Why Pay More for a Web Site?

You want a web site, but who do you trust to build it?

…and why is it so expensive? Is the uncertainty, the cost, and the hassle of making a web site keeping you from joining the information age?

Don’t pay $1000, $2000, or even $3000 for an old-fashioned static web site!

This summer, I’m building dynamic, search-engine optimized websites for holistic practitioners and small business owners for only $500. What do you get for $500? You get a five-page web site built from your choice of attractive designs. The site includes a home page, services page, “about you” page, map page, and contact page. It includes advanced traffic statistics, weekly site backups, and a full-fledged blog for posting new pages, articles, and announcements. You also get instructions on how you (or your staff) can easily add new pages and upload articles.

Contact Tony and reserve your $500 web site today.*

First 25 clients get free domain name research & registration, and one free year of site hosting ($260 value).

Rate: $500 per website
Promotion: First 25 clients get one year free web hosting
Details: We build a professional web site for your business. This price includes five main pages. Free web blog software is also included so you can post articles and announcements without paying a web designer each time you need an edit.

Sample Client List

• SherriLackman.com
• PeoplesChiropractic.net
• SolarTexans.com
• BargainBuylines.com
• EnergySaver.tv
• HolisticDentists.org
• NaturalWellnessConsulting.com
• AffordableSolarPanels.com

Visual search, with an iTunes-like visual scrolling (Cover Flow), seems like a the logical next step in the user-interface of search. searchme.com shows off an excellent demo of their visual approach.

Is this the next killer app? Should Google be concerned? It’s too early to tell how this will work in real life settings. Like the, thumbnail-focused www.pixsy.com, searchme believes that the future of search is visual.

The history of visual approaches to search, including 3D flythroughs and other graphical models, has been littered with failure. VRML comes to mind, in the 1990s this was going to be “next-gen” the 3D web. In early-2008, with broadband and ubiquitous dual-core cpu power, we still have not seen a visual approach to user-interface gain much traction in the marketplace. (The desktop metaphor–invented at Parc in the early ’80s, popularized by Apple, and copied by Microsoft–has been the last major epoch in user-interface development. We really haven’t moved much past overlapping windows in the past 28 years.)

Enabled by Adobe’s® Flex 3® software Searchme emphasizes that their technology is more than a slick UI.

“The Searchme visual search engine, which leverages the power and ubiquity of Adobe Flash™ software and Adobe Flex, is an innovative rich Internet application that could help fundamentally change the Internet search experience,” said Chris Rogers, West Region Leader, Adobe Consulting at Adobe. “It’s more than a slick UI; it’s an engaging search experience that emphasizes relevance and usability to help users more easily find what they’re looking for on the Web.” [press release]

I believe that people think primarily in verbal concepts, our brain has uniquely evolved to the complex task of reading in ways that cognitive neuroscientists like Dr. Maryann Wolf are just now discovering. While, plain text is not as sexy as animated flipping thumbnails, I believe that relevance and simplicity are still king.

Amazing overview of how technology permits the interlinking of minds.
How does this change who we are, and how does it change our civilization?

Where 2.0: Google Launches Streetside View with Tech from ImmersiveMedia

Virtual reality took another step forward when Google showed off their “Streetside View” at the Where 2.0 conference. Using a slick Flash interface you can access a ground-view perspective of a mapped area. If we apply the Law of Accelerating Returns, the resolution of these images and the density of mapping will increase one thousandfold in a decade. Imagine dropping into an immersive video projection of a Paris boulevard cafe to have your next team meeting. It’s closer than you think.

No one can tell you about Street View, you have to see it for yourself.

“With all respect to Google, it is Web 1.0.
” Roger McNamee’s seemingly derogatory observation of Google (TICKER:GOOG) - the greatest search engine in the universe, the God of the Web, the organizer of our cluttered online lives — was one of the many provocative lines coming out of a panel discussion hosted by the Churchill Club…

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