Author Archives ⇒ Brandon Hann

Practical Uses for the iPad

· Brandon Hann


I recently read an article that talked about how the iPad is being used in up-scale restaurants. Would it be surprising to learn that the iPad is being used as an electronic wine list?! This prompted me to evaluate the overall practicality of the iPad itself.

Understandably so, whenever a new “tech” device arrives on the scene, one of the first things that happens is people ask if it’s worth the retail price. Well, I’ve owned an iPad for almost two months now and I can say I’ve gotten my practical uses out of it for sure.

In the Workplace

You can kiss writing notes on paper goodbye! The iPad is the perfect complement for all your work meetings. There are plenty of note-taking apps available for the iPad, but the one I liked the most is Penultimate. This app allows you to create virtual notebooks, in which you can have an unlimited amount of pages of notes. The best part about it is that you can write all your notes with just your finger or you can get a fancy stylus that works with the iPad (and iPhone/iPod Touch).

I also use it while I walk around troubleshooting problems for my co-workers. I use it to take more notes or to enter things into my calendar on the fly. Everyone at my job now wants an iPad because it replaces Post-It notes (to an extant) as well as paper notepads and pens.

At Home

What’s the difference between work and home these days? For me, there is no difference, but it’s nice to be able to kick back and relax while playing a few games to hold you over until dinner. My favorite started out as FlightCTRL HD because that the first game I demoed on the iPad when I went to the Apple store to see one for the first time. It’s a super fun game that becomes really addicting really fast. My newest favorite is Texas Poker because it’s free and because it has online multiplayer capabilities.

Beyond games, the iPad serves many purposes at home, some of which are:

  • A lightweight replacement for your laptop
  • Video/movie/tv show player
  • Portable radio (Internet music and radio stations)
  • Kitchen aid for pulling up recipes
  • Alarm clock
  • Ebook reader

Speaking of ebook readers, all you Amazon Kindle owners can look no further for your next device upgrade. Yes, there’s a Kindle app for the iPad that allows you to open and read all of your already purchased Kindle books–and in full color!

On the go

If you’re actually moving while using the iPad, hopefully you’re a passenger and not the driver and if you have the 3G version, you can do everything I said above while driving to your next destination. I’ve taken my iPad almost everywhere I go. I’ve used it in stores, at gas stations, at restaurants and riding around with friends.

I think the best part of the iPad is the ability to be more portable than having a laptop, but large enough to not be stuck on the tiny screen of a smartphone.

My gripes

The iPad is great and works as well as any product can be expected, but alas…there are some gripes that I have. Just a fair warning–these gripes come from the iPad software version 3.2.2.

  • No file system – The iPad uses the same software as the iPhone and therefore has many limitations as far as file sharing, file manipulation, file storage and everything else to do with files.
  • Limited web browsing – The iPad still suffers from the limitations that affect the iPhone like no Flash support, weird Java problems and no tabbed browsing (if using Safari).
  • No printing – Even the cheapest of netbooks can print! But, I hear that wireless printing will be available on the next software update in November, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it actually works.
  • No multitasking – Yet. This is also a new feature coming out and I have a feeling, it’ll become much more useful on the iPad than it was on the iPhone.

All in all, the iPad is a great device and is very useful in the right setting, but if you’re on the fence about it, you may not really need it. It truly is just an oversized iPhone/iPod touch. If you’re looking for something closer to a netbook in features, you’ll need to get a netbook…or wait until all these new touch-screen “iPad killers” start coming out from HP, Lenovo, etc. They are supposed to integrate features of a netbook with the design and simplicity of an iPad.

Visual Design – CDN

· Brandon Hann

CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. Its sole purpose is to help you evenly spread your entire website’s content (mostly the larger media files) across multiple web servers to alleviate server load from a single machine. This, in turn serves two purposes.

First, it minimizes how much bandwidth you’re serving out to your web visitors on your webhost. Second, it allows your site to run smoothly without server crashes, timeouts and user caps. However, a CDN can be quite expensive depending on what type of CDN you require and what services you need. Let’s explore these.

CDN Types

A Content Delivery Network can serve the function of completely mirroring a portion of your site or a specific area of your site, like your video section or streaming music channel. Back in the old days, we didn’t have sites like YouTube, so if you wanted to play videos on your site, you needed a lot of bandwidth or pay a company to host the video for you and stream it live from your site.

  • End-to-end Transport – This is the fundamental standard of the Internet. It basically means the service will connect you to the content directly. Let’s say you had 10 videos all about 5 minutes each. Just for the sake of this point, let’s assume to stream each video, it would “cost” you about 100mb in bandwidth. If your site streamed all 10 videos 10 times a day, that’s 10GBs of bandwidth every day! To offset this cost, a CDN would charge you a monthly fee to host the video thus sparing your server–and your wallet.
  • P2P Transport – I can write a whole article on just P2P alone! To keep this one short, P2P is short for peer-to-peer and it is currently used as the backbone for downloading content online. The idea behind it is sharing. For example, when you are downloading (and watching) a video, you are also helping in the upload process for someone else who is watching it too. So rather than 1000 people streaming 1 video from 1 site, each of these thousand are sharing the parts they downloaded with the other users who need them. This allows the 1 video to circulate through all viewers at the same time thus removing the main load from the website.

CDNs aren’t generally described as P2P networks as they were designed to use point-to-point protocol, however P2P has become a fast alternative and popular protocol among the large media sites of today. Some examples of CDNs (and P2P) are bit torrent, Internet radio, Hulu, YouTube, Webcasting and Internet tv.

Content Providers

High-end delivery companies are designed to handle massive amounts of web users, traffic and media data every single day. If you’re running a basic website or blog, you will never need something of this nature, but nonetheless, here are a few commercial companies.

How does all this help me?

Again, depending on your specific needs, you may or may not even need a CDN. The point is that if you have a very large web presence, you might want to consider saving some of your webserver’s bandwidth and going with a company that specializes in these services. Doing so can dramatically decrease your monthly costs and save you a lot of headaches over time.

<< Back to Bandwidth Consideration Forward to Interlaced Images >>

Free iPad, iPod, iPhone, Macbook offers. Are they legit?

· Brandon Hann

You’ve seen them everywhere–Google, Facebook, MySpace, etc.!! They are those little annoying ads that show up telling you that you can get an iPad, an iPod, a Macbook or some other expensive gadget for FREE.

Naturally, you click through only to feel duped because now there’s all sorts of ‘offers’ you have to complete. In my opinion, you shouldn’t feel duped–you should probably feel a little naive for thinking that you were really going to get a $200-2000 item for doing nothing. After reading a blog post on Technologizer.com, I was amazed to see how many people think these offers are outright scams.

Are they scams?

Ok, so you clicked an ad and now you want to know if you’re about to be scammed, right? Perfect, I’m here to set the record straight for anyone who’s still cloudy on this topic.

Before I get into the specifics, let’s define a couple of related terms:

  • scam (noun) – a device (website, contract, etc) used to cheat or defraud
  • scam (verb) – to cheat or defraud
  • scammed (past tense) – having been defrauded or cheated
  • mislead – to lead astray, deceive or guide wrongly

Now that we know what the difference between a scam (or to be scammed) and something that’s misleading, we can continue.

The reason I put misleading in there is because once I prove to you that these offers are not scams, the next thing you’re going to say is that they are misleading and if that’s what you believe, then ok. I, on the other hand do not feel that these ads are scams or are misleading and here’s why.

To me, an ad that is misleading would be this:

Sign up today and get a FREE iPad! Simply enter your email address and we’ll ship your new gift directly to your house!!

An ad that is not misleading would be this:

Sign up today and get a FREE iPad! *Participation in promotional offers required. (The last part will likely be in fine print.)

How do these offers work?

Each company has a different approach to the same end result, but in general, the company has a sponsorship deal with the advertising company in which the advertiser pays the promoter an affiliate bonus for every customer they send them. This bonus is what the promoter uses to pay for your free gift. So how can they afford really expensive gifts and still make money? That’s where simple math comes into play.

I run a website and I have a few sponsored ads throughout my website, so I know how much can be made on deals like these, but for this example I’m going to use simple (yet realistic) numbers to illustrate how this is all possible.

Let’s take a standard “FREE iPad” offer. The promoter tells you to get your gift you have 180 days to complete a total of 13 offers from 3 tiers. There are three key facts in that one sentence. First, you have 6 months to complete the offers. Second, you have to do 13 offers and third is that the offers are broken into tiers.

  1. Time limit: The promotion company is banking that you don’t have what it takes to comply with all these rules and this is where they make the real money. Imagine if 100 people completed 11 offers, but ran out of time before they could do two more. The promoter just made affiliate bonuses on 1100 offers and didn’t have to ship 1 iPad! If each offer earned them about $50, they just walked away with $55,000! Hopefully this clarifies how it’s possible to afford such expensive gifts.
  2. 13 Total Offers: That’s a lot of offers and it’s easy to get confused and lost in all the signups you’re about to get involved with. Again, the promoter hopes that you stay confused so you either a) don’t get all 13 or b) stay a subscribed member so they can continue making affiliate bonuses off you.
  3. 3 Tiers: One such offer site mentions you have to pick 2 offers from tier 1, 2 offers from tier 2 and 9 offers from tier 3. The reason they do this is because the offers range so dramatically from things like subscribing to a magazine for 3 months to applying for a car loan. It would be unfair to make you apply for 13 car loans, so they break them down into manageable groups.

As you can see if you apply some basic math, even if every single person did every single requirement and they shipped out an iPad for every person, they are still not losing money depending on which model they ship. Plus, $50 is an average amount. I’ve heard of affiliate payouts being much higher.

My two cents

To call this a scam, you would be implying that these companies are promising you one thing and backing out at the last minute thus robbing you of your free gift. Aside from these offers consuming loads of time and aside from you perhaps making a mistake of not completing one of the required terms, there is no way you will not get your free gift. It would also be a scam if these companies were asking for money and not following through on their promises.

So, for all those that still think these offers are scams, listen up. It’s natural to feel “scammed” after seeing an ad for an offer claiming you can get some really expensive gadget for free (iPad, laptops, big screen tvs, etc) only to discover that there’s a “catch”. But just because this upsets you, does that mean it’s really a scam? Of course not! That’s like saying you signed up for a credit card with a 0% intro rate and then 6 months later, you’re surprised to be hit with a 19% APR. You should only be surprised if you didn’t read the fine print and only be mad at yourself that you didn’t. Offers like these and others like home loans, car leases, hotel rentals or anything you sign a contract for should not be obtained without having read the fine print first! That’s just common sense.

Hopefully now we can all agree that they are not scamming anyone. Just read the details clearly if you’re interested and follow all the rules. It’s not that difficult if you’re paying attention and you will certainly get a free gift at the end. By the way, if you still think this process is a scam, you probably also believe that Quibids is a scam too.

A little history

So where did all these offers start?? As far back as I can remember, it all happend around the time when the 3rd gen iPod came out when a company called FreeiPods.com started offering free iPods to anyone who signed up for 1 offer, but then you had to get 5 friends to sign up under you and they each had to complete 1 offer themselves. After all this happened, you were sent a free 20GB iPod. I was able to score two during this time. The problem with this setup (if you haven’t noticed already) was that it was a pyramid scheme. What this meant was only the people who started first were getting the free iPod because at some point, there was nobody left to sign up (to get your five friends) because everyone was out trying to get 5 more people! Make sense?

That’s when the complaints started…people weren’t getting their iPods, so they felt cheated. Well, since they never paid any money up front, then what were they exactly cheated out of? Perhaps they were cheated out of the chance of getting a free iPod, but this hardly equals a monetary value.

Anyway, the business model was changed to allow people to bypass getting referrals and instead, just complete more offers. Eventually, the whole “referral getting” model was scrapped and now we have the current business model which is simply completing multiple offers. They even added a twist–you only have 6 months to complete everything! See, the ones offering the free gifts are hoping you can’t complete everything in 6 months.

Overpriced concerts, ticket scalpers and fee after fee after fee

· Brandon Hann

I read an article today about Bob Dylan. What struck me more than the fact that he’s actually touring is the way he plans to sell tickets to his next show in San Francisco. But before I get into that, let’s go over the process (and cost) of going to a big-name concert these days. (If you just want to know what Bob Dylan did, skip ahead.)

Naturally, for an act as big as Lady Gaga, Metallica or (hate to say) Justin Bieber, you probably wouldn’t bat an eye after shelling out $70+ for a basic seat somewhere in the back of the building or arena. Of course, if you want to get much closer, you’re probably looking at the $200-300+ range and if you want to sit so close that you can actually touch Justin’s bowl-of-a-haircut, you’re looking in the $700-1000 range. Have these artists become so popular that the prices keep going up or is there something else at play? That question is hard to answer because there are so many factors involved. You have to consider the popularity of the artist, the location where they’re playing and their touring frequency. One fact that can determine your purchase price is who/where are you buying your tickets from.

Purchasing Concert Tickets

Let’s explore a current event. I went to Ticketmaster.com and searched for one ticket in the best available section for the Lady Gaga concert at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. By the way, it’s August 24th and the concert is on March 28th, 2011–that’s still 7 months away! The fact that I can’t get a better seat than this right now proves the next argument I’m about to make. Anyway, here’s my ticket:

From this, you can clearly see that I have a mid-level seat and a low-level row. This actually puts me in a fairly good seat as far as the view is concerned. But let’s look at the price. We have a ticket face value of $181.50 and a convenience charge of $19.65. I haven’t even selected how I want it delivered to me and I’m already out $201.15. Speaking of delivery, I wonder if I can just print it on my computer for free…

I guess not. Believe it or not, I can have a printed ticket mailed to my house via standard United States mail at no charge, but to PRINT the ticket on my OWN printer using my OWN ink and paper, it costs me $2.50! For this example, I won’t count the expedited shipping charges because these prices come from the shippers and have no bearing on the cost of the ticket unless you’re impatient and you want them faster. But I will mention that if you wanted to pick the tickets up at any local Ticketmaster location, it will cost you $3.00.

Let’s recap. Aside from choosing faster shipping, you have three basic options:

  1. Use TicketFast: NOW — Print your tickets in the “convenience” of your own home. The cost: $2.50
  2. Pick it up at a Ticketmaster location — Any Ticketmaster outlet can print your ticket on demand and hand it to you. The cost: $3.00
  3. Have it mailed to your house — Ticketmaster will print your ticket on demand, put it in an envelope, stamp it and mail it to your house. The cost: FREE

Is it just me or does all that sound a little backward?! Wouldn’t it be more convenient to be able to print your ticket for free using your own supplies? And why does Ticketmaster feel they need to charge $3.00 to say hi and hand a ticket to someone at a ticket counter? (Actually I’m told that if you want them to say hi, it’s another 25 cents.) And why do they not charge to print and mail a ticket via the Post Office?

Anyway, moving on. I haven’t bought my ticket yet and I still have to consider a few more (optional) costs. Let’s take a look:

If I choose to, I can buy an exclusive t-shirt for $30 and parking in one of two Staples Center lots at $25 or $20–that is if I don’t want to try and find a cheaper (and likely less secure) parking lot further away from the building. Since this article is simply based on ticket prices alone, we’ll skip past these charges and continue to the purchase page.

Even though I included parking on the shopping cart, you can still get the overall idea of total cost. The last fee to be added is an order processing fee for: $5.90. What is this for?! I thought the earlier convenience charge of $19.65 would cover the entire ordering process?? Nonetheless, it’s a fee that can’t be avoided.

Our total for one Lady Gaga concert that will probably last 2-3 hours on a Monday night is:

Grand Total: $209.55

Remember, this is for just one ticket without parking, no souvenirs and no alcohol! And don’t get me wrong–I’m not inferring that Lady Gaga isn’t worth it (I wouldn’t know as I’ve never been to her concert.)–I’m just making a point here!

I just wanted to throw this in here because it can potentially add to your overall cost. It’s ticket insurance and it’ll let you recover your purchase price if you can’t attend the concert for whatever reason–all for the low cost of $7 per ticket. Take a look at the terms:

The Aftermarket

There is a huge aftermarket for concert/event tickets on sites like StubHub, TicketsNow.com, TickCo.com, TicketsWizard.com and many more. Just go to any one of these sites and you’ll see the difference in prices!

This is where the real mark-ups begin! As a quick example, I went to StubHub and looked for a ticket in the same section as my ticket and would you believe it? The concert is 7 months away and still not sold out, yet they are already selling same-section tickets for $237. As you can imagine, these prices will only go up the closer the concert date comes.

The only real advantage with these aftermarket sites is that you can generally pick your own seats whereas with Ticketmaster, you are stuck with what you get.

Ethical Dilemma

Buying something for one price and selling it for another when demand is higher is not illegal and is generally considered a good business decision. But what about companies that buy up very large amounts of tickets just to sell them at a 50%+ markup? Do you think it’s fair that you don’t even have a fighting chance to get a ticket at face value?

Personally, I think buying tickets online is a great convenience and certainly worth the “fees” to not have to stand in a line for hours to buy a ticket at the door, but I am completely against ticket hoarders much like I’m also against domain hoarders. These people make it almost impossible to get tickets because they buy so many so fast. Plus, the venues, the artists, Ticketmaster and everyone else involved don’t want unsold tickets, so they will sell them to anyone with money.

Alternatives

Every artist could do what Bob Dylan is doing and that is not allow any concert tickets to be purchased before the event. He decided that tickets for his next concert in San Francisco will only be available if you stand in line starting midday and purchase your ticket at the door. In addition, fans can only buy one ticket each which means your friends are standing in line with you. Oh and I almost forgot to mention, ticket sales are cash only!

By doing this, Bob Dylan is single-handedly eliminating the over-inflated ticket prices found online, the ticket resellers on eBay (people who buy out-of-state event tickets just for resell), the “convenience” charges from Ticketmaster, the handling and order processing charges and the printing charges. Good job, Bob!!

Of course doing it this way will most certainly cause many more problems–having that many people in lines all day holding cash, but I think it’s the only fair thing to do to ensure everyone has a fighting chance. Obviously this doesn’t stop people from scalping them, but because the tickets don’t go on sale until the day of the event, there will be no time for proper marketing and inflation.

If every artist did this, maybe the tickets wouldn’t be so high and regular people can actually afford to go to high profile events. If it continues going down this road, eventually we’ll be accepting higher and higher ticket prices and before we know it, we’ll all be financing our next concert.

I'm back and better than ever!

· Brandon Hann

I know it’s been awhile since I last updated the site, but between working on other web projects, my full time job, taking care of school and sleeping, I haven’t had much time for this site unfortunately. However, this is all about to change as I expect to get back to my regular daily routine in no time!

Also, for those who didn’t notice or as a memo to my new visitors, the site has been completely revamped for the first time since I launched it!! I’m using a whole new backend system and I feel the new layout will make everything just a bit more organized and easier to find.

New layout

In light of the new layout and in the spirit of not having the site closed for too long, I have opened the site now. What this means is simply that there might some things out of place (like the menus) and things that don’t match too well due to the site being solely formatted for the previous layout.

With that said, please bear with me as I work out the kinks. I can promise you that the new site will allow for much more flexibility (for me and you), plus add some new enhancements and features that are sure to up the user experience around here.

Some new features

  • Submit your writings – I am now opening the site for the first time to guest bloggers and freelance writers! You can submit your own articles for review and I will post them with all due credit. In time, you may be granted full publishing rights to the site.
  • Improved newsletter – I am throwing out the old and bringing in the new. I will be offering an updated newsletter for anyone wishing to get free information from me that’s not available on the site.

I think that’s it for now. I hope you enjoy the new site!

Brandon

Using Yahoo! Answers to promote your blog

· Brandon Hann

I signed up for Yahoo! Answers a long time ago because I remember searching for some information and I was amazed at how much mis-information there was out there! It was then that I discovered that I could share some of my knowledge, help people out and be able to build a reputation all at the same time.

Enter the world of cross-promotion. I talk about this all over my site as a means to help pollinate your image/brand in as many places as you can (without being obtrusive). I say “obtrusive” because you don’t want to come off as spamming. If you have a general passion for your topic of interest, you’re going to love spreading the word about your knowledge. For me, I love helping people out with their computer problems or website questions.

What is Yahoo! Answers

So as not to override the point of this post, I’ll be quick. Yahoo! Answers allows anyone with a Yahoo! login to go to the site, submit a question they want answered and then other people viewing the site who might know the answer can post their opinions. As a member, you can also ask questions as well.

As an answerer, you earn points for every answer you submit and even more points if the asker selects your answer as the best choice. Other members can also vote your answer up to the best choice too. After certain levels of these points are acquired, you can do more things on the site like answer more questions, ask more questions, receive more ratings, etc. More about how Yahoo! Answers works.

Yahoo! Answers as a promotional tool

Just like any other member site, you can create a profile. In this profile you have your standard avatar, email address, website link, etc. All these are quite obvious as promotional tools, but Yahoo! Answers inherently goes a step further. Since you’re answering people’s questions about any topic imaginable, you get to answer freely. This means, you can reference external websites, cite sources, talk about how well you know a particular topic, etc.

So here’s what I do. We all know that I blog about marketing online and building websites and such. Every now and then, I toss in a few posts about computer repairs and fix-it utilities.

Naturally, I go over to Yahoo! Answers and look for questions related to my blog and begin answering them. In some cases, I have already written a detailed blog post that better illustrates my answer and I’m able to insert a link directly into it. This allows the asker (and everyone else reading) to access my link and see my blog post!

What not to do

As time goes on, your answers (with your links) are all floating around Yahoo! and other major search engines which will generate more traffic for your site. However, this can be abused just like every other traffic-technique so you want to make sure you not only follow Yahoo!’s guidelines, but also some search engine one’s as well.

Here are some things not to do:

  • Don’t submit just a link for your answer
  • Don’t add more than 2 links in one answer
  • Don’t give half-assed answers–put some thought into your responses
  • Don’t link to webpages that don’t contribute to your answer

My two cents

The main point of Yahoo! Answers is to help people answer their questions. Make sure that you are actually contributing to the cause. The more help you provide, the better your reputation will be. If people start viewing you as a credible source of information, then they are more likely to view your site and if they run sites of their own, they might link back to you. You can see how the dominoes fall from here.

iPhone 4 Lands June 24th, 2010

· Brandon Hann

I tell you, the last few months have been crazy over this new device! First of all, we caught a glimpse into the world of Apple when a man by the name of Gray Powell left a prototype device at a bar in Redwood City after celebrating his birthday. Shortly after he left the bar, someone found the device and sold it to Gizmodo who then explored the device to it’s fullest to get a clearer idea of what it was.

Gizmodo broke the story about the iPhone 4 to the world, thus causing Apple to sue for theft and have the editor who wrote the article turn over his property to the cops for evidence.

Once the phone was finally claimed by Apple and then officially announced, all we wanted to know was “how much?” and “when can we buy?”. Not only did the phone itself cause the demand to be exceptionally high, but the announcement of AT&T allowing early upgrades for basically any contract that would be expiring in 2010 opened to flood gates to just about every single previous iPhone owner.

Black Tuesday

June 15th was the day selected for the pre-ordering of iPhone 4 and boy what a day it was! Here are a few of the things that went down (pun intended) that day:

  • iPhone 4 Pre-order system shuts down – The pre-order system was opened at about 1am on June 15th and right from the start, people were complaining about not being able to get in the system to place an order.
  • AT&T account security breaches – Many AT&T users (including me) experienced a wide-spread security breach within AT&T after logging into their wireless accounts online. Instead of seeing their own information, they were presented with the information of someone completely different.
  • AT&T stores took iPhone pre-orders on paper – Many customers (including me) were forced to have a pre-order written down on paper only to be processed later.
  • iPhone 4 orders were being randomly cancelled – It almost seemed completely random, but iPhone 4 orders were getting cancelled left and right with no apparent reasoning behind it. I think it had to do with people placing multiple orders on single accounts or the old rule about upgrading your account where you actually couldn’t upgrade if you had a balance due. I made sure I paid my bill before I started this process!!
  • Shipping date for iPhone pre-orders pushed to July – It appears like July 14th is the earliest date you can expect your iPhone to ship. The demand was just too much for AT&T and Apple to handle.
  • Best Buy was pre-ordering white iPhone 4s – Somehow, a few people were able to successfully order a white iPhone 4 from Best Buy even though it was clearly stated that the white iPhone 4 would not be available at launch date. We’ll see about the “successfulness” on June 24th!

The Aftermath

After all this, AT&T and Apple have both formally apologized. Apple released this statement:

CUPERTINO, Calif., June 16 — Yesterday Apple and its carrier partners took pre-orders for more than 600,000 of Apple’s new iPhone 4. It was the largest number of pre-orders Apple has ever taken in a single day and was far higher than we anticipated, resulting in many order and approval system malfunctions. Many customers were turned away or abandoned the process in frustration. We apologize to everyone who encountered difficulties, and hope that they will try again or visit an Apple or carrier store once the iPhone 4 is in stock.

And AT&T had this to say:

DALLAS, June 16 — AT&T issued the following statement today:

IPhone 4 pre-order sales yesterday were 10-times higher than the first day of pre-ordering for the iPhone 3G S last year. Consumers are clearly excited about iPhone 4, AT&T’s more affordable data plans and our early upgrade pricing.

Given this unprecedented demand and our current expectations for our iPhone 4 inventory levels when the device is available June 24, we’re suspending pre-ordering today in order to fulfill the orders we’ve already received.

The availability of additional inventory will determine if we can resume taking pre-orders.

In addition to unprecedented pre-order sales, yesterday there were more than 13 million visits to AT&T’s website where customers can check to see if they are eligible to upgrade to a new phone; that number is about 3-times higher than the previous record for eligibility upgrade checks in one day.

We are working hard to bring iPhone 4 to as many of our customers as soon as possible.

After the aftermath

The dust appears to be settling and the lucky people who got orders in on the 15th or manual orders on the 16th (taken on the 15th) are starting to see shipping information in their AT&T accounts. The blogs are on fire with people talking about their own personal experiences and of course griping from people who aren’t getting theirs on day one.

I had my own streak of good luck turned bad and then turned good again. I started off with two orders for the same account and then I thought I was getting none. I was thinking I’d see my phone in mid-July, but then I got the good news that mine had shipped! You can read my whole story on my blog. The story is called ‘How I Almost Got Two iPhone 4s on Release Day‘.

UPDATE 6-23-10

I just wanted to share that I received my new iPhone 4 today and from what I’m hearing, I’m one of few that actually received the device today and even fewer received it yesterday. Here are my last pictures from my iPhone 3GS (which is now on sale on eBay) and the first ones of my new iPhone 4.

©2010 Brandon.me and Ledfrog.com

©2010 Brandon.me and Ledfrog.com

Visual Design – Color Pallets

· Brandon Hann

As equally important as whitespace is the choice of colors throughout your site. These colors can represent your company’s existing logo properties, a particular color scheme used throughout the products you sell or simply just a series of colors that are pleasing to the eye.

If you’re just starting out a business, choosing the color scheme is much easier because you can essentially start from scratch. You may even begin by choosing the desired website design and then using it as a starting ground for your branding.

What colors do you use?

Surprisingly, not a lot of thought goes into this question for most web designers. The problem is that most people simply start with a cut and paste approach to website design and copy elements off a template. For example, lets say you downloaded a fresh new template that was all black and red. You got it because you liked it and it was cool. Rather than come up with your own color scheme or layout options, you forced yourself to use the ones in the template.

Now this isn’t such a bad idea if you just want to whip a fast site together, but if you’re in it for the long haul, you are missing out on future opportunities to market and brand your site better.

Think about a big name company’s image. Is their logo one of those logos that you can take a half-second glance at and still know what it was you saw? You have to remember that when you’re starting a business, your choice of colors and theming is the most important thing for your image and/or brand.

How do colors benefit readers?

Besides the overall look and feel of your site, your visitors are going to benefit greatly from your choice of layout. That’s because colors play a large role in visual response. Ever wonder why most of your local big-chain restaurants use the color red in their logos and marketing materials? This is because some scientist did a study a while back and determined that the color red is closely associated with the feeling of hunger and generally speaking, a red sign pointing out a flashy restaurant is supposed to make you more hungry.

The same can go for your website. The proper use of white space, the choice of colors and even the style of font and logo design can all keep your users browsing or drive them away. Of course, a lot of web users don’t care what your site looks like as long as you have the information they were looking for, but as you get more and more into the Internet, you deal with more and more competition. This means that any edge you can obtain is something worth considering.

My two cents

This post was more of an eye-opener rather than actual help, but that’s because nobody can tell you how to design your site. Only you (and others with similar sites) can know what your visitors like or don’t like. If you really want to find out, look at other sites in your field or start polling your own visitors to see what they think.

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Visual Design – White Space

· Brandon Hann

White space is the most literal concept you’ll find in this section. It is the actual space between design elements such as paragraphs, images, text, graphs, etc. The purpose of this space can vary depending on your desired results. One reason for using it might be to create a specific flow to your design. You may want to direct one’s eyes to something on a page more so than other items.

By the way, WebDesignNuts.com created a great article about how to use white space effectively, but to summarize, I’ve written a little piece myself.

Effective use of white space

The most common use of white space can be found in just about every publication on Earth including almost every website you’ve been to. What I’m referring to is the breakup of large blocks of text into smaller chunks that can be more easily digested. The following text is NOT effective use of whitespace:

We are guessing that most of you have already read Gizmodo’s account of how they managed to obtain a prototype for the upcoming Apple iPhone 4G device. If you have, then you’ll know that the whole thing was allegedly down to a 27 year old Apple Software Engineer, named as Gray Powell, who managed to leave the prototype in a bar in Redwood City, Calif. Now that the whole thing has come out, and Apple are yet to confirm or deny the story – what will the repercussions be for Mr Powell? Every human makes a mistake once in a while, but you have to say that this is a major blunder if it turns out to be true. Will Apple remove Powell from further duty, or will common sense prevail and no firm action will be taken? Hopefully it will be the latter, but you never know with Apple. Let us know your opinions on the whole saga and what YOU think should happen to Gray Powell.

-Text quoted from Product-Reviews.net

The text above looks much better if formatted properly:

We are guessing that most of you have already read Gizmodo’s account of how they managed to obtain a prototype for the upcoming Apple iPhone 4G device.

If you have, then you’ll know that the whole thing was allegedly down to a 27 year old Apple Software Engineer, named as Gray Powell, who managed to leave the prototype in a bar in Redwood City, Calif.

Now that the whole thing has come out, and Apple are yet to confirm or deny the story – what will the repercussions be for Mr Powell?

Every human makes a mistake once in a while, but you have to say that this is a major blunder if it turns out to be true. Will Apple remove Powell from further duty, or will common sense prevail and no firm action will be taken?

Hopefully it will be the latter, but you never know with Apple. Let us know your opinions on the whole saga and what YOU think should happen to Gray Powell.

-Text quoted from Product-Reviews.net

Now imagine if an entire website appeared like the first block of text! Just looking it would make you want to change the page. To make effective use of white space, you need to focus on things other than breaking paragraphs apart. Here are some things to consider:

  • Line spacing – In college, you generally had to make all your papers double-spaced, but on websites you can space as much as you like, even down to the last pixel.
  • Margins – Keep side bars and advertisements at bay so they don’t crowd your page too much. In general, you don’t want to flood your site with stuff like that anyway, but more importantly, you want to keep it away from your content. After all, you visitors don’t come to your site to look at ads.
  • Headings – Make sure your headings stand out and properly define the content below them. This isn’t just good practice for design, but also search engine rankings as well.
  • Images – How often have you been to a site where the images seem to be mixed right in over or under the text? Your images should standout alone and text should either wrap around them or stay on one side.

More information

This was just a sampling of what to look for when designing your pages. I’d suggest doing a deep search if you think you’re having problems adjusting content on your pages. If all else fails, get yourself a web template or theme that controls the layout for you.

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Visual Design – Layout

· Brandon Hann

A crucial design element of your website is the layout. Believe it or not, there are phycological studies on the layouts of other media such as magazines and newspapers. Small, but important details including where certain text is, how big the titles of pages are and what colors are used are all attributed to the success or failure of a website.

The best way to get ideas for your own site’s layout is to look at other related websites that contain similar content and see what it is that you like and don’t like about it. What I do is look at a site for a few minutes, close my eyes and then try to remember the things that stood out.

Choosing the right layout

As you scour around the Internet, you may notice design patterns spanned over the various websites you see. You might have noticed that most news sites tend to favor white backgrounds with black text. You’ll notice media sites like YouTube and Hulu that design the rest of the site around their video players.

The point of any layout is to draw attention to a specific area of a page to generate the most focus on that spot. This will ensure that if you’re blogging, your content is being read or if you’re showing videos, that your videos are being watched.

Just take a look at my site. You can see how things are organized within a matter of seconds. Every page conforms to the same layout in general and this was done to keep everything looking clean as well as to allow the content to flow. When you create your own site, you want to make sure that the design flows and matches, but not to mix everything together. This can confuse your visitors and will probably make them leave your site.

Themes and templates

Both of these are generally the same. The difference is how they’re applied. A template is a set of pre-built files that make up a website that allows you to fill in or change information to correspond to your own needs. A theme does the same purpose, but it’s applied to a pre-built structure. The main difference between themes and templates is that you can change the theme of an entire website without affecting too much of the content. A template needs to be re-edited if it’s changed.

If you’re running a blog site, using is theme is the only way to go. This is because WordPress is a full software package all rolled into one that allows you to apply different color and layout themes as needed.

Here are a couple of place to look for great themes and templates:

  • TemplateMonster – This site has thousands and thousands of web templates and they even have themes for content management systems like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. Their prices range from about $20 to $150.
  • WooThemes – WooThemes makes themes specifically for WordPress, ExpressionImage, Drupal and Tumblr. They have some free themes, but the paid ones seem to be of much higher quality and generally have more features.
  • StudioPress – If you want to up the ante (and the price) on quality WordPress themes, you need to go here! In fact, if you want to see a sample of one of the themes they offer, you can look at my other website.
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