Our house is being fumigated this week because we have wood-boring beetle damage under the floors. Yes, this means the big circus tent over the house. So we are staying elsewhere.

Surviving at the Motel 6
I originally reserved 4 nights for us at Motel 6. I have no idea what I was thinking. It turns out that while Motel 6 is cheap to stay at, it has very little in the way of creature comforts. You get a bed, a bathroom, matchbook-sized soap, a small desk, air conditioning, and a 19″ TV. Plus unidentifiable stains in the carpet that could be chocolate or could be something else. Plus a “non-smoking room” that reeks of stale smoke. Then there’s the meth-addled chick who dug a cigarette butt out of the ashtray outside the front office, then tried picking up on my husband while I was walking beside him.

We even had to bring our own small fridge, an iron and ironing board, and a clock radio, just so we could function on work days. My cell phone had zero signal indoors.

I also paid for 4 days of Wi-Fi so I could conduct business with my laptop. The “Motel 6″ Wi-Fi never connected, in spite of two lengthy phone calls I made to the tech support number I was given. I ended up having to pirate the signal from nearby sources, which made me really resent Motel 6. It turned out that the Wi-Fi signal to my room was shut off, but that was not figured out until two days into our stay. Lame.

Thriving at Days Inn
Near the end of the second day, I couldn’t take it any more. We made a reservation at the Days Inn across the street. We canceled our last 2 days at Motel 6. Moving into Days Inn was like switching from pauper to prince. For $16 more per night, we now have a gorgeous room in a hotel with interior hallways that require a room key to enter.

This room is nicer than our house (though smaller). And it reminds me of all the things that make living in a hotel a treat, rather than a misery. These are all things that our $60/night Days Inn room has, that the Motel 6 rooms don’t offer:

• refrigerator with a small freezer
• microwave
• thermostat on the air conditioner (so you don’t have to keep turning it on and off manually)
• shampoo, conditioner, and lotion
• tissues
• ideal, consistent water pressure
• coffee maker, instant coffee, and tea
• table in addition to the desk, two chairs, two nightstands, and some kind of sideboard which is great for keeping food and supplies on
• iron and ironing board
• alarm clock/radio
• art on the walls
• drawers for clothing
• free Wi-Fi (Motel 6 charged $3/day, and it didn’t even function in our room)
• free continental breakfast, including cereal, juice, and waffles
• sheer curtains between the window and the heavy drapes (add privacy while letting in light)
• hair dryer with built-in night light in the bathroom
• smells nice

Talking Dollars and Sense
In terms of costs, the Days Inn room is a much better bargain. If you add the costs of Wi-Fi and buying breakfast for two elsewhere, the Motel 6 room costs more per night at $44. Considering that buying a canned or frozen lunch to microwave in our Days Inn room saves another handful of dollars, I now appreciate why you’d want to pay more for a hotel room.

I’d also like to mention that the fixtures here are surprisingly lush. The furniture made of matching, carved, real wood. The bathroom counters and tub surround are granite. The wooden hangers are plentiful. The pool is bigger. The TV is bigger and has more channels.

The moral of this story is: when you travel (especially for business), consider the total package of a hotel/motel. Don’t assume that a cheaper room is a better financial decision.

On July 9th, I posted here about my initial attempts at getting a marketing plan for BluLob off the ground. This is an update and a general impression of my experiences so far. If you find yourself mentioned here, please understand that I found everyone – with rare exception – to be personable and having the best intentions. That rare exception would be my first item: National Association of Professional Women.

National Association of Professional Women
A couple of weeks ago, I got a postcard from the “National Association of Professional Women”. It offered a free membership and online networking opportunities. I paused but then I figured, “What the hell?” I filled out the card and returned it. On Tuesday, I received a phone call from a very businesslike-sounding woman. She said she would like to interview me for consideration as a NAPW member. I sincerely answered a series of questions about my experiences and strengths. I started sensing tiny red flags when she started two questions with, “As a successful business woman…” I found that rather presumptuous and felt more aware of a script the woman was reading. Eventually, she said I had met their unstated requirements for membership. She began to rattle off a lengthy list of benefits of membership.

I was not born yesterday (just the day after), so I interrupted her to tell her that I was guessing that there was some cost associated with all of this. She told me in her flowery way that they had two membership levels, each as a one-time fee. One was $698 and the other was $498. Clever. Probably most who fall for this go for the cheaper one and that’s why they offer one that’s $200 higher than what they really expect to get.

I told the woman that I had ZERO dollars to spend on this. Truly. No money at all. She gave me the option of a $289 membership with fewer advantages. I reiterated that I can spend zero dollars. She tried a $189 membership, then an $89 membership. Clearly not getting it, and assuring me that I had correctly identified a scam. I also happened to Google the organization while on the phone with her, and found this. She finally said something about a free trial membership, and I managed to politely get off the phone.

Lesson learned: don’t fill out anything for an unknown organization without some extensive Googling beforehand.

eWomen Network
I went to a second meeting with eWomen. This time it was a dinner meeting with more people – maybe forty. Dinner was decent. The meeting had some interesting aspects. Some women had display tables for their businesses, which provided a topic for conversation. I am sort of awful at small talk, so I was grateful for this. There were a couple of speeches, and two sessions of “speed networking” with 4-5 women per group. One of the speeches was on the “Elevator Pitch”.

The Elevator Pitch is the idea that you prepare a quick rundown of your business that serves as a miniature commercial when you meet new people that ask what you do. You begin with asking a question like, “You know when people have a hard time getting ________ done?” And then person is supposed to respond in the affirmative. Then you follow up with “Well, what I do is _______.” You’re supposed to identify a “pain point” that you help people resolve, and then tell them how you can help them with it.

I am still dubious of this approach. The woman who gave the speech – and who gives paid workshops on it for a living – is very nice. Like too nice. Maybe she is earnestly like that, but her enthusiasm and friendliness is almost off-putting. I hesitate to outright call it insincere until I get to know her better, but you probably know what I’m talking about. And the Elevator Pitch approach itself seems to turn an ordinary person into an actor on stage. I don’t want to deal with actors myself, and I don’t want to appear sales-y to others. And what happens if the person says, “No, I really don’t know people who feel that way”? If I heard the Elevator Pitch, I might be tempted to say that because I could sense that I was supposed to give a manipulated response in order for the script to work.

I do recognize the importance of identifying that “pain point,” especially since I provide services. I want to develop a website that speaks to the real problems that people (and businesses) have. And I believe I have real solutions that will help them make their businesses look amazing. It’s not a matter of lack of confidence in the work I do. I just want to be myself.

This reminds me of the Showtime show called Bullshit, starring Penn and Teller. I love this show. Many episodes are about people who make up phony solutions for real problems. They make a lot of money doing this, and manage to do it year after year without real results because the people who invest money in their “services” truly invest emotionally as well. I am beginning to realize that there are lots of people in the business world who do this as well. They make a living out of helping (or pretending to help) businesses grow through various approaches. The Elevator Pitch is not new, and I imagine lots of people earn money telling you how to do it. I can’t tell yet if the Elevator Pitch helps anyone generate business, or merely pretends to.

Okay, anyway, I did join eWomen that night (luckily “eWomen Network” doesn’t have a bunch of bad results in Google). With my new membership, I got a free workshop for the Elevator Pitch. It will be next month, and I’ll report back here.

CraigsList
I’ve responded to a handful of part-time and contract job job postings on CraigsList this week. This has resulted in nothing but one response which turned out to be a check cashing con. I reported this to CraigsList’s legal department.

I also posted an ad for my design services. Also zero response…until today, day 7. I got a small illustration-type job. I will continue to try this marketing technique. Hey, it’s free and requires only time to repost the ad once per week.

Google AdWords
A fellow attendee at the eWomen morning meeting I went to heartily endorsed Google AdWords for advertising one’s business. She said her business got 3 clients in the first month from it. I signed up on July 8th. Since then I’ve gotten over 20,000 impressions, 18 clicks, and zero clients. I guess I’m doing something wrong. Here’s the text of my ad; I probably need to talk benefits instead:
Eye-Catching Websites
Your website designed by a true
artist and web expert. Blue Lobster
blulob.com

Following Up
I sent out a small batch of follow-up emails to people I met in March at a business expo. Two people responded, and one of them wanted to talk at greater length about working together. She works at a mailing service, and I met with her at a Starbucks on Tuesday. Our meeting was awesome. She not only may have some contract work for me with her existing job, but she is looking into starting her own business and it seems I would be her designer of choice for that venture. She gave me a folder full of samples from the mailing service, and we chatted about the relative merits of each design. I was grateful for the samples, which I immediately took to my design class that day to enhance my demonstration of the design principles.

I also spent Monday lunch with a nice lady I met at the eWomen dinner. She is a writer who specializes in writing for websites. We are both artists, and she seems really down to earth (a characteristic you can probably tell by now that I value.) If eWomen comes to nothing else, I hope to generate some friendships with other women.

All in all, though, all my networking so far has resulted in zero business. I hope that this changes with persistence.

Next Up
I will have my first official marketing planning session with Avaunt next Monday. I am still a long way from identifying a niche to market my services to. I hope that in this meeting I can explore a number of options and come up with something that is uniquely “me”. I would love to work with the colorful/kooky/funky/artsy style that I seem to do the most. Like that blue lobster drawing up there in the banner. I just don’t know if there is enough of a market for that stuff. Again, I’ll report back here.

The last time I was freelancing, I was a very passive marketer. For the most part, I relied on people finding me online or through referrals. I managed to win and keep a few clients this way. However, as you can imagine I didn’t really make a living this way. It was lucky I was teaching and receiving students loans at the same time.

This time, I am committed to making my design studio very successful. I am pursuing marketing more aggressively than last time. I need to make sure not to spend all of my money right out of the gate, of course. I want to take a little bit of time to evaluate all my options and decide intelligently. Then gain the discipline to work as hard on getting new clients as I do working for my existing clients.

Here are my reflections and notes from my adventures in marketing so far. This is not cut-and-dried and may ramble at times, but if you are new to marketing you may glean some bright ideas that I learned from others. Read on:

June 18 – Cleaning House
I began by redesigning the home page for BluLob.com. Earlier versions put the focus on the blog. I needed to refocus on what I offer to paying clients. So now you will find only marketing items “above the fold” – things that invite visitors to see what I offer in the way of design services. The blog’s still here if you scroll down a bit. I also began the process of prettifying my portfolio. I need to refine it to only five to ten of my best pieces. This is still a work in process. Once I decide  what my niche (target market) will be, I’ll have a better idea which items to include.

June 25 – Finding a Coach
I met with a marketing specialist by the name of Corey Walker. She was gracious enough to give me free advice for an hour. I took copious notes, which I will share with you below. Same of these may pertain to what you do in your business.

Notes from meeting with Corey Walker:

• for online teaching and conferencing, check out wiziq.com
• give some more time to networking and building connections on LinkedIn
• create and use two brochures: one focused on web and one on graphic
• find a local group to network with on a regular basis – people get more comfortable with you over time
• check out a local chamber of commerce – maybe there’s one for East Sac; they often send out:
  • email blasts
  • newsletters
• start up a regular email newsletter
  • include 1-2 articles in each
  • recommends use of Constant Contact
  • each newsletter gets an associated web page
  • post link to web page on Twitter, etc.
  • links can generate additional subscribers
  • content ideas:
    • case studies, redesigns, how a client benefitted
    • simple design tips, design principles
    • how to hire a designers
    • how to take a good head shot for marketing materials
    • what sort of things do I already teach clients about?
    • how a web site comes together
    • tips for copywriting
  • use the lobster as a character with adventures, personality
  • the newsletter does not have to be all-business
  • when I get business cards at networking events, email the person and incidentally ask them if they’d like to subscribe to newsletter
• make a Facebook fan page for BluLob, and link to it on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
• e-Women Network
  • people are really supportive
  • directors are really focused on helping you grow (as opposed to a chamber of commerce)
  • Corey goes to Folsom chapter
  • most meetings generate something, so it’s worth the cost
  • mostly small business owners
  • mention to people that I am also interested in talking to marketing people at larger companies
• charge less for tri-fold brochure: $650 is more reasonable
• reconsider whether to list prices on website; maybe use a sliding scale depending on business size and budget; alternately, show two scopes for each item, one low-end and one high-end
• Corey can provide the following ongoing services for me:
  • copywriting
  • ongoing marketing plan
  • coaching on newsletters
  • checkups on marketing progress
  • keep me focused on continued marketing and networking

I have already followed some of her advice. I also spent some time researching eWomen Network. More on that later.

June 30 – Finding a Coach, Part II
I met with another marketing expert, Brandon Miller of Avaunt Advantage. This meeting was similarly useful, but instead of “to do” ideas, Brandon schooled me about five major components of an effective marketing plan:

1. Advertising- such as Google AdWords
2. Networking – such as BNI, LeTip, and various chambers of commerce (check out the Asian Chamber even if you’re not Asian!)
3. Public Relations – my tutorials here on Blulob count, but this also refers to being a sponsor of non-profit efforts (little league baseball, anyone?)
4. Cold Calling – terrifying but true: it’s not a marketing plan unless you do it (see notes below)
5. Database Management – keeping an organized contact list and following up with people I meet

Cold-calling will be most effective if I do it myself, because I’m the one with the expertise to answer client questions right off the bat. A few notes on cold calling:

• A cold-calling business person has to overcome TWO fears:
  • Your own fear of rejection.
  • A potential client’s fear of making a bad buying decision.
• Sales is a numbers game. You won’t win everyone over, but you will win over a percentage.
• A good way to cold-call is to offer a free consultation.
• The first thing to do is identify a target market.

Brandon offers a few different marketing packages, starting at $200/month for helping me develop all five components mentioned above. He’s offering direction, focus, ideas and coaching. I am taking this under consideration. If we’re successful with this and I’m getting enough money in, I may upgrade to a more elaborate package. This would include marketing analysis and networking training. He described a number of networking concepts, such as “speed networking” in which you meet 20 people face-to-face and spend 90 seconds each describing what you do.

Brandon says his strongest service is “developing a great message”.

July 1 – BNI
I was invited by my plumber to attend a networking mixer for BNI of Elk Grove. Everyone was really nice, and I met a man and his wife, Todd and Hilary Dorff, who run another web design firm in town. Not only do I enjoy chatting with other people in my field, Todd seemed interested in subcontracting to me as the need arises. Hilary invited me to a free networking event the following morning.

BNI has an interesting arrangement. There are usually several chapters in a given town. Sacramento has four. Each chapter can have only one member in any given field. Unfortunately, each of the Sacramento chapters have a web designer already. I could try to find a chapter further away, or market myself there as a graphic designer instead. Initial sign-up costs something like $400 and there are quarterly fees of around $20. I don’t recall the exact amounts. They allow you to attend two meetings for free before you join.

BNI provided free appetizers at On the Border. Yum.

July 2 – a Free Networking Thing at IKEA
I went to a networking event put on by a woman who does financial consulting. It was held at the local IKEA. Hilary couldn’t make it but one of their salespeople did. There were a good number of people from a variety of industries. After a bit of mingling with free coffee and pastry, we sat in a large horse-shoe configuration. Two people had previously arranged to make special presentations of their companies (these guys provided the snacks). Then everyone had a few minutes each to talk about what they do and to pass business cards around.

All in all it was interesting, but I don’t know yet if it will lead to any business relationships. I contacted a few people afterward via email, but have yet to hear back.
By the way, IKEA offers meeting spaces for free before the store opens. The setting is like a large classroom or conference room. I had the notion to teach a basic HTML course there for a small fee.

July 8 – eWomen Network
My third networking event for the month: I went to an eWomen Network “Strategic Business Introductions” meeting. This one was not free. In fact, I paid $75 to go an a non-member. I had two goals: evaluate eWomen before I join, and meet a few more potential business contacts. Other eWomen events have a lot of people, but this one just had nine, two of whom represented eWomen. The small number was intentional, because the idea was to really connect, and to advise each other.

After a brief introduction by each person, we did an interesting brain storming session. Person one described a particulat business need, and then each person in turn would give suggestions regarding that need. After we went around the table, it was person two’s turn to voice a need. For example, one person expressed the need to get articles published about his industry (Bowen therapy). I suggested publishing them on his very own blog as well as in publications.

The need I expressed was the need to find focus: focus on a niche market, and what to focus on with all my business ideas at any given time (design work, blogging, T-shirt design, teaching, tutorials, etc.)

Here are my loose notes from this meeting:

• One woman found success with Google Adwords; she pays $50 per month and found three clients her first month. I went ahead and singed up yesterday. I’ve gotten 4 click so far but no calls. Patience, patience.
• A sales expert recommended this method of cold-calling:
  • Have 100 face-to-face interactions within a two-day period.
  • Get to know people – don’t try to sell. It’s about relationships.
  • On a second visit, hand-drop off a card with a box of chocolates.
  • It can take five to seven interactions before someone buys.
• Tell stories in your marketing. I had the brainstorm to include a sort of story-telling element to my portfolio items.
• Check out Get Networking Now to find future network events (Sacramento region).
• Constant Contact offers email marketing and newsletter services, and a free trial.
• The Small Business Administration (SBA) has “Score” members who coach people with their businesses. (I searched for mentors in California for “Advertising and Marketing”, which came the closes to what I do. I submitted a request for advice from Peter Thomsen in Sacramento.)
• Interview a number of business coaches before deciding on one (eWomen Network gives you two free coaching sessions – with two different coaches – with your membership.)
• Check out Stephanie Chandler in regards to professional publishing and producing/selling eBooks.
• Delegate basic business functions when you can to a service like SimpleBackOffice.

eWomen Network costs $290 to sign up, then $16.95 per month. Events are an additional cost but members get a discount. Members also get access to a large online community where they can create a business profile page. And there’s the coaching service too. A few women whom I met yesterday have already called or emailed me.

Conclusion
I have been working very hard the past two days to digest everything I’ve learned, follow up on suggestions, and reconnect with everyone I met. I’ve emailed a hello to a number of individuals whose business cards I’ve kept since March. I’ve also tracked down a number of them on LinkedIn and requested connections with them.

I think I will budget $200-300 per month for a while to get my marketing really going. I will be going to one more eWomen event next week, then probably go ahead and sign up with them. That will burn up July’s budget. Then I’ll start working with Brandon Miller in August to get those five marketing components going.

I’ll let you all know in the future, with complete candidness, what generates real clients for me with real money, and what doesn’t.

I’ve seen a number of blog articles lately which list which WordPress plugins the author is using. These are very useful articles. But I thought I’d share with you what I’ve tried and ditched. And why.

All of these plugins have their place. Unfortunately, it’s not at BluLob.com.

WP-PostRatings

This one functioned very well. It allows you to add a five-star rating widget into each post. You can also plop the 10 highest rated posts into your sidebar navigation panels.

However, visitors rarely used it. Any visitor likely to use it would either rate it 5 stars because they liked the post, or not at all because they didn’t want to hurt my feelings (or think, why bother?). Besides, ratings are best for sites that have competing products or authors. I’m not competing against myself.

This is similar to why I removed the tag cloud widget from the sidebar. It is a feature that works really well somewhere like Twitter with many people posting. You can get an idea of the latest topic trends. It makes little sense on a one-author blog with a narrow focus.

WP-Sticky

Also a well-functioning plugin, WP-Sticky allows you to identify one or more posts to stay at the top of your home page. This is fantastic for a site like problogger.net (which again has multiple authors). If you have a home page with a big main panel like theirs for the sticky article, then areas for other articles, this works well.

My blog outline is more linear. One post appears below another in the same column. It could confuse readers who see the same post on top and think I haven’t added anything new.

On the other hand, I just had a brainstorm. I could have a “latest tutorial” panel, then a block for excepts for all the latest posts. It would require a major layout change, but I might do that. Then I’ll unditch WP-Sticky.

Twitter Widget from Widgetbox

This was code I added directly into the sidebar rather than needing to install a plugin (I had one for Flickr as well). It was a great novelty at first, but after a couple of weeks I got bored with it. It took up a lot of real estate, and probably weighed the page down in terms of download speed and bandwidth.

I have prominent connections with Twitter elsewhere. I have a “follow me” button in the sidebar, which is a nice compromise between too much information and too little. I also have a “Tweet This” button with each post, thanks to TweetMeme. Readers also have the option to Tweet a post from the Add To Any bar at the bottom of each post.

Do you use WordPress? Are there any plugins you’ve tried and ditched? Please share with us in the Comments section below.

Earlier this week, I ran a poll on what people like to do on Facebook. It’s part of my research on online communities and what makes them so attractive to people. This poll asked the question: “What do you do the most [on Facebook]?” Voters could choose more than one activity, or add their own. The poll received 45 unique visitors and 84 votes. My visitor base was mainly adults with some technical savvy.

Here are the results:

The Top Three
The majority of visitors enjoy doing these three things:

1. Post about my status (15%)
2. Read my friends’ status updates, quizzes and links (14%)
3. Comment on friends’ posts (14%)

The Rest of the Top Eight
These activities are less important to Facebook fans, but still popular:

1. Write on friends’ walls (11%)
2. Upload and tag photos (10%)
3. Post links to videos, articles, etc. (9%)
4. View Facebook on my mobile device (7%)
5. Take quizzes (5%)

Not So Great, Actually
These six activities got low scores:

1. Play games (3%)
2. Get and send emails (2%)
3. Network with people in related industries (2%)
4. Customize my profile with Facebook apps (1%)
5. Add as many friends as I can (1%)
6. Send virtual pets and gifts (1%)

Who Even Does That?
These activities received zero votes:

• Market my products/services
• Invite friends to events

Write-in Votes
The write-in votes were interesting and entertaining:

• “Look at other people’s photos, see about events friends are attending that I mig” (and then he ran out space – sorry!)
• “Look at other people’s pictures” (I wish I had used this on the poll.)
• “Utilize the community to concoct a nefarious plan to take over the world” (Ahahaha.)

What do you think? Should I create similar polls on MySpace and Twitter? Did I leave any important activities out?

It’s not too late to vote, if you’d still like to ad your two cents. Thanks!

I got an email this morning from a former Web design student of mine. He was asking for a copy of a document I used to have on my previous design Web site and is long gone. Fortunately, I still have it in my files. And I’ve updated it and posted it here.

This is a sample Request for Proposal (RFP), which is a key beginning stage in planning a Web site design. The RFP helps a designer and his/her client nail down what is wanted in a Web site, as well as what a client’s priorities are. It may bring to mind things that a client hasn’t even considered yet. It gives the designer an opportunity to educate the client about the degree of complexity that can be involved in a Web design project.

Now, I have found that it usually too overwhelming to a client to just be handed the RFP and asked to return it filled out. They sometimes don’t even know what half the questions are about. For example, this company’s RFP leaves a lot to be desired. What it the potential client doesn’t know the difference between a “Template Design” and a “Blog Site”? What if their Web site idea doesn’t seem to fit into any of the available categories? What if they don’t know what “Maintenance” entails?

I recommend you use the sample RFP below as a guide for interviewing a client about their needs. Clients often have questions about each of the questions you ask them. Ask and answer lots of questions. Get it all down. Then you can write a reasonably accurate design brief based on the responses to your interview.

Here is my original Request for Proposal, originally written in about 2003 but updated today for new Web technologies such as social media and mobile devices.

Introduction

Thorough planning of your web site project will save you time and money in the long run. It will improve communication of your needs to designers such as myself. The Request for Proposal questionnaire below gives an overview of many of the considerations when undertaking a web site creation. Your responses to these considerations will help me provide you an accurate project price and schedule, and they will also help me to draw up our Contract for Services.

Company Basics

Please tell me a little about who you are.

1. Descriptions
   1. Brief company description
   2. Brief industry description
   3. Description of competitors and their web sites/marketing collateral
2. Contact Information
   1. Company name  
   2. Company location  
   3. Contact name and title  
   4. Contact phone number  
   5. Contact e-mail address  
   6. Company web site

Next: Project Basics…

microsoft vs. apple vs. adobe vs. yahoo 1996

1996

Microsoft’s is more compact vertically than Apple’s (which is very scrollerific). Microsoft and has a nice header that expands across the top. Apple has a sweet scroll box for choosing alternate country sites. Both Microsoft and Apple have a colored vertical column and a white background for the main text. Adobe blows them both away with a compact layout based on a grid. Too bad the navigation text is super teeny tiny. Instead of a complex table structure, the layout mainly consists of three horizontal images with extensive image maps. Yahoo combines a simple search box with a large directory list and icons for navigation. No-one has adopted CSS yet (the CSS 1 specification was completed this year).

microsoft vs. apple vs. adobe vs. yahoo 1996

1998

Microsoft makes a vast improvement in its layout, but their home page is super link-heavy and the text is very small. Apple’s site has more of a sense of hierarchy, with new product images giving a visitor a quick pathway to the most popular pages. Adobe chooses red text links to match their logo, and the effect is garish. The images are unusual and appealing. Finally, Yahoo tightens up their home page with a double-column directory listing. However, it would take some time to learn what you are supposed to do here. Microsoft has a rudimentary use of CSS for styling text and links, but none of the others do.

microsoft vs. apple vs. adobe vs. yahoo 1998

2000, Web 1.0

Microsoft incorporates more images but the home page is still text- and link-heavy. News and download panels arrive on the right. Apple’s home is essentially the same as in 1998. Now glassy tabbed navigation appears on the top. Adobe gets pretty playful here. Adobe’s organization and hierarchy are the best in the bunch. Yahoo tries to put it all on the home page, and finally starts blocking out areas of content. The use of CSS has not progressed on any of the sites.

microsoft vs. apple vs. adobe vs. yahoo 2000

Coming soon: Part 2…

Evolution

You can look up archives of Web sites with the Wayback Machine at archive.org. Sometimes images weren’t archived completely, so some of the screenshots below have some missing bits.

August 2000
Yes, I used frames and I am ashamed. But, hey it was 2000. I wasn’t even promoting my design work yet. Longest copyright notice ever. This is the earliest version I can find of dawnsbrain.com.

August 2000

January 2001
The Flash splash page with various animations is missing in the archive. Luckily, I have samples of a few of them below. Roll over one of the thumbnails on the left. I had just learned to use Flash.

July 2001
I have no idea how I expected people to contact me. There were no links on this page while I redesigned the site (which apparently took a few months). Just some self-promotional verbiage.

July 2001

February 2002
I still like these goofy creatures I used for the navigation. I made some decent glass buttons for the left edge, but the text formatting is so lame. When you rolled over the text, you got a JavaScript image swap in the right-hand box. This is the first appearance of a Dawn’s Brain logo.

February 2002

September 2002
What was I thinking? This looks so formal and bland. At least I was learning how to tighten up the layout, and the logo looks better. I think this is when I started using X-Cart as a way to generate my portfolio. X-Cart was not a bad solution, and I used it for several years in this manner.

September 2002

November 2002
This is a small improvement. I added images of recent work above the introductory text.

November 2002

February 2004
Finally a return to color, with an aquatic theme. I really love animals. I took those photos as Monterey Aquarium, I think. This was about the time I also fell in love with the combination of orange and green.

February 2004

December 2005
I was really falling in love with 50′s modern design motifs. I finally came up with my favorite logo design for Dawn’s Brain: the retro “dbd”. This was my first Web design done completely with CSS positioning rather than tables.

December 2005

August 2006
This was when I went into teaching full-time and put my freelance career on hold. The banner image is missing here but it looked pretty much like the current banner. I swapped the X-cart portfolio for my first WordPress blog.

August 2006

BluLob.com
I’m hoping that the archive eventually shows my earlier attempts here at blulob.com. I failed to archive the screenshots myself. The Wayback Machine says that it takes about 6 months for the archives to appear after they have been collected, so I’ll be checking back with them in September. In the meantime, here’s what blulob.com looks like today, May 2, 2009:

May 2, 2009

For years, I have worked with blogging software like WordPress and shopping cart software like X-Cart. For much of that time I have been intimidated by the prospect of developing an online community. They seem to be an order of magnitude more complex than anything I’ve worked with before. That has changed.

I spent the earlier part of this past week at the NAB Show in Las Vegas. I learned many things there, and got some great visual introductions to 3D motion graphics. But the most paradigm-shifting (please forgive me the cliche) experience I had was a 3-hour seminar on Wednesday.

The seminar was entitled “Emerging Web 3.0 Technologies You Need To Know”, and it was presented by Todd Marks and Vince Buscemi of MindGrub. These guys were great. I took seven pages of notes on my laptop. I’ll talk about many of the things I learned there in future posts, but for now I am completely energized to build my own online community.

These days, people aren’t satisfied with simply reading a Web page. They want to comment on it, rate it, Tweet it, and blog about it. They want to generate their own content on your Web site. I recommend you embrace this. The free user-created content not only builds your site traffic and your page ranking in search engines, it helps build rapport with your visitors.

Todd and Vince introduced us to KickApps.com and Ning.com, both of which provide ready-to-go online communities that are somewhat customizable.

I purchased two books at the show, Designing the Moment: Web Interface Design Concepts in Action by Robert Hoekman Jr., and Online Communities Handbook: Building your business and brand on the Web by Anna Buss and Nancy Strauss. These two books are fantastic. They really helped me see the potential in creating a social networking site.

When I got home, I looked into KickApps for a couple of hours. You run your community on their servers and simply point your domain name to your affiliate location there. This is known as Software as a Service (SaaS). They run ads on your community site, but you can pay them so that you can remove their ads and place your own and make a little moolah. I do want to make some moolah. I was uncomfortable with not running the software on my own host. I feared I couldn’t really get at the source code like I am used to. And I had no idea how much they might charge to strip their ads out and run my own.

Then I found this article:

Dolphin vs phpFox vs Joomla vs Drupal vs Ning vs Kickapps for Your Social Networking Site by “Codernaut”

This article was a god-send. It helped me see that although Drupal has a steep learning curve, it’s free, has great online support in the form of other Drupal users, and is extremely customizable. I had heard of Drupal before but thought it was essentially the same as WordPress. Wrong.

I’m willing to learn how to build my Drupal community from the basic installation up. Hey, I’ve found there’s a strong demand for Drupal designers at eLance.com. Luckily, my Web host WestHost let me automatically install the Drupal core (the installation itself probably was not too hard anyway), and I am working from there. The quantumcritics.com article above helped me figure out which add-on modules I needed to acquire and install as a next step. I did much of this, but I am still overwhelmed but the complexity of this monster. I haven’t even started customizing the look and feel yet.

I’m keeping the Web address and topic of my new venture under my hat for now, but I will be working on it feverishly for the next month or so. Then I will invite Beta members to help me test it and build some initial content.

Now I’m off to Borders to buy a copy of About Drupal from O’Reilly Media. Good Sunday reading.

I’ll be heading to the NAB Show in Las Vegas on Sunday, staying through Wednesday. One of the seminars I plan to attend is called, “Emerging Web 3.0 Technologies You Need To Know”.

When I saw that seminar title, I thought sheesh I’m still trying to figure out what Web 2.0 encompasses. It turns out that a lot of people are still doing that. Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web, once said “I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means.”

This is a great article that attempts to define the differences between Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. It even offers what Web 4.0 and beyond may look like:

“How Web 3.0 Will Work” on howstuffworks.com

Here’s a quick summary I compiled of the suggested distinctions:

Web 1.0 Sites

(1992 – 2001)
“Web 1.0″ refers retroactively to the time between when the World Wide Web was first released in 1992, and when the “dot-com bubble” burst in 2001.

• Static. Pages contain information that might be useful, but that does not change regularly.
• Not interactive. Visitors can visit, but cannot impact or contribute to, the site.
• Proprietary. Companies develop software applications that users can download, but the users can’t see how the application works or change it.

Web 2.0 Sites

(2002 – 2011?)
Purportedly begun in 2002, the term “Web 2.0″ was coined by Dale Dougherty (of O’Reilly Media) and Craig Cline (of Seybold Publications) in 2004.

• Dynamic. The site content is always changing and worth multiple visits. Example: a blog that owners can frequently update.
• Interactive. Visitors can contribute to the site. Example: wikis and Amazon.com’s customer reviews.
• Open source. The source code for the program is freely available, and users can see how the application works and make modifications or even build new applications based on earlier programs. Example: the Firefox browser provides developers with all the tools they need to create new Firefox applications.

Another major innovation of Web 2.0 is social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. Social bookmarking sites like Digg and Technorati also make connections between people and information, and rely on large groups of people to create content. In addition, the concept of a semantic Web is building.

Web 3.0 Sites

(2012 – 2021?)
Web 3.0 is expected to take the concept of the semantic Web and build a sort of gigantic database of interconnecting information. Quoting the article “How Web 3.0 Will Work” linked above:

Internet experts think Web 3.0 is going to be like having a personal assistant who knows practically everything about you and can access all the information on the Internet to answer any question.

They give the following scenario:

Let’s say that you’re thinking about going on a vacation. You want to go someplace warm and tropical. You have set aside a budget of $3,000 for your trip. You want a nice place to stay, but you don’t want it to take up too much of your budget. You also want a good deal on a flight.

With the Web technology currently available to you, you’d have to do a lot of research to find the best vacation options. You’d need to research potential destinations and decide which one is right for you. You might visit two or three discount travel sites and compare rates for flights and hotel rooms. You’d spend a lot of your time looking through results on various search engine results pages. The entire process could take several hours.

According to some Internet experts, with Web 3.0 you’ll be able to sit back and let the Internet do all the work for you. You could use a search service and narrow the parameters of your search. The browser program then gathers, analyzes and presents the data to you in a way that makes comparison a snap. It can do this because Web 3.0 will be able to understand information on the Web.

Web 4.0 Sites

(2022 and beyond?)
And here’s what some experts envision after Web 3.0 is fully developed:

• Aesthetics and usability. Focus will return to the front end of Web sites after Web 3.0 reinvents the back end. Designers will be able to take advantage of new advanced capabilities of Web 3.0 browsers.
• 3D. The Web will evolve into a three-dimensional environment: the Web could become a digital landscape that incorporates the illusion of depth.
• Artificial intelligence. Some people believe the Web will be able to think by distributing the workload across thousands of computers and referencing deep ontologies.
• Mobility. Everything from watches to television sets to clothing will connect to the Internet. Users will have a constant connection to the Web.
• Blending. The Web will merge with other forms of entertainment until all distinctions between the forms of media are lost. Radio programs, television shows and feature films will rely on the Web as a delivery system.