I’ve decided to change from a package rate to an hourly rate on logo design. A logo needs to get the job done, and a package with a set number of trial & errors is not the best deal for the client. I can still offer a flat-rate on logo design, if you really like it, but I was considering raising my price to $1000, and that punishes clients who know exactly what they want and those who communicate effectively, make quick decisions, and the times that I hit the nail on the head the first time.

I decided to stop punishing the easy logo design clients, and start rewarding them instead by charging hourly creative charges. My creative charge is $70/hour because being creative is as tough as being technical (this is the same rate for my technical skills clients). This charge is at an hour minimum, charged in 15 minute increments, rounded up. So an easy logo can cost $70, a tough case can go for several hundred dollars, and you get to choose how long you want to nitpick over details (and it’s your logo — you SHOULD nitpick over the details!!!). Designing business cards, flyers, post cards, etc. goes under this category.

So what about people who need something easier, less creative?

While it can be time consuming, some clients just need artwork cleanup rather than creatives. If you never received a clean copy of your logo design suitable for imprinted products, or scaling up, Eclectic Tech is charging less for artwork cleanup charges. In-trade (printers, promotional product consultants, screen printers, designers, etc.) the charge is $50/hour. For one-time-only clients, i.e. direct-to-consumer, I’m charging $60/hour. So please come to me if you need your logo or artwork cleaned up for a project. Most artwork doesn’t take more than hour to clean up. Half-hour minimum, charged in 15 minute increments rounded up.

If you give me anything from a vague idealistic concept of what you’re looking for through a rough sketch (back of a cocktail napkin or computer mock-up rough) of what you’re looking for, it’s a logo design charge. If you have finished artwork that just isn’t up to snuff for the project at-hand, needs a text change, a color change, etc. then it’s a “light design” charge and goes under artwork cleanup. If you already have a business card, and you want the exact same design with a change in a phone number or color, the charge is an artwork cleanup charge.

Prices may change in the future after this blog entry. Please check my website for current charges.

My first client for artwork-cleanup is Prisms Promotions — I’ve done almost a dozen cleanup projects for them, and I’ve decided to advertise the service. See my portfolio page or testimonial page for more information on who is using this service.

I’m a website designer & programmer. I can work with anyone, anywhere in the world. I chose to be different and do most of my work in the local region. But like I said, that’s different. Many of my colleagues think more is better, and try to price low and gain money on quantity rather than quality, both of their clients and of their services.

When searching for a service online, I don’t care if you’re looking for website hosting, website design, logo design, custom graphics, or an alarm company (the only item in this list that I’m not providing), you probably want — or need — to know where the person is.

So how do you figure it out?

I wanted to use a specific set of examples in this post. Top-of-the-search engine results with fantastic prices, and absolutely no phone number or address to be seen on their website. Sites that ended up being in other countries. Websites with blatant grammatical errors that obviously still rake in enough cash to get to the top of Google search results on pay-per-click hot topics that are highly competitive.

But they asked me nicely to remove their website address and information from my blog. So I’m removing it. Not exactly sure what offended them about the post, as they were only a live example and it was true that they were in a foreign country, but I’ll remove it to keep the peace.

Some cliches exist for a reason. “You get what you pay for” is one of them. In a vast sea of choices and no education, people choose the products by lowest price. There’s either too much information, or not enough, to educate the consumer into making informed choices.

There are real dangers in sending your money to a foreign corporation. They can be of the most stellar reputation, 100% honest, hard-working people, but you are still never afforded the same protections and conveniences you have working with someone in the same town or at least the same state. It is much less convenient to do business out-of-state, or out-of-the-country. If it’s out-of-state you have the additional complications of figuring out which state/jurisdiction to interpret your contract in, and where you have to travel to in order to arbitrate disputes. In foreign matters, unless you have the type of money it takes to go to International court, you don’t have legal protections no matter what the contract says.

If you are going to a local company, you can check their mailing address, their reputation, get a real referral from someone you know to someone you know you can trust. You can track their professional affiliations, check the Better Business Bureau to see if there are complaints against them. And more.

So how do you figure out who people really are? There is a database that stores their legal domain registration information. There is real consideration to abolishing this information on the web, but in the meantime the more of us who are using it for legitimate reasons (to check on the idenitity of a service before purchase) the better. This database is accessible at http://www.whois.net/

If you enter theirdomainname.com into Whois you can see their registration record. Enter “theirdomainname” in the field for looking up domain registration data. Make sure the right suffix is selected (”.com”) and click GO!

Not all domains show legal registration information online. The domain owner can hide that information by paying their domain registrar a few extra bucks to make even that anonymous…. Then you need to get into some website gymnastics to figure out who these people are, and I am not sure it’s worthwhile. If they’re hiding, maybe they have something to hide. More often, though, people are banking on ignorance. This blog post is to help some people wake up and smell the scandal. The flip side of this idea: If you run a legitimate business, you should not be anonymous on the web, and prospective clients shouldn’t need to resort to the “whois database” method above, just to figure out where you’re located. I get a few junk mails and a junk fax or 3 for having my information up — the worst is the domain-registration related spam, but that’s a hazard of doing legit business on the web.

I suggest you look at people’s Contact Us page and check that their information matches their WhoIs registration — check their professional affiliations and their memberships in local chambers of commerce. Ask if there have been any complaints against them.

If you’re in the local region, you could ask for a face-to-face with the person you’re doing business with. The only way to see eye-to-eye on any project is to actually be able to look someone in the face.

Moral: You pay for what you get.

Good luck!

Here’s my low-tech tip for how to organize all those business cards you (should!) have been getting at all the networking events you have been going to (you HAVE been networking, right????!?). I have an address book in my computer, I have a Palm, I have considered whether or not to enter “ALL” business cards I collect into an electronic medium, but so far I’ve found an easier (for me) way to keep business cards at my fingertips.

It involves several 1.5 & 2 inch 3-ring binders, and Avery (or similar) business card sheets — these sheets hold 10-up — putting cards back-to-back to display on 2 sides makes it 20 cards per page… There also are tabbed business card sheets so you can use some of the sheets as dividers. I also get 100% post-consumer recycled college-ruled 3-ring binder paper, which I keep in clipboards on my desk, normal section dividers, and a set of A-Z section dividers I had laying around for years.

Here’s how I set them up:

One binder (about 1.5 inch right now) is the “Business Cards” binder and that has a section for the Orange County Chamber, Sullivan County Chamber, Orange Networking Alliance, each BNI chapter I visited, Toastmasters, etc. When I meet someone at an event by a specific group, their card goes into that group’s section. Later, when I’m trying to connect people together, all I have to do is remember which group I met someone at to find their card. Within sections, I’m not terribly picky about the order I put them in: most of those groups don’t have enough people/cards in them to get too anal about how to organize the section.

I keep a 2″ binder for warm/hot prospects, a 2″ ring binder for current clients, and a 1.5″ binder for clients “in support.”

Prospect book: I set up the book with a few business card sheets, a plain piece of filler paper for an index, then the A-Z dividers. When a prospect calls, I grab a clipboard and start taking notes on the filler paper (or on 1-sided scrap, more on that later). Then it’s time to file their information. If I have their business card, I slip it into the business card sheet in the front of the book. I write their name & business name, perhaps how they were referred to me, on the index in pencil, underline the letter in their name or business name that I’m filing them under, and file them in the binder in that section. Now when I need to touch base with that prospect, I can easily take the binder off the shelf, start dialing or emailing them just from their card, then turn to the divider section and have my hand-written notes at my fingertips.

If that person becomes a client, their information gets moved to my client book, and their name gets erased from the index in the prospect book. Their business card goes in the front of the client book, and I now use a complete divider section for the client. I still use an index in pencil for the front of the book, but these sections are numbered. I file notes on phone calls, timesheets, contracts, and other documentation in their section. Once the client’s job is finished, they migrate to the In Support book.

All the books are labeled and sit in the hutch of my desk.

This works best for people who aren’t trying to cold-call every business they’ve ever contacted — and people who can remember where they met someone but not their name or business name, although some electronic systems allow you to track when and where you met someone. However, if you are going to cold-call everyone, I’d recommend adding small post-its to your collection. Why add people to an electronic database if they’re not interested, and probably will never be interested, in your product? Keep a notepad nearby, a small post-it pad, make the initial call off the business card, and if they’re not interested now, put the post-it on the card with the date you called and that they weren’t interested. … or a date they said to call back. You might only manage 10 business cards per sheet, but you could take some notes on paper, fold them up and stick them behind the card in question. Now you can try them again later, but don’t have to spend much time on someone who is not making you money.

Another person I know writes the event & date on the cards when she brings them home. She’s going to start using my binder system, rather than have the cards in piles, but I like the idea of putting a date on them. I’m not going to, but I like it

Even if I had a business card scanner, I would want to hold on to the business cards themselves. I find they give me important clues to who the person is — the style of card often helps me remember who the person behind the card was. If I only had the information, I might not remember the person. Also it’s easier to pass along a business card if you have it than if you scanned it. I have been known to bring the whole business card binder with me to speed networking events.

Now, there are some cards you should not have in this system. These are your preferred vendors, other members of your own referral group, cards from terrific places to bring a client for lunch or dinner, and the people you feel most comfortable referring to others. If you’re in a larger organization you might include your colleagues in this category. For these types of cards, I have a small portable business card book, because I’m most likely to need these cards on-hand at any event. I can leave the big binder at the office and bring along my smaller binder.

When buying your supplies, shop local! Please find the nearest mom & pop stationery store and open a business account with them. I use Charles B. Merrill Office Products in Newburgh, NY — they deliver the next day.

Another thing I do is keep a stack of half-used paper, usually Chamber flyers that were printed only on one side, folded in half. These make great notepaper that I grab when I get a phone call and start taking notes on. Until I know someone is going into a binder, why use the virgin paper? They still fit in the book with 2 holes from a 3-hole-punch. It’s a great way to re-use before recycling. With a stick of re-stickable glue, I can quickly make any note into a post-it.

Phew. Good luck!!

I’ve decided to change discount policies. There are two blanket discounts available:

Orange & Sullivan (NY) Chamber of Commerce members, and members of Business Exchange Network get a base 5% discount on Eclectic Tech’s easy-to-edit websites.

Child care professionals (including teachers, schools, and child care centers), holistic businesses & practitioners, organic businesses, and registered educational non-profits get a base 10% discount on Eclectic Tech’s easy-to-edit websites.

I’m extending a discount of 5% for any contract which is paid in full at contract signing. This discount is in addition to the discounts mentioned above. So for a chamber member to enjoy a 10% discount now requires payment in full up-front.

The discounts will no longer extend to other services or my hourly rates.

I’ve watched some very large contracts come through where chamber members would be getting a discount that is more than enough to pay for me to renew my chamber membership next year. I can’t sustain that level of discounting on my services, especially any services that are laborious and may not be furthering my overall goals in my business.

I’m sorry for any inconvenience. I will honor any proposals that have not expired, but the new policies will take place in any future or re-assessed contracts.

I run this one-woman minority-owned company called Eclectic Tech. Started out with the intention of doing whatever it takes to help people (with technology). Found that most people need help with websites, so that’s my primary selling point and like any other company, I have to flaunt it.

I do my best to make sure I don’t bleed my clients for every cent they have. Came up with a great way to picture it — sudden inspiration in a restaurant in Warwick: “Free your website from the Bastille! Liberate your website from your oppressors!” all in a French-ish accent I like to flatter myself is pretty good. It was a hit. I love making people laugh.

Well, I have yet to find a French person who is offended. I don’t like doing the same schtick twice, but this is certainly my most popular self-aggrandizement. So it stuck — now I run around saying “Liberate your website!” a Whooooooole lot. Usually with the French accent. Because people actively request it. Once I did it in a fake Transylvanian accent “Is your vebmaster sucking you dry??” Did any Transylvanians come out of the woodwork to take offense? There was a room full of about 60 or 70 local business people — no one said anything, a few people laughed, most people smiled.

So, my client Paul Ellis created this Faaaaaabulous commercial for me, inspired by my own inspirations. He has 4 actors do this commercial — 3 “Mexican revolutionaries” and a damsel in distress. Same basic schtick: freedom from your oppressive webmasters. It’s on the radio. It’s on my website. I love the commercial. It’s a work of art. It’s a whole minute-thirty long, you can’t BUY an ad slot like that on the air!

After all my other “revolutionary” spontaneous ads, someone’s taking offense at the commercial. Maybe more than one someone. Because maybe, just maybe, it’s racially biased.

I don’t know who you are, but there’s no racial slurs in the commercial — there’s no vandals or “bad guys” in any of the voices and the webmaster’s race or lifemate are not mentioned. The damsel cries “Help, Help” and the revolutionaries come to tell her about Eclectic Tech and how Eclectic Tech can free her from oppression. I’m not Mexican, so maybe I have no right to portray Mexicans in my advertising any more than I had a right to portray a French revolutionary, or a Transylvanian vampiress. But I grew up the daughter of an Argentinean immigrant. I’m Hispanic. My children are 1/2 Puerto Rican, and all Hispanic. When he described the commercial to me, and I read the script, I thought it was cool. When I heard it I thought it was brilliant.

All of this was probably not an issue until it came time for Paul Ellis to run for Chester Town Supervisor. After all, someone has to find some dirt to fling and get offended — and men aren’t marching after him with torches and pitchforks for the character named “Harry Paratestis” so I guess the next obvious target is my commercial. Gotta get dirt on this man who works himself to the bone, collaborating with everyone on every project, trying to make people laugh, no matter what their color, gender, or who they sleep with. So this man makes me an inspired, funny, and talented commercial, intended for play during a radio COMEDY, and somewhere in the middle of the high sidekick and the dead guy with the dirty name, people can’t seem to locate their sense of humor anymore. It’s with the missing sock, people!

No wonder commercials have to resort to CGI-animated bullfrogs and geckos. People have missed the point, but I’ll let you in on it: The joke is NOT about the revolutionaries. The accents are trite clues that there’s a bigger joke going on. The REAL joke is about web-masters who take advantage of their clients, creating websites no one can touch but them. These people charge either monthly fees or per-change charges for people to keep their websites up to date. And so far, even THEY aren’t taking offense!! No matter what color they are, where their ancestors are from, what language they speak, who they sleep with, or what gender they are, the webmasters have not risen to defend themselves. I believe they have every right to their residual income, and I believe their clients have every right to get fed up with it and choose a different alternative, which I will happily offer them. And I’ll use every historical reference to revolutions and oppression I want — as long as it makes someone giggle — to drive that point home. Robin Hood? Sure! Boston Tea Party? You betcha!! Moses & the Pharaoh? Now you’re talking! “Let my website go!”

I don’t get people. But here’s one Hispanic woman who is saying WTF about this attitude. Do you want to talk about crimes against humanity: Paul Ellis made me laugh! Now there’s a crime — I might live a little longer because I laughed and released some endorphins. If you don’t find it funny, why are you listening? At least I got a good hearty laugh out of the thought of anyone being offended!

There is an awful lot of clutter on the web. There ought to be a fine for littering in cyberspace. You’ve seen the kind of junk I’m talking about here and there: content that is there for the sole benefit of search engines, such as white keyword text on a white background, people who spam in blog comments, and even the harmless pages of nonsense that grows like weeds on each of our websites.

In June I tightened ship on my own website. I’ve implemented some new security on the blog software, notably reCAPTCHA, a captcha project by Carnegie Mellon University. Captchas use images containing distorted text that you have to re-type into a form field. The reCAPTCHA project uses portions of scanned/OCR’d books that failed to be recognized easily by computers to test users. Once the text is verified to be read by a human, it helps add books to electronic libraries. So using this method not only foils spammers, but helps with online literature projects.

I’m also working on editing down my website. I am guilty of using my ability to create web pages so easily as an opportunity to be too wordy. Some websites don’t have enough information, and you leave disappointed that you couldn’t find what you needed to know. Others are too wordy: “Welcome to (this website). We’re so glad you came… have a seat. Would you like some tea while you’re waiting for real content? The bathroom is down the hall.” I’m guilty as charged, in a court of my own self-examination.

I altered the navigation on the site, so it should hopefully make more sense to someone at least passingly familiar with websites. I started out with really obscure labels for the links, now I’m back down to the basics. Practice what I preach: I’m always telling my clients what should be on their homepage, how their navigation should be labeled. I have finally followed my own advice.

As a new service, I’m helping clients with their website “talk” — a website needs to be the executive summary of a longer proposition. The longer proposition can be there, behind the scenes, and you can bring on the content in layers that are carefully crafted to build detail into the subject. However, people don’t need to be hit over the head with a heavy sales pitch, proposal, or autobiography from the get-go.

Tightening up the wording, reducing babble, using bullet lists for main points, taking advantage of proper linking, and proper keyword integration.

People don’t have time to sit through a long reading: they came with something in mind, even if it was just to learn more about you, and then they’re going to go on to the next thing in their life. I’m working on other ways to increase website traffic to my client’s site other than the stinking, lying, cheating ways that some search engine optimization businesses have taken up. It’s a definite art, and it’s easier to do on content that you didn’t write yourself, so for me it’s slow going between projects, and for clients, hopefully it won’t be as slow and inconsistent.

Some of my new philosophies about optimization of websites were covered in my second workshop at the QED Business Edge conference yesterday: “Who’s your website for?” It went over well. More about it later.

Because I’m expanding my business into content development and website planning, I’m starting to subcontract some design work out so I can make room for adding new services to my business. To see what this looks like, see the Rhthym and Rhyme Childcare and Simply FlawlessFaces websites.

Can you believe I founded this LLC in 2004? On August 24th (or was it 25th?) it will be the anniversary of Eclectic Tech, LLC. Officially 3 years old, I’ll be entering my 4th year of business. Oogie. I can see ghosts of business past already.

My next several weeks are going to be hectic. Post-mortem of yesterday’s conference, all the business meetings normally held 3rd week of the month, all the meetings and business I put off so I could handle last-minute tasks and stress before the conference…and getting my kids back from Mother before packing them off to school again.

And I’ve said this before, but there’s always time for you. I love helping people out.

Today I sent someone to ICANN to see if they could recover their domain name — why would I take someone’s money to scramble to replace their website at a new domain name when they might recover that name legitimately?

I have a few appointments to help my client Linda Borghi of Abundant Life Farm to network in the region and gain clientele. I’m training two clients. The normal networking events like the Orange Networking Alliance. And I’m trying to remember where I left off when I put my business on pause for a moment.

The conference, on the other hand, went well. I’m so glad I didn’t have to handle every detail. I thought, the night before the conference, “Oh, no, I need evaluation forms for my workshops!” and had to give that up — no time. When I was there the next day, there were evaluation forms. I have to thank Susan (QED, LLC website coming in the future…) for handling details without needing me [I have a serious “If you want something done right…” complex!]. And Joe, her husband — I would think we either took turns keeping Susan sane or took turns doing things that needed to “just be done”. I like that synergy. People with focus getting things done. I could go quietly insane for a week and no one noticed Linda Borghi unknowingly helped keep me sane. It was better to focus on someone else’s needs than the billion things I should have been doing, but would only have stressed about and never accomplished anyway. I had honest moments of peace in the tsunami of anxiety.

I apologize if I missed a phone call, missed returning a call, missed a hint that someone wanted me to do something, or somehow made a commitment that I didn’t keep. What a month! I could list the accomplishments, such as the 92-page Business Edge website, but then you’d think I was bragging.

And I thank all the people who helped out at the conference. Thank you!!! I had a WONDERFUL time and didn’t have to run around taking care of “stuff” all day. Joe & Susan & Frank Lowell and I think the other woman was Andrea at the registration desk….you made my day terrific by taking care of all the minutia.

I have a client. Not a loud client all over my portfolio, a pretty quiet client. A good client. A repeat client. I worked with Kevin Burke of Lucid Marketing last year doing piecemeal projects while their systems administrator was out.

He’s started a new company named Light Iris, with a focus of marketing to new mothers.

He had a notion one day that he should get a better perspective on being a new mother, and has been wearing a 35-pound pregnancy suit on his off-hours. Not to parade around town, but to get an idea of what it’s like to have all that extra weight on.

He’s doing this experiential experiment for a month. You can read about it at http://blog.lightiris.com/

I’d like to tackle the theory of AJAXification for a moment, mainly because I was just in the middle of an AJAX-rendered hellish portion of an otherwise OK website.

AJAX is a buzzword and people who even know it are probably some of the few web programmers out there still able to compete over 6-digit salaried jobs.

The simple definition is that AJAX is a browser-side technology — in other words it doesn’t run on the webserver, it runs on your home or office computer — that sends data and fetches data to and from a web server without the need to reload or load the webpage. Only the portion of the webpage that needs to be changed is changed, rather than the whole webpage. It can save time and looks better to the user because the pictures and background of the page don’t need to reload. It can also be a waste of time, as shown in the example below.

With the proper use of AJAX, a web application can swiftly and seamlessly load information and change something on the webpage. Perhaps it can be used to anticipate the user’s next move, load some data on the sly, and have it ready to slip in with some slick javascript maneuver when the user clicks. “Ha, ha! I knew you were going to click that!” This is especially cool when there are fewer choices for what the user might do. Not so great when there is a lot of data to pull from the webserver and not so great when there are too many choices to properly anticipate the user’s next maneuver or when the data being pulled is directly dependent on the user’s input.

The result of AJAX used correctly is a user experience that resembles a desktop application. Google (gmail at least) has it right, and I sure hope their programmers are getting the 6-digit income they deserve.

What annoys me is when AJAX is used to “be cool” — not to enhance the user’s experience.

The application that annoyed me today is the largest area newspapers’ online calendar of events. Perhaps the application ran “slick” in testing with only 5 or 10 events listed. I’m sure it ran very nicely. Especially from their high-tech offices with terrific web service, or even with the servers at the same location.

There’s a mini calendar which shows a bit into next month, and underneath it, starting with “today”, is a huge detailed listing (date, time, name of event, location…) of the area’s events for the next several days.

Each date on the calendar is a link that, when hovered, brings up a floating list of that day’s events. If there were 3 events per day, this would be bright. There’s more like 40. It takes as long to load the floating list as it would to reload the web page. You have to sit there hovering your mouse over the date for what seems like an eternity as it makes a call to the database to pull up and format the day’s events. There’s a nice swirly thing that shows up if you hover over the mini calendar. Without the swirly thing, if I went to the mini calendar to click, I wouldn’t ever know that a “cool” list would eventually pop up. It pops up next to my mouse with a listing so long that when I then move my mouse down the list I eventually hit the bottom of the browser, and the whole AJAXified listing goes away. It doesn’t scroll as I move down. That’s real helpful.

Ok. Well, one could live with that — instead of hovering and getting a hand-cramp, how about clicking on the date. As one would expect, the listing under the mini calendar changes to start with the date selected. However, this incites another AJAXified call to the database to fetch several days’ events and replace the vast majority of the content on the webpage. Again, this data pull results in a long “load time” for the javascript (AJAX) to pull the data. It’s nice that the sidebar dancing ads don’t change, but exactly what time are you saving? Does this make you look “smarter” and “slicker”? Maybe…to the advertisers since you suddenly have nothing to do but stare at their glowing undulating ads.

But let’s say I want to peruse today’s events, and pull up the event details for items I’m interested in in another window, or in another tab, of my browser? Then when I’m done selecting a bunch, I can look through the event’s details…

Because these aren’t real webpage links, it ignores my attempt to open the link in another window. They’re all “javascript links” and when I click them, the entire page goes away, even if I’ve attempted to open it in another window or tab. To get back to the mini calendar or listing, now I have to get the whole page by going “back” in the browser. That’s not the way I want webpages to behave. At all. I’m a tab-oriented person. I let pages load in another tab and look at them when I’m good and ready.

All this time my laptop fan is going nuts, the load on my laptop was increasing, my laptop was getting hotter, and it was a waste to even be on the page. I have better things to waste my time with, like ranting about the abuse of AJAX!

This is just one example of a webpage that needs an AJAX Anonymous support group. Perhaps they never thought through what the user would do, how they would expect it to behave. They created a webpage Frankenstein monster based on what was “cool”. It’s not EASIER. It’s not CHEAPER. It’s their self-aggrandizement at stake. “Look, we have AJAX!” — so what?

It doesn’t help that I went for an interview with that company a year ago and they kept asking me if I knew AJAX and I kept saying “Not Yet.” I still say not yet because I’m still not convinced that anything good would come of it. I’ve seen very very few things that would REALLY be enhanced by the use of AJAX. AJAX is not the killer tool to make a website cool. A website is either cool or not, regardless of the technology behind it. If doing something in AJAX would really make the experience better, go for it. Gmail is cool because it rather closely replicates the experience of a desktop email application. I hardly use it, but when I did, I was suitably impressed, then went back to my own email app.

An online shared calendar doesn’t need to be AJAXified like this one was, though. I would have preferred to load each day’s events in a separate tab, or view event details for selected dates in different tabs so I could keep flipping between them and comparing times and locations to see how many events I could attend.

What this AJAX stuff does to search engine optimization: Since search engines ignore javascript, all that data means nothing to them. Terrific on a private area of a website, horrible in a calendar application.

So, in conclusion, if you’re looking for AJAX because you heard that AJAX is cool, ask to see some good and bad AJAX in action and talk to an expert to decide whether or not AJAX would enhance your users’ experience given what you’re doing on your website.

If you really do know AJAX, please stop people before they ruin their websites with it. You have a moral and ethical responsibility to guide people correctly in how they use their websites.

Please curb your AJAX. Good boy. Sit.

Bank acquisitions have become so commonplace around here that I’m not at all surprised to walk into my nice local upstate-only bank and find that some global giant is gobbling it up like yet another Pac-Man pellet. I look on with concern, watching them rip apart the interior of my local branches to change the branding so that we can know for 100% certain that our money is no longer helping a local institution.

They even tore out the ATM machine and replaced it with a Diebold monstrosity. It has all the bells and whistles, or should I say beeps. Every number in your password elicits a LOUD beep so everyone in the bank knows how many digits there are in your password. When the cash is coming out, it beeps loudly. Thanks for letting everyone in a 12-block radius know I now have cash in my pocket. Wheeeeee! I hope they’re not rolling out these monsters in NYC proper, but they probably did. Now they’re infiltrating upstate New York. As if it weren’t bad enough that the bank is changing, the new regime has installed monster equipment from the same company many people suspect have rigged elections. I’m scared to death to put my credit cards and debit cards into it’s gaping maw. The only thing I can say in its favor is that it has an exquisitely sensitive touch screen. Everything else — and I mean everything — disgusts me. Every. Shiny. Millimeter. And I’m a geek.

I had 2 accounts at this bank. One personal (free for life — *cough*) and one business. The business account’s days were numbered already — I never have enough money in the bank to escape monthly fees — the bank gave me my first year in business for free. I threw enough of a stink that I got my second year free. But any day now, the account is going to start costing me $12 a month. That’s enough chicken to feed my family for 3 weeks!! Forget it — I was SO out of there. I started shopping around for a new bank. One that respected that my miniscule business needs every penny it works so hard to earn.

The DDay was to be March 23. I needed that account closed before the official 100% turn-over to the other bank. I didn’t want them to send me new checks with a new routing number. I didn’t want their promises that things wouldn’t change too much. I didn’t want their new signage. I definitely didn’t want the Diebold ATM.

I had an outstanding check floating around in the wild, so I called the payee, and I made arrangements to send a money order and I was to put a stop payment on the check in question. They wrote a note in my account not to cash the check. I went to put a stop payment order on the check. Note the check is only for about $40.

It would cost me $33 to put a stop payment order on the check. For crying out loud, that feeds my family chicken for over 2 months! That’s a lot of rice & beans. I hope they sleep well at night! Who would put a $33 stop payment order on a $40 check??!?

So, given that it could cost me $40 if the check goes through after I get the money order — or $73 if it goes through but there are insufficient funds (but wait, then another $33 on top of that if the fee for insufficient funds sends the balance into the negatives!) — or $33 to put a stop payment on the check, I chose the best thing. I’m closing the account out. Right now. It’s cheaper. They’re absolutely INSANE. They’ve sold their soul to someone out there, and I’m just another cow to be milked for my money.

Good Bye. Good Riddance.

I want to tell you about my savior. She came into my Thursday morning referral group and mentioned Federal Credit Union and lightbulbs lit up and chorusses of angels began to sing. Nancy Finn of Mid-Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union said the magic words of lower fees, lower (or non-existant) minimum balances, non-profit bank-like institution. Magic. I promise.

I opened accounts in December, and started the confusion of having my money spread out in too many places, too many accounts to juggle, etc. I waited until after the 30 day probation period required at a new banking institution before moving all my money over. Now I’m doing all my banking at the Federal Credit Union, and only keeping the personal monster account open so that my ex has an easy place to deposit child support payments if needed.

When you open a business account at a for-profit bank, you pay probably $20 for 50 business checks. It doesn’t last long. I paid $10 for a whole box of personal-sized business checks.

None of my accounts have a minimum balance, except the $5 minimum for my savings accounts — which is more like a membership deposit. When you quit the credit union you get $5 back. Who would quit?

All my accounts, including joint accounts, are on one screen when I do online banking. They’ve created such a simple interface for banking online that I’m very impressed.

I feel like the cow that woke up from a dream to find out they were human — was I a human dreaming I was a cow? Or am I a cow dreaming I’m human? Who cares as long as I’m not getting milked! heh

They’re friendly, they’re not out to get you. There are some fees if you do something stupid, just like at the for-profits, but the fees are lower, sometimes very significantly lower.

The best thing, though, is that they’re local, non-profit, and they’re going to stay that way. The big for-profits won’t gobble them up. No Diebold machines. Please. *phew*