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March 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

In case some of you haven’t noticed, I have been relatively quiet lately.  The reason for my silence had a lot to do w/ the fact that I somehow managed to simultaneously catch the stomach virus and flu at the same time.  Fortunately I am doing a lot better.  While getting caught back up on my workload I noticed that I haven’t posted any of my most recent projects for quite some time now.

I will be launching a few individual posts related to Pleth projects that I have been working on lately, so stay tuned for those later, but I wanted to be sure to point out 2 new layouts, or WordPress themes I had a hand in creating or modifying for a strategic partner in the hosting industry.  You can click on the screenshots below for a larger view of each theme.

crowneplazalittlerockscreengrab  southridgescreenshot

Since both of these projects are not quite finished so I don’t have any links posted to the live websites yet but stay tuned and I will post a follow up about each project.

Filed Under: Current Projects, Wordpress™ Tagged With: ,

#RefreshCA – Tuesday, March 30th

March 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

This have been so hectic for me this past month that I haven’t even sent out the Facebook reminders to the Central Arkansas Refresh group about our meeting tomorrow night, Tuesday, March 30th at 6pm.  We will be meeting in our usual location, downstairs at The Flying Saucer in downtown Little Rock.  For directions, please see the map below…

This month Justin Wright from Mainstream Technologies will be sharing some of the high points from the SXSWi conference in Austin, Texas earlier this month.  This should be a very informative meeting, as many of you who work within the industry are probably already aware, many of the apps and technologies we use today were born at SXSWi in previous years.


View Larger Map

Filed Under: Central Arkansas Refresh Tagged With: ,

Installed Parallels on MacBook Pro

March 28, 2010 By 5 Comments

parallelslogo I blogged a few weeks ago about how I had recently purchased a MacBook Pro after having using Windows based PC’s my entire professional life.  I knew going in that the transition to a Mac wasn’t going to come fast, I had spent years learning shortcuts and applications inside the Windows environment and honestly some things about the Mac are total opposite.  While I still have continued to use my Dev1 and Dev2 machines for client projects and actual production, I have been tinkering around w/ the MacBook as much as possible to familiarize myself with it.

Going into this whole thing w/ the Mac, I knew that I would have to have some sort of virtual environment for me to run native Windows applications because some of my day to day applications don’t have a Mac friendly counterpart.  Two cases in point, PHPRunner and WS-FTP Pro.  Well, in the case of WS-FTP Pro, the manufacturer, IPSWITCH, has a Mac alternative called Fetch, but you can’t import from WS-FTP Pro into it.  To the normal user, this probably wouldn’t be an issue, but for me, I have over 700 client FTP connections loaded in WS-FTP Pro and I wasn’t about to re-enter a single one of these by hand.

Well, I looked into Boot Camp, a free product from Apple that would basically allow me to boot up in Windows or Mac OS, but to me that just seems a little too much like work.  I then checked out the VMWare product for the Mac and it didn’t impress me as much as the Parallels solution so I installed Parallels.  A short while into the installation process it asked me to insert a Windows XP or Vista disk.  I found an old XP Professional and loaded it up.  The Parallels solution installed Windows XP on my machine and I now have a start bar docked w/ my native Mac applications as well as my IDE, PHPRunner, which also is a native Windows application.  I also was able to install Office Professional 2003 very easily and now, instead of trying to wrestle with getting my .PST files from Outlook imported into Entourage, I can just run Outlook on my Mac.

The best thing about Parallels that I can tell right now is that it allows Windows and Apple based applications to coexist w/out having to boot out of one OS into another.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: , , , ,

WordPress 101 – CMS Basics

March 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I created a screen cast on Vimeo the other night so I could send it to some of our new clients to help them get acquainted w/ WordPress as a content management solution.  The video is very basic, and somewhat “hokey” at the same time but it accomplishes what I wanted it to do. (be sure to listen for phones ringing and alarms chirping while I was recording, :-)

I figured that the video might be useful to other users so I decided to share it here.  Again, please don’t laugh at the minor imperfections, this was put together very quickly.

In the video I cover the following:

  • Logging into WordPress (The Dashboard)
  • Adding / Editing Pages
  • Adding / Editing Posts (Categories, Featured Content, etc.)
  • How to Add Photos to Posts / Pages…
  • How to Add Thumbnails to Posts
  • How to Add Featured Content Images ‘articleimg’ to Posts
  • How to Add Users / Administrators
Filed Under: Wordpress™ Tagged With:

The Starbucks Church

March 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Rick Bezett shared this on Twitter this morning and I couldn’t stop laughing when I watched.  The video is actually a parable asking what if Starbucks marketed like the Church?  It’s actually a pretty deep topic if you think about it.  The funniest part of the video, some dude yells out “Javalooooya” and when the couple tells the barista that they are new, he points them out to everyone. ha.  Good stuff…

The video actually makes a very good point if you think about it.

Filed Under: Faith / Family, Funny Tagged With:

Outlook .PST to Entourage

March 15, 2010 By 2 Comments

Update: Eric Caldwell turned me onto a solution for doing this conversion / import, plus a whole lot more email migration related tasks.  It’s called Emailchemy.  You can pick that tool up here for $29. Well worth the money if you ask me.

outlook-entourage-logos-cottonclubOkay, so I posed a question today on Twitter to some of my friends who are hardcore Mac users as to how I can import my Windows based Microsoft Outlook .PST files (containing 11 years worth of business data) into Microsoft Entourage on my new MacBook Pro.  I know that there has to be a way to do this, I did a little research the other day and found some possibilities but none have panned out yet…

2 Possible Solutions that Didn’t Work Out…

  1. O2M – this solution just works if you are bringing Mac based Outlook 2001 files into Entourage 2004 (and up) and will do nothing for you if you have .PST files originating in a Windows Environment.
  2. Microsoft PST Import Tool – ran into the same situation w/ this solution as well.

There has to be a way to do this…

I know that there has to be a solution out there for handling this type of migration, but for the life of me I can’t seem to find it.  It looks like to me if Mac wanted to grow into the business sector, they would benefit greatly by coming up w/ some sort of conversion / import functionality and distribute the heck out of it.  I am still looking while juggling a few projects today but will update this post as soon as I find a solution.

In the meantime, until I can spend some quality time researching a solution for doing this, if any of you out there have any suggestions for me, I would love to hear from you, please fee free to leave a comment…

Filed Under: Email Solutions Tagged With: ,

Bitten by the Apple

March 15, 2010 By 9 Comments

maclogo I never thought that the day would come that I would own an Apple product and then came the iPhone.  I was reluctant at first to jump to the iPhone because I was in such a comfort zone w/ my Palm Treo and I had concerns as to how it was going to sync up w/ Microsoft Outlook (which I have been married to for as long as I can remember).  Well, once I got the iPhone, needless to say, it revolutionized my life. 

Fast forward about 6 months and I am hacking away during a client meeting on my “less than 2 year old” HP Tablet PC making notes and it just dies.  Fortunately I was able to plug it in when I got back to the office to backup everything one more time before it died again, just sitting there, no one touching it.  I called HP and got the run around about how they couldn’t just replace the motherboard for me, which I knew was the case, instead they were just going to send me out a new one, for $400 of course.  Well, I almost did it, but then I got to thinking… All of my friends are moving toward the Mac, and for the most part I only see excitement in their eyes when they talk about their systems, and for me, well honestly it’s been the opposite.  Nothing but heartache and despair on my end.  So I decided to head to Best Buy to talk w/ an Apple professional who answered my questions (for almost an hour).

So, with the Rackspace conference coming up in a few days I decided to make the plunge and get a MacBook.  Plus, I have another side venture that I have been working on that I needed a tax write off for so I dove in w/ both feet.  I opted for the exact same model that my business partner Stephen had gotten about a year earlier since he had been very happy w/ his machine so far. 

Well, I brought the machine home that night and didn’t even bother unpacking it, thinking to myself I would wake up in the morning and it would have all been a mistake and I could take the thing back and never tell anyone I almost went Mac.  Well, long story short, I plugged it up the next day and downloaded a few programs that I had heard some friends talking about, one of these programs was Coda.  I spent a little bit of time playing around w/ it and I have to tell you, I was determined to keep the machine after seeing it.  It’s everything in a web development suite that a guy could want.  And, honestly it’s not only Coda, there are several other applications that I have downloaded that I see a lot of potential in down the road.  These are programs that I hadn’t ever seen before, it was like being at an all you can eat buffet with delicious foods from another country I had never heard of before.  (had to use a food analogy, sorry.)

It’s not only the applications and programs that are available, it’s also about the hardware.  With my tablet PC, and any PC I had ever owned for that matter, it’s always been about shutting down and waiting on the freaking thing to reboot itself.  Well, w/ this MacBook, I just shut the lid when I am finished and open it when I am ready to use it.  The reboot on it is very lightweight should I decide to do a shutdown too.  No more embarrassing 5 minute waits while sitting in a client meeting to open OneNote. 

In addition to the smooth operational aspects of the MacBook Pro, I also noted that the machine itself doesn’t get hot in my lap.  With my old Tablet PC I literally could not hold it in my lap, it got hot enough I could iron my pants with them on. Ouch, yeah. 

I am looking forward to familiarizing myself on this machine and learning a new OS, something I didn’t think would ever happen for me.  I am normally very resistant to change, but in the case of the MacBook Pro, I am making an exception. 

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

Following SXSWi Conference

March 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

sxsw I have to admit that I am a little disappointed to not be in Austin this weekend for the South by Southwest Interactive Conference.  I had planned on heading out there but given the fact that I am running behind schedule on just about every project I have going on right now I figured it was in my best interest to just stay behind this week and get caught up.  As a lot of you may already be aware, my wife and I had a tragedy recently and needless to say I didn’t get a lot of work done all last week. My partners and I also attended the Rackspace Conference in Atlanta earlier this week, so not only has my productivity and focus been down but I have also been out of the office a lot.  Staying home from SXSWi this year was the right thing to do…  Okay, I have justified it.

What’s the big deal about SXSWi you might ask?  Well, that’s simple.  In terms of conferences / conventions, this is the big one for the interactive industry.  In fact, many of the trends and products that will shape our industry this next year will be unveiled at SXSWi in Austin.  Fret not though, I have some friends that are attending the conference this year and have been tweeting and blogging up a storm about what they are seeing.  Here’s a few if you are interested in following along…

So, what to do this weekend??

So, besides getting caught up on my backlog of client projects what am I doing this weekend?  Well, turns out it’s not that bad of a weekend after all.  My church, The Church Alive, is hosting their annual Unlimited Realm conference this year.  Nick Brewer and I have been managing our live video stream and social media presence for the conference and it’s been a big honor to use our talents to further the kingdom.  Tonight we led a young man to Christ in a chat room that had been dealing w/ drug addiction.  We also prayed w/ several others on matters related to their health and healing.  This sort of ministry opportunity doesn’t present itself very often but when it does, I like to roll up my sleeves and get involved however I can.  If you are interested in tuning into the conference this weekend, you can do so by clicking here…

Filed Under: Faith / Family, Social Media / Web 2.0, Web Development Tagged With: ,

Rackspace Conference Thoughts

March 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I am presently sitting in the Delta Sky Lounge hacking this blog post because our flight from Atlanta to Little Rock is delayed.  I am heading back from the Rackspace Reseller Conference to what looks like the Mt. Kilimanjaro of emails.  If you have sent me something that I haven’t tended to in the past week and half, please know that I have it on my desktop and will get back to you as soon as I get home.  To say it’s been a rough two weeks is an understatement.

The conference we attended was awesome.  It gave us an awesome opportunity to network and meet in person some contacts that we have known and worked alongside for a few years now.  Was pretty cool.  I made about two pages of notes on this new MacBook Pro and didn’t get frustrated the first time and toss it across the room.  That’s a sharp contrast to the less than 3 year old HP tablet PC I just had to trash.  I will be going through these notes and throwing up some blog posts as soon as I get back to my office and climb out from underneath email hell, so stay tuned.

One really cool thing about the trip that happened today, I was sitting in the food court outside the conference having lunch and looked up to find one of my sports heroes as a child.  Kevin Mchale of the Boston Celtics was just standing there getting a cup of coffee.  Mchale was a sports star back when sports stars could be considered positive role models.  Being the nerd that I am I had already twitpic’d the dude before he was finished putting sugar in his coffee.

Filed Under: Web Hosting Tagged With:

Rackspace Reseller Conference

March 8, 2010 By 2 Comments

Just a heads up, my business partners and I are heading to Atlanta for the next three days to attend the Rackspace Reseller Conference.  I will likely be in sessions for the biggest part of the next three days but will be checking email and voicemail whenever possible.  If you are going to be in Atlanta for the conference be sure to send me a tweet, @cottonr and let me know.  Maybe we can meetup between sessions.

Also, I will likely be blogging some things that I pickup during the conference, so stay tuned.

Filed Under: Web Hosting Tagged With:
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