Brainstorm: Has your email been spoofed?

The May issue of Brainstorm! is out.

• Email spoofing: A spammer's best friend
• More Smart Tools: Our favorites for your business
• Recommended book & blog: Duct Tape Marketing
• Kayda the Newshound: Updates, news & announcements

It's up!

I've worked hours to launch a new look for the Whole Brain Technologies web site, and now it's finally up and running. Actually, it's been up for a few days. I'm still doing some tweeking and adjusting. The devil definately is in the details. But overall, I'm pretty happy with it. A very liberating experience, I'm relieved to finally claim the company as my own (more about that later).

I have a renewed appreciation for anyone spending time, money and energy on a web site - like my clients. I spent hours just looking for photos to use on the site. Going through the old site and deciding what to keep and what to leave behind was a valuable review of the company's past direction. Now it was time to articulate it's direction moving forward in 2007.

I decided to update the corporate colors and change the tagline. That was a refreshing change. I like the connection green (rather than the old teal) has to growth. I've always liked purple, so I couldn't get rid of that color. Plus, it forced me to update the designs for letterhead, business cards, and other collaterals. I even adjusted the colors for this blog.

The best thing is that now I'm free emotionally and psychologically to move forward. I've reclaimed the company as my own - something I no longer need to share with anyone.

Take a look and let me know what you think.

The launch of RYLA

In partnership with Moo Interactive, Whole Brain Technologies has launched the new web site for Rocky Mountain RYLA, the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards.

Whole Brain featured in Boulder County Business Report

Return of the king: content Web designers focus more on data, functionality, less on 'eye candy'

Launched Final Exit Network

We've just launched a new Web site for Final Exit Network. Jim Moore of CommUlinks did a great job of providing us with all the necessary links, such as to Paypal for donations, and other information we needed. He was great at facilitating the communication with the Board so that decisions could be made effectively. It will be interesting to continue to develop this sites as we watch the organization develop over the next few years.

Migrating CUA

We just migrated the web site for Consumers United over to our web server over the weekend. We were planning this for several weeks, after many problems with their previous host. So far, everything seems to be going smoothly. We were able to protect the integrity of their extensive database, thanks to Heather's expertise. Sometimes these moves are a little tricky, but since we've been working with this site for nearly 3 years now, at 2 other hosts, we knew what was needed. But you just never know what unexpected problems could come up, until you get in the middle of it, particularly with an active and complicated database system, such as we've set up for CUA. Whew! So far, so good!

It's Here!

Well, it's finally launched. We've been working on a new look and navigation structure for our own web site for quite awhile now. Thanks to Matt, we've had the look for awhile. But you know how it is: "The cobbler's children have no shoes." Our own stuff almost always takes a back seat. But we had some new publicity hitting the streets today, so we had to set a deadline for ourselves. Let me tell you, we can really sympathize with what our clients go through to develop their own Web sites. It's a lot of work! And it can be an intense process!

Since Heather and I both do Web work, and we both like having control, we had an additional dilemma to resolve: who's going to handle what and using what programming language. This can require quite a feat of coordination, which gets confusing at times, but we manage to work it out. What's our secret? Plan as much as possible up front, deciding what needs to be dynamic and what will be static, remember to back up, watch version control and communicate changes. Did we ever screw up and overwrite each other's work? Sure, but it happened fairly infrequently and we could always recover easily and quickly.

So here you have it. The new site for Whole Brain Technologies. Enjoy!