Well, I've been away quite a while again. I've been very busy however. I designed some incredible sites and learned quite a bit about organic groups, organic group blueprints, podcasts, audio, video, iTunes integration, user profiles, ubercart, and tons of hacks to make things interesting.

Just now, I finally gave up trying to upgrade my last 4.7.x site and just put up a brand new 6.x site instead. I still have the upgrade in my backlog in case I should stumble onto some copious free time ... sorry ... that just cracks me up!

Anyway, I did a bit trying to integrate one of my ical feeds with Facebook, harder than it sounds though there is a great Facebook app that is almost there ... ya get duplicates after a short bit ... but hey I can turn it on then off -- saves me a bit o'typing I say.

Look at what I just did there ... I'm suddenly typing wit a British accent! Yikes!

I started using "scrum for one" to handle the sheer magnitude of my backlog -- which is a great term if you think about it. I am also using Zen's kanban board system to organize my sprints. I am thinking of upgrading to a paid account -- it is that good.

And what else ... oh yeah ... I am using Autofocus to manage my GTD next action list -- fantastic!

It has been really hard with the economic downturn to get paid work, I guess it is a good thing that this is only my part time job. In the mean time, my next big project is converting my over 10k lines of perl script into a drupal/ubercart app. This just gives me the heebie-geebies, but my site admins are tired of double and sometimes triple entry. Sigh ... the hits keep coming ... Happy Belated New Year ... and I am out!

Well, it has been a long time since I posted an entry here. I had been working feverishly on two major web designs -- one which is finished and the other is almost finished. So I literally forgot about this blog.

In the meantime, I became an ubercart, event, nodeprofile, panel, views and og aficionado! At the same time, however, I seemed to have missed the memo to upgrade anything to drupal 6.

Yeah, I pretty much gave up upgrading anything. It became too time consuming.

I will consider upgrading my 5.x sites to 6 when and if I suddenly get some time and ... some motivation. The main problem is that I sort of burned myself out on the big projects.

I am curious. How do you motivate yourself to upgrade sites that are working just fine, thank you very much?

What is Web 2.0?

It is the next phase of the world wide web.

In the beginning, there was HTML.

In the mid-nineties, Tim Berners-Lee crafted a new markup language by extracting a subset from an older markup language and boom! The Web was born.

Web technology continued to improve over the next decade, producing a whole slew of applications with each having their own set of bells and whistles. Then in 2004, ten years after the birth of the web, another Tim, Tim O'Reilly, declared the birth of Web 2.0.

With all the new technologies and seemingly endless array of options facing web users, Web 2.0 in many ways goes back to the basics in terms of usability and scalability.

In Web 2.0, no longer do you have to handcraft each web page, or know a programming language to have a web site, you do not even need a web guru to run your web site. In Web 2.0, you enter the world of content management systems(CMS), search engine optimization (SEO), web services such as RSS and Amazon, web automation such as Google sitemaps, and countless other improvements.

What does this mean for web site owners?

So what is the difference between a web design and a web theme?

A web design is how a web site works, what you can create, and how it all fits together to satisfy some goal or create an outcome.

Amber Eyes, for example, is a small one person company that excels in making affordable and attractive web sites that are easy to use. So our web design includes this blog so you can tell that I am a real human being. I list all of my web sites on the front page so you can see my work. I include my design notes to illustrate my design philosophy. I showcase my most recent designs and I offer a menu of things right at the top to take you to areas you might find interesting as a potential client. And I keep the whole thing simple and pretty straight forward, a lot like me in fact.

A web theme includes all the graphical elements, colors and fonts. It is what the design wears.

Amber Eyes, for example, is wearing a sturdy pair of shoes, khaki pants and a comfy t-shirt. Every element says casual and laid back. Of all the themes I have created, this one is the simplest -- all I did was increase the font on an existing design template. I let my client designs showcase my talent. Low key, sturdy and accessible -- that is the theme for Amber Eyes.

So when you purchase a design from Amber Eyes, we include a theme for free. If later you want a new look, all you do is order a new theme, and all your content stays exactly where it is.

Simple, hunh?

My thoughts exactly!