About a month and a half ago I was contacted by a friend of a friend who was interested in a website for her and her daughter’s new business. I was happy to help out and for the first time I used WordPress for a client site. Overall I think the process went really smoothly and with the back-end already in place I was able to focus my time on the design of the website.

The Vintage Plate Company is Kansas City’s first source for vintage dish rentals. Their goal is to provide you with a unique touch for your special occasions. Check them out!

A week ago Microsoft announced that it would start automatically upgrading its Internet Explorer browser next year. For anyone who has tried to design and support even a basic website across the plethora of available browsers, this should come as great news. Internet Explorer version 6, which is still widely used, is the hardest browser to support and it often has to have code designed specifically for it. This browser is ten years old and desperately needs to be retired. The current version released earlier this year is version 9, so it’s easy to see why the upgrades are necessary. If you are still using IE6, do yourself (and web developers everywhere) a favor and download the latest version. Or better yet, switch over to Chrome, my preferred browser.

As announced on their official blog, Google Music is now open for business. The idea here is that anyone can upload their personal music collection for free to the cloud so you can stream it anywhere, any time. The service has been in beta since May and though I was a beta member I never used it. Since our move my main music library has been stuck on a computer that does not have internet access, so I didn’t have an easy way to upload my tracks.

I finally took some time today to login to the service and even found some free tracks to add to my library. The best find so far has been 13 selected tracks from the Dave Matthews Band Caravan tour stop in Chicago earlier this summer that I attended. According to antsmarching.org the tracks are all from night three. These tracks are well recorded and are only available on music.google.com. Be sure to download Live On Lakeside and start using this great service.

Most of my free time this week (and some of the last couple of weeks) has been dedicated to getting oarsa.org updated. We use the Coppermine Photo Gallery to drive not only the photos section but it is also the backend of the user login system. The software package is updated regularly, but we never bothered to upgrade it on oarsa.org mainly because we had modified some of the source and didn’t want to lose those changes.

Well our version 1.3.x was completely obsolete a few years ago, and it wouldn’t run with PHP 5. We built our own version of PHP to use with the website, but when that stopped working a couple of weeks ago, we were forced to use the PHP 5 version on our host. That means that we had to upgrade Coppermine, as well as some of our own code that wasn’t compatible with the PHP upgrade.

The upgrade actually wasn’t too bad once I got down to it. oarsa.org is now utilizing Coppermine version 1.4.27. The 1.4.x releases are no longer supported, so I may have to upgrade to the latest 1.5.x in the near future if I want to avoid the catastrophe that happened the last couple of weeks. Live and learn I suppose.

O.A.R. has a new album coming out August 2nd titled King. The have also revamped their website completely, including a page dedicated to the upcoming release. And while that is all great, my favorite part of the website has to be the Past Shows area under the On Tour section of the site. Why is that? Well because I am powering that entire section of the site through a XML feed of data on oarsa.org. Each show has a “More Info” button that you can click to magically be taken to that show’s page on oarsa. I love it and I hope it really drives even more traffic to the site. In addition there is a nice write-up about the site (and a link to it) on the Community page. Once again these guys have proved to be the most thoughtful and down to earth musicians around.

I’ve been slowly adding Cincinnati related blogs to my blogroll and have built up a pretty good collection. First are a handful of blogs dedicated to urban living in Cincinnati.  UrbanCincy is a wonderful resource for happenings and events around downtown and the nearby neighborhoods. Somewhere Over the Rhine focuses more on the Over the Rhine neighborhood that is going through much revitalization, but it also has other downtown related news.

As far as personal blogs go, it seems that 5chw4r7z is the most popular around. And for good reason, as his blog entries are full of great photography and tales of so many events from around town. Wine Me, Dine Me is a great resource for local restaurants and Hoperatives is my go to source for craft beer in the area.

A blog that I just found yesterday, Ault Park Sunrise, is nearing completion of the author’s attempt to document 40 sunrises in Eastern Cincinnati. He travels by bicycle to Ault Park, or other surrounding areas of town, to document the sunrises, as well as area history and nature. I found the photos to be great and the historical information to be very interesting. Eventually we will be living in this part of town, so I look forward to making similar adventures soon.

Ustream has a 24/7 live feed of a pair of Bald Eagles and their three eaglets. I’ve had the stream on in the background of one of my monitors since earlier this morning and have been fascinated with it. I’ve seen the eaglets all eat pieces of fish that the parents have brought and fed to them. Currently the three are all laying down for naps, but both parents are still full of action, though usually it is just one of them in the nest at a time.

According to an article on TechCrunch, this stream is nearing 100 million views and is Ustream’s most-watched live stream in their five-year history. Within the last month the stream has tallied over 70 million views! I expect that number to increase even more as news of this spreads and especially with the upcoming first flights of the eaglets, which is expected to be late June or early July.  I’m sure I’ll be tuning in from time to time.

Recently I completed a website for some longtime family friends and their new lawn care business.  Sure Cut Lawn Care is family owned in the Cincinnati area and offers services including grass cutting, trimming, edging, mulching, cleanup, aeration, sealing, and more.  Contact them at 513-310-9265 for a free estimate.

A couple of years ago I mentioned a photo blog on boston.com called The Big Picture.  And thought that site continues on, the primary contributor, Alan Taylor, recently left there to join The Atlantic’s newly created In Focus.  The idea of both sites is the same, but they are often covering different events.  I’m still following The Big Picture, but find that Alan’s work with In Focus usually is more exciting along with latest photos.  In other words, things that I see on In Focus often later show up on The Big Picture.  Either way, both are worth visiting a few times of week when they are updated.

I purchased a new TV about a month ago.  Over the weekend I was alerted by Price Protectr that Best Buy had dropped their price of the TV I bought $50 under the price I paid.  All I had to do to get money back was take my receipt into the store and they credited $50 plus tax back onto my credit card.  I’ve used Price Protectr before, but it has never saved me much until this latest purchase.  Still it is worth using if you aren’t already.  All you have to do is enter the URL for the product you bought and provide your email address.  Their system watches the product and will email you if the price falls below what you paid for it.  With 160 supported stores, it is well worth your time to utilize the simple process that could save you money in the future.  I’m glad I did.