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!

I don’t mean the sponsor of Eclectic Tech — I mean OUR sponsor. Every gerbil, human, fish, amoeba, building, dishwasher, diamond ring, space shuttle, barrel of oil — ALL of us.

I’d like to make a multi-faceted argument, so I may explain an awe of the relationship between the planet we live on and our people, our companion animals, our vegetation, and our creations. I can look at it from theology, from philosophy, and from a pseudo-scientific standpoint.

Someone said that mankind owes its entire existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains. I don’t know how many people really think about that statement. I want you to really think about that statement. We owe our existence, our persistence, and every one of our inventions to a layer of fertile soil and the fact that it rains water and not ammonia. Look at what other planets have for ice, and feel lucky.

On theology and as an Interfaith minister, I want to make a statement about humanity’s neglect of our relationship with the Earth: We wave a book — either a most holy book or the greatest work of fiction ever — that we will gladly interpret as granting the God-given right to abuse the planet and its creatures, as if that’s a good excuse for our neglect. I suggest that everyone reread that section. We were not appointed by any God to be the despoilers and abusers of the earth, but the caretakers, the tenders, the shepherds. Not to be above, but to be in love with every critter, and take loving care thereof (because one of the most inoffensive statements I’ve ever heard in trying to define “god” is that “god is love”). Those of us who don’t have those books usually have a similar idea of our relationship with the earth and its creations. It’s amazing how many religions incorporate not only gratitude to their powers-that-be, but to the earth and its children. And some go so far as to attribute spirit to all things, whether or not they are created by mankind. Above all, through the ages we have noticed and respected the fickle relationship between ourselves and our environment.

Oil, and thus gasoline and propane, plastics, and petroleum jelly, are taken from the veins of the earth like blood from a donor. We who would consider it unjustifiable to strap another human into a chair and bleed them day in and day out for years upon years without consent are doing this to our Earth. Our planet. By our, I mean every insect, every human, every fax machine, every toaster, every car, every tree.

The cluelessness astounds me. The neglect frightens me.

Somewhere in this terrifying rollercoaster of how we treat our planet, I wish someone had the ability to push the red button that makes the ride stop. But we don’t. As individuals, we can’t push that red button. But we can refuse to take that ride.

It’s not enough to watch the rollercoaster of destruction. We have to run around the amusement park planting trees, picking up litter, playing less games, winning less “prizes” that we can’t take into the afterlife anyway.

There is only one thing that will make a difference beyond this lifetime — relationships. Whether you believe in absolute blackness after the flesh dies, whether you believe in Heaven, or reincarnation — the lives you touch will live beyond your time, just as those who are gone have touched your life. And relationships can be relatively carbon neutral. If we spend our time building dreams for the bigger prize of love — and here we are back at god again — we can consume less, plant more, and maybe other people will decide it’s more fun doing what we do than to embark on that terrifying ride that ruins our planet.

Everything has a spirit, because everything, and I mean everything we surround ourself with, is a part of us. We breathe the same air. We eat the same carbon. My molecules are yours. My energy is yours. My spirit is yours. WE are Mother Earth. Every lightbulb. Every stone. Every living, inanimate, and dead being on the planet. We are Mother Earth. Why are we killing ourselves?

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.

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/

Ok. I’m gender agnostic on the inside, but I’m 100% certified genetic female on the outside. My Djinni is a bit androgynous, I guess. In email I only introduce my gender if someone requested a female for a specific (and good!) reason.

Yet, when a client calls on the phone, they’re always taken aback that I’m female. I know that female artists are commonplace, but I’m also a programmer, a Linux admin, and competing in a fierce male-dominated field. Maybe I should make it much more obvious that I’m female. Once I get my woman-owned business certs, I can flaunt them, but for now, it’s me, that’s all you have, and I’m female. 2 homebirths to show for it. Deal