Hello. Two small item's for today's post. It is Monday, after all.

ARE YOU THINKING OF GETTING A BOOK READING TABLET? Well, we have been considering it, mostly for the children. As most of you know, personally I LOVE LOVE my iPad. Useful,  easy, fun -  did I say useful? However, sharing is not something one does easily when it comes to sticky little 6 year old hands. So we are looking at the possibilities of the other simple tablets out there, which basically comes down to the Nook Color from Barnes & Noble or the Kindle Fire from Amazon, since we want to include web browsing.

And since our local library downloads are available as Kindle editions - that kind of makes the choice for us. Although Netflix being on the Nook is another point to consider. And price, of course.

So I am glad to be seeing the reviews of the Kindle Fire so far - which shipped a day early, today. They seem to say it is the better model:  Read the ZDNet review

Also to mention today: don't forget to sign up for the new newsletter.  In my new collaboration with Michael Carnell (otherwise known as the truly techy Data Director) - DesignTechWeb - we'll be sending out a semi-regular newsletter with how-to tips, content ideas, maintenance guides and  occasional odd ball humor.  And did I say, we'll be making it a point to write in plain-old-English-non-tech-speak?  The content will be directed at you, the website owner, so we hope you'll find it useful.

Just a brief announcement: tomorrow lunchtime, I will be co-presenting at the Charleston Center for Women's Brown Bag Lunch Series at Noon.

This is a free event for professional women.

The topic for the presentation and discussion is Working from Home. My esteemed co-presenter will be Cheryl Smithem of Charleston PR & Design, LLC.

I'll be talking about the challenges of working from home when one has children...!

Registration required:
Call (843) 763-7333 or email to register info@c4women.org

129 Cannon Street
Charleston SC 29403

Snacks provided by Costco Wholesale

More details at:

http://www.c4women.org/Calendar/2011_oct.html

Anyone with an Apple mobile device - iPhone or iPad or iTouch - is familiar with the "This device does not support Flash" message, especially when browsing websites such as YouTube.

And now in a move that will have big consequences for everyone, Microsoft has announced that it's new OS Windows 8 (which is a big deal, but that's another blog post) will have a mobile version called Metro, which will not support Flash.

Basically explained for most of us, this is because playing a Flash component on a web page requires a plug-in for your browser.  Which Metro will not use. This is with the aim of using less battery power, bandwidth, and being touch interface friendly, and open web standards - all those goals that mobile devices are striving for.

What does it mean? Well, basically, if you want your website to be visible (specifically the picture or video parts of it) then it's time to "remodel" without Flash. Or at least develop a "mobile only" version.

All those lovely home page rotating images, they can still be there, but not in Flash. Apparently, Microsoft recently examined 97,000 web sites, and discovered that 62% of them do currently use Flash - but many of those use it only to display ads, not their content.

All the numbers say that a larger and larger proportion of web browsing is done on mobile devices. And now that Microsoft has joined Apple in this particular attribute, this is one feature that's going to become almost impossible to ignore.

So, it's time to look again at your website, and decide what YOU are going to do.

An elegant website design for a high quality builder in Charleston. This design is based on a blog model, using the SunBlog module to build a searchable project portfolio, as well as an easy way for the owner to keep his content fresh by blog posting useful content for his clients.  The color scheme was already in place with the client's logo;  the skin is a fixed width customized DotNetNuke 5 skin. This project includes some custom graphics and a bandwidth friendly mobile website also, with automatic redirecting. We created a temporary website within a week of the project start, and stayed within the limited budget.  Also included was help with submission of the website to Google Places, Bing Business and more, and basic SEO service. A happy client.

www.SimonBlackConstruction.com