By Al Morel

I can’t remember the last time I used the Yellow Pages.  How about you?

The 3W initiative is a series of templates that we’ve designed to be used with the blogging software WordPress.

This program was created to give web designers and others in the internet field an offering that they can re-brand and offer to their customers at an affordable entry level price.

When completed, the websites can be easily updated and expanded using a standard web browser and basic computer skills.

This offering is perfect for a client that:
• Wants to update their own site
• Needs a blog
• Wants to market via social networking
• Looking for a very affordable price

For more information, please take a look at the 3W website: www.webswithwordpress.com

by Al Morel

Recently, Dan and I, along with a group of fellow collaborators, launched a group called the New England Web Developers Association or NEWDA.

As many know that have followed the formation of CommAREus, we have run several edu/networking events over these past two years. It’s a great way to meet others in the web world and to share ideas and jobs. There are a few that think that they can do it all themselves, but it’s apparent to most of us that you really need a team of people to create a great website.

I would like to thank my fellow collaborators and state coordinators in this exiting endeavor:
Connecticut: Marjorie Clark of Little Fish Studios
Maine: Ken Pooley of Customer Ergonomics
New Hampshire: Kevin Skarritt of Acorn Creative
Maine: Paul Fleming of Fleming + Co.
Vermont: Tim Nitz of Panther Internet

In addition, I’d like to give a special thanks to Hans Riemer of Market-Vantage who gave a great presentation on Google’s Adwords program.

For more information on NEWDA, go to our website: www.newda.org
And, of course, come to one of our events!

In the most recent Roundtable, there were some general questions about the capabilities of Flash sites and content to be optimized for search engines. Our Art Director and resident Flash expert, Dan Rouse, did some research, that can be found on our Articles page. In summary, it can be done, but the content and the Flash have to be crafted properly.

Creating Flash is one of those things that can be easily done badly. The investement in the application to create it, and the ability to make simple slideshows and animation has a low threshold. The learning curve rises dramatically as you transition to tasteful, well crafted Flash. In other words, something like Dan might create.

This week I attended a presentation hosted by the Search Engine Marketing org of New England called “The Future of Marketing.” A woman came up to me, looked at my nametag, and asked if I represented some dinosaur or something like that.

It’s not Greek or Latin or something clever like that. Commareus means “Communications are us, with 2 “M”s thank you! I’m glad she didn’t think it would hurt my feelings…too much…SNIFF…;-( But if we were a dinosaur, we’d be something like this: