I’m always checking into domains. Anytime a somewhat decent (or really crazy) idea pops into my noggin, I have to check if the most ideal name is available. Domain names aren’t everything, but having that ideal name certainly helps. For the past few years I’ve used Godaddy, but I’ve been looking here and there for [...]

While it’s great to use Google tools, it’s important to keep in mind that you want to use them, not totally rely on them. I read about a situation where a person’s Google account was disabled, which caused a LOT of trouble for him. I don’t want to be “that guy” and I’m sure neither does anyone else.

Last month I read this really nice post over at youmoz about a website called Mindmeister. Mindmeister is an online collaboration tool that allows you to create mind maps – you know those charts where you’d circle an idea, then list related ideas, and keep branching away. You can share your “mind maps” with other users, and they can add to and edit your map. All revisions are tracked and can be easily undone.

I recently installed Wordpess on an older flat-file website that had a massive amount of seperate pages. The owner would occasionally shuffle his content around (manually archiving) and he’d never heard of a redirect. As soon as I started working on the project, I noticed all the 404 traffic he was getting (not caused by me!). Since I installed Wordpress for him, I was able to find a plugin to fix this situation. Enter Redirection.

The other day I was going back and forth with a potential client about re-designing his web site. It’s a small site, and I worked with this person before – so it didn’t take us very long to hammer out the details. The next step was writing out the contract and getting him to sign off on it. I had heard about a service where you could electronically aquire a signature, so I figured what the hell, I’ll give this a try.

After my friend had his hard drive crash, and he lost a lot of important data, I realized I’ve been protecting myself from something like this without even noticing. If my computer crashed right now and I lost everything on my hard drive, I wouldn’t lose anything important. Not because I’m paranoid and have a tape-system backup in my basement, but because I take advantage of free & portable web technologies that simplify my life. If you don’t use them now, check them out. Who knows, you might find something useful.