The Kennebec Journal has a story this morning on Steve Jobs' impact throughout the state of Maine. 

http://bit.ly/n8ZQM5

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Since it seems we are all going to get a little wet this weekend (thank you Irene) here's a nice tutorial on underwater photography... 

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If I could just play my ever growing, slightly bloated, and a little trendy from time to time (see nu metal, emo-rock, and indie hip-hop bands) music collection anywhere I go without having to lug a massive hard drive at the same time I'd be a happy audio-junkie. 

What's that you say? Apple has a solution for me? iCloud? Sweet! 

I kid. We've all heard of it. If you haven't I suggest reading some here. It's worth it. 

The reason for this post is to note the iCloud has just released it's beta version for developers to test [see here]. This means we're close to streaming all the Journey we want via our computers, iphone, ipads, or AirPlay enabled house stereo system from one place! What I like though is the "personality" Apple has designed into the cloud itself. It's the little things that keep this [AAPL] on top.

For more iCloud "persona" see this article:

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/01/apples-icloud-com-error-pages-have-person...

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Adobe has just released (Aug 1) a preview of their new HTML5/CSS3/Javascript (no flash) software called Edge. It's pretty sharp but seriously lacking some of the tools we love about Flash. Interactivity for one. It is promising to see Adobe addressing the issues web designers and developers are having today with essentially double the work for the same project budget. We strive to create rich, interative web sites, games and software with flash but those pesky ipads and iphones are always screaming for "their" content too.

Have a look at this article and maybe even try out the preview software. Create a buzz about it but don't expect to be using it in place of Flash for a while. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go build two photo galleries, one flash, the other javascript with the same content. Sigh...

http://www.fastcompany.com/1770591/adobes-edge-html5-designer-is-ready-for-a-... 

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Fast fiber optic lines are being laid in northern Maine as part of the rightly praised Three Ring Binder project. This is great news for people and businesses in Aroostook county.

The Bangor Daily News has the story.

http://bit.ly/rmayPF

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File this under "it's getting better all the time," along with GWI's news from a couple of weeks ago that users of its residential DSL service were going to be getting a big speed bump, but AT&T is updating its wireless service in the state. Specifically, AT&T are expanding service, and they're expanding coverage for the spiffy and über fast 4G services.

The ever-lively Portland Press-Herald has the scoop.

http://bit.ly/nnCJPV

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So it's Friday, July 1st, and we've got a long holiday weekend ahead. The focus in the office can be likened to a 3.5 year old at a new playground — anywhere but in one place. So while we type this many of you are already in the car driving north thinking about the weekend's BBQ with family and friends or how the golf will play out while the kids watch Dora the Explorer on the DVD in the backseat (hopefully with headphones on)... Ok, if I can get this together the weekend will be here and the traffic not so horrendous — apparently yesterday was the BIG travel day. Here's what a couple of our great Packawhallop customers have been up to lately, and please be sure to have a safe and happy 4th of July weekend!

Geoff Gronlund, chief editor and founder of Nine Point Publishing in Bridgton, Maine, is gearing up to launch his 12th installation of Omphalos, a semi-annual arts & literary magazine "published every solstice (June and December) that seeks to expose the human experience and inspire the human perspective through compelling poetry, art, fiction, drama, interviews and more." Nine Point Publishing accepts submissions throughout the year and is always looking for new and unique material! Possibly consider supporting Omphalos and Nine Point by subscribing here.
www.ninepointpublishing.com

If you're driving through Yarmouth, Maine on your way to Boothbay Harbor (just an example - although one Packawhallop partner we know will be doing the same in T minus 3hrs...) please stop at our customer and friend Alison Evans Gallery. Alison is an accomplished RISD grad and ceramic artist. "Alison Evans' Ceramics takes the natural forms of coastal life and transforms them into dinnerware and tabletop accessories. Her work is hand molded and hand glazed, making each piece unique." We're in the process of updating her web site with extensive new work, and a new Mint & Tortoise glaze that is stunning! Stay tuned for the launch of her SlickFish Studios revamped web site this July!
www.aeceramics.com

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BBC Word Update, which we listen to in the wee small hours here in Maine, where we don't need to use AC in mid-June (just thought we'd mention), has a story on ICANN preparing to add new top level domains, or TLDs to those overly fond of calling things by their initials.

A top level domain is just the .com, .net, .org, etc. Instead of having a URL that read just http://www.packawhallop.com (so difficult!), we could, if we wanted, actually have one that read http://www.packawhallop.packawhallop. Or, realistically, http://website.packawhallop (much much much better!). 

Here's a like to the World Update site with the story: 

http://bbc.in/jpzHoR

It's going to be quite costly do get these top level domains. Dan Damon, the World Update presenter, is a bit of a geek, in that he's aware that the $185,000 application fee is way beyond the reach of all about large companies. The rep he interviewed from ICANN replied, when he as asked, that true ownership and rights were covered.

Cheap action for businesses concerned about this but not saving up for the vanity top level domain might be to trademark their names. It's old fashioned. And it seems ICANN may release the top level domain even if you the trademark owner don't want to purchase the top level domain. 

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Whew! Isn't summer great! We wish we could enjoy some of it with our families, and we will be sure to set aside time to do so, but it's been busy. Like we said: Whew! Our customers have been rockin' busy too. Here's just a couple of cool things they and we've been doing to beat the heat:

Who knew Yellahooser and Packawhallopian Jumpin' Jim Cradock knew how to parachute? Well, he does, and he did the IT equivalent of fire jumping when he helped out with a quick reboot of Gretchen's Children's Shop, an ecommerce site those busy Yellahoosers put together several years back. As part of the reboot we made an assessment with the customer on infrastructure, and all agreed the web hosting was inadequate and that the site needed to be moved... to Packawhallop. Done. 

We don't host them (yet!), but Shannondell at Valley Forge, the Pennsylvania-based retirement community, lifestyle, value and top-quality continuing care program, needed some of the top-notch sysop smahts (Mainer for "knowledgeable, professional, direct, effective") Packawhallop's got under the hood as part of its own hosting smahts. So senior Packawhalloper ol' Jim jumped in and straightened out some DNS, Qmail (it's an email server) and Fedora (Linux) server configuration, and then translated all the whole shebang (enchilada) in such a way that Shannondell's hot web designer and web master won't need to use SSH, CLI, Terminal or to be honest Jim to make changes in the future.

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Well, this one's novel:

Using PHP to build desktop apps. The technique uses appcelerator's Titanium toolkit to build mobile, and yes desktop, apps with HTML5 (JS and CSS) and any of of a number of lightweight scripting languages, like Ruby, Python and PHP. We know about appcelerator because they recently aquired Aptana, which we liked when we were plunked down in front of our Linux computers working, working, working.

TechMaine's PHP User Group tonight is showing off what PHP can do on the desktop tonight at Tap Tapas on Fore Street. It should be fun!

Here's the poop:

http://bit.ly/iYQ1fn

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If you're like us, and I know we are, then you're energized about the renewable energy conference happening this week at the Holiday Inn by the Bay. As part of that conference, Ocean Renewable Power Company has parked its prototype tidal energy turbine near the Maine State Pier in Portland Harbor. The plan's to test and then implement full scale turbines in Cobscook Bay and in the Bay of Fundy.

Here's a link to the Portland Press Herald's story:

http://bit.ly/lnFRNd

This is all great news for fans of renewable energy sources, and for Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

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Hosting, hosting, hosting. This week's updates are all about the cool sites we host for our great customers. And it's about the stuff we do to make hosting better, faster, and stronger for our customers.  

Looking for some northern Maine adventures? Try checking out the great, cycling, travel packages on Discover Northern Maine's web site! We've begun to revamp the web site with road biking getaways as well as German and French translations for our bi-lingual friends. Discover Northern Maine is a web site connecting Aroostook County small businesses with eager travelers from New England, the United States at large and Europe. Cycling Travel packages in Northern Maine: http://www.discovernorthernmaine.com/travel-packages/cycling/

Our friend and client Leslie Wagner of Leslie Wagner Photo has been busy! The Art Directing LLBean veteran is working regularly in the field but it seems she's going where the fun is! Leslie has recently been photographing numerous rock and pop bands (Neon Trees and The Avett Brothers) both in concert and candid portraits as well as charity events (recently the Maine walk for Haiti) and professional tennis players. Shouldn't we all be doing this? Check out Leslie's web site and follow her on Facebook!
http://www.lesliewagnerphoto.com
https://www.facebook.com/lesliewagnerphoto

Holz Creative of Atlanta Georgia tapped us to host the great new site they're working on now, even now, from faraway Germany, for Jeff Brickman Law. (Hey there, Cory!)

The righteously bad (bad meaning hot; righteously meaning, well, shooot) folks at BAD Studio and Packawhallite and Yellahooser Jim Cradock are building sites for Diane de la Rue, one she and her daughters are using to write about her benign brain tumor being shown the door – think of it as kind of TV situation comedy with one of the lead characters, though not the straight man, being the tumor – and another site for her legal consulting business. The tumor has a name, and the site is here: http://www.byebyebillybob.com/ Stay tuned for more!

Making hosting better:  

We recently upgraded our server in Texas to make use of Cloud services. There's a buzzword for your: Cloud. But it's a buzzword with some real substance behind it. Cloud services allow resources, whether bandwidth, drive space, processor cycles, to be shared across computers plugged in to the Cloud on the 'net. Practically, and really basically, it provides an even higher level of redundancy. Think of it like this: Cloud is to hosting and serving what RAID is to harddrives and storage. It's about keeping our customers' stuff online. Always. Just one of those proactive things we're thinking about in a meangingful way and utilizing when it appears ready for prime time.

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Hola.

We don't normally do Saturday posts, because our weekends tend to be focused on our families, some might even say they're sacred that way, but we (one of us, anyway) were sitting here on the sofa, drinking strong coffee and listening to NPR's Weekend All Things Considered, and we heard something we are going to share. It's, in part, why we brainstormed and began the Packawhallop grant.

Weekend All Things Considered's host, Scott Simon, was interviewing the author of Vaclav & Nena, Haley Tanner. And she said something so true about this country, the value of its diversity brought on by the layers and layers and layers of immigrants. We might be paraphrasing a tiny bit, and we'll check the show's transcript once NPR puts it on the site today, but Tanner said immigration and the immigrant experience wasn't the path to the American experience. She said that "the immigrant experience is the American experience."

That's right on, even if the emphasis there is ours.

Our grant program, focused on organizations promoting cultural diversity and understanding and acceptance, is meant to say we, Packawhallop, not unlike most people in the mainstream of society, absolutely welcome people of different cultures brought to this country and to Maine by immigration. Tanner, in part, nailed why.

Here's a link to the grant, and do tell people about it:

http://www.packawhallop.com/grant.html

Cheers. Continue with your weekend.

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Hey there. 

Quick heads up, because we know some of you were starting the weekend early, i.e. last (Thursday) night, and if you're in Portland-town we know some of you were super productive attending the Abstract conference, but if you're hosted with Packawhallop our server (one of 'em) on which we host your stuff was upgraded. Thursday night. Cloud upgrade. Sorry, no iTunes gift cards... Maybe next upgrade... 

Good news is that because of Packawhallop's proactive measures to always make things better, your hosting with us got better. Even if you didn't notice. Which is kind of the point. We're always thinking about and doing stuff to grow our hosting business and to make it better without interrupting the things you need your site to do. 

Cloud. It's really great. Well, we're digging it. Our propellers are spinning really fast on our beanies right now so that we're floating – really, floating! – like three feet in the air. And yes, we love all our customer, and we understand and appreciate that you host with us because it's great having geeks, actual geeks listening to oftentimes dissonant music (although in our case that music isn't metal but Hungarian folk, but, alas, that's stuff for another post) doing your hosting. 

Have a great weekend! We have your hosting covered! 

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It's June! We hope everyone is having a great summer. 

Packawhallop will have important news Monday. We're not teasing, but we don't want to say what it is now, because when the weather is this nice we know no one reads email, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. Well, you shouldn't be. You should be outside! 

We would like to highlight some of the things our customers are doing. It's all really great stuff! 

Quality Care for Children launched its summer camp search site, hosted by Packawhallop. The site's really cool: It features an über database of camps in Georgia, searchable on a number of parameters (meals, activities, distance from parents' home zip) by parents in Southeastern states. There are mechanisms for comparing and reviewing summer camps, too. Scott Banks at BAD Studio did the hot design, Packawhallop co-owner James Cradock did the programming, information architecture and sysop, Chad Thompson and Reynaldo Green at QCC helped clean up data and facilitate user acceptance testing within Quality Care for Children. Here's the link: http://www.allgacamps.org

Packawhallop will be hosting a revamped and awesome new web site for the State Theatre Building, the Portland Arts District anchor, and the home to offices, studio space for artists and craftsmen, galleries, stores, and The State Theatre. The Building is managed by Stone Coast Properties. Yellahoose will be redoing the site, with help from Packawhallop partner Gordon Holman, and Kerryann McQaude at Stone Coast Properties. No link to share now, but watch for it! 

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The Guardian's reported that Steve Jobs will materialize at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Fran next week. Cool! We wish him the best of health. Here's the story, but a spoiler alert: The story explains some of the things Jobs will show off, in addition to himself: 

http://bit.ly/jlNUsL

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We don't know if Microsoft or Adobe has more frequent updates to their software, and this mini rant is probably an extension of our annoyance with Growl we posted a couple of weeks ago, which granted is like centuries in Internet Years, but it's annoying. To be prompted for updates. Every freaking time you turn on your computer. Or try to use it.

Too frequent updates are the new Clippy by our reckoning.

Message to Adobe and Microsoft, and for that matter Apple, though it's not our experience that Apple are as egregiously update crazy: Group the updates together unless the update you need to push out for Acrobat Reader or Silverlight is going to save my life or bring immediate and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Then stopping everything, or in the very least slowing everything down t-o   a   c-r-a-w-l, is ok. Really. Please. It's not like your software doesn't crash anyway. And we have stuff to do besides updating your software. Like using it.

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Probably you've gathered we read. Not strictly because we use East Coast Liberal Elitist language like "[p]robably you've gathered" or that we put the letter P there in brackets just then because we changed the case when we quoted ourselves. Hopefully, without knowing one twinkle about us, our little Packawhallop blog and what we like to call its smart exuberance has conveyed that. That we read. 

Point? 

Jonathan Franzen. He's an author we know and love. Not personally know. Through his work. People who read say weird stuff like that: "[A]uthor we know and love," when they don't know the author personally and also don't love him, or her, in a sense that we love our families the way you love yours. And they use brackets when quoting and changing case. 

Love. Franzen has an article in The New York Times, the paper East Coast Liberal Elitists like us read, about living in the real world and living in the digital world. It's about being connected and disconnected. And it's about reconnecting. We have to eat dinner now, but consider checking it out. 

http://nyti.ms/jzSMMi

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The Packawhallop artístes have been cleaning their fashionable berets, buttering their fluffy croissants, and steaming their strong cappuccinos to keep off the malaise of the weather. That doesn't mean we haven't been busy, or that our customers haven't been up to some incredible things. Voila: 

First, Bonney Staffing launched their Yellahoose-built and Packawhallop-hosted video interview app this week. It features web and iPhone and iPad video interview viewing, résumé submissions, some cool MySQL, PHP, Perl, Apache and iOS development. It's an internal app, and though we'd really, really, really like to share, we can't. Great work, Jim, Morten, Glenn and AJ!

Next up on the plate, we have three more Maine-based customers working with us on updates, SEO and great business development. 

We've just completed a round of updates for our friends at eco-kids^® including a new product launch! Something we've all been waiting for, eco-crayons! I swear these little nuggets of creative love are more than fun to play with and the tin they store in is just right. Go on and check out the eco-kids web site and pick up some eco-crayons or some eco-paint^™ and create some happy little trees: http://www.ecokidsusa.com

Uncommon Paws loves your pet. Really! Not only does this new company offer some super-edgy collars and leashes (check out the colorful "Retro Flower Dog Collar") but they've just expanded their store to offer All-Natural Flea & Tick, Dog Grooming and Suppliments for your pet! Just in time for the sun to come out and our beloved pets to play in the woods, roll in the dirt and eat something they probably shouldn't. I swear we just saw that dog collar on 5th in NYC last weekend... Visit Uncommon Paws' web site now! http://www.uncommonpaws.com/

Crossroads for Women are expanding their Kennebunk counselling office, and the agency will be moving to great new digs in the fall. We'll share updates through Packawhallop. Crossroads for Women's site: http://www.crossroadsforwomen.org

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The Portland Press Herald's reporting that Massachusetts computer backup masters Carbonite are locating a call center, with plans to grow the number of employees staffed there, in Lewiston, Maine. Yay, Lewiston!

http://bit.ly/l6dwOx

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