I love these xtranormal videos.

This has consistently been my favorite song.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9EKqQWPjyo

Really, Prince?  If you had said, “radio is over,” I might have supported you on some level (but even that’s not true, depending on how you look at it).  Not only will music continue to be distributed via the Internet for some time to come, there is good evidence that CD sales will continue to decline (and we can assume they’ll eventually die off completely).  Prince – you’re certified loony.

The Internet is over, as is clearly depicted in the screen shot above (click to enlarge). Note the simultaneous streams of video, combined with typical web browsing - highlighting the Internet's complete lack of ability to deliver content.

Thanks to the WPtouch plugin, there’s now a mobile version of this site designed to play nicely on mobile touch devices (ie. iPhone, iPod touch, Android, etc.). Ya know, cause so many people can’t wait to hear what I have to say.

Sarcasm aside- it’s quite awesome, and I’ve also implemented it on the Solas site (which people actually visit).  They also claim it can load a page on mobile browsers up to 30 seconds faster on and Edge connection.  Not bad.

Not all websites are created equal, with some sites failing to translate well in the viewport of a small mobile device. Many WordPress sites today make heavy use of different javascripts which significantly increase the load time of pages, and drive your visitors on 3G/EDGE batty. So we’ve come up with WPtouch, a lightweight, fast-loading, feature-rich and highly-customized “theme application” which includes an admin interface to let you customize many aspects of your site’s presentation.

WPtouch has a couple of cool features, the first of which is direct messaging from the mobile site to the administrator’s iPhone (via push notifications) with Prowl/Growl.  Do I actually want to use this feature?  I don’t think so, but it’s an interesting option.  Probably the biggest thing stopping me is the $2.99 price tag on the Prowl iPhone app.  For the amount of times it would be useful (offhand, I’m thinking zero), it’s not really worth three bucks.

It also sports built-in integration with the WordTwit plugin, which allows you to show off your latest tweets and automatically send a tweet when you publish a new blog post.  Interestingly, there’s also support for GigPress, but I’ve decided to stick with Gigs Calendar on the Solas site for the moment, as it seems to have a nicer layout.

Speaking of mobile: this post was typed up on the WordPress iPhone app.  Unfortunately, support for hyperlinks is basically non-existent, so I still had to save as a draft and add the links on my laptop.  I hope they can figure out a way to make it easier, but I’m afraid the iPhone just isn’t built for such things.

Best wishes this holiday season to anyone who reads this.  It was quite a year, to say the least.  I’ve been looking forward to Christmas vacation for quite a while… I plan on sleeping as much as humanly possible.

Started working with Solas again, and I’m just about wrapped on their new site design.  The site is live, though there’s a few more nuts and bolts to screw down.  They’re gearing up for their album release in early February, and wanted to get a fresh look.  Though it took a while, it would have taken infinitely longer without WordPress!  On top of the new look and feel, the site sports tighter social networking integration thanks to ShareThis and other plugins.

The goal has generally remained the same: keep the design simple, modern, and easy to navigate.  For the band, it needs to be simple for them to update (which is why I chose a WordPress backend to begin with).  Thanks to the mobile WordPress apps for iPhone and BlackBerry, a quick update is a snap–essential for folks that hardly have a minute to sit between gigs.

And, looking forward to 2010…

Musically: I’m almost finished mixing the new album from Ol’ Bill Dollar, and mixes for batsupsidedown should be finalized in January (fingers crossed).

In the interwebs: I’ll be making a website for The Cascia Center set to be built at Broad and Ellsworth streets.  Prepare for a new media blitz.

What a good feeling. The new site is finished, and everyone seems quite happy with the results. The old site was flash heavy, and while it looked great, it was a total drag to update. The band definitely needs a site they can easily access and keep up to date with fresh news and gigs, and I think the new format will work out well for them. Check it out, and definitely check out their music. They’re a great bunch.

So my hosting company decided to update their servers without any warning, and I lost everything on the old site and the Atlas Casket Records site.  Starting fresh…