When I leave DDA, a search engine marketing company, and drop the role as Search EngineOptimization Specialist, I can become quite crafty. Aside from website optimization, domain name registrations and my other daily duties, I love scrapbooking, crafting, organizing just about anything I can get my hands on, and can make a wicked birthday cake or two (see my son’s second birthday cake below). I can be a seamstress to a certain degree, make anything with Popsicle sticks, play sports with the boys, do hair and makeup with the girls, come up with games to keep kids entertained and clean until the cows come home. I could also mention my killer moves on the dance floor and amazing lyrical skills while singing every word to every song you throw at me, but that’s another story. I believe the saying is Jack of all Trades, Master of None… sounds about right.

This weekend, I will be attempting to sculpt a pirate ship out of cake and icing for my son’s 3rd birthday. Most people think that I am crazy and tell me that I should just buy it and save myself the time and aggravation. Or just to pick up a cake pan mold and throw some icing on it and be on my way, but what fun it that? After all is said and frosted, the look on my child’s face when they see their birthday cake is all that I need to feel that it was all worth it.

After all, I don’t use a “website mold” or template while I am at work so why should things change at home. At DDA, we tend to think outside the box and come up with some truly unique website designs. Sure, it would be much easier to use a template and it could save time during the process, but that is something that our graphic designers just do not believe in.

I will admit to still using boxed cake mix and icing (this kills my mother), but in the end as long as it tastes good and the kids are happy, whats the difference.

Here is the cartoon rocket ship from the show that he loves:

And here is my version in cake form:

So as it turns out, a lot of my projects, which have been otherwise on hold, are gathering momentum, which means a lot is happening at once.

I have video scripts to finalize, scripts to rewrite, a menu to get out for the new website development process, a sell sheet to review,  a marketing slogan to develop, and client-supplied content to get on the site. Plus, one or two or three proposals to get out the door.

It will be a busy day, but that’s the kind I enjoy and as it is a mix of work and for different industries, it makes it that much better.

Usually by Thursday I have zero things to write about, or I was lucky enough to save something from earlier in the week to post. Today however, two things caught my eye in the wondrous world of online navigation.

IE8 public beta release is out.  Coolies.  It looks like a lot of stuff that Firefox and Opera have been doing over the years continues to drive a better (better than its own previous release) browser product from Microsoft. The security and privacy features sound nifty, but I like the idea of automatic crash recovery, especially considering how often I get browser crashes (overworked perhaps?). I will probably load up the beta at home, since I still need to be able to test sites in IE7 here and generally MS doesn’t let you install both at the same time (lame).  My only question will remain: how standards-based is it? Or rather, do I now need to program in another set of random “hacks” to make basic websites work?

The second thing of note is a new Mozilla Labs creation called “ubiquity.” I don’t know how useful this “new thing” will be to me personally, but it’s a different way to extend your Internet browser in the new world of handheld web-enabled devices.  Ever try to copy and paste into the iTouch? It looks to be a big giant mashup creator in whatever app you want.  So the basic examples are all about adding a map to your emails, and using Web 2.0 stuff that I don’t much care about.  In any case, it’s a nifty technology, because it gives us the ability to simplify something that generally would be more difficult.  For example, say we wanted to meet a friend out at a new restaurant. We could send an email to that friend with a map, a review, and set a ‘task’ or ‘appointment’ in our calendar system.  So that’d be useful for those of us who do that sort of thing.  I still think it’s a great idea though, now, how do we use that for something within DDA?