Have a visit over at arisalomon.com.

Here’s my new logo for my photo work – these business cards arrive monday here at my hotel at the Fotofest conference.

We used WordPress (of course – and after my training they are now WordPress experts) and customized the presentation of events and people in a variety of contexts. Many landing pages were customized with  the amazing Page.ly MultiEdit plugin that allows  the client to edit the various pieces of these multi column landing pages with featured content via easy to manage, custom built shortcodes.

Donations, subscriptions and other CRM actions is integrated with Convio’s services via act.greenbelt.org.

Protecting Open Spaces & Creating Vibrant Places: Greenbelt Alliance brings people together to protect what people love about the Bay Area and to make it an even better place to live.  Learn more .

Tether is an application (2 apps – one for your Mac/PC and one for your iPhone/BB/Andriod)  that allows you to share Internet access from your phone to your  laptop (or other wifi device)  using your smartphone’s data plan. No need for jailbreaking or paying extra for WiFi hotspots or data “tethering” plans.

I have not tried it yet but will soon – I wish I had know about it before I gave up my unlimited data plan. They have had a real battle with the AT&T/Apple corporate control … But they came up with a innovative technical solution. Reminds me of how the clever Dropbox guys hacked OS X core to get their amazing technology to “just work”.

Tether’s new version for the iPhone is purely based on HTML5 and creates a completely wireless connection over AdHoc. This circumvents the need of buying the application directly from Apple’s App Store and allows any iPhone or iPad with a data connection to allow tethering.

via Tether Relaunches iPhone Version | Tether.

Some great new tools out there to monitor and update a number of WordPress sites from one central place. Here’s some notes I’ve gathered – please share your experiences in  the comments.

WHY REMOTE MANAGEMENT OF WORDPRESS SITES?
As part of my services as a web developer and WordPress expert, I have to manage many websites for my clients — it’s a tedious chore to track the latest  plugin updates, and  WordPress versions. Most updates go smoothly but on occasion plugins conflict and updates can even make your whole website become unavailable.

When people sign up for my WordPress small business web hosting service they get to avoid all these headaches and let me manage their WordPress updates. I include at least an hour per year for the updates and that’s plenty for most small businesses.

But that leaves me with a growing number of WordPress sites to manage. So to the rescue come a new generation of tools to

ManageWP
I’ve been hearing about them for a while and have been enjoying the free trial service. They are the best and most comprehensive service and offer a free trial. But they are not cheap. I had a problem adding a site and their support was very responsive – that’s a great sign.

main features:

• bulk install, update and management of plugins and themes and WP
• backups to FTP, DropBox or S3
• email notification: for updates and other stats
• clone or migrate a WP install from one site to another,
• SEO tracking tools (for highest tier price)

more features:

• One-click automatic login to any website
• Bulk Add Posts/Pages and  Links
• Simple cleaning of spam comments, removing post revisions or optimizing database
• Built-in pageview statistics
• Restrict login to your ManageWP account by IP address(es)
• Two-factor login authentication (email code)
• Backups for your websites (to your server, Amazon S3, Dropbox, FTP or an email address)
• Schedule daily, weekly or monthly automatic backups
• Easily Clone or Migrate website from one domain/hosting server to another
• Bulk User Management (change your admin password on all sites with ease, add/remove users, change roles…)
• Add and manage Sub-users in your account
• Run code tool
• Google Analytics dashboard widget
• Traffic alerts (receive an email if your daily website traffic changes by set amount)
• Website Uptime Monitoring
• Remote Maintenance mode
• View PHP error logs

Here’s my wishlist of features:

1. Incremental backups: this make all the difference in  the world when it comes to making a backup of a big site and committing to the computing resources to make it happen often.
2. Backup options:  stored at managewp.com . I wonder if they could team up with vaultpress to offer that service within their service perhaps? Ideally I would like a less expensive option since I’m already paying for a server-level (domain-level) backup.
3. Multiple service levels/flexible billing:  I have lots of WP sites but not all of them need the higher  level of service so I’d like to adjust the service level for each site (eg: not all sites are concerned about SEO).  I’d like to have a per-site billing system so I don’t have to think about the big price leap from 50 sites to 51 sites. I add my WordPress sites one at a time (as I build them for my small business clients) so i’d like to be billed one at a time. This would also make ManageWP more competitive with the free offerings out there (see below)
4. Automatic backups – I am dreaming of an email telling me that my site was updated with screenshots before and after the update! Or maybe not an email but adding before and after screenshots or a few key pages would save alot of work in assuring the completeness of a backup

The competition:

WP Remote
WP Remote  handles updates to installed plugins and themes remotely via the WP Remote website and provides quick access to core updates. It can also create full off-site backups. Seems to be free but hard to tell from their site.

portal.wpengine.com
They are still coming up with a name for their service – it’s very new. Minimal functionality but it’s free and they promise not to start charging – which makes me wonder if it’ll really get continual development. Log into any site from  the central control panel, view WP version, some troubleshooting links.

wpmanagerdx.com
Only $67 per year, this offers a php script that lives on your cpanel-based server. Offers uploading and updating of themes and plugins, backup, RSS autopost and quick WP installs based on profiles you configure.

A “logo” is often made of a logotype and a logomark. But not every business needs both.

The letter "IBM" written in a certain number of blue stripes is a logo. The blue is very specific and there are a different number of stripes depending on the size of the logo.

Usually when using the word “logo” people are thinking of logotype. A logotype is the name of a company that is designed in a visually unique way for use by that company. It may be displayed in a preexisting font  that is customized to some degree or another.  Or it may be built from geometric shapes that abstract letters for a specific effect. There can be other specifications associated with the design of a logotype that are referred to more broadly as corporate identity elements. These include PMS colors and how much empty space is required around a logo.

An apple with a missing "byte" out of it is the logomark of Apple Inc.

A logomark  or “symbol” does not generally contain the name of the company — it more abstractly represents that company.. It may or may not always sit next to the logotype and there may be a few types of marks in the corporate identity system that get used in different contexts. These rules will be spelled out in a brand usage document.

Do I need a  logomark?
How to decide if you need both a logotype and a logomark? It depends on how you will use your logo and what business sector you are in. Designing a logomark can add a significant cost to your brand development process so budget can be a factor too. Some new businesses will start simple and add a mark after the business grows and perhaps gains more (or sometimes less – meaning broader)  focus.

It’s important for all logos to remain equally readable  at each zoom/ scale level. You may not be buying a giant billboard but printing a logo a few inches across on a brochure is a much higher resolution environment than on a website.

To see some logos I’ve design head on over to my logo design portfolio or just download my updated identity design portfolio PDF.

THE GREAT WALL OF OAKLAND

On the first Friday night of each month, a large wall of an Oakland office complex morphs into an outdoor theater. A projector on a nearby rooftop shows videos a hundred feet tall on the exterior of a building at the corner of West Grand and Valley Street. The spectators — most of whom also attend the monthly event called Art Murmur in nearby galleries — stand or perch on the curb to watch the show.

via The Great Wall – NYTimes.com

and recently another client was featured:
SORA AND THE CLOUD

SHOW DATE
January 19, 2012 (Thurs) 7-9pm

VENUE
Apple SF Store
1 Stockton St., San Francisco (map)

WHAT I’M DOING
I’ll be giving a 20min artists talk (slideshow) of my Interface series—this is an encore presentation of what I presented last year at Stanford.

WHAT IS OPEN SHOW
Rapidly growing into a worldwide movement, OPEN SHOW is a series of free monthly curated artist-talks that feature 5 or 6 photographers who have 10-15 minutes each to show a 20 image story (or 4‐7 minute video/multimedia project). Beyond offering a stage to get great work seen, shows are also incubators for emerging photographers and works in progress. This evening is a “best of 2011″ encore so it should be an especially compelling show. More info at openshow.org.

OTHER PRESENTERS
Jeremy Rourke – Out to See
Brandon Tauszik – Pray For Mercy
Michael Mullady – In Memory of Fabienne Geichmar
Yoni Klein & Alka Joshi – Blink
Cera Hensley – Here Nor There

Come experience this unique live show featuring the six best projects from 2011 curated from hundreds of submissions. Work includes a photo collage music video, powerful images from Haiti, surreal landscape dioramas and more. (I am the more, I suppose).

>>RSVP AT FACEBOOK (optional)

Some images from my Interface series…

RELATED: video of my presentation of this work at Stanford last year
ALSO: Read the post about me over at the SFMOMA Artists Gallery blog

Paper or plastic? When it came to cups the answer was always “both” since you didn’t have a choice.

Now we do.

So the main goal here is to make plastic, carry-out lids obsolete.The design has flaps similar to takeout cartons that fold over to seal in cold or hot beverages, while creating a sipping spout. See their site for a quick animation.

This is the kind of brilliant rethinking of everyday objects that makes me think we might evolve out of this chemical swamp we call home.

via: The Compleat Cup | One Piece Paper Cup.

An interesting account of one persons experience with Godaddy and WordPress Hosting.

Continual frustrations, annoyances and poor value for my money

I switched from my old hosting provider (Godaddy), to WordPress.com because Godaddy was giving me issues every other week, or had caching issues, and did not support gzip (fully) etc. Plus the $5/month I was paying was not worth it.

via Why I switched from Godaddy (WordPress.org) to WordPress.com « one cool site.

Also: a related discussion about SEO and WordPress.com. Interesting opinions on pros and cons of keeping a simple site at wordpress.com in order to improve SEO.

> Read my other Godaddy related posts
> Read about myWordPress Hosting service

goPano

I see complains about fuzzy videos and an explanation that teaches alot about how it works.

But my main issue with this is that it wont shoot stills – that might be more fun for me to play with actually. I think it’s got a wider angle of view than the Kogeto. It’s also slightly bulky – at least compared with the competition…

kogeto

Kogeto

I  was at first surprised to find a competitor. Very similar but physically smaller and i think that’s a big plus.

• their kickstarter comments
• they say “The 4s is going to vastly improve the quality of Dot videos due to the 1080p resolution so we’re really excited”
• The Dot let’s you view the full 360 in their player – i like that better than dragging around a video to see the whole thing. But you can’t see the screen while sooting and you can’t see as much vertically (gopano sees 90 degrees)

other comparisons:

• http://www.johnmason.me
• http://www.iphoneproguide.com
• http://answers.yahoo.com

BubbleScope

wait, there is a 3rd option: BubbleScope
360x120degrees in a package that looks smaller than goPano. But you can’t buy it yet.