In hopes of motivating myself, I read. Most of the books in my library are about motivation. One book, in particular, Dave’s Way.

On page 10 in the book, something stood out that I thought I would share with all of you. It has to do with quality service, and giving people what their money deserves.

… a magazine reporter asked me why Wendy’s hamburgers were square. I answered, off the top of my head, “At Wendy’s we don’t cut corners.” It dawned on me then that not cutting corners was a lesson I learned from…

Folks, readers, viewers – name your slang – I, Michael Barton, offer you services that will be of amazing quality, and I promise, I DO NOT cut corners.

I can be reached view comments, my contact form or by phone 801-787-3237.

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One thing that I constantly have to do with sites is add, for SEO purposes, a redirect of non-www to www. The reason being, Google sees michaelbarton.name and www.michaelbarton.name as two different sites and I’d get penalized for having duplicate content should someone out there link to my site using one or the other.

The solution being, choose which one you want to have redirect – non-www to www or www to non-www. The choice is yours. It’s really just a personal preference for me to use www in front of my domain.

The Solution: non-www to www

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There comes a time when you’re working with someone, or talking to a friend or family member on the phone, and something comes up and they want to send you a file. Now this isn’t just any old file, it’s a large file. A file that will be annoying to send via the inbox, and a file that may crash your instant messenger window.

Droopy to your rescue! Droopy is a mini Web server whose sole purpose is to let other people send files to your computer. People spend a lot of money on these types of things. Why? There’s a free one out there for you, and its name is Droopy :)

Of course, the downside is you’re going to need to know a little bit about computers to install it. Be happy, I’ll help you out for a small investment on your part. We can work out the details, talk to me: 801-787-3237, or use my contact form.

You may find and download Droopy by using the following button:

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I came across an article about the best jobs in America. Systems Engineer won it; keep in mind that Systems Engineers are not System Administrators.

The following image shows the list. Be sure to click on the image for the full image.

I just came across a good article on sitepoint.com about How To Handle Client Support Requests Virtually. It has a few good points and links to other articles from sitepoint.com that you should skim also. The article talked about using screen shot tools to show what you’re talking about, it listed some meeting tools to help facilitate collaboration, and it told you how to remote into your client’s computer.

Internet Explorer 8 was released March 19, 2009 and what an exciting browser it was supposed to be. It was going to be faster, allow you to browse privately, it was going to be be XHTML compliant, and it was going to be more secure. All those fun things, right? Sadly, IE8 was faster, had a private mode, it was XHMTL compliant, and more secure than the older IE browsers.

The Problem

You must be wondering what the problem is right? Well, there wasn’t really a problem with the browser. There was a problem with your code, wasn’t there? You coded around IE6 & IE7 bugs. You made your site look lovely in those 2 browsers, and now that IE8 is out, your site looks broken again, doesn’t it?

What are you supposed to do about it?

The Solution(s)

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If you’re into jQuery, then you need to bookmark this site. It’s amazing! Not only do you get links to some of the great jQuery plugins out there, you also get links to some amazing articles/tutorials on jQuery. Try it out and let me know if you need help with anything.

I came across this article about The Roadmap To Becoming A Professional Freelance Web Designer. It’s a great article. I’m just not a fan of the name because the tips in the article can be used for a Web Developer, Programmer, Small Business & any type of product. Just to name a few. I think it’s weird that so many good blogs out there are geared for Web Designers and not everyone else. How unfortunate.

Regardless, it’s a great article and I hope you take down notes. The key thing you should take a way from this is “branding” because it has a powerful affect on people. If you’re branded in a good way, like Honda for instance. Honda is known for quality, right? Among other things. Now, if you were branded as “quality” then people would pay more for your service even though there are cheaper services. Like non-America for instance. Non-American labor is known for being cheaper than American labor. However, I feel strongly about this – America is the best damn country in the world – and I am so proud to be an American. Take that one to heart. My point being. America is so branded in my heart and in my soul that I will never outsource as long as I can help it. Of course I can’t guarantee any of my clients will feel the same way I do, but I try my hardest to push (& force!) my belief about America being the greatest onto other people.

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