This is one of the most exciting political periods in our time. Many Americans have found within themselves a renewed interest in politics, and it’s got me thinking about the recent candidates in terms of programming languages. So, in no particular order…

Hillary Clinton is Javascript.

Before I offend anyone that thinks I’m relegating her to a small and insignificant language, think about Javascript. It’s loosely based off of a programming monster, Java (aka Bill Clinton). It’s the heart and soul of a lot of stuff you see on the web today, like AJAX or JQuery. A lot of those fancy things you love about sites like Flickr or Facebook are filled with Javascript. And, just like Javascript, she’s got the backing of a lot of big players and the pedigree of a respected and well-tested precursor.

Mitt Romney is .NET

Romney is one of the more well-funded candidates on the campaign trail. Like Romney, deep-pocketed Microsoft’s .NET languages have features that are admired by many, but its colleagues seem to be growing tired of its rhetoric, and often team up against it much like the candidates at the New Hampshire debates teamed up against Romney. It’s losing ground to open-source, grass roots languages like PHP and Ruby on Rails, but .NET still holds significance to many people.

Mike Huckabee is PHP.

If only for the reason that Huckabee has Chuck Norris as his biggest “Hollywood” supporter, Huckabee is the tough and no-nonsense PHP. Like its conservative counterpart, PHP is known for providing a solid set of tools and having a vocal group of ardent supporters. It’s relatively extendable, easy to like, and performs well in public–just look at Facebook for PHP in action.

Fred Thompson is Flash.

If Flash had a counterpart in the political realm, it would be one-time senator and part-time actor, Fred Thompson. Granted, Mr. Thompson himself isn’t all that flashy, but Hollywood is. And you can compare Flash’s ActionScript with Thompson’s turn in “action thrillers” like Die Hard 2 and The Hunt for Red October. Like Flash, Thompson has his niche, and even though he didn’t win the race, he is still useful and interesting nonetheless.

John McCain is Perl.

Perl is your dad’s pocket knife that’s been handed down for a few generations. It’s seen a lot, been in a few scrapes, and is always better for the wear. Perl as McCain is old and slowly losing its effectiveness, but provides those who know how to use it a vast amount of influence and power. Aging well, it shows that no matter who or what steps forward as a new leader, Perl will always be around as a stalwart alternative.

Barak Obama is Ruby on Rails.

If you’ve been programming for anytime at all, you’ve heard about the Rails framework. And whether you wanted to or not, you’ve noticed Barak Obama as well. Obama’s splash came at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when the relative newcomer burst onto the scene as the keynote speaker, enamoring a section of voters that had become tired of the typical political monotony. Rails, too, was announced in 2004, and has quickly emerged as a leading contender because of its ease of use, youthful loyal following, and ability to combine old programming styles with newer streamlined methods. Who doesn’t like the apps from 37signals, which are done with RoR?

Rudy Giuliani is Visual Basic.

What is Giuliani–a conservative Democrat or liberal Republican? What is Visual Basic? A Windows-based application language or an internet VBScript language? I’ve always had a fondness for Basic, since it was my first programming language, and Visual Basic was always intriguing to me because I could easily build usable Windows apps. In a similar way, most of the nation developed a fondness for Giuliani during the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and he’s hoping they still love him when he decides to run for an office again.

Dennis Kucinich is Smalltalk.

Look, I don’t know anything about Smalltalk, but this joke just writes itself.

In our world today, the advances in technology are becoming better than ever… electric cars, music playing sunglasses, 3D movies and most importantly Facebook in your pocket at all times. But the absolute coolest thing out right now, and most brilliant piece of machinery known to man, has got to be the Apple iPhone [subliminal message: lifeBLUE loves Apple and they should send us stuff]. It basically does everything for you except the dishes and laundry (lets hope that’s coming soon). If you don’t have one, you’re practically living in the stone age. I mean, all the cool kids are doing it, why haven’t you? Along with its daily schedule, nifty calculator, weather information, high quality camera, and list of a million apps for you to choose from, the internet integration is outstanding. And what do all the great features and internet integration have in common? You get to them with a simple touch of a nice, shiny, glossy, rounded button. Who doesn’t love those icons? Who hasn’t brainstormed in their head ways they can use that same interface look, whether it be in a marketing campaign, a webpage design or simply wallpapering your house? It’s become a “trend”, these stylish little buttons.

The cool part is now you can make your own. Within the Safari internet browser, when bookmarking a website, you are now able to customize your own buttons by taking a screenshot of the page, creating even more icons on your home screens. Why just bookmark something when you can add a button directly from your main screen. Talk about convenience.

But let’s take this one step further. Have you ever noticed that when you bookmark a more well known, popular site, it doesn’t just take a screen capture, instead it already has its own default icon for you to use. Google has the “G” icon and Yahoo has the “Y” icon. So how do they do that? How neat would it be for you to design your own icon as well, for your personal website for everyone to see? Yahoo can, so we should be able to. Have no fear, you too can do this custom icon trick for your personal website as well and be just as savvy as those other big businesses, and all in about 3 easy steps.

1. First of all start with a 57 x 57 canvas (pixels), and create your design.
2. Save it as a PNG file named “apple-touch-icon.png”
3. Upload this to the root directory of your website.

Your Image	How It Appears

Leave it to Apple to do the rest, your design will automatically be given the curves it needs, along with the inside glow, your icon will fit right in with all the others.

That wasn’t hard at all! Now you’re just as cool as Apple and Facebook and when people (and yourself of course) bookmark your website, your newly designed icon will show up on their iPhone home screen. Go ahead, test it for yourself!

We the people at lifeBLUE Media have become quite comfortable with the use of the word “nerd”. It is certainly not a derogatory term by any means. I would actually consider it almost a term of endearment, well not really, but praise nonetheless. Here are three reasons why you should hug the next person you cross sporting a pocket protector, taped glasses and high watered pants.  He might even be that big tall drink of water next to you at Starbucks that eats binary code for breakfast. You wouldn’t know he is the soul reason your mobile device has become something you could not live without.

1. NERDs fix things. A nerd is the guy you call frantically asking him to fix the computer that you actually just forgot to turn on (#1 rule of technical support). He is your family member you ask to take a look at your MP3 player when he (or she) comes over for Thanksgiving dinner. Nerds are your technical relief when franchised computer fix-it companies want to charge you $1,000 to fix your $600 laptop.

2. NERDs simplify your life. Justly stated, thank Bill Gates and the writers of MS Word. Can you imagine going back to a typewriter or handwriting your 25 page report for your college final? I don’t think so. Long have we taken spell check, sentence formatting, and 2.12 page spacing (that’s right you cheaters) for granted. Yes, it costs a little more than a pretty penny but how much is your time worth, not to mention, your household nerd already saved you $600 by fixing your laptop.

3. THE INTERNET! Need I really say more? Of course, originally the Internet was produced by the Rockwell New Mexico aliens who turned it over to the military, who then gave it to us little people for common household use. But it is the nerd’s of the world that bring it to your doorstep everyday. From building websites, computers and server management, it is the nerd’s of the world that are keeping our Facebook statuses updated. They create endless and mindless games, costing companies billions of dollars and free music thus putting our country’s musicians in the poor house (you didn’t hear it from me).

Always remember it is a “scorned” nerd that is spamming your email with tales of Nigerian princesses and causing us to pay thousands of dollars for spamware, malware, and whateverelseware. Hell hath no fury like a nerd scorned…trust me. So next time you see a nerd, give him a hug and say thank you, you just might need him someday.

lifeBLUE Media has unleashed its own puzzle movie game for the world to enjoy. In fact I am not sure why you are reading this blog when you could be playing the game.

We call it lifeBLUE “Romance Cinema”. The really cool part about all of this is that you can win $500 in the “Share the Love” contest. Its not some random drawing contest either, you can actually control whether or not you win just by placing links to the game throughout the wonderful world wide web.

Many a person has attempted to solve the entirety of this brain buster but zero have conquered. It is precisely the intention of the games creators. Besides nobody really likes something that is too easy do they?

Have you played? Where do you stand:

Correct

Answers

0-10               I am guessing the word “romance” makes your brain fry. You are under the age of 3 or maybe you are trying to play this at work when your computer screen is right in front of your boss’s office and you can only attempt to answer in between his sips of coffee (and even that is a stretch). But don’t give up, there is still hope my young paduan.

11-20             You are now pushing the averages, but not quite there yet. You should probably get more in touch with your feminine side or read People, Glamour, or Cosmo. Regardless, this is not a number to brag about so keep this one to yourself until you can do a little better.

21-30             That is more like it. You are now average, mediocre, par for the course or whatever else you would like to call it. You have accomplished neither a great task nor a small one at this point. Do you stop here in the bowels of normalcy or do you trudge into no man’s land destined to become the greatest “Romance Cinema” genius of all time? That’s right I am calling you out.

31-40             I see you have now moved on. I am proud of you, a Jedi you shall soon become. You are definitely smarter than the average bear but loom in the shadows when compared to the geniuses of the world. Do you have what it takes to continue?

41-50             Nerd Alert! Just kidding, you should truly be proud. Very few stand where you now stand. You must have at least won Jeopardy a couple times over by now, but you are at least smarter than a 5^th grader. I have no ill words for you my friend. Now just take it a step further.

51-59             WOW! You are amazing. You could probably win American Idol just on sheer mind power alone. Don’t go near any Top Secret facilities anytime soon or you might pick up on some information the government will hunt you down for. Knowledge sticks to you like crazy glue. One more to go?

60                  Its true! You are the smartest person alive. There will be books written about you some day, not just cheesy romance novels either, but real top selling hardbound books! You put Good Will Hunting, Albert Einstein, and anyone else with an IQ of 1,000,000+ to shame. Everyone now kneels before your greatness.

Alright, here it is ladies and gents. Impress your friends, family, all of your secret admirees, and maybe even yourself with this tiny piece of information. I am not even joking. This will make you feel like a genius while connecting whoever to whatever web site you want…whenever. Are you ready for it…Here it comes!

<a href=”http://www.lifeblue.com”>Web Design Company</a>

Of course I would like you to use this specific reference and plaster it all over your site, but then this article might not be so beneficial to you when it comes to impressing those listed above. This is a standard HTML coding tag that websites use to link other URLs. Have you ever right clicked on a site and viewed the source code? Odds are you will find this similar code in abundance throughout those millions of other characters and what nots displayed on the page.

It is simple as it looks:

(a href) is the HTML tag that says “Hey web browser, I am about to display a link here”

http://www.lifeblue.com is the actual URL that the link goes to. So you can put any up and running website address in this spot.

Web Design Company is the text displayed to click on the link.

</a> as any good HTML person would know, you always have to close out your tags.

Now you are saying “Okay nerd face, what good does knowing this mind boggling information do me.” Well I will tell you. Try typing out this code on a notepad document>Save it> and open it with your favorite web browser. There it is. You can also include it any website, profile, e-mail, etc that allows HTML. Well I believe I have done my good deed of the day. So long.

Britney Spears…who, what?  What did she do again?  Nothing is the honest truth.  So then what is this article about?   Don’t worry about that quite yet.  Let’s get back to the Britney topic.  Did you see that performance?  I believe I have now gone through all the phases of the grief cycle for Britney.  I have certainly been in shock, denial to say the least, anger and depression to the hilt, and now, thankfully, I am on the road to acceptance and recovery.  It is now truly at the point of empathy.  The poor girl just does not know which way to turn.  Don’t worry Britney, I am behind you 100 ½ %. 

Well it would not be a good web industry related blog if I did not tie all of this to some higher meaning subject.  So in honor of Britney’s downfall, today’s topic is truly Oops! I Did it Again.  What is the Oops?   The oops is the fact that you chose the wrong company to do your web design development and marketing….Again!    So in order to better help you get through this mistake, let’s go through the grief cycle for choosing the wrong web design company. 

Shock – That’s right.  You both saw your results and went into a vegetative state, or it has been months down the road and you are shocked your site isn’t the next hottest thing on the market.  Breathe deep, its okay.  Either someone did not tell you what you needed, you didn’t know, or your odds of success stood where most new un-marketed, un-targeted websites are…not good. 

Denial – Go ahead and deny for a while.  It lets us clear our head and come back to the problem once the initial emotion is gone. 

Anger- Anger is okay too; let us keep it simple though.  Crush a can or even hit your head a few times on a well padded wall…but not too hard, we don’t want forget what has happened and then have to start the process all over again. 

Depression – It would probably be a good idea to skip this one if at all possible.  Nobody benefits from depression.  Think happy thoughts, like what could happen if you choose the right web design company. 

Testing – Let’s start searching for the right professional web company.  Test the waters and see who is not going to let you do the same mistake?

Acceptance – Ahhh…here we are…recovery at last.  Use your past mistakes and input to help pave the way for new found glory.  Don’t worry, that sorry excuse for a site you are currently using can be undone with a snap of the fingers.

Do you feel better…are you still reading?  If you need to go over these steps with an expert website consultation provider then call us.  We are here to help.  Now if only a quality, well marketed website could help my girl Britney…if only.