As the internet and technology zips along every hour of every day, literally hundreds of new threats arise in the form of spyware, malware, adware, worms, virii, you name it. For you, the user, it is imperative that you be proactive in protection of your machine, instead of reactive (waiting until something happens to take action). The more proactive you are in applying security, the more you can stop spreading junk that comes through your inbox or browser, and more importantly, protect your identity.

There are lots of retail software suites that can accomplish the basic protection you need for your computer. But lets take a look at some free offerings that you can find on the internet that can do just as good of a job and be used in conjunction with Norton type packages, adding an additional 60-80% more protection.

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For over 6 years now I’ve had the pleasure of being friends with some of the best guys in the music business. I’ve never met or read about anyone else who has put as much blood, sweat, tears and heart into what they do as far as music goes. They, like us, had humble beginnings in West Chester, PA. So, I wanted to do all I could to help them in whatever way possible to succeed. Naturally, this meant with the internet.

This is actually how I got started with my career, as these guys (specifically, Deron Miller) were the only ones to give me a shot at doing a website way back in the day. When I joined Inclind in 2005, I was really able to step up their game online and help them with their continuing success. Their website has over 30,000 registered members and receives on average 20k hits, viewed by millions, and their forum is very active with thousands and thousands of posts and topics. It is one of our cornerstone websites and one of our most unique clients. You may have spotted them before on MTVs “Viva la Bam” or “Jackass”, but the real deal lies in the music of the band.

The roots of the relationships that bring you the present-day CKY date back to late 1992 at East High School in West Chester, PA. 14-year-old drummer Jess Margera is a freshmen in Pre-Algebra 1A class, where he meets 16-year-old guitarist/vocalist Deron Miller, a junior who had past credits to make up. They became friends, but it wasn’t until later that they started playing music together. By 1995, they were writing songs and practicing together exclusively in Jess’ basement under the band name Foreign Objects. They entered the studio that summer, and, on October 1, they released a five-song EP, The Undiscovered Numbers & Colors, which was a popular local release. They played two official shows as Foreign Objects with the first of many live bassist’s over the next few years.

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For the past 2 years, I have been using various blog platforms on the internet (such as LiveJournal, Blogger, Wordpress, and a slew of others that didn’t quite make it) and in client project developments for Inclind. I even use one for my own personal site/playground, built with Wordpress.

But recently, I took a step back and said, why Wordpress? Is it really that great?

Lets look at the reasons why I chose to integrate Wordpress into websites as a way of content management / blogging:

1. Simple to use.

2. Not hard to learn.

3. Allows non-internet types to jump in and start writing without having to program anything.

When I thought about it, are these really perks at all? Especially since I am an application developer? In retrospect, I feel like a lazy developer for bringing Wordpress into play for client projects, despite the fact I hooked it in well and made it work for them. But, you know what they say about hindsight.

That was then, this is now.

Thankfully, I am a better developer now than I was back then, and decided to code my own blogging solution that would be open ended enough for our needs that it could be deployed quickly into existing sites as well as ones under development. Since our web applications are powered by Coldfusion, and Wordpress is entirely in PHP, it creates a headache when trying to use Wordpress on a non PHP site. The reason being, you can’t run Coldfusion code in a php file, and vice versa, so it creates more overhead when integrating it into our Coldfusion applications and adds difficulty in extending site functions and maintaining all the code.

I thought, hell, why not just recreate Wordpress, take out what you don’t really need, and keep it streamlined? After doing some planning and whiteboarding, it occurred to me that creating a solution would be rather simple, and in just 5 days, I had built a blogging platform that is good enough for most people to use. I concluded that blog only needs a few core things: the content, the attributes (date, author, views), and ability to comment. This is all the user needs to conduct a blog. Other things like search engine optimization can be handled by the developer. The user does not need this headache, especially those that are not internet-savvy. What I mean is that our system will generate the appropriate data to gain search engine rank, aggregate feeds so people may add that blog content to their site, block spambots and other such features that the average user shouldn’t have to concern themselves with.

Wordpress does allow for theme switching though. But, that is just a feature for people without a website, and the templates available for it are rather bland. Thankfully, we have the two best graphic designers in all of Delmarva, Jason Steagall and Tom Brown, that can cook up beautiful websites in their sleep. This allows us to give customers exactly what they want without problems. Other companies tend to get templates from sweatshops like templatemonster.com, charge a ton of money, and force poor coding into these designs. Not Inclind. We build a custom solution each and every time, and thus is the basis of me dropping Wordpress as an offering.

Remarkably, I was able to get this done in just a week and ready to use. We have a lot of upcoming sites that are already using this feature, and I am quite proud of what I was able to achieve in just a short time. From a user perspective, I can tell you that around 80% of blogging platform features are simply not necessary. In other words, blog administration intranets are more complicated than they really need to be. By taking all of this away and leaving in what you do need, you will get more out of your blog and website that you can imagine, and have fun doing it. All you have to do is post, our system handles the rest. It will update itself to search engines, manage comments, block spammers, and everything else that makes blogging worthwhile all on its own. It is also 100% customizable from our perspective, should a user want to customize our platform even more, which I/we are happy to do.

Don’t believe me? Simply go to google.com and type in my name, Kevin Quillen. I come up in nearly 75% of the results on the first 5 pages. Now just imagine what we can do for your site with the blogging platform I just built, or our other web applications that include this function. After just a few months of tinkering, my site shot to the top of the list. Your site can be at the top too.

We offer free consultations for any project you have in mind. Call Inclind, Inc at (302) 856-2802 today and ask how we can help YOU.

So you want to learn how to play guitar huh, but not sure where to begin?

Most people will tell you that you should learn to play acoustic first, which is a fairly big misconception to bestow upon those interested in learning guitar. Learning guitar should be a fun process, and never feel like work or a job.

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Who says you can’t grill in the rain? We brought a grill to the Inclind Headquarters last week and have decided to start using it on Fridays. This week was Burger Friday Week. Then, on Wednesday, we found at that torrential downpour was going to happen on our Burger Friday. Initially, we thought that we’d have to wait till next week, weather permitting. Then, we thought, we have a garage. We can grill in there (with the door open). So, Burger Friday stays!!!

So, our outstanding Graphics & Illustration Director / Grillmaster, Tom Brown, grilled up some “Tommy Burgers” (patent pending). Susan Hillman, our Marketing Director / Pastry - Desert Chef, made some macaroni salad and cookies and the feast was on. While watching some NCAA Tournament games on the Internet, we collectively devoured the slow cooked 1/2 pound burgers. We’ll be continuing this tradition of Inclind Family meals on Fridays.

Next week is Brats and Dogs Friday, weather permitting, we’ll be able to eat outdoors this time.

I was a little late to this blog mania that seems to be sweeping our society. But once I began, I never looked back. I started my foray into the realm of blogging with Yahoo! 360. I’m nearing 1000 blog posts there after being an active blogger for a bit over a year.

It’s really quite amazing how social networking technologies like this are shrinking the world. I’ve got friends in Japan, New Zealand, The Philippines, and Bosnia-Herzegovina… and every place in between. It’s interesting how we attract like minds, kindred spirits, from the vast pool of humanity that is finding its place in an online world.

I suppose there are nearly as many reasons to blog as there are people who blog. Some use it as online journals, some to spread knowledge, teaching and opinions, others blog to rant. We walk, we talk, we dance, we blog.

So, blogging, to me, is like any other form of communication. We communicate what we believe, feel, care about, are interested in, and occasionally, someone who shares our worldview finds it. And we share, and we join, and we blog….