I've now seen it all...As web 2.0 apps become more and more capable with new tecnologies like AJAX and Flex, the world of computing will become a very different place. Take Fauxto, for example. It's a web-based photo editing tool that may give Photoshop Elements a run for it's money. Another promising photo editing app is Picnik. And these apps appear to be free, although still in beta. Don't you just love the internet? ;-)

Well, I must admit that I've always been partial to Macs. My first post-DOS "real" computer in college was an old PowerComputing Mac clone. I even worked as a Mac technician at my college. But when I first started my business, I bought a killer 17" LCD Toshiba PC laptop because I thought that a PC might be better, since the business world seems to prefer PCs. And, don't get me wrong, it's been a great machine. But recently we replaced our home computer with a Mac Mini and there's nothing that really demonstrates the superiority of a Mac to a PC until you have them sitting next to each other and you try to do the same thing on both machines.

I can't get enough of Google. They just keep on cranking out great web-based tools! I'm lovin' it! My most recent discoveries are Google Checkout, Google Analytics, Picasa Web Albums. While most of these services are not new (except to me), I've added these to my growing list of other free tools from Google:

We do a lot of e-commerce websites and one thing that many people don't know that if you want to sell something online, you need to have what's called a "merchant account" with a payment company. Your payment company might be your bank or another organization like PayPal. If you go with a bank (will will set you up with a payment processor like Verisign or Authorize.net), you'll most likely get better transaction rates. For example, with Paypal, there is roughly a 3% transaction fee, where as most other merchants charge around 2.2%. BUT, most banks will have a monthly fee of around $40, where Paypal does not. So if you anticipate moving a lot of product, or large amounts, a credit card merchant other than Paypal may be ideal. Keep in mind Paypal, as well as other credit card merchants, have several different plans, so this is a generalization, for simplicity's sake.

It's been a while since I posted last, because, well, we've been crazy busy! We recently upgraded our hosting package in order to add several new spam blocking applications, and I have to say that it is working amazingly so far - and we're not even done yet. We have established a real-time black list (among other things) that actively checks all emails to see if they are being sent from a server known for spamming. If you want all the juicy details, read this.

Anyway, just thought you may want to know that we're always doing our best to keep up with spam. We hate it more than you do (believe it or not ;-)