This week has been intense and I didn’t get much time for reading. But here you go.

Design

• Designers Creative Solutions for Necessary Error Pages: a list of fine examples. Personally I like ours.
• CSS Basics: A really good place to go for CSS.
• 30 Creative Illustrative Website Headers: A good list of really nice headers.

Business & Freelance

• 8 Signs of a Great Client: Meant for Designers, but can be used for other business models.
• How to Set Business Boudaries with Your Clients: 3 points really good to address.
• The Top 5 Ways to Attract and Keep Customers in any Economy: Really good gameplan to follow for converting customers.

Nerdy Geeky Entertaining

• Star Trek Gallery: Then and Now: With last week’s Star Trek, this is really good look back on the original and compare to now.

All I have to say about today is: Star Trek.

Design

• Simplifying Website Usability: The 3 Step Approach: Several site examples that break down everything into 3 step processes.
• 20 Cool RSS and Twitter Icons: Really good list for inspiration. Ours is also included.
• Why Does Clean Markup Matter in Web Design: A really good explanation of why you should write with standards in mind.

Development

• Four Ways Ruby on Rails Can Help You: Rails is my favorite language for App Building so I’m biased and love this article.
• How to Create a Twitter-style Alert with jQuery, CSS, and PHP: Really good tutorial

Business & Freelance

• 20+ Online Invoicing Services to Help You Get Paid: We use Freshbooks here but its good to take a look at all your options.
• 40 Places Where Freelancers Can Learn More About Business: I can’t tell you enough how reading has helped us.
• 7 Networking Opportunities for Freelancers: We actually have found several clients through some of these.

Nerdy Geeky Entertaining

• Cheat Codes for Everday Life, and How to Use Them: Every now and then, a cheat code is necessary.
• The 50 Most significant moments of Internet History: A lot of interesting details that I didn’t even know about.
• 12 Amazing Chewing Gum Sculptures: Some people just have waaaaaay too much time on their hands.
• 106 Historical Scenes Rendered Hilariously Inaccurate by Technology: Jimi Hendrix one is awesome! And same with the Constitution.
• Lego Torture Scenes Protest Media Censorship: Its amazing the things you can do with legos.

I try to participate on the Linkedin Q&A as much as possible. Yesterday someone asked the following question:

“What do you recommend as a hosted ecommerce application for a small business?”

What do you recommend as a hosted ecommerce application for a small business?

I am working on an ecommerce solution for a small business, and would like input on what to consider in selecting a vendor and application. One recommendation is to use oscommerce (http://www.oscommerce.com/) on a hosted solution such as Bluehost. I am going to have about 150 products available to choose and buy using paypal.

Thanks for helping!

This is something I’ve covered before on our blog, and now that I think about it I should have linked to the post, but this covered a little more. Anyway, I was chosen for best answer (Yay!). My response was:

If you are looking for a hosted system, I would suggest looking into Volusion (mentioned earlier) and Shopify. Volusion is a feature rich software so it might be too much for starting out. Shopify is a solution that has a lot of features and is also hosted.

osCommerce is a great platform with a rich community that, in my opinion, is slowly dying. Plus, you will more than likely need to hire a developer to add any extra features you need, adding to cost. The platform is old and almost outdated so you may want to look at other cart solutions out there.

xCart, Magento, and Interspire are also great shopping cart solutions that you would need to host. xCart is similar to osCommerce and has a large community. Magento is fairly new but feature rich. It has a high learning curve but does a lot. The community is continually growing. Interspire is costly, but feature rich.

What you need to do is ask yourself a few questions.
- Price? Do you want a free solution? Will the free solution have everything you want or will you need to hire someone? Will paying for a solution be OK?
- Hosting? Do you want it to hosted? If so, does the company have 99.9% uptime guarantee? Do they have support? If you’re going to host it yourself, where are you going to host it? Will it work with your server choice?
- Support? Does the ecommerce application come with support? Does it cost me? Is it 24/7?
- Features? Does it integrate with whom I will be shipping? Does it integrate with Quickbooks? Does it integrate with my Merchant Account? Can it support coupons and discounts? What type of reporting does it have? Can it support product options? Etc.

These are only a few of the questions I suggest you ask yourself. Once you have these answers, take a look at the various companies mentioned in the answers. Contact their sales AND tech support. Ask them if they meet your criteria. Good luck!

Its a new month! And guess what else? X-Men Origins: Wolverine is finally out. We get to see him battle it out against Sabretooth. And Gambit is in it. And I think we’re going to see Emma Frost too! I’m really stoked and I hope the movie is amazing. If not, I will be disappointed for a week until Star Trek comes out. There are so many great movies coming out! OH! And this weekend is BarCampLA 7! You should definitely head out and go. Anyways, links!

Design

• Become an Illustration Master - +60 Adobe Illustrator Tutorials and Resources: A great list of sites out there to help with Illustrator.
• 10 Top Skills for Web Design: I don’t necessarily agree with the order but the skills are definitely correct.
• 30 Essential PDF Documents Every Designer Should Download: There are several of these that I had from a long time ago. This is a good round up of them and more.
• 40 Outstanding CSS Techniques And Tutorials: These are truly outstanding and you’ll see some of them in some future work!

Development

• Cornify Easter Egg Plugin with jQuery: Probably one of the funniest things ever. I want to do something similar to this on all the websites we do. Well maybe just ours. Make some epic battle scene occur.
• 20 More Excellent AJAX Effects You Should Know: Its always nice to see the great things you can do.
• 13 Excellent jQuery Animation Techniques: I love how there are ways to make things all nifty and awesome and don’t require using Flash.
• A Better Way to Understand Cloud Computing: A good place to start to learn about Cloud Computing.
• 20 Excellent JavaScript Navigation Techniques and Examples: A lot of these are really pretty and I haven’t seen them all.

Business & Freelancing

• How to Make Customers Love You: 5 Steps that Zappos utilizes to be the awesome company that they are.
• Thoughts on Design Integrity. Getting What you Want from Your Client: Really good discussion.
• A Guide to Self-Employment: Click the link to the Slide Show at the bottom. Very well worth it!
• 50 Simple Marketing Ideas All Freelancers Can Use: A good start off point. There are more than enough choices, just pick the ones that work best for you.

Nerdy Geeky Entertaining

• The Konami Code Makes ESPN.com Magical: The fact that this was true, and I was able to do it before ESPN become smart and took it down, makes me epic-ly happy.
• Software Engineering Proverbs: I now know why I saw these all over the whiteboards in my AP Comp Sci classes in High School.
• A Short Illustrated History of the Nerd: Ever wonder where nerds came from?
• 10 Bizarre But Useful Appliance Combinations: The Tea Maker & Life Line is a funny one.
• Cyanide and Happiness:  This made me smile =)

Absolute Fail

• Swine Flu JPG: funny little picture.

Now, before you go and kill me for asking this question, I seriously want to know your thoughts. Ken tried to tell me its a Fantasy, and I straight up said he’s wrong because how could it NOT be Science Fiction? We’ve had epic battles about this and I’ve decided to finally do the research and prove once and for all where the Star Wars story stands.

So, backtrack for a second. I once wanted to be an English Major, and I recall in my freshman English class we were tasked with figuring out why Achilles is a Tragic Hero and Odysseus is a Comic Hero. Most people don’t know that the there is a list of characteristics a character must possess in order to be a specific hero archetype. Well, I’m going to take that same concept and apply it to the Fantasy and Science Fiction genres.

What classifies a Fantasy?

• Magic, supernatural
• Good vs. Evil
• Imaginary Lands
• Quest to obtain treasure or personal gain
• Generally in the past
• There is a hero

And the Classification of Science-Fiction?

• Speculations based on current or future science or technology
• Setting involving the future
• Involves outer space, other worlds, or aliens
• Discovery or application and/or explanation of new scientific principles
• Characters are secondary

I got this information from Wikipedia and a few other choice sites via Google. If you think anything else should be included, let me know and I’ll change the results accordingly.

Battle 1 - Setting: Time & Place

We’ll begin with the obvious. At the beginning of all the movies, it starts with “A long time ago, in a Galaxy far far away.” The movies starts with a conundrum! First we’re led to believe its going to be a fantasy movie since it starts in the past, but then we’re told its in a Galaxy far far away, so now we’re involving outer space and other worlds. Generally speaking, the Galaxy part wins the puzzle, and people choose to classify the movie as a science fiction. But, nonetheless, we cannot forget the very first sentence. The score: Fantasy - 0; Science Fiction - 0.

Battle 2 - Advanced Technology

Early on in “A New Hope,” we’re introduced to laser guns,  space travel, and light speed. These are things you would never see in a Fantasy movie or novel. The weapons, the setting, and the vehicles are all science fiction. The closest thing to fantasy that we find is possibly the Ewoks and their sticks, bows and arrows, and catapults (BTW, a few of the Ewoks are scary looking, but the first one was insanely cute!). So, one point to Science Fiction.

But, if you look at the characteristics above, there really is no explanation or speculation based on the advanced technology. They just exist. We are meant to believe that someone had invented all of this at some point in time, and go with it. So it includes all these scientific principles, but it does not explain or discover these scientific principles. So in essence, it should not count. So, take back that point from Science Fiction.

Battle 3 - Characters

So the score is still 0-0. So let’s take this a step further. The last thing to discuss under Science Fiction is “characters are secondary.” I think we can all agree that Star Wars is all about its characters. They are not secondary to discovery of truth, or the application of new ideas. No, not at all, its all about Luke, Han, Leia, and Darth Vadar. The characters are anything but secondary. They are the story. Can I take a point away from Science Fiction? Would that make it 0 to -1? Anyway, this brings me to my next point.

Battle 4 - Storyline

The story is about the battle between good and evil (and let me tell you how excited I was when Darth Vadar saved Luke at the end). Evil is bad, very very bad. And when you fight for the greater good, good things happen to you. The empire is bad, and the rebellion is good. They’re trying to rid the world of the evil empire. They’re ridding Middle Earth of Sauron. Oh wait, wrong story. Point goes to Fantasy.

Battle 5 - Plot Line

Next point, Star Wars begins with a quest for treasure and/or personal gain. Han Solo is pulled in solely for the purpose of getting paid. So “A New Hope” is his quest. The opening scenes to the movie are also the droids quest for the Death Star plans. That’s personal gain - who wants their ship to blow up? All three movies show us Luke’s quest to become something better. At first it starts with him just wanting to join the Academy, but as you move onto the other movies, its him wanting to become a Jedi. Point to Fantasy. 2 - 0.

Battle 6 - Heroes

There is a hero. Of course there is a hero. We’re rooting for Luke and Han throughout all the movies. We want them to win. That was easy. Point to Fantasy. 3 - 0.

Battle 7 - The Force

Now the last point I wanted to discuss was the magic, supernatural. Obi-Wan describes the force  “as an energy field created by all living things, that surrounds and penetrates living beings and binds the galaxy together.” Its a mystical energy, and that’s very non-scientific. So, you would think the point would go to Fantasy for that. Think again, in Episode I, The Phantom Menace, George Lucas decided to give the Force a reason of being - Midi-Chlorians. Now, this is very science-fiction like. It now explains to us this “advanced science.” So here is the dilemma. Do we give the point to Fantasy or Science Fiction? For those of you who don’t like to act like the prequels exist, point goes to Fantasy. For everyone else, point to Science Fiction.

And the winner is…

So, after really looking at the movies with this criteria, I’ve decided that Star Wars is a Fantasy (3-1 score) packaged to be a Science Fiction. Smart marketing move Mr. Lucas.

What are your thoughts?

Its another Friday! Oh my! Any exciting plans for this weekend? I don’t think we have anything epic, but next week is BarCampLA 7!!!

Anyway, here’s you’re weekly dosage of awesome sauce.

Design

• 30 Exceptional CSS Navigation Techniques: Some really nifty things you can do with CSS.
• What is User Experience Design: A really good read for all web designers.
• 3 TED Talks That Will Make You a Better UI Designer: TED talks are always insightful. Here are a few that help out with UI.
• The Art of the Title Sequence: Some beautiful examples of Movie Title sequences.

Development

• Essential PHP Techniques for Web Designer and Developers: A good list of tutorials to help you master PHP techniques.
• More on PHP Arrays & How To Display Array Data: Woohoo! Arrays are important, so its good to have info on ‘em.
• Building a jQuery Image Scroller: I <3 jQuery and its nice to find things to use it for.
• Build an Incredible Login form with jQuery: I have always been a fan of nice pretty login forms.

Business & Freelancing

• The Dreadful Mission Statement: Why having one is not only necessary, but why having a good one helps your business.
• 10 Game-changing Tips from the World’s Top Freelancers: Good advice from people in the same boat.
• Why Everyone Should Have (and Spend Money on) a Strong Web Precence: Awesome information to tell a client when they’re hesitating on doing anything on the internet.
• How Launching Before Being Perfect Heped Kiva Chante the World: Some advice that we still need to adhere to. Good story!

Nerdy Geeky Entertaining

• 100 Unintentionally HIlarious Spam Subject Lines: I know Spam is dumb, but you would think people sending & creating it wouldn’t be THIS dumb.
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Clark Kent’s Honeymoon: This is epic funny. It might’ve been funnier if it was Spider-Man

I’m sorry about last weekend. So here are some new links. We’ve been getting terribly busy here that its hard to find and read such valuable links. But, reading is the best way to get new information so I’ll need to be spending more time finding more resources.

Design

• 50 Creative Business Cards of 50 Graphic Designers
• Elements of Great Logo Design
• 50 Sites That Will Help You Become a Designer
• 50+ Refreshing Design UI
• 12 Excellent and Useful Design Process Tutorials
• 90+ Logo Design Tutorials and Resources
• 350+ Great CSS Tools and Techniques

Development

• Exploring jQuery Selectors

Business & Freelancing

• How UGC Affects Every Aspect of Your Business

Nerdy Geeky Entertaining

• 10 Signs You Really Need to Get A Life

I am always the first to admit that the Border7 office is filled with nerdy people. But sometimes, things happen, where you just can’t believe how nerdy we are. The best example I have of this is this:

We’ve been expanding at Border7 and have been adding to our staff. We have one computer that is shared with two of our guys since they work different shifts. Chris, being one of them, mentioned that we should get a new computer. I told him to write it on my whiteboard as a reminder. This is what I got.

!THE LORD WILL PROVIDE

Travel to the northwest and obtain a computer and monitor.

Computer: 0/1
Monitor: 0/2

---

Due to the extensive expansion of the Border7 legion, more technological resources are required. It has come to our attention that Local Clergy have come into possession of such devices. We beseech thee, go forth and relieve these peons of their precious treasures. Slay all who oppose you.

Yes, we are nerdy. On another note, since I uploaded some photos from the camera. Here is my friend’s son playing with two of our nerf swords. Isn’t he cute? We are training him to become a ninja.

Also, I apologize for the lack of a FTW Friday last week. The office was closed last Thursday and Friday for a camping trip. It was my first time ever camping and I think I can handle sleeping on the ground. I also had my first smore ever. I’m not a big fan. Weird texture. Anyways, this week we’ll have FTW Friday and it will be a double dosage to make up for last week. I promise.

And because I want to fill up the text so that this doesn’t end with the picture. Here’s a few things you can expect in the next few weeks.

• An epic geeky post discussing whether Star Wars is Science Fiction or Fantasy. You’ll be amazed at the results and how we figured it out.
• A series of posts discussing the steps to take to have a bad Ecommerce site. Tragic, I know.
• Reasons to start an online business
• Step by step guide to customizing your own Maverick Nerf Gun.
• And any other geeky nerdy stuff that crosses our minds.

So that’s what’s been going on. I have to go accept the quest and obtain the quest items. We’ll be moving into a new office in the next few weeks as well. Hope you all have a great week!

Its a new month! Boy does time go by fast! I couldn’t find anything for Absolute Fail…haven’t had time, I’m sorry. But if you can think of something, by all means link it in the comments. Have a great weekend!

Design

• 36 Beautiful Login Page/Form Designs:  These are some inspiring login screens.
• Get Creative to Be Creative: Yes, the title confused me too. But its actually a valuable resource.
• 65+ Hand-picked Free Fonts For Designers: Pretty fonts that are also free. Double bonus!
• 10 Simple and Impressive Design Techniques: We use a lot of color on our own site. So we’re glad to know we follow some of these.
• Designers: Make it Memorable: We really love 37Signals and to hear “The Drudge Report” is the nicest site was a shock for us too, but JD explains and makes a great point!

Development

• 12 WordPress Plugins for Theme Development: Anything to make WordPress better is awesome sauce.
• Should Competent Programmers be ‘Mathematically Inclidned’: If you’re a Computer Science major and suck in math, this might make you feel better.
• Five reasons to replace Apache mod proxy and Mongrel with Passenger: DHH said to!

Business & Freelancing

• Don’t be a Whore: Useful tips to keep you from becoming a client’s biyatch.
• 15 drawbacks to working as a full time freelancer: Its great to see an article out there showing the down side to freelancing.
• Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously: I love hearing that other people agree with our philosophy.
• Exceeding expectations or Don’t Bother: Seth Godin  makes a very valid point.

Nerdy Geeky Entertaining

• 99 Seinfield References: I use to watch reruns a lot and these are funny.
• Ultimate List of Awesome Wikipedia Lists: Who doesn’t love good valuable wiki’s?
• Threat Level’s 10 Favorite Paranoia Films: I <3 movies! Especially movies that freak me out and fear for the future.
• More Gifts for the Design Nerd: I want a few of these items and I own two. See if you can guess which.
• Goldstar Beer: Flow Charts as Beer Advertising: Very cool advertisements for Beer.

One page that many people always forget about is the About Us page or the Company Info page. Some people think these pages don’t mean anything to buyers, but this cannot be further from the truth. When shopping online, there are plenty of fake websites trying to scam users into giving their personal information out. One way to prove you are different then them is to prove you are  real. The best way to do that is to have information about your company somewhere for all to see. Typically the page gives a brief history and contact information.

Talk Content gives the Top 10 Ways to Create a Perfect ‘About Us’ Page. These are a few that I think should always be addressed.

Make it Conversational and Personal

You are trying to make your shoppers have confidence in you. How best to do that then by proving you exist. Don’t be a robot in your copy, especially on the About You page. This is where you can show that you are a real breathing human being. We open ours with a funny little story to tie into our site theme. We are fun people who like to joke around. You can see that through out our site.

What is the site about?

Some people find sites randomly. The best way to establish what the site is is by going to their about page. This establishes what you would find on their site. In The Skate Authority’s About Us page, they quickly let you know who they are and what they provide.

Contact Details

Something a lot of people forget is their contact information. True, this is the internet, but that does not mean that everyone likes to communicate via email. Having a phone number listed gives customers an option to contact via telephone if they want. If you can, list a physical address. Seeing that bit of information soothes customers by letting them know you’re real.