When it comes to websites, small business owners tend to fall into one of two camps:

The first are those whose website is vital, and they integrate it into their overall business. They look for the latest and greatest trick, they understand SEO, they blog and post and all the rest.

The other group are those folk who know they need to have a website, pay it lip service, and either have a site (albeit an unexceptional one) or, horrors, no site at all.

If I were to tell you that the majority of small businesses fall into the second camp, you wouldn’t be surprised, would you? We have all seen what too many small business websites look like: With the look and feel of something out of 2002 or so, they have few, if any, Web 2.0 tools and act essentially as an e-Yellow Page ad.

Given that, it is not surprising that many small business people find their website to be a pain in the rear, a necessary evil, a chore to be handled, rather than what it should be – their MAIN window to the world, a profit center, an e-billboard, a marketing brochure, and a sales tool all rolled into one. But for too many small business owners, it is not that. Instead, their site is not only boring, it is difficult to update, and although they may want a nicer or more robust site, the imagined costs and effort make it seemingly prohibitive.

But it need not be, redoing your site with WordPress can change all that.

As you may know, WordPress is a popular program that many people use to blog. It’s popular because it is easy. But what you may not know is that WordPress can also be a very powerful and affordable website creation tool.

(Confession: Two years ago, wanting to redo my own site, I received bids as high as $75,000. Sticker shock led me to rethink the project, and my assistant extraordinaire, Vivian, convinced me that we should use WordPress. It turned out to be a very smart business decision. I love WordPress.)

Creating a website with WordPress is surprisingly easy. There are literally hundreds of themes to choose from, and most are free. These themes can be completely customized and installed quickly. You can see some of the best themes here.

The advantages of using WordPress for your business website are many:

The look: As indicated, there are tons of WordPress themes out there, so finding one that fits your business is easy. That it will be Web 2.0 enabled, and have the look and feel of something very now makes it all the more attractive. Slideshows, flash movies, blogs, video, advertising spots – all are a part of various WordPress themes, or easily integrated.

No longer need you be stuck with a site that is bland, blah, or mediocre.

The cost: Most WordPress themes are free, and those that are not cost less than $100, generally. Customizing your theme, if desired, is easy.

CMS: A CMS, or Content Management System, is what most small business people need but don’t have; that is why they need to go to their webmaster whenever their site needs updating. Not so with WordPress. The WordPress CMS is simple and intuitive. It is designed to make adding or changing content to a site a breeze.

SEO: SEO is built into the WordPress dashboard. Below the spot where you post a new article is an “All in One SEO Pack.” It asks you to give your keywords, tags, excerpts, and so on. WordPress does the rest. The result is that you get URLs that are indexed right, full of keywords, and are friendly to search engine spiders.

Suddenly, SEO is a snap.

Participation: Adding visitor comments to your site is always great, and with WordPress, visitor participation is integrated through comments and trackbacks.

Support: Because WordPress is open source software, there is a very large community of people out there who can help you.

Ease: Installing a standard WordPress site is quick and easy. Even a custom one can be done in short order. 1 and 1, GoDaddy, and other web hosts know how to add WordPress sites easily.

Bottom line: If you have been thinking of redoing your site, give WordPress a good look. You will be glad you did.

©2010 Radical Gravity. All Rights Reserved.

There email (you get one by default when you get the internet service) can now connect to your social network accounts like twitter and facebook (Microsoft does the same with Live mail).

If you got to http://telmex.com/apps/ they have a store with more than 50,000 apps for free download. Applications for PC, MAC, Linux and Mobile.

One of there more interesting apps is a 24 hour professor. Kids who are in school and our having trouble can get assistance for free on school topics.

Source Article (Spanish)

©2010 Radical Gravity. All Rights Reserved.

But the Flash Player has yet another Ace up the its sleeve, Augmented Reality. AR has many uses when it comes to directions, presentations and games. And now it does not need any other special plugin but the Flash Player, and since its in 99% of all machines installed, we should be ready for some great AR applications and examples.

AR applications can now be developed with ActionScript, all thanks to T-Immersion. Bellow is a video to explain more about this exiting technology, Augmented Reality.

©2010 Radical Gravity. All Rights Reserved.

Many of the the cool features in websites are no longer done with Flash, because you need the plug-in for your browser, updating it was tedious, not SEO friendly, etc. AJAX with its easy to use libraries (JQuery, Spry, etc) has made the life for us programmers much easier, and fun. For many cool effects all you need to do is cut and paste.

So where does Flash stand in this hole World Wide Web. Well without flash you would not have great sites like YouTube, uStream, Hulu, etc. Flash is the dominant environment for video, specially interactive video. But now with HTML 5 and its new one line of code insert video tag, things could change. Flash is also a big player on the new AR (Augmented Reality) technology, which looks very good.

Who knows what will happened with Web 3.0, if there ever be one, or if its already here. The way we program for the web has changed, and will continue to change, for the better… hopefully.

©2010 Radical Gravity. All Rights Reserved.

Here are the few good ones I found:

• http://www.byki.com/
• http://www.italki.com/
• http://www.livemocha.com/
• http://www.voxswap.com/
• http://www.babbel.com/

Byki for example lets your create your own flash cards, with voice and share them on websites and other social networks. VoxSwap and iTalki reminds me more of a MySpace for learning languages. But very professional looking with interesting methodologies are LiveMocha and Babbel.

Pick your choice, how do you want to learn or teach a language: like a geek, like a teen or like a traveler.

©2010 Radical Gravity. All Rights Reserved.

With Factual, it’s easy to collect and present content that will keep your readers coming back for more. By using open data sets and building a community of contributors, you can create enormous databases of useful information – and keep them up to date – at almost no cost.

Why should you care about open data? Keeping proprietary data fresh and accurate costs money and time. But “open data” is emerging as an alternative sourcing model that can keep costs low and quality high. It’s like what “open source” has done for software, but absolutely anyone can contribute to open data. To that end, we created Factual to help people and companies manage this new web of information, and make it easier to mix, mash, and share. Whether your motivation is to build cool applications or better the world, we’d love your help in starting new data projects on topics you’re passionate about. Just follow a few easy steps.

Example: SEOmoz Top 100 Most Visited Domains

©2010 Radical Gravity. All Rights Reserved.

You spend half an hour just scrolling your systems font list just end up frustrated. Next step, you go online to look for the perfect font and it has a price tag on it, and you have a budget. If your that person, I have compiled a small list of sites that offer FREE fonts, no catch:

• www.searchfreefonts.com
• www.dafont.com (Personal favorite)
• www.fontex.org
• simplythebest.net
• www.misprintedtype.com (Truly unique)
• www.allfontz.com
• www.abstractfonts.com
• www.jabroo.com
• www.fontriver.com

Here are some interesting font related resources:

• 40 Excellent freefonts for professional design
• Fonts used in logos of popular websites

©2010 Radical Gravity. All Rights Reserved.

Its a free live streaming service you can use for security your own cams, live cams in business and streaming events. It gives you the power to add text, videos, polls, twitter, viewer stats and communicate live with your viewers. If you can learn to wield the power of this storm your into quite the surprise. Basically you can have your own online TV station without the expense.

All you basically need is a computer and web cam, but if you really want to spice it up you can connect a handycam or if you have a video switcher, many cameras and stream from various angles. Add a analog to video converter and you can stream movies, shows, news programs, etc.

The best part of it all is you can embed this live stream like a YouTube or Vimeo video. Add a box to you Facebook profile, website, blog, etc. All your websites and networks can be windows to your live program. Now all these features are sweet.

Check out the live stream channel we are working on

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rockypointgo

©2010 Radical Gravity. All Rights Reserved.

©2010 Radical Gravity. All Rights Reserved.