia. Scary SEO was actually one of the best conferences and networking environments I have ever been to. The best thing was that I had made an impression on Loren, Dave and Jordan in the short time I had there. These three guys are probably the best, most active, intelligent professionals I’ve met in the 10 years in my field. They were the Search & Social crew and now they are a part of a bigger alliance of web companies known as BlueGlass.

What seems like ages ago Loren came to me and asked me to redesign and develop their blog http://searchenginejournal.com/ or SEJ as we tend to call it. It was an absolute pleasure working with these guys and I’m proud to say the redesign was a huge success.

Today everything seems to be going so right for these web pioneers. I just found out that they are joining forces with 10e20 and Brent Csutoras to form Voltron, eh.., I mean BlueGlass. (The Voltron joke was all Loren. It made me spit water all over the screen, so I use it now.)

“So what does this all mean? For our clients, we can now offer our clients better return on their investments, greater options and ultimately – the ability to have one company manage all of their Internet marketing needs under one roof. – http://www.blueglass.com/news/blueglass-has-formed/

I just wanted to take this opportunity to publicly congratulate Loren, Dave and Jordan. I wish my friends the best in all future endeavours and am sure they are going to kick some serious A$$.

Read more at on the New York Times blog: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/agencies-roll-up-to-form-blueglass/

After spending a ton of time on the phone with Best Buy and HSBC I find out that my tv is no longer under warranty. So I decided to contact a local tv repair guy. Then this happened:

I thought small “mom and pops” were the good guys

Unbelievably bad service. The owner John seemed like a nice guy but works very quickly to rip you off. He even used anti semitic and derogatory in order to get his way.

His service was terrible. He didn’t do anything and stole $100 from me in an effort to collect on his diagnostic testing.

This was a horrible experience and has taught to only work with people who have been specifically recommended to me from people I trust.

Please do not use this shop to perform any repairs on any tv’s you own.

Read the full report here: Warwick TV Service

Here’s their site: http://tvserviceri.com/

I’m really looking forward to the Future of Web Design conference this year. I have heard a ton about it from previous years which has only built up my expectations. I haven’t yet found a web design and development conference I’m completed dedicated too.

I’ve been to An Event Apart, Web 2.0 Expo and a few others and have been left wanting. So I hope the crew at Think Vitamin don’t let me down this year. Learn more about FoWD Con here: http://futureofwebdesign.com/

In the meantime Think Vitamin sent me an email/newsletter with some links to some awesome articles that I thought I would share with everyone.

Below is quoted straight from their email:

In this special edition of “Focus” we look at some of the most popular web development articles on Think Vitamin and highlight some must visit online resources.

Focus On: Web Development

Highlighting great web development content on Think Vitamin

There are over 600 articles on Think Vitamin, many relating to web development. Here are seven great articles from the archives that we consider a must read for any web developer.

• Getting Started with Yahoo! GeoPlanet Explorer
• How to create a valid Non JavaScript Lightbox
• Why you should switch from Subversion to Git
• The Future of HTML5
• The definitive guide to Get Vs Post
• Getting started with the Twitter API
• 17 Must have Web Developer Cheat Sheets

Web Development Resources

Highlighting some of the great web development resources on the web

Here are a list of great web development related sites that will keep you up to date on the latest trends, techniques and technologies

• Mashable: For up to date news on the latest trends and tech
• jQuery tutorials covering all aspects of the library
• Web development tutorials, from beginner to advanced
• Stack Overflow: The community site to get help with your development issues
• The Top Web Developers to follow on Twitter

If you’ve been to the Future of Web Design Conference please share what we can expect below.

I’m a huge fan of Verizon Products but their customer service is terrible.  I have Verizon FioS Tv, Internet, and Phone.  The services are amazing. Lightning fast internet, great HD channels and twitter on my tv and phone works

However, their billing and customer service sucks!

The Story

2 years ago I signed up with Verizon for services in my home. They offered me a free 20″ LCD HD Tv.  Two weeks after signing up they tell me it’s not availble so they offer me $10 off my bill each month for 24 months, and two $100 Amex gift cards. I took it with a smile.

What I didn’t know was the $10 wasn’t able to just come off my bill, infact it had to be manually applied each month. After a lot of phone calls and customer support I actually found out that a customer service rep had a post-it note on her computer monitor reminder herself to apply my $10 refund each month.

I’m sure you can imagine with turn over, general forgetfullness and a lack of concern with my problem how many times I had to get on the phone and make sure that $10 was applied.

Now for some reason I can’t see my bill online. I try to pay my bill but when I sign in it tells me to call them. So a I did several times. Each time they take my payment over the phone and tell me the problem will be fixed for the following month.

Tonight at 8:45pm (my 2 year old son is sleeping) the house phone rings from an “Unknown Number” and it’s Verizon telling me that they are going to turn off my service if I don’t pay.  I attempt to go online and make my payment where it again tells me to call Verizon.  I call Verizon back not 5 min after they called me and guess what it says “I’d normally transfer you to a customer service representative but currently our call centers are closed, you can however make your payments online.”

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

This enough to drive someone mad.  Verizon if you want to keep your customers happy DO NOT MAKE IT DIFFICULT FOR THEM TO PAY YOU, DUH!!!

Good night.

This has been a long time coming.  I just heard from the doctor yesterday that I’ve been scheduled for surgery.  I’m going in for Gastric Bypass on May 12th, 2010.

Gastric Bypass surgery is a procedure where they reorganize your stomach and intestines to prevent you from eating more than a few ounces at a time.

Here’s a detailed article on the surgery and a video.

It’s taken 6 months of testing to approve me for the surgery.  Now that I have medical approval I have to be on a liquid diet for a month.  Essentially only protein shakes for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner for 4 weeks.  Then I’ll go in to the hospital and be there for 3 days.  After that it’s another 6 weeks of liquid diet and a lifetime of other dietary and physical changes.

For a while I thought I could hide the surgery and convince everyone I was just very successful at dieting but that passed quickly.  At this point except for a few close friends and family no one knows, so I figured now is as good of a time as any to announce it.

I have been thinking about creating a new blog dedicated to my Gastric Bypass experience and hopefully success.  There will be more info on that soon.

As for now I am making this announcement official to my friends, family and followers.  More to follow…

Honestly I didn’t even know that this program existed but it seems pretty cool. It quickly integrated with Wordpress on my server and is making life pretty easy so far.

It appears to have simple solutions for editing and adding content locally. I do not however see any controls or functionality to control commenting.

Clicking on “Mange Blog” or “Dashboard” opens into my default browser.

There are tabs at the bottom to allow for easy view switching.

Screenshots

Edit Pane:

Preview Pane:

Source Pane:

Below the tabs I can easily add my categories, tags and publish date.

Thoughts

Adding links, photos, tables and even maps is relatively easy.

Will Windows Live Writer replace the need to sign into Wordpress? NO.

It’s lacking commenting control, custom values, plugin input and a few other things. It also adds a lot of   into the html, but that’s Microsoft’ s WYSIWG for you.

I’ll give it a try, seems like it’ll be great to use when I might not have an internet connection, so I can save my work for later.

Chad Foster, the Art Director at Neal Advertising and I, are competing for “Best Home Office”.  Both Chad and I renovated our home offices, all the of the renovations were done by us (no professionals).  We put a lot of sweat, creativity and money into them. Now we are asking your help to settle the debate for us.

Who Has The Better Home Office?

Take a look at the tours of our offices below.  Then vote for who you think has the better home office. Use any factors you want to choose, creativity, best use of space, most Star Wars stuff (wink), etc…  Then comment below with a quick note stating who you think should win.

What’s At Stake?

Since Chad and I are both pretty creative people and we love to torture each other, the winner gets to create something for the loser.  The winner will paint, draw, or somehow create something on a canvas no larger than 24″ x 36″. No matter how grotesque, immature or inappropriate the loser must hang the art on a wall in their office for a period of 1 year.

Jesse’s Office

Notice the 6′ x 7′ white board, social media and web dev curtain, stunning brick wall, star wars memorabilia and excellent book collection (including “The Whuffie Factor” by Tara Hunt, a fantastic book).

Chad’s Office

Flashback to Aug, 2008

I’m standing in an AT&T Wireless store, purchasing my first iPhone and signing up for a 2 year contract. A few months later my 2G iPhone is stolen out of my gym locker. Now because there is no insurance on iPhones and the 2G was discontinued in that short period of time I have a choice; buy a 2G from eBay or other site or upgrade to the 3G. Upgrading to the 3G requires a new 2 year activation and an increase in my monthly costs. In November of 2008 I renewed my contract and bought the 3G iPhone.

Today

I still have that same 3G iPhone but it’s all beat to hell. Only one speaker works, the “vibrate” button fell off and the battery life is poor. So now I’m looking at either purchasing the 3GS (which I’m sure will be discontinued this summer) or get a new phone and plan with Verizon.

Well What About The Warranty?

When I bought the first phone I bought the extra “Apple Care” warranty plan. When the phone was stolen I was told I can rollover the warranty to the new phone or get a refund on the original warranty. I chose to roll it over. Today Apple tells me that wasn’t an option and the Apple Care Rep I spoke to was misinformed. I’m still trying to get my refund on the warranty but it’s slow going.

Verizon Wireless

I loved Verizon. I got my first Verizon phone when I was 16 years old (1999). It was a “bag phone”, basically a suitcase with a corded phone attached to a base (something very similar to the photo on the left). Verizon was so good to me, providing great coverage and great value in their plans. I’m not saying their plans are cheap but you get what you pay for. The only reason I left Verizon was for the iPhone which had no real competitors then, unlike today.

My Plan

So I decided to get out of my AT&T plan but desperately wanted to avoid the early penalty that comes with all wireless plans. I researched online on how to get out of a wireless plan early. There were some strange recommendations but the constant was “claiming” to not have service at your home or neighborhood.

• How To Get Out of a Cellular Service Contract
• How To Cancel Your Cell Phone Contract

On Friday February 19th, 2009 I called AT&T wireless and pressed “4″ for “Questions About Canceling Your Contract”. I was surprised that it was a main menu item (maybe I shouldn’t have been). I spoke to a rep and explained to him that my service has been terrible at home over that last few months. I told him that I really liked my AT&T service outside my neighborhood but as I approached home my cell service would drop. I even told him about a time I had to pull over to finish an important call on the side of the road because I knew my call would be dropped.

This customer rep was very nice and apologetic for the inconvenience. I then told him that I used my phone for business and couldn’t afford to lose anymore calls. He then stated “Well sir, if we find that the poor service is on our end, we’ll take care of you”. I responded “Does that mean let me out of my contract with out penalty?”, he said “Yes”. At this point I knew I was on the right track. From there I was passed on to a Service Tech who walked me through the process of turning my phone off and on, checking my settings and resetting my network settings. After this the tech called my cell number after asking me if I was currently home. I answered the call and he said “Sounds like you have service now”. I replied “it’s intermittent”.

After a few more minutes of tips and tricks I could implement for better service like:

• Turn off “Push” because your iPhone prioritizes content over the call which can cause it to drop
• Shut your iPhone off for 1 min at least once a day
• Reset your Network Settings periodically
• Use the 2G network when you aren’t getting good reception with the 3G

I quickly decided that these recommendations weren’t ideal, I’m sure you can see why. Before the tech hung up he asked that I write down all of my lost calls over the next 3 days and someone would be calling me on Monday to check in and see how are things are doing.

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

No one called to check on me.

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

I noticed that for brief moment I had “No Service”. I quickly took a screenshot with the iPhone and called AT&T. I explained to them that I couldn’t deal with this anymore. That no one called me and that I’m still suffering with poor service. That I liked AT&T and I loved my iPhone but I can’t deal with this anymore. I offered to send them my screenshot but they didn’t want that. Instead they offered to send a tech out to my neighborhood to check out the service in the area and determine whether it’s my phone or if there is some type of interference.

I knew what that meant, so I explained to them that I really can’t wait for that and I wanted to get out now. After some polite debate I asked for a manager. The manager was kind but said the exact same thing the rep said.  Eventually I said something which seemed to trigger me getting out of my contract penalty free.

“I’m still happy with AT&T, I’m not an angry customer… YET. Please let me out of my contract so I can just make and receive calls from my house.”

Now I’m on Verizon using the old cell phone I had back in 2008 waiting for the Nexus One, happily making phone calls from my house.