We’ve noticed the same problem with clunker websites.  They are inefficient, hog bandwidth, slow the Internet, have designs that hurt your eyes and rattle a user’s mental health.  We want to put an end to it.

Trade In Your Clunker Website
We’re offering $500 to anyone wanting to trade in their clunker website for a brand new, efficient, scalable, CMS powered, search engine optimized Five Technology web design.

• Get started with a new website now!

If your site resembles the clunker website below or falls short of your needs, we can help.

So do the right thing, improve the Internet, make your customers and prospects happier and trade in your clunker website.  We’ll give you $500 off of your web design proposal for being so smart.

• Start the Cash For Clunker Websites process now

You are missing out if you’re not in Omaha. I made the voyage down from Minneapolis to check it all out. I’m a big fan of people taking ideas and working them to reality like Jeff and Dusty did.  That’s real inspiration to me.

Local web talent What Cheer and marketing mix Secret Penguin hosted an open house that got the evening started.  Things shifted around the corner at 7:30pm to Slowdown, where Gary Vaynerchuk got things up another level by doing his Wine Library TV episode LIVE to a packed house.  Gary will be presenting Friday at Big Omaha as well.

Here are a few photos and video to give you a taste of the night.

Gary Vaynerchuk doing his Wine Library show LIVE at Big Omaha

Big Omaha Conference Kick-off With Gary Vaynerchuk from Five Technology on Vimeo.

Big Omaha co-creator Jeff Slobotski at the kick-off event with me

Badges?  You better believe Big Omaha has some stinkin’ badges!

It was a great night to catch up with some great web design and marketing minds I have connected with in person and online. Drinks and dialogue with Eric Downs, Steve Gordon Jr., Jeff Slobotski,  Robert Murphy, Michael Kelley, Brad Wisler, Chris Burns, Nathan T. Wright and a slew of others.

Things get even better tomorrow with a line-up of great speakers.  I’m pretty excited to hear from Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame.

If you’re not here in Omaha, you can tune it to the chatter  http://twitter.bigomaha.com.  Holler at me tomorrow if you are here and I’ll be recapping Friday and the whole weekend next week.

During the last decade, millions of websites were released year after year.  In a great trend for all involved, user experience became the dominant focus. Social media is now skyrocketing in nearly every sector for every audience. Websites are now being used on mobile phones and devices. Desktop applications are interacting with websites. Businesses are integrating a large amount of their operations into web-based platforms.

The trend in web design during the last decade resembles that of the 1960s and 70s in the advertising industry, often referred to as “The Golden Age of Advertising”. A time when great, original ideas were continuously rolling off the tables at agencies, and new technologies had enabled conceptual wizards to push the envelope with out-of-the-box ideas. Like then, we have had agencies and individuals all over the world pushing the envelope for the last decade to make the internet the best it can be.

Has anyone considered we may be in the golden age of web design? Some observations I have on this are below:

• Larger companies are re-investing in great design and technology regularly to retain and attract users. Smaller companies are biting off as much website as they can chew when facing overhauls and brand updates. Most companies are representing a growing interest in SEO, analytics, social media, marketing strategies and usability.
• Advancement of web application technologies – Web 2.0 methodology and technologies have swept the premium web marketplace and is here to stay.
• A threshold in interactive web design. While interactive & animation technologies continue heavy development, the majority of websites stay relatively limited with those features – particularly utilizing Adobe Flash, embedded video and JavaScript frameworks lightly.
• There has been an unprecedented drop in the releases of base website languages. From 1995 to 2001 there were 6 official version releases of HTML in 5 1/2 years. From 1996 to 1998 two versions of CSS were released. Now we stand around 10 years later with the next generations of each still pending – which are XHTML 2.0,  CSS 3, and XHTML/HTML 5.0.

Summing it all up:
Utilizing the tools we have today, web designers and developers have not required major advancements in technology to pump out robust, user-oriented, interactive websites. As much as anything, the ideas and approach has evolved.

The marketplace has also shifted to deliver stronger websites to smaller businesses at lower costs. In addition many businesses are going green and utilizing web technologies as cost-efficient marketing channels. Wikipedia is now the local library for many average citizens; Facebook, the schoolyard; Google, the everything.

We know it will continue to get better from here, but what I’m getting at is where we may be on the web technology curve.

Sounds like the golden age of web design to me.

This interesting question came from my wife this weekend as she exclaimed her love for AllRecipes.com. She commented that if she could only visit one website, it would be AllRecipes.com for all of the cooking ideas she gets from it.

This question really got me thinking about the value a website can have. That value is it’s content. Do you have the kind of value to be the only site a person would visit in your industry?

So how about you? If restricted to just one website, which one would it be? A news website? A sports website? A resource website?

Please comment and share your one website you can’t live without. Search engines don’t qualify so please don’t answer Google. If you want you can break down a site for each category or news, life, work.

My one website: I guess I would go with USAtoday.com

I look forward to your comments!

I was able to watch the Broncos come back on the Browns for a victory online as well as my phone.  Just a fun glimpse into the future of more media consumption online and mobile … with the TV fading away.  Think it won’t?

The only bad news was that Broncos QB Jake Cutler had a monster night in Fantasy Football … and of course I’m playing the team in my league that has him at QB.

Do you have anything to share on your transition to web or mobile from the tube?

What Was My Hesitation To Start On Twitter?
I thought there couldn’t be enough value in short thoughts, randomly in the day. I couldn’t wrap myself around the benefits and use of the technology, mostly because I didn’t even give it a try. I thought that online interaction couldn’t get any better than a blog post and comment string. I was wrong.

“Finally signing up for twitter and tracking peeps down”
Yup, that was my first Tweet. With that first update I starting to search out people already using Twitter and I started to understand the value. Foremost for me in the beginning, Twitter was going to be access to some great minds in web design, Internet marketing and all that other web stuff I love. Finally I looked at what I could “buy” by being on Twitter instead of what I could “sell”. I could suddenly see what intrigued Lee Odden, where Ted Murphy was pitching Social Spark ( I heart Rockstartup.com), what conference Rand Fishkin is speaking at or even the random humor of Aaron Mentele and Ed Kohler. I was eavesdropping on great Internet minds, thanks to their sharing via Twitter.

Participating In The Conversation
I remember when starting to blog, the pressure I felt to make “valuable” comments on all these great blogs and posts I was reading. The fear of saying something basic (or stupid) to these great web minds often lead me to not participate. Then I decided I would never get anything out of sitting on the sidelines and that these great minds would probably still interact with my takes even if they weren’t earth shattering. They did.

I learned even more because I jumped in the game. That same thing has applied to Twitter. The first few days I thought I had to tweet some great information, break some great news or hype a blog post first. Then I remembered my blogging experience and I just went with what I was really doing and being myself. Turns out I have things to offer without being an A-list. Now the tweets come easy, without pressure and I get more out of it. I enjoy it.

The Benefits Of Twitter So Far
The biggest benefit has been the access to the intelligent and savvy minds of industry experts as I touched on. What a great source to get a better pulse of what they are plugged into … or what they just ordered for lunch.

Another benefit has been finding other peers out there locally in Minneapolis and in other areas of the country doing what I do and being equally talented at it. Rick Brooks of Flyte New Media, Teddy Garcia of Cyber Media Marketing, August Ash Web Design here in MN and of course knowing even more on Paul Jahn’s local search thoughts. Being in the industry that has the biggest users of Twitter is a benefit. If I was into pottery or cooking, I doubt I would have access to so many respected and experienced folks.

Getting put onto news or industry articles quickly has been another benefit. People like Matt McGee, Chris Winfield and Jennifer Laycock put me onto some great info well before I would ever find it through blogs … and maybe I wouldn’t even find it at all.

I’ve been baited and hooked on Twitter as well. Just last week PRmoxie of Sterling Cross Communications mentioned a new business publication in Minneapolis she was just added to and when I asked her how to get in on it … she let me know a good PR person (like herself of course) could make that happen. A sales pitch on Twitter! That tweet did get me thinking of when the timing will be right to utilize her services. Without following her on Twitter, that wouldn’t have happened.

So What’s Next?
It certainly has been an eye opening month for me on Twitter. I haven’t even touched on the many other business or marketing uses of Twitter and the accompanying tools others have created. I’ll be posting more on that down the road. I’m looking forward to tapping in to more great minds, access to industry information and learning. I’m interested to see what my threshold is for following, can I possibly follow 100 people and still get great value? 200?

I will be using Twitter to launch and promote an internal web project for Five Technology later this month and I can’t wait to see the results. Lastly I’m curious to see what it will take to gain more of my own audience and followers.

Will mainstream media and attention push more small business owners and management, especially in the Minnesota area, to join Twitter to follow a great small business web design and Internet marketing mind? I hope so and they (and you now!) can follow me by visiting Twitter.com/AaronWeiche.

It’s not hard to imagine the same growth and acceptance blogs have seen in the mainstream this past year hitting Twitter. But even if that doesn’t happen, I have already found the value of Twitter for me, in just 30 days.

The first, since it has the mass appeal, is the US Open golf playoff going on right now. Thanks to the US Open website, I can watch streaming LIVE video of the bonus playoff round today between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate while I sit at my desk.

Without Internet video of this, I would be checking updates every 10 to 15 minutes or taking a long lunch at the bar around the corner (still sounds like a good option). Internet video brings more eyes to the web. I”ll be interested to find the stats on the increase in web visitors and viewers for todays playoff round.

Drumroll please ……
My second example is our new Five Technology company video. We finished up this minute and a half segment last week, added it to our website as well as a few video sharing sites on the net. Internet video is a great way to showcase your company in an overview, offer customer testimonials or feature a specific product or service. Five’s Internet video production can help you plan, script, shoot and edit your own video segment to really enhance your website. Todays’ website visitor needs more than a few lines of text to engage them and video on your website grabs a hold of the user and lets you tell your story. It truly is a powerful and engaging medium.

Here is our web design company video below in a YouTube player, but if you visit our Why Five page you will see we can customize and embed a Flash video player into any website or page with endless customization.

Give Five a holler with your video production needs for your website.

Google’s Summary: On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai, and Tel Aviv, will hold events to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation.

Now I’m not overly connected in the news world, but in reading the USA Today daily (hard copy and feeds), the Minneapolis Star Tribune daily, watching television news and browsing a few of the national and international news websites, I had heard/read/seen NOTHING about this.

Running into this on Google gave me two thoughts:

1. How did I miss this in other news sources? Did they just not promote it?
(I have seen 50+ stories, tv segments and posts on Britney Spears on HIMYM)

2. Just how much reach does Google have for promotion and information delivery like this?
(Answer: A LOT!)

Something that other media outlets didn’t reach me with came to me from a website that I search for information on. But this time it was flipped a bit and they gave me information without me searching for it. What could this exposure do for other initiatives or causes? If Google featured an organization, event, non-profit or cause daily … or even weekly, just imagine the exposure level it could bring for them. If they went as far as changing the visuals like the black screen for Earth Hour … wow, they basically made me investigate Earth Hour just to learn why they went black. Thats powerful.

Just a few things to think about, and another angle to think about on Google’s future. With the traffic and audience they have, they can make a big deal out of whatever they want. Thanks to them making a big deal out of earth hour, my house will be dark from 8pm to 9pm central tonight up here in Minnesota.