This is a great article. I completely agree. Personally, I love writing content for web. This made me think a lot more into what I am writing.

This is a big truth and I really like the way he put it: If our community fails to recognize, divide, and conquer the multiple roles associated with planning for, creating, publishing, and governing content, we’ll keep underestimating the time, budget, and expertise it takes to do content right.

I like that he included email campaigns in the last talking point.

I think that this is also a very strong point in the article: This is a whole lot more than smart copywriting. An effective web writer must understand the basics of user experience design, be able to translate information architecture documentation, write effective metadata, and manage an ever-changing content inventory.

Google has great information about SEO. Here is a link to their SEO starter guide PDF. Here is a link of guidelines to follow to help Google crawl your site.

SEO Boss

SEO Boss has some good blog posts about SEO.

Information SEO

This has lots of great articles about SEO. From basics to tips, etc.

House of Blues Dallas has a great calendar. It is short, sweet, and to the point. I also like how it shows the first 10 shows on the homepage.

Gilley’s Music

Gilley’s Music has a decent design, but their calendar is very appealing with all the photos they incorporated. I really like how they added a colored triangle on each photo to show what genre the show is.

Granada

Granada has a solid design. Great visual with the colors on the links. Their calendar has great functionality, although I’m not a fan of the calendar layout rather than a blog style layout. They also color coordinated the shows by genre. The have decent social integration and the ticket but is easily visible.

The Crocodile

I like the looks of the home page. It shows a few of the upcoming show’s poster designs. It puts the address front and center and the social links are easy to spot, also. Their calendar is a little messy, but I like the looks of the show pages (when you actually click on a show). I don’t get why it doesn’t show up on all of the shows, but I love how they add arrows on the show pages to switch back and forth between shows without having to press the back button.

Largo LA

This site has a great simplistic design, although it is a litter over-sized. I think everything could be shrunk about 70% and it would cut down drastically on the scrolling issue. Same problem with the calendar. It is really long. The show pages are a little boring, but they have great social integration.

Red Rocks

The only thing I really like about this site is the way the background image stretches across the screen and switches out on a timer. I think this would be really cool with some great venue shots. I don’t know if I like the design of it, but I like the main nav being at the bottom.

Stubbs

I love the design of this site. The rustic textures and the color scheme. The client really like the fun navigation. He wants to do the same thing with this site, but with the different bar logos. They have a great calendar design and layout, also.

Emos

I like the simplicity and color scheme.

First Avenue

The color scheme is pretty and subtle. A little too tame for a venue in my opinion, but it’s clean. The design is great. I like the tear off paper behind the logo and the way they list their upcoming shows on the home page.

The Orange Peel

I like the look of their calendar. Everything else is pretty gross.

La Zona Rosa

This site is beautiful. I love it! The style is great. The color scheme is great. The way they listed the upcoming shows on the home page is great. The show pages are a bit boring, but they have amazing social integration and a great side bar. The calendar is short and to the point and still really pretty. This site is by far my overall favorite.

Redo The Door and Prophet Bar’s website. They have a horrible website with a horrible calendar combined with a horrible splash page. HORRIBLE. Would love to redo it and work in some back end database coding.

Dallas Shows Site

I think it would be cool to do a site that compiles all of the shows at all the different Dallas venues into one site. One stop shop for live Dallas shows.

Venue Rating Website

It would be cool to be able to rate and comment on different venues. Maybe tell everybody that they have great pizza, or not to come if a certain sound guy is working, etc.

Tiny Chef is a very addicting restaurant management game. This game is one of those on-going games that you have to keep checking back into to succeed. You choose different kinds of food to serve to your customers and level up and decorate your restaurant.

You start off as a small plain restaurant with 2 burners, 2 servers, and a few tables. The burners are what the food is cooked on and you can make one dish per burner. The servers are where the finished meal is placed and they also hold one dish. There is a chair and table for every customer. Different dishes have different prices and different cooking times and serving sizes. The dishes that take the longest have the most serving sizes and usually make the most money.

One of my favorite parts on the game is getting to decorate and arrange the restaurant. You have to make sure that you aren’t blocking any of your sims’ paths and that there are enough tables for all of your customers or they will get tired of waiting and leave. The more money that you spend in the game the more you level up. So decorating your restaurant also helps you get more decorations.

When you level up in the game you get more options in the store. For every other level or so you get the option to expand your store. The bigger your store gets the more customers you can hold. When leveling up you also get the option to add more burners and servers allowing you to make and serve more food at a time. This comes in handy when you get up to the dishes that take 24+ hours. You can help your waiters out by cleaning off tables after your customers complete their meal. The more you make of one dish the more stars you earn. The more stars you earn the more food dishes you get and the more you level up. You master a meal when you have 3 stars.

Tiny Chef is a silly but very addicting game and if you have time to kill I recommend the download. Especially if you are one of those people that loves sims games and customizing things. The app is free and is currently only available on the iPhone.

Happy Hours is a great city based iPhone application to discover bars and restaurants that are having drink or food specials. They have different lists like “Most Liked” and “Editor Picks” in addition to the search results. Since the app is different for each city you have to choose a major metroplex and then you can filter down within those results. The Dallas Observer provides all the information for the Dallas / Fort Worth Metroplex.

By default the app goes to your search results screen when first opened. There are different ways to filter your results, for example day & time, location, specials, cuisine, features, and buzz. Day and time defaults to the current time, but you can change it if you are looking for something in the future. The location option is to narrow your results down even further within the metroplex. You can select and deselect certain cities and neighborhoods to narrow down your location.

Specials only has two options, drink specials or food specials. In cuisine you can choose from a large list of different cuisines to narrow your food pallet. In features you can search for very specific features of a venue, for example dj, after hours, ATM, free wifi, valet, etc. The last sorting option is buzz. In buzz you can choose genres of places, for example cheap eats, date spot, good for groups, quiet, etc.

The best features of the app are the most popular and editor’s pick sections. These are great for discovering places that other people frequent. Most popular is basically the same list but sorted with the most popular at the top instead of by distance. Editor’s picks is a list of editor’s picks that are available for the time you have selected. You can also use the filters that I talked about before in both of these lists.

Overall Happy Hours is an amazing free app for finding happy hours near you. It is only available on the iPhone for now, but the Dallas Observer does a great job of keeping up with the Dallas / Fort Worth metroplex.

QuadCamera is one of many photography apps available for the iPhone that allow you to do fun and artistic things with the iPhone’s built-in camera. And the finished results are usually something you’d be proud to put on your Flickr page.

QuadCamera allows you to take four quick shots in succession, producing a single image divided into four quadrants. Just tap the camera icon on the bottom of the screen, and it takes four quick snapshots, complete with lens shudder sound effects. The snaps are arranged in a four-by-four square.

Tapping the colored squares in the lower right corner of the screen brings up some options, including changing your layout to 1×4 or switching to an eight-shot sequence. You can also adjust the timer, putting more of a delay in between shots. You can also switch your shot style from vivid, high-contrast, or grayscale.

With the iPhone 4 they also added the feature of switching back and forth from the front facing camera to the lower resolution back facing camera. This is very fun for getting yourself in the shot.

Overall Quad Camera is one of my favorite photography applications. It is $1.99 on the app store and well worth it, although only available for the iPhone.

Meebo has finally released an official app for the iPhone that lets you connect to your Meebo account from your iPhone. Meebo combines all of the instant messaging services into one convenient app. Meebo on the iPhone supports a very large amount of services, including the big ones like AIM, MSN, Yahoo! IM, Google Talk, MySpace IM, ICQ, Jabber, and Facebook Chat. If you’re already using Meebo then the Meebo iPhone app will automatically pull in your account settings and log you into your accounts just as you have setup online already.

The app is broken down into 3 tabs: Buddies, Chats and Accounts. Buddies lists all your contacts along with a service icon, buddy icon, status, and nickname, sorted by your custom groups. You can search for people by name and tap on any buddy to start a chat. Tap the + icon if you’de like to add a new buddy, type in their name and choose the network.

The Chat tab shows a list of all your active chats and is broken down into all, or recent. Chat messages are shown in little bubbles, similar to what you see in the iPhone’s native text messaging app, but with a more subdued color finish. You can insert smileys by tapping the happy face icon. You can swipe left and right to toggle between active chats quickly.

The Accounts tab is where you can view and edit your online status, list of all your connected accounts, and where you can add new ones, sign on and off, and edit some account settings as well. A bunch more settings can be found if you go into the Meebo section of your iPhone’s settings section. From there you can enable landscape keyboards, auto-correct, auto-capitalization, showing timestamps on IM, and more.

Overall the Meebo iPhone app is a great IM utility for the iPhone. If you are already using the Meebo Desktop Notifier software or FireFox plugins, then the iPhone app will be right up your alley. It is currently free in the Apple App Store and also available for Android and Blackberry.

About Incredibooth from its creators – “Incredibooth is a photobooth in your pocket. No coins needed, no hunting down old dirty dive bars, and no longer limited to a single backdrop! Step up, sit down, and get ready to cram as many of your friends together as possible. The photo booth has returned, and it’s incredible.”

Incredibooth is a great photo app that replicates the old vintage style of photo booths without all the hassle of finding one. It brings all the fun of a photobooth directly to your iPhone. It has a beautiful interface with a vintage wood style. It is a very simple application and is split up into 2 screens. The main screen is where you choose your settings and take the photos. The second screen is where you can view all the photos that you have taken. It takes 4 shots combining them into one popular photobooth style picture.

Incredibooth has 3 mind blowing lens/film combinations. On the main screen there is a dial with a 1,2, and 3. They could have done a better job at labeling these selections. Your options in order are a Helga Lens with Supergrain B&W film, the classic John S lens with SuperContrast film, and a custom Kaimal lens with Infrared film.

My favorite part about Incredibooth is its iPhone 4 feature (obviously you don’t get this feature if you have an older model). On all iPhone 4 devices it uses the new front facing camera. Some people don’t like the front facing camera because of the poor quality, but for a vintage photobooth picture it works perfect! You can pose and see yourself as you take the picture just like you would in a real photobooth.

Incredibooth also has some amazing social media integrations. When you are viewing a specific photo you have a share link. Your options with sharing are Share on Facebook, Send in Email, and Save to Photo Library. The Share on Facebook feature is a lot like doing a mobile upload in Facebook. It loads it into its own album called “Incredibooth Photo Strips” on your profile. The other two options are pretty standard. You can email the photo to somebody or save it to your iPhone’s photo library.

Overall Incredibooth is a fantastic app that incorporates the old school style of a photobooth into an easy to navigate simple iPhone application. It is $0.99 on the Apple App store and is currently only available for the iPhone. So get your friends together and have fun taking those goofy those photobooth strips that you grown up loving.

Snooth is the high all mighty of wine apps. Just about anything you could want to know about wine and where to find it. It has a great maps feature with all the quality places to buy wine (even though this does not include your liquor stores with a few bottles, only places with a large selection). In certain areas you can also view their inventory and see what wines they currently have available.

One of the most unique features of Snooth is their photo search. Any of you out there that have search for a wine rating know how difficult it can be to find the exact bottle. With Snooth you can take a photograph of the label and it will find it for you. This is very convenient when browsing wine in a store. Not sure about a certain one? Just take a photograph and instantly see all of that wine’s information and ratings.

A very handy feature when you are looking for something new is Snooth’s Wine Search (even though its more of a browse). You choose what color you are looking for, what price, and what country and it does the rest, giving you a list of all the wines that fit your criteria. If you want to dig deeper it also gives you filters for your list. You can filter by vintage, winery, and varietal. You can also choose how it sorts your list and your options are by Snooth Rank, quality/price ratio, price, and vintage. You’ll catch yourself finding all kinds of wines that you never knew existed.

Finally, my favorite part about Snooth is My Snooth. My Snooth has three sections: My Reviewed Wines, Cellar, and Wishlist. My reviewed wines is a list of all wines that you have added a rating to. So you can go into your reviewed wines, find a wine that you tried last week, and see what you rated it. Cellar is a list of wines that you have in your cellar (this feature is obviously for the collectors). Wishlist is very handy when you hear somebody mention a wine that you want to try. Any time you hear about a wine, just type it into your wishlist. This will come in handy the next time you are at the wine store.

Snooth is a spectacular wine app currently only available on the App Store. It has both free and paid versions. The difference between the two is the photo search feature. So go ahead. Let Snooth change the way you interact with wine.