It was a cold day in March 2009 when I first posted to this blog. I mused about finding a Bojangles In Nashville. It was Nashville Interactive's most delicious post to date. Not that it's significant in the grand scheme of things but it seems like only yesterday I was designing and launching this version of the site. It's been a very great year and I have much more than a lot of people could hope for these days and I'm thankful for every bit of it.
Expect a website/visual brand redesign in the next month or so. Subscribe to the RSS feed if you'd like to hear about it hot off the presses.
In an effort to better aggregate fresh Nashville Interactive content (and stay on top of the latest technologies for content feeds), We're now using Feedburner to handle all RSS content. This Google-provided service allows website owners access great data on their site's feed usage. Also, feedburner now updates your twitter page with your latest posts and integrates effortlessly with Google Analytics and AdWords too. Exciting stuff for content people.
Please enjoy, let us know if you love it or hate it and SUBSCRIBE TO THE RSS FEED of course.
If you're interested in using feedburner for your site's feed here's a few good links:
- http://feedburner.google.com/ (obviously!)
- http://adsenseforfeeds.blogspot.com/
Open Office is a great FREE alternative to Microsoft Office for those of us on a budget. OpenOffice.org has been around for a while now but I'm just coming back to their solution and I've found that they've created (possibly long ago?) a much more user friendly Mac version. Being entrenched in website design, I've become a huge fan of open source software solutions. There's almost always a decent if not great solution to commercial software. Now I don't hate Microsoft or capitalism but if there's a good open source alternative I'll opt for that every time.
Open Office provides alternatives for a good bit of the stuff that Microsoft Office can offer. There's all the usual suspects: Text Documents (Word), Presentations (Powerpoint), Spreadsheets (excel), Databases, Drawing, Formula etcetera. Unfortuately there's not an email solution bundled in with Open Office. However, There's a lot of great open source email clients out there, like Thunderbird (which goes great with FireFox for a web browser)
Google is huge for a reason, they do things right. Email and spam filtering are just a couple of those things.
I have several email addresses that have apparently been sold to half of the free world for "marketing" purposes. I'm sure many of you do as well. These are all email addresses from old websites of mine that aren't run through one of the major providers like yahoo mail or gmail. I know that this filtering trick has been around for a while but I just recently started using it and I thought I'd share the knowledge.
The Overview: Basically your emails get forwarded to gmail when they hit your personal account. Next gmail does its thing, filtering spam in this case. Now you set up your email client to use the Gmail POP credentials and then you can check your email as you normally would.
The Specifics:
- Go to google.com and signup for a gmail account (link in the top left of page). [something like your-email.spamfilter@gmail.com works well]
- Make sure POP is enabled for the Gmail account by going to "Settings" > "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" [you may have to enable IMAP for some mobile devices]
- Redirect your personal email address (via your email server/client) to your new Gmail account address. (If you're not sure how to redirect your email, contact your IT guy)
- Configure your email client to receive the Gmail-filtered emails.
- Leave the outgoing mail server set to your personal account details and all outgoing email will be sent as usual with your name, email address, signature, etc.
Now please note that there are several ways to accomplish Google spam filtering but this technique seems to work very well. If you know of a better way to handle this or see any issues with this particular technique, please feel free to post about it.
I've never been a fan of Microsoft. Mostly because of Internet Explorer's poor web standards and all the pain It's caused myself and thousands of other web designers over the years. Now Microsoft has fallen even further out of favor with much of the web design community with their imposition of Bing onto its customers. Basically, Microsoft is trying to play catch-up with Google in the online advertising arena. They've already failed in my eyes.
Bing is now the default search engine for Internet Explorer. When the update was first released there was no choice in the matter, however Microsoft has fixed that "bug" so now it is apparently possible to switch the default search engine if you know how. I can see the logic behind promoting your own product versus the competition's but haven't past anti-trust cases taught you anything Microsoft? I have to think that one of the largest corporations in the world could do a little testing on their software updates before they release them. Missing such a major bug (not being able to change the default search engine in IE6) considering the touchy anti-trust subject, is inexcusable to me.
Also, in certain situations it seems that if you type an actual website URL into the address bar of Internet Explorer, you get Bing search results rather than the actual website you were looking for. (I hope this is a bug but I doubt it) Now, I realize that many people who use the internet utilize the search feature when they're trying to get directly to a site anyway. (i.e. typing "facebook.com" into the Google search bar rather than the address bar at the top of the browser). But I expect to get directly to the site I'm looking for when I type its URL in the ADDRESS BAR. I'm not looking for search results and paid ads. Search engine FAIL in my eyes.
Yes, it's true. The new contact number is 615.521.1890. While some of you will miss the Las Vegas area code calls, I felt this was best. Please feel free to call me to test it out if you'd like.
I recently completed a fresh website design for country music star Jason Aldean. Somewhere during the process I realized that I'm much more in tune with the country music scene. More so than I ever guessed I would be. I've always been a fan of older country music like Johnny Cash, Willie, Waylon, Hank (Sr) and Patsy Cline. You know, the classics. But now I can actually name that tune when it comes to mainstream radio.
All of this caused a bit of introspection as to what I've learned (or become more aware of) from other jobs I've worked. For a while, Point of Sale was my thing. I could tell you who the big players were and exactly what their visual identity looked like. I critiqued self checkout systems much to the annoyance of my girlfriend and the lady working the system. When I was working in advertising, I was made (sometimes painfully) aware of the outboard engine market and lawnmowers and generators from my dealings with Honda.
So… what has all this introspection resulted in? The realization that self-checkout still has a lot of room for improvement, outboard motors have twice the power of my car but a fraction of the weight and new country isn't all that bad.
And so this is it. pretty disappointing content-wise, I know. I’m working on it. My name is Chris Bradshaw and I’m a web designer / front end guy living in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m currently designing and building websites and implementing this blog. This will ideally be a repository of thoughts and commentary on design and the web. (possibly a tutorial or two eventually as well). This “design blog” will no doubt also be filled with plenty of off-topic posts as well just to keep it fresh for the anti-nerds. Please subscribe to the RSS feed and check back often. thanks, Chris
I found a Bojangles in Nashville last weekend! I had no idea that they existed west of the North Carolina border. Bojangles was a staple for me when it came to hangover/tailgating grub. You can imagine my disappointment when I came to the realization that I was no longer going to be able to enjoy two egg and cheese buiscuts, an order of bo-tato rounds and a sweet tea on a groggy weekend morning. Mrs Winners and Church’s may be great for some, but they’re sub-par at best for me. Unfortunately when my girl and I saw the Bojangles we were already committed to Cracker Barrel and had to pass. Next weekend though I’m all over it. Even if we have to drive clear across town to get it. (exit 201 off I-40 / Charlotte Pike). Delicious.
