I set up a blog for my company the other day (http://www.avalive.com/blog/blog.html) and was showing it to a friend. He asked me if I was pinging Technorati when I made updates. I was like, ‘Techno -who?’.

He said you can set it up so that whenever you made changes to your blog, you notify other popular blogs of your changes. Fortunately, Google’s Blogger does that automatically for you.

Technorati is very popular right now so you want to make sure you ping them.

I did some research and found this site the other day:

http://www.pingoat.com/

This service lets you ping multiple blogs at once. It’s free, easy and they also have some other great tools like a webpage keyword analysis tool, a spider simulator tool and email anti-spam generators.

1. Download Simpleviewer – http://www.simpleviewer.net/simpleviewer/
2. Download Picasa2 – http://picasa.google.com/download/index.html
3. Create a folder on your desktop to hold the gallery.
4. Open Picasa
5. Create a new web album, select the folder that contains your pics, select the Simpleviewer template, select the destination as the folder on your desktop and voila – you’re done.

One of my clients, Ryan Curtis uses this method on his website:

http://www.curtis-photo.com/

Just click on one of his gallery links to see an example.

Another project for a non-profit organization is in the works.

Last May a couple of buddies and I went to Jaco, Costa Rica for a surf trip and stayed with the local Christian Surfers in Jaco.

Upon returning from the trip, Daniel Looman, the local chapter director, asked me to help redesign their new site.

The design phase is complete and now we are busy integrating all the content and pics into the site pages.

This site will probably be done before 2007 so check back soon for the release date.

We have been busy redesigning the local Surfrider chapter’s website that is set to be completed in early 2007.

Check back around January to get a final release date.

You can view their current site at:

http://www.surfrider.org/capefear/

Last year I was doing some computer work on the side for a gentlemen named William Casey here in Wilmington NC.

He is part of a non-profit organization called Propapa which sends different types of teams to Honduras to minister to the people who need help. The types of teams they send there are:
dental teams, eyecare teams, construction teams and medical teams.

Casey asked me if I would help out with the site which in the end will help the people of Honduras by creating an informative sight that is easy to use and bursting with different opportunities for people to help, volunteer and donate.

http://www.propapa.org/

I met ‘Bob’ on the wblivesurf forum when I saw his current site – man was it ugly.

Anyways, at the time I was trying to build up my portfolio and I was also looking to progress in my surfing by moving down from a huge 6’8 king fish to something smaller.

‘Bob’ and I worked it out where I could do the entire site in exchange for a new custom made board.

His main concern was that he wanted the ability to upload/mange his board inventory whenever he wanted. So I built him a backdoor where he has the opportunity to upload pics of his boards and load information about those boards such as price, dimensions, fin setup, etc.

I also wound up using some Lightbox/Javascript technology so that when you view a larger image of the board thumbnails, the larger image expands and adjusts to the size of the original image. Also, the rest of the page sort of fades to black and the larger image sort of jumps out at you. If you have no idea what I’m talking about you can see an example here:

http://www.blueridgesurfboards.com/boardPics.php?boardType=shortboards

Just click on the board pic and you’ll see what I mean.

Anyways, if you’re looking to support a local shaper and get something custom made, ‘Bob’ is your man over at Blue Ridge Surfboards.

To see the board he made me, go here:

http://www.blueridgesurfboards.com/boardArt.php

Mine is the Blue Rising Sun, top line, far right. He did a sick job – I love this board!

My friend Heath over at http://www.mtgotraders.com/ referred Ryan to me a couple months ago. Ryan and I eventually made contact through http://wblivesurf.com ‘s forum and we discussed developing a site for his photography business.

Impulse Web Solutions of Wilmington NC is starting it’s own blog courtesy of Google’s Blogger.

The purpose of this blog is to discuss up-and-coming technologies in the world of web development and to inform site users about what’s new with Impulse Web Solutions.

Enjoy the blog!

http://www.impulsewebdesigns.com