I’m a bit of a CNN junkie. In the last few weeks, there has been a lot of buzz about the Supreme Court thanks to Jeffrey Toobin’s new book The Nine and the upcoming release of Justice Thomas’ memoir.

In an interview for the book release, Jeffrey referenced several particular decisions by the court and mentioned that you could see any decision in its entirety on the court’s website.

Hmmm, the Supreme Court’s website…I bet that’s pretty impressive. I think I’ll go take a look…

Yikes! I don’t know exactly what I expected the highest court in the land’s website to be, but it wasn’t this. I suppose I’m glad that thousands of my tax dollars are not being spent to make a sweet Supreme Court 2.0 portal.  Although being a government run project that is produced and maintained by the Government Printing Office, I have to assume that it is one of the most costly basic, boring websites in the country if not the world.

Not to entirely bash the GPO and their design skills, I will give them that they have kept it simple.  It seems pretty easy to use.  I ran several searches, pulled up quite a few decisions and had fairly quick load times.

I just expected something more.  Have you visited a website that you thought would be one thing and turned out to be something else entirely?

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Watch out…I might forget the words as I’m type-synching…

I was going to let DW Web take the weekend off, but I’m happy to say Brown Baron gave me a reason to go ahead and post! I’m very honored to have been awarded one of the Breakout Blogger Awards. I was just as happy to get the chance to tip my hat to my very own favorite breakouts blog stars! This award was launched by Bob of Bobbarama.com to celebrate his blog’s first year anniversary.

Bob’s official description of the award:

This award casts a spotlight on bloggers who are just beginning to draw lotsa attention — the equivalent of a song with a bullet on Billboard’s Top 100 chart. Lotsa good posts. Lotsa good buzz. These bloggers are going places in a hurry.

So of course, I was really happy that Brown thought of me and would definitely have included Brown Baron in my list…but you already got one

So without further ado. I now give you my picks for the Break Out Blogger Award:

to YC at Internet Marketing Mind, Ad Tracker from Ad Tracker (what is your name Ad?) and Kate Hook with her very new blog Cheesy Marketing Ramblings.

YC is truly my internet marketing guru. The blogger known as Ad has won me over with her great posts with very tricky digg/link baiting titles. And Kate’s blog is new on the scene, but can that chick write!

Congratulations everyone! Beware the paparazzi when you leave your house in the morning

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This is not a list!

I didn’t mistakenly put a dash in front of this title. I just spent forty five minutes clearing out over 7,000 “free extras” fonts, styles, brushes, patterns and shapes that I have never used from my Photoshop.

I am a total sucker for all that stuff! It’s so much fun to play. But when just like anything else, sometimes less is more.

Don’t freak out. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t take advantage of all the awesome Photoshop toys that are out there…but don’t be like me. I find all this stuff and am so excited to see what it can do that I immediately throw it all into my Presets.

Then what? You guessed it. I get busy. I have work to do for clients who would never really be interested in having Celtic crosses or Dick Van Dyke fonts. Sure, I could take all that stuff out then, but that would be admitting that I don’t have time to do everything I ever wanted to do!

Today, I reached a breaking point. I had to clear that stuff out. My PS being so bloated was costing me time both in program processing and because I had too many choices for every single simple project!

So I’ve taken a good number of the extras and organized them into folders each with a little description of what they are, so I know what I have when I need it.  And I placed all those folders outside of the Photoshop files!

I think my next project is going to be going through my Outlook archives…you don’t want to know how many e-mails I have sitting in there!!!

Do you have any “fall cleaning” projects on your to-do list?

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 You know you’ve been there. You have to get a project started. You’re got all the details on the structure and functionality you need. But you sit down and every bit of creative juice that was ever in you has evaporated.

You go online and start surfing around. You open up magazines and books. And still, nothing.

I find myself in this situation more often than I’d like to admit. I’ve found one trick that has never let me down. So what do I do?

I go outside!

When you work and socialize and practically live online, it’s easy to dismiss the thought that anything offline could be a worthwhile source of inspiration. But in my experience, nothing could be farther from the truth.

There are more color combination and different shapes and patterns in nature than any designer could ever dream up.  It doesn’t matter if it’s sunny or cloudy, hot or cold, rainy or sunny or if you’re in the city or the country, just relax and look up and around you.

Even if you don’t think you’ll be inspired by the great outdoors, if you’re really stumped, a break and a brisk walk will probably do you some good anyway

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Then, I’d recommend checking out About Web Design or to be more clear About.com: Web Design/HTML.

This isn’t an official review or anything. But as I’ve searched through that site countless times and always enjoy Jennifer Kyrnin’s blog posts (enough to put them on my Blogroll for awhile now) Jennifer is About.com’s Web Design / HTML Guide. I thought maybe it was time to give back a bit and let you all know one of my first stops for all things HTML.

The main reason I love the site is that not only is it clear that Jennifer is an expert, but she does a wonderful job of putting together resources from across the web all in one central look-up site. If she doesn’t have a step-by-step tutorial or complete definition/explanation of something, I guarantee she tells you at least a few places to find it!

She covers a ridiculously large array of topics from all coding, design, web promotion, web design as a business and the list goes on and on! I’m trying to rack my brain for a way to really get across the vast amount of resources there, and I think Jennifer describes her site best:

“The Web Design/HTML site is a forum for those who create Web pages. You can expect to see information about Web design, new XML and HTML standards, HTML tag libraries, Web conferences, and Web development news.”

Jennifer also does a great job of keeping the place interactive and interesting…don’t tell anyone, but pure HTML and CSS tutorials aren’t always the most exciting thing to me! She throws in a lot of quizzes and polls to mix things up a bit.

I also really appreciate her willingness to respond and help people out. She was one of the first people to ever comment on this blog way back when, and she continues to add a lot.

Alright, now this is starting to sound like I’m a bit obsessed with About and Jennifer…so I’m going to leave you with a few of my About Web Design favorites:

Web Development Horror Stories

Who Can Argue With Free Stuff - her take on over 65 free editors

If You Build It…Will They Come? Tips to Promote Your Website

If you haven’t already, check out the site and keep your eyes peeled because she’s putting out a web design book soon too!

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se·man·tics The meaning or the interpretation of a word, sentence, or other language form: We’re basically agreed; let’s not quibble over semantics.

I’m always quick to pull out the old “semantics” argument with friends and family. But when it comes to website design and online marketing semantics are huge! You know what your business is and the words you use to describe it. But you’re already visiting your site, you need to find out the words that people searching the internet use to find businesses in your industry.

This issue came to the forefront of my mind this afternoon when I stumbled upon a site called Geoff’s Google Duel. This site is basically just an application that allows you to compare the number of results for two different keywords or keyword phrases. Just out of curiosity I entered “web design” vs. “website design.” Here are the results:

Now what stands out to me immediately looking at those numbers is that I should definitely be actively targeting “website design” as the competition is far less than “web design.” And it might be a more realistic shorter term search engine goal. If you have a young or newly redesigned site, reaching the top 100 for “web design” could really be an impossible dream, but with a lot of hard work and active marketing, it could be a possibility for “website design” or at least not bring quite as loud of snorts and smirks from the pros as reaching the top of “web design!”

Keep in mind though…that there are other things to take into account. There is probably a reason those numbers are so lopsided. The number of searches for “web design” is probably higher, right?

A quick search on Wordtracker shows that the daily prediction for number of searches is as follows:

• “website design” - 2,030 searches per day
• “web design” - 6,291 searches per day

From a purely free, organic search engine optimization point of view, I for one, would not snub my nose at over 2,000 searches a day. So you might notice me substituting “website design” for “web design” here and there.

After all, it’s just semantics!

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• Check your links! There’s nothing more annoying or amateurish then trying to follow a link on a website and getting nothing but a 404 page or even worse just an error! One really easy way to check links is by using a Google Sitemap Generator…I like the one at Audit My PC. Whenever I generate the sitemap, it highlights any errors including broken links.
• See Your Site In Another’s Eyes I am a full-on Firefox devotee, but unfortunately, not everyone in the world is! So you need to check your designs in every possible browser that you can. Now, that can seem like a very daunting task. I personally have 4 different browsers on my PC’s. But there’s a great service that I’ve found invaluable for checking browser compatibility. Check out BrowserShots.org. It couldn’t be easier and it gives you a look at screenshots of your page on over 50 browsers at one time!

• Have Your Grandpa Try Out Your Website  Ok, so it doesn’t need to be your grandpa, though I’d gladly pass your site along to mine for you :)  My reasoning here is two-fold.  First, my grandpa still has a dial-up connection.  Secondly, God bless him, he’s not too comfortable surfing the net.  So when I am designing a site, I like to keep in mind that as hard as it is to believe, there are still plenty of people out there like my Grandpa, and I need to design accordingly.  I always try to make sure there is clear, easy to use navigation included on every page.  I also take into account that not all of my potential visitors are viewing the site on a blazing broadband connection, so the site needs to load as quickly and efficiently as possible!

All these elements may seem minor, but just ask OJ, sometimes the small stuff is what gets you in the end!

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Well, I actually managed to get it done!  This morning I launched my third blog…DanaWallert.com, another blog about blogging!

I’m excited to be able to blog freely about all the ins and outs of the blogosphere that I find intriguing!  And thank goodness, it’s finished so I can get back to writing and stumbling!

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Well, I don’t know that it’s definitively the number one blogging rule.  But one of the keys to blogging and online business in general is knowing your purpose and sticking to it.

Now, I’ve been having so much fun hanging out in the blogosphere with all my new found blogger pals, that it occurred to me this morning that I’ve gone a bit off track with this blog.

This blog is housed on http://www.dwwebsolutions.com - my small business website design site.  DW Web Solutions designs basic websites for small businesses and entrepreneurs.  Now, there’s a lot of gray area in here, but in reading through my posts from the last week, and my focus  has definitely shifted towards blogging about blogging.

Don’t worry I’m not regretting that trend, in fact I’m been enjoying it immensely!  But I think it’s time to bring this blog back to dealing with the business of taking small business’ online and away from the ins and outs of blogging and social media.

Now, you may be thinking shouldn’t those be one in the same?  Possibly, but for the majority of my clients, no.  My posts of late have been a little out of the realm of most of my customers, and I’ve had some feedback along those lines!

So anyway, I’m going to spend the weekend working on building my third blog…my blog about blogging…I know just what the world needs, another one of those!  But this one will be more fun for me, a place to talk and share with my fellow bloggers about  the ups and downs, the brilliant and strange of blogging and yes, my love of StumbleUpon and obsession with becoming a top stumbler!

I’m still going back and forth on the name…I have several domains in mind.  And you’ll definitely hear about it as soon as I have all the details straightened out.

Meanwhile, I will continue my daily posting here on all things small business, web design and search engine stuff…just a little less SU, Digg and Wordpress!

I hope you’ll all come visit me at all my online homes (hopefully just the three, but I don’t trust myself much when I’m buying domain names!  I tend to treat GoDaddy like it’s a sample sale at Jimmy Choo and buy, buy, buy!) 

PS If anybody has any great ideas for “bloggy” blog names for me, I’m always open to suggestions!

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1. Funny, strange or especially cute animals, kids or old people - pictures or videos are even better—see above!
2. Some number of must-have tools, plug-ins, etc.
3. Anything to do with why Digg sucks
4. Anything to do with why StumbleUpon rocks
5. All lists regarding insomnia and ADD especially inspired by SU
6. Any color hat techniques to beat Google
7. The Inside Secrets of or Things they don’t want you to know from Matt Cutts, John Chow, Darren Rowse, Seth Godin, ShoeMoney, etc.
8. Joke or Attack posts on George W. Bush, Hilary Clinton, or any other polarizing politician of any persuasion…pictures are great here too!
9. Everything Zen, Self-Improvement, Time Management, Life-changing!
10. How to get: Stumbled, Dugg, traffic, subscribers, MONEY!

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