I’m proud to announce that Cornerstone-Electric.com is now live.

Jack Brockway had been a visitor to the Unleashed office for 2 months before he said ‘let’s do this.’ Jack took a bit of convincing because, let’s be honest, times are a little tight for everyone. Unleashed provided him with a WordPress site that allows him to update his own site with information that is relevant to his profession.

Check out Cornerstone-Electric.com and see how Jack and his staff of experienced electricians can help you with any of your residential or commercial electrical projects.

Just recently while scrolling through the blog of David Mihm (another Portland based web designer) I decided to look at his source code. David was using some AJAX code that I had never seen before and it seemed that he got it from the Google API. Now the Google API is a kind of repository of knowledge for programmers and web designers alike. Much of it has to do with how to create better applications and making the web much more interactive. Yay for Google.

What intrigued me about David’s use of the Google API was that he was pulling feed sources from other sites and services with his Google supplied AJAX code. Well in true web designer fashion I stole his code and learned how to manipulate it (eventually going through the API process with Google myself and getting my own feed code) and add it to my own site. In the end I pointed the AJAX code towards my RSS feed and there you have it, a ‘Recent Blog Posts’ in the footer section on becomeunleashed.com right next to my Twitter feed.

This handy little AJAX snippet not only will entice my viewers/potential-clients to read my blog, but it also (inadvertently) might cause them to click on the Google AdSense adds or the affiliate programs that I have set up. The only down-side that I can see is that the AJAX code does not validate with the W3. I like to keep all of my sites W3 friendly, however, I’m willing to give a little on this one.

So the benefit of code stealing is learning quickly, however you really should go through the process of finding how to do it yourself. Here’s to you David Mihm!

I’ve found that in today’s market pepole want a lot for a little. Developers are so focused on making the LARGEST SITE KNOWN TO MAN, but they tend to neglect the business aspect of designing a site: search rankings, usability, and a interesting aesthetic. More often than not I meet developers that are so focused on using their new super awesome code thing, they forget who they are actually designing the site for.

Taking this knowledge into account, I’ve begun development on a one page site that will allow for easy customization, great search engine optimization, and easy-to-read. In tandem with a grid based layout, the one page site is an effective means of marketing to a target demographic.

I have already begun utilizing the one page site for smaller sites that are in a need of a simple web based initiative for their business. Several of my clients have already remarked at the speed and flexibility of the development of their one-page sites. I hope that eventually the major search engines will determine search ranking based on the quality of content presented in a site, instead of the quantity.

Google and Yahoo! are already making strides to to accommodate this new philosophy of web development. I only hope in the future it gains a greater foothold with the rest of the web development community.