There's Nobody Out There.

New blogger here. Feelin' Pretty alone, too. If you read this, please post a comment, or drop me an email that you're reading it so I don't feel like a dork, typing my life away and feeling like nobody reading. If you aren't reading this, well then, you must be a very busy person not to partake in something so very important. Sheesh!

NEW SITES UP AND RUNNING!!

A fun blog: Christie's Divorce Party - you go girl- Life is going to get GREAT!
The ION CHI PATCH - these from my favorite entrepreneur - and provider of great holistic health care products. Personally -I can't wait to try these, need to DETOX!
and coming soon - VERY SOON - the DUMPTANK. We just did the Dumptank's MYSPACE BLOG too
- so get hooked up if you have a MYSPACE account, the Dumptank is going to be lots of fun.

More coming soon -

Ali's Cookies:(YUMMY YUMMY!!! Get your cookies NOW, even if we haven't redone their site yet. They sent me some for 'inspiration' - and I have to say - the BEST EVER!

RACETIME

I've been helping on and off with a cool lil' project that belongs to my friend Shannon:
The US OUTLAW Nationals

Drag race enthusiasts - run what you brung! Get all the info here.

Need an Auto Loan?

Welcome to the web: The Auto Loan Group! Although still working on some final functionality things - this website is live, but not 'functional' yet. Look for it soon for all your financing needs!

A beautiful design (that I am particularly proud of...) - Ion Chi Patches - and a great client. (a VIP client!)Trust Jason and his staff at IonChi, for the lastes holistic and natural remedies and healthcare. Check out these cool detox foot pads!!!!

Also (sort of) coming soon - VMS Security Seals. The site is designed, and should relaunch in the next few weeks. Lad's been working up a storm on it!

Coming soon:
Hire Instincts
Muscle Car Mania of Texas

New Sites

New sites are hitting the web!

WELCOME TO THE INTERNET:

Elliott Consulting - Sherri Elliott, an HR Professional in the Dallas area, has taken her consulting firm online. She and the team at Elliott HR Consulting can provide assessments, training and other HR solutions for your business. Check them out!

Suburban Roofing is a new website for some long-time, experienced repair/remodeling/roofing company local to the Dallas area. Need some remodeling work? or a new roof? They handle residential and commercial repairs and remodeling solutions all over the Dallas Metro area. Welcome to the web, Jeff Peters and Staff!

Redesigns:
Check out the new look of The Purse Boutique and Red Carpet Bagz! Updating their look for the new year.

Although we don't get to take credit for the cool website design, we did recently made some website updates for Absolute Pitch Public Relations, and designed their MySpace blog. Looking for some cool music? Or are you a musician with lots of promise? Seek out Beatrice at Absolute Pitch PR for your public relations needs. Very cool stuff!

Coming Soon:
VMS Products (Security Seals and other Security Products)
Acrylic Designs, Inc.
Morgan and Son Racing
Muscle Car Mania of Texas
Fraud Consultants Online
The Anderson Firm (redesign)

Not New, But Very Much Needed - MySpace

Just stumbled upon a very good article and example of CSS to 'decrappify' MySpace web profiles. Great article, thought I'd mention it here - Mike Davidson's Blog.

I have to say, I tried this technique with a blog resdesign - here: Absolute Pitch Public Relations - and while it turned out fairly nice, I find that MySpace is crazy about cross browser compatibility, still. I had lots of problems getting my 'MySpace' project to look as nice as Mike Davidson did with his blog - but I finally realized that you can't allow HTML in the comments section, or the images and other doodads your 'friends' can put in your comments will throw your tables and design out of whack.

Took me a long time to figure this out, I'm a little embarrased... but lesson learned. So - for the most part, if you want a nice clean, contained look, you have to create new template with the default MySpace CSS, (as Mike provides in his blog at above referenced link) and then turn of the HTML Friend Comments. (or as far as I know.)

Still a learning process.....

New Sites Launched

Well, we've been working hard over here... and we've launched some new sites.

Just Launched!

Barrett Bronze:
www.barrettbronze.com
Jamie Barrett, of Barrett Studios (a Division of Barrett Bronze, Inc.) creates custom casted replicas, awards, POP displays, 3-D Signage, Liquor Displays, and much more. He's got my dream job! He gets to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC often, as he creates museum quality replicas. They do much more though, check them out!

Diva:
www.divakids.net
Miriam is a distributor of designer kid's clothing. Carrying high-end kid's fashions like Simonetta, Juicy Couture and many others - she's got a physical store in New York, and now has a presence on the web for orders out of the area. Although her website is not an e-commerce site, it is on a CMS (Joomla) that supports a shopping cart, and allows the user to place an 'order' - from which Miriam and her team will work to fill the order, accept payment and arrange shipping. We're still in the process of adding all her great stuff, but that could take some time - as she's got SOOOO much cool stuff!

Casa Irie:
www.casairiecollections.com
Annette owns a consignment boutique in New Jersey - and carries quality consignment items, as well as Rockers It's Dangerous (New Clothing) and her own unique line of hand-painted vases. Now, she's got a manageable CMS (Joomla) with a shopping cart feature - where you can purchase her items online. We're still populating her items too, but she's up and running - and getting her business online!

And last but not least!

Posh Puppy Boutique
www.poshpuppyboutique.com
This is one of my VIP clients for sure - Jen is a master of e-commerce. This is a customized Volusion template, and she carries designer and unique doggy doo-dads. Check it out, and get your pup some posh prizes!


Coming Soon:

• Charla Glass Interiors
• Barrett Environmental

Virus Alert

*DISCLAIMER*
I'm no expert in viruses, spyware and malware,
this is simply a personal story of survival where these rude little irritants are concerned.

There's no doubt that computer viruses and spyware are a crippling time-waster for those of us who work on our computers, and also on the web. What sort of person creates this stuff? Honestly? Immature pre- teenage geniuses? Mr. Norton? Come on now. You know who you are. (AND - Just so you know, you totally blew me away this week - with your smart little 'rogue anti-spyware hijacker' programs.)

So here's what I had going on (and have a little of, still) Trojan Vundo and Trojan Zlob + an ugly little hijacker called "Storage Protector". (please notice - I did not put a link to their nasty little website and I do NOT recommend going to it or downloading any of their software!).

It all started with my computer running a little slow. Then, all of a sudden - I start getting crazy messages and system errors. And these look totally LEGIT, people!

Next thing you know, you've got two "Microsoft Windows" icons on your desktop: one for "Help and Support" and one other (I can't remember - and I don't want to bring it back just to post it here!).

Luckily, I didn't click on any of them - but viewed their properties (right click, view properties.) and saw that they DID NOT go to Microsoft, or to a system file on my machine, but rather a website called "Storage Protector". UGLY!

Here's how smart these uglies are: you can run anti-spyware programs (Adaware by Lavasoft, SpyHunter3 by Enigma - both good options) and these little malicious programs 'sense' or are triggered that they're being hunted.... So, they change their filenames often (to go under the radar of these programs and of known filenames that one might try and delete to manually remove the infection).

In addition, they embed themselves in Windows logon files, so they automatically renew themselves on startup/boot. So many times, the only way to get rid of them is to format or restore the entire hard drive, because trying to remove these files from the logon files can damage the logon process, making it impossible to boot up again. UGLY!

What did I do? I freaked out first. All my client files are on my machine, and my entire life in photos. I use the internet and FTP all the time.

For hope and inspiration, I then spoke to an Apple friend, who told me that the MacBook Pro I got for Christmas just wouldn't put up with these nasty little programs (the Operating System, OSX, does not support these programs, they are ahead of these hijackers! Hallelujah!) and that it was safe to transfer my client's files. I did so at once. Then, I moved on to the business of cleaning my Windows Laptop of these hateful little boogers.

Tips to remove and protect and learn:

First and foremost: Change browsers. If you're on Internet Explorer: change now to Mozilla Firefox. It's more secure, and less likely to allow browser hijacking and these back door viruses like Vundo and Zlob into your computer to open it up to other infections.

Then, look and learn: If you suspect malware or spyware, or virus infections on your computer, run an anti-spyware program and an anti-virus program. There's lots of good FREE Ones out there.

Spyware/Malware: SpyHunter3, Adaware
Both have good support, forums, and helpful people. You might have to also download and test some other programs or tools to remove the bugs (as requested or directed by security volunteers on the forum).

Typically, the people on these forums are volunteers - so you MUST have patience and manners when posting on these forums, and read the pre-posting instructions. You might figure out and clean your infection on your own just by the free info. They are helping others for a whole buncha nothin'! And if you can, please donate to their causes - because they are working hard to keep people safe. I actually purchased the paid versions of a couple of spyware programs and run them every day now. They didn't remove what I had - but support was good - and informative.

Virus Protection: Avast AntiVirus
So far so good - this little gem has cleaned up a bunch.

Overall support and GREAT info: Atribune
Atri - the developer and site owner - he's an INCREDIPEOPLE kind of guy. Seems that he came up with a little thing called VUNDOFIX, which I ran - it (in my case) actually got rid of the ZLOB, and the Storage Protector. (or a combination of Avast + VundoFix) so now I have 4 files left, that claim 'Vundo' that I'm having a hard time getting off my machine... BUT - I have, since finding Atribune, removed 10 files of Zlob + Vundo and the Storage Protector. So I am totally happy - being that progress has been made.

So there's my journey - and my links to great tools and websites that I think will help others. I've posted in the Atribune forums for some help on removing these last 4 files - so hopefully I'll get those off too. I'll keep you posted!

Cheers - and Good luck!!