Summersault Weblog

As I did with the release of Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger”, I thought I would share a few notes about my experience in upgrading to the latest version of the Mac operating system, 10.5 “Leopard”.
If you just want to hear about all of the good stuff I’m experiencing as a result of the upgrade, you can skip to the bottom line.
Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s edition of the Palladium-Item has an article about the unveiling of the new website for the City of Richmond. The article has an error about the version of the website that was replaced with this exciting new launch - it does not replace a site created in 2001.

In 2003, Summersault was hired to create the new City of Richmond website and in October 2003, the new site was launched. The Palladium-Item published a story about this on October 9, 2003, with the headline “New city Web site offers cleaner look.”

In 2005, the City replaced the Summersault-built site with a completely different version created internally, and that is the version referenced in the article as not meeting the information technology needs of the City or the design and functionality expectations of users.

Given that it was fairly widespread knowledge that Summersault had created a previous version of the City website, we have asked the Palladium-Item for a correction clarifying that it was not our earlier work that was so much in need of replacement as a part of the recent effort.

Congratulations to the City on the launch of the new site, and congratulations to Programming and Micros for a job well done.

We received a bit of mail today from the organization “StoresOnline.com”, which is hosting two marketing events in Richmond, Indiana on December 11th at the Holiday Inn. Their pitch is that if you attend their 90-minute “conference” presentation about how to make money on the Internet, you’ll get a free meal, a free personal organizer, and priceless knowledge. It seems that the reality behind the free offers is a bait and switch scheme, which has been documented extensively on sites like TheRipOffReport.com. The reports include some heart-wrenching stories from people who invested quite a bit in StoresOnline.com (Aka Imergent Inc Aka Inetseminars.com) thinking they were going into a legitimate business, only to find that the promises made to them were empty ones, and that when they asked for a refund, they were referred to lawyers or not even called back at all. Yikes!

In general, even though the popular narrative about the Internet boom is that lots of people are making money overnight, remember that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and so on. Never hand over your money to anyone promising you big bucks through Internet commerce just because they’ve got a flashy presentation and give you free food. Using the technologies of the Internet to build your business takes good planning, solid partnerships, and technical expertise - there’s no substitute, and especially not in the form of a 90-minute sales pitch.