Travis Danielson's Blog

AT&T Merger, 3D Evo

Travis — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:28:46 +0000

If you haven’t already heard, AT&T has purchased T-Mobile, for $39 billion. What does this mean for consumers? The good: Possibly more coverage in various locations. The Bad: Less competition, and likely data caps if they merge in to one entity. The last time I checked, the best plan in my area from AT&T phone plans in terms of data usage is 2gb/month. This may seem like a lot, but I put my HTC Evo from Sprint to the test to see how much bandwidth I use. Watching videos on my phone for about two hours netted me about 500mb, which is 1/4 of the monthly allotted data usage in just one day. The video was pretty high quality, but similar programs through Netflix and other video streaming services could sure use up the bandwidth fairly quickly.

Speaking of smartphones, there’s a new phone coming out from Sprint, another evo. They won’t be making it smaller this time, but it will be glasses-free 3d. It will feature dual cameras for 3d image capture, and a 960×540 resolution, a step up from it’s current resolution.

New TLD

Travis — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:16:53 +0000

The ICANN has approved a new TLD, .xxx. It probably won’t be seen anywhere until June, but there have been over 250,000 registrations already. Apparently, there is a system set up to make sure the domains only go to people IFFOR deems as “officially in the adult entertainment industry.”

I agree with this article in that there have been many useless TLD’s coming out in the past decade, some of which may be put to good use, but with .xxx for adult content, .AERO and .travel for those areas, what’s next? .train, .car, . bicycle?

Icons for Web Designers

Travis — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 02:59:41 +0000

One of the most visible things on a business websites are its icons. It may not seem that way, but they are what draws the eye to each section of content. If you’re not experienced in programs such as Fireworks or Photoshop, it may be hard to design a site with a good layout and image scheme. I found a few ‘free’ icon sets for web designers to use, and I’d thought I’d share them with you. Make sure you check that they’re copyright free and royalty free for commercial use, before you use them.

http://djdesignerlab.com/2010/12/17/useful-free-web-icons-for-your-next-design/
http://www.pingable.org/20-sets-of-free-royalty-free-icons/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/06/35-really-incredible-free-icon-sets/

New theme and integration

Travis — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 21:39:30 +0000

I’ve changed the header to look more like the rest of the site, and I’ve added twitter integration to my TravisDanielson twitter account. Also, I’ve finished the low-res redirect, and added a dynamic RSS to PHP blog listing on the lower part of the main page.

The Future of Web Design and Domains

Travis — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 17:18:53 +0000

A few days ago I read an article that talked about the increasing number of smartphone sales in the years to come. Here is the article. It might seem a little astounding that by 2012 more people will be buying smartphones than computers. Now, I don’t think the increase in sales will be quite that big, but it will still be a huge part of the design world. I think it will take a long time for many small town web designers to take this into account, leaving a lot of clients either getting something that won’t fully promote their business or spending thousands of dollars for a large professional design company. There’s nothing wrong with that if you choose to do so, but it’s always good to have some options. Now, I don’t know how many years it will be until there are very few new computer sales to the point that web designers actually build their sites from their smartphones, but until then people will have to put greater focus on cross browser compatability for smartphones. How does this affect domain names? Well, I don’t really know of the .mobi domain names will become that much more valuable, but I think short .com and .net’s will be much more valuable, even more than they increase regularly each year. That is simply because people with smartphones don’t always have the advantage of a full size keyboard, and a 5 or 6 letter domain name would be much easier for them to get to. I’m going to start developing an android app soon, which will be a tutorial program for things like HTML and CSS on the go for new designers.

What TLD is right for you?

Travis — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 01:41:19 +0000

If you have a business, you need a good domain name. One that’s short, rememberable, and professional. .com is the ‘best’ TLD in terms of resale value for most domains, although some .net’s may be worth more than other .com’s. I invest in .com domains because they are much more rare than other domains. They are the most registered TLD, followed by .cn, .de, and .net. 4 character .com’s are all either owned by people, being sold on auctions, and if they do drop, they are automatically registered by software programs. 5 letter .com’s are a good place to start investing, I have a few and will get more over the next few months. I would say that most won’t become valuable for a few years unless they are pronounceable, or dictionary word domains. Right now, something like xqzu.com would be valuable even though it’s hard to pronounce, because 4 letter .com’s have been taken since 2007. There are still some pronouncable 5 letter .com’s left, but I would say all of the good ones will be gone by the end of next year. So if the .com you want is taken, it might be a good idea to invest in a .net of the same thing (as long as it’s not the name of another business for example), but if that’s taken, it’s probably a better idea to think of a new name.

Registrars

Travis — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 01:27:37 +0000

There are many different domain registrar. Godaddy, Register.com, moniker, too many to name. Most are similar in price for .com domains, around $10 a year, but others charge upwards of $30 a year. I use Namecheap, which is a reseller of enom. It’s cheaper than enom, and I can get free whoisguard on new domains. The DNS servers are very fast to change compared to other hosts I’ve used, and everytime I’ve needed help the chat was available and ready. I also like the control panel, it’s very easy to navigate. However, I don’t really appreciate the methods of payment, which is probably one of the most important things with a registrar. With Namecheap, you have to transfer money into your account to make sure they get re-registered every year, with most registrars it’s automatic with credit cards. Hopefully that will change in the future though. Also, hosting plans with them aren’t exactly the best deals, you could go elsewhere to find a host. I’ll leave that to another post though.

Updated

Travis — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 02:09:09 +0000

I’ve added a contact page and a link to this blog on my main page, just in time for a blog post sometime tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving

Travis — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 05:21:18 +0000

Welcome to my blog and new website.