Welcome to Chez Cliff!

The highlight of this blog was not my first purchase.

Nor was it my second.

The day my student loans were paid off pales in comparison.

This singular event is the highest point, my proudest moment of this blog.

A few weeks back, I talked about and Leslie’s efforts to bring laptops to kids stricken with cancer.  Her story so moved me, touched me that I felt the need to share it with you.  What I did not expect was that several of you would also be moved and touched by her story.

To those of you who also donated to Leslie’s cause, I thank you for making not only my day brighter but those of those kids as well.

Tomorrow I’ll start the discussion on the new site.

Before heading along much further, I should probably explain something.  When I started this online venture, it was quite different from what I debuted yesterday.  A lot different.

This primary idea I was focused on was suddenly shoved to the back while a secondary idea came up.  I had always wanted to write a book and I would pick at it a little bit at a time.  But when the market tanked, I knew the time for the book had arrived.

To make this idea more concrete, Apple announced their new iPhone would accept 3rd party applications.  That got me all fired up.  To see the principles of my book displayed on an iPhone would be cool.  So while the book was in the hands of the editors, I started writing a specification for the iPhone.

Anyway I’d like to take a poll.  I won’t talkabout the nuts and bolts of this idea if you’re not curious.  So take a second and vote below on whether you’d like a break down of what I did and why I did it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, and the rest of you.

Thanks for your patience last week.  Things got nutty but at least it went forward.

Feedback is king.  Last week, probably about 50 suggestions floated across my doorstep and I grabbed about 90% of them.  Most were little tweaks here and there.  Some were major re-writes.  But in the end, I think it’s the customer who will benefit from it the most.

One giant request came in: change the name.

Not that the name of the site or the product is bad.  But it doesn’t leave room for further expansion.  And of course I have many ideas on ways to expand not only the site but the number of software offerings.

So without further adieu, please check it out and let me know what you think.

Buy That Duplex

I’m not a happy camper.

With the web site flying along at break neck speed and the launch day quickly approaching, I realized the site needed to be tested in all browsers.  So I pulled out Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.  The top 3 browsers.

Admittedly the site looks best in Safari.  There is something about how Safari renders web pages that just makes them look slick.  But that’s neither here nor there.  The site looks good in Firefox and looks alright in Internet Explorer.  Not the “site of the year” but it’s passable.  And yes, I tested the site on both PC and Mac platforms.

So what’s the problem?

I’m glad you asked.

IE Users by Browser Version

Do you see this?  Green represents the number of users that still surf the web using Internet Explorer 6 (IE6).  I did my testing in IE7.  In IE6, the site looks like a blind, epileptic monkey on crack designed it.  Really bad.

If the number of IE6 users were 10% or below, I’d shrug it off and launch anyway.  But 40% can’t be denied.

Fortunately this only delays the site one day.

Fortunately I haven’t paid the graphics guy yet which may motivated him to fix the problem.

Even if he can’t, Wordpress has some slick plugins which allow for mass updates to the entire site quickly.  Within a few minutes, the site would be functional.  But I want more than functional.  I want slick.

Think of it as manufacturing a brand new model car.  It has all the latest in high tech gadgetry and a built in toilet for long road trips.  At the last minute, the paint machine doesn’t work and the cars can’t be painted.  Sure, we could push the car out the door and all the bells and whistles would still work.  But who wants primer grey as a paint color?

Alright everyone, I’m just a bit busy to produce anything that might be worth reading.

I’ll check back in after the launch.