Through Saturday, July 11, U.S. consumers running XP or Vista will be able to buy an upgrade copy of Windows 7 Home premium for $49.99, Windows 7 Professional for $99.99, or Windows 7 Ultimate for $219.99. Windows 7 is expected to be released on October 22, 2009.

Not sure if your machine can handle the new version? Well, just stop by the Microsoft site and download and run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor on any machine you plan on upgrading.

Although here at High Aspirations, Inc. we just couldn’t pass up a sale like this, we still plan on creating web site designs that look great no matter what operating system you’re running!

Visit HAI Hosting for a free preview of what your site would look like Mobilized!

Search for your .MOBI Domain Name now! If you are an HAI client, just let us know and we’ll handle it all for you. If you haven’t yet signed up for one of High Aspirations many useful web site services take advantage of this opportunity to start getting your web site designed for access at home, at the office, or on the road!

As with all our games, it was tested and approved by my son David, the guru of games! I approve of this one as it’s definitely my kind of game. Odd, he usually picks ones that are so not me! While testing, I reached Level 12 and had a score of 153,530 but I had to stop, just had to! It’s okay to escape to a game for a little stress relief every once in a while, but eventually you have to get back to work and I can’t keep all my clients waiting!

Absolute Zero is also available as a free download so you can play it offline whenever you like.

New domain names and transfers both qualify for the sale price of $7.99, a savings of $7.00! And, remember, if you’re not quite ready to have us design a web site for this one, you can park it or forward it to an existing site for free.

Search for your .US Domain Name now! Or, if you are an HAI client, just let us know and we’ll handle it all for you.

Sale expires July 7, 2009 at Midnight (PST)!

As more and more people look to create or bolster their online presence, HAI Hosting is expanding web site building services too. For people who want to have their site developed without investing lots of time or money, we suggest HAI Hosting’s WebSite Tonight®.

We have also introduced an Unlimited Hosting package designed for power users who need more disk space and bandwidth. Unlimited Hosting is available on both Windows and Linux.

A new integrated product suite which allows users to quickly switch between WebSite Tonight, Quick Shopping Cart®, and Quick Blogcast has been introduced. This integration is aimed at business users who want to build a complete online presence, including ecommerce, using our simple-to-use products.

Finally, since email has grown into such an important communication tool for individuals and businesses, HAI Hosting offers an email plan with unlimited storage space and IMAP. We have also launched two new Hosted Exchange Email plans with BlackBerry® support.

To review HAI Hosting’s products and services, please visit www.haihosting.com. And remember, High Aspirations, Inc. is always here for all your web site design and related needs, whether you want to do them yourself via HAI Hosting’s suite of tools or have us handle them for you!

The Lithium-Ion batteries used in Hewlett-Packard and Compaq notebook computers can overheat which poses a fire and burn hazard to consumers. The recall affects batteries with several different bar codes on them. Visit the CPSC (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission) web site for the complete recall notice which includes a product image, list of affected computer models, and list of recalled battery bar codes. Contact HP to receive a free replacement.

• News. You can find news in all sorts of places: the newspapers you read daily; the magazines you receive weekly or monthly; news web sites like CNN, The New York Times, the LA Times, etc., niche news web sites like National Geographic for science and the environment, ESPN for sports, etc. There are also news services that do the searching for you and find items relevant to your area of interest such as Clip & Copy, NewsGator, Google Alerts, and others. If you frequent sites relevant to your own, you can sign-up for their newsletters or RSS feeds and get news from them as well. Once you have the news, you have several options: You can write a post citing the news as it relates to your site, along with links to the news article online. You can notify your users of the news by including teaser text (usually just a sentence copied from the news article) and a link to the news article’s site that says “read more.” You can summarize the news article, include a link to it, and provide your point of view.
• Recalls. Like news, recalls happen. If products are recalled that relate to your site’s area of interest, post about them. You can find recalls online at manufacturers web site and sites like the US Consumer Product Safety Commission.
• Upcoming Events. Post about upcoming events, conferences, meetings, classes, etc., whether these events happen at your business or are just related to your area of interest. You’ll find out about them using the same resources you use to find news.
• Regular Posts. Everybody loves a regular column in the newspaper, whether it’s the kids going for the comics or you hitting the sudoku puzzle, so do the same on your blog. A daily, weekly, or monthly post will keep your visitor’s coming back. You can post about pretty much anything: recipe, photo, software program, quote, game, puzzle, site recommendation… this list is endless. You can find something relevant to your site or you can do what we do on Tech Talk and put up a game which isn’t related to web site design but it provides a little fun and stress relief. You can schedule these posts to publish in advance so there’s no need for you to feel rushed to get things done. Sit down one quiet day and publish a month’s worth of “quote of the day” posts. If you do that, you can then focus on the items that are more time pressing, like the news, or original content which takes more time to research, write, and edit.
• Look and listen for suggestions. If you normally visit forums related to your own site, see what people are asking or looking for and use those “suggestions” to come up with a post. Then you can answer those posts and say I’ve got that information on my site and here’s the link. You win twice with this by getting an idea for your blog and a link to it on the forum for all to see, including the search engines. You can do this with mailing lists and other blogs and comments on them as well. If you’re always being asked the same questions when people call or email, answer them on your blog. You may cut down on the number of calls or emails you get if they can find the answers on your site, you’ll have gotten a good post out of the question and answer, and it’ll be easier for you to answer those questions as you can simply point the person to your site for the detailed answer.
• Ask for suggestions. There’s nothing wrong with asking for help, so post a “what do you want me to post about” question and see what comments you get. Don’t forget to ask your friends and co-workers, etc.
• Get Help. Sometimes you just need a helping hand and there’s nothing wrong with asking a friend, business associate, or co-worker to be a guest author. If it works out, it might turn into a regular gig for that person and you’ll get a break as they write their own “column” every once in a while. Don’t forget you can always ask to re-publish something you find elsewhere. A lot of authors and sites are more than willing to grant permission to re-publish their work for credit and a link back.

I’m sure there are plenty of ideas out there for content suggestions, but these should get you started. If you’ve got any to add, just leave a comment!

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• Give them what they came for. Someone came to your site for a reason, whether that’s for information on the service you provide or the goods you sell. Don’t make it hard for that person to find what they are looking for. Your site’s home page should clearly say what you do or what you sell. If you make it hard for them to find or figure out, they will move on, quickly.
• Navigation. Whatever method of navigation your site has (text links, buttons, drop-down menus, etc.), it should be clear that these elements are for clicking and when clicked they go to what they said they would. Don’t make your visitors jump through hoops or click through gateway or full-page ads to get to where they wanted to go.
• Contact Information. Every single page or section of your site should have contact information, even if that is just a link to a contact page that includes all your information. You should include your address, phone numbers, fax number, email address, and any other method of contact that you allow. Don’t ever make a visitor search for how to contact you, if you do, they’ll move on to another site that makes it easier for them.
• Who are you? We always recommend that our clients include an “about us” page or section. This is your opportunity to tell your site’s visitors any number of things. You can include who you are, what you are about, why you have this business or site, why they should do business with you, etc. The “about us” page or section is your chance to make it personal, prove that there is a real person (or group of people) behind your site, and develop trust between you and your clients.
• Color. The colors you use on your site should be a reflection of your business or your site’s purpose. Conservative colors for an accountant or doctor. Ocean colors for your fish keeping hobby site. Match your company colors if you have any, but always keep your audience in mind: blue and yellow are great company colors, but yellow text on a blue background and your visitor will have a free-site flashback and leave as fast as possible.
• Sitemap. A sitemap provides a list of every page of your site and a link to it and the larger your site, the more important a sitemap is. It helps visitors find what they are looking for quickly and easily and search engines tend to love them too.
• Load time. Pages that load slowly are closed. It’s as simple as that, especially in today’s world of high speed access. We do our best to limit load time using various techniques, but sometimes it is beyond our control depending upon the content of the page. As a client, keep your content in mind, the more media (images, graphics, animations, etc.) you add to a page, the longer it will take to load.
• Moving things distract. If you are a professional, you want your site to reflect that. Avoid animated graphics. It won’t take long for your visitor to want to leave your site just to get away from the animation that is now giving them a headache. Animated graphics have their place, but if you want someone to sit on your site or one of it’s pages and read, then keep those elements away. Save animation for links pages where a banner ad is expected or on pages where you don’t expect your visitors to stick around for long, like an index page, photo gallery, etc.
• Music and Videos with sound. Most of the time we recommend that a professional web site avoid adding background music but it is appropriate for some businesses. However, we recommend that the site loads with the music off and give the visitor the option to turn it on. A lot of people surf sites at work and if one loads music without a warning, most employees will leave quickly so they don’t disturb their fellow workers or get busted by the boss. The same goes for embedded videos, let your visitor click play when they are ready.
• Selling something? While buy now buttons powered by PayPal and the like are fine for one or two items, if you are selling a number of products, you might want to invest in a shopping cart. You definitely want to avoid just listing what you sell and telling your visitors to email you to order.

Now I’m sure that I’ve missed some. It really is hard to sit down and write all this stuff into a list as each site designed is a different case and, therefore, some elements will apply and some won’t. But, the list above is a pretty good one I think and will certainly be enough to get you started in your plans for your site and help you work better with your web designers.