Thousands have seen Daniel Shakhmundes in videos on the web and cinema, but he is just as comfortable performing roles behind the scene.  A portfolio showcasing the various responsibilities is now available on the Video page.  Sometimes Shak is on-screen, but you can also find him doing one or more of the following:

• Shooting video,
• Editing video, and
• Formatting & publishing video digitally.

Daniel Shakhmundes just upgraded to the latest version of WordPress smoothly and easily, thanks to the WordPress Automatic Upgrade 1.2 Release.

Keeping up with technology is easier and more cost-effective when you use open source software with large communities. Avoid entrapment by “Vendor Lock-In” exercised by local competitors’ use of proprietary software for Content Management System (CMS) applications, we recommend that you contact us for further information on how D.Shak can improve your bottom-line and manage your internet presence more effectively.

This month, Daniel Shakhmundes would like to highlight the following services: Website Development, including the new “Live Real-Time Website Editing Service”.

Daniel Shakhmundes has been creating new websites and improving existing ones for twelve years now. In that time, he has successfully participated in all the roles entailed, from production of virtually all types of media/content to managerial responsibilities. His broad specialization and diverse business experience enables him to deliver a vast variety of website-related services, while sustainably opening new opportunities that are business-worthy.

Our website design goals:

• Standards-compliant programming & media formatting that consistently delivers user-friendly experiences across all the most popular computer environments;
• Efficiently-implemented and fast-loading programming and media encoding that keeps visitors’ attention;
• Expert selection of the best 3^rd party partners & software to leverage the best of what’s out there when streamlining development.

While many clients are already familiar with Daniel Shakhmundes’ dynamic methods of website development – custom-tailored to each client’s circumstances – some have also experienced and specifically requested what will now be officially dubbed “Live Real-Time Website Editing Service”. In most circumstances, we are able to carry out website edits/revisions immediately after they are requested, whether communicated in-person or over a telephone.

Please contact Daniel Shakhmundes by phone or email to request further information and/or a quote.

Phone: 1-905-321-9898

Email: d@shak.ws

The Search Engine Optimization Checklist was due for an update, since there is much more to write, and the initial content from its launch in mid-May is just the tip of the iceberg. Have a read of the new third point: Know Your Stats (Correctly)

D.Shak

Tonight, Shak removed Akismet’s WordPress sidebar widget that displayed a count how many spam comments it has automatically filtered from this website. Unfortunately, its output was not compliant with the loosest of XHTML standards, transitional. He gave up on his search for a solution when Google’s first, most relevant, and only search result was a thread on the WordPress.com forums from 2006/2007 titled “Akismet widget not xhtml valid”. Even on the WordPress.org Plugins/Plugin Compatibility/2.6 page, Akismet is listed as a “Working plugin, no issues”, but “with XHTML validation errors”. Shak will contact Akismet and see what they have to say…

WordPress is built on a fantastic programming language named PHP. It’s free, it works on virtually all computing platforms, and it’s definitely one of the reasons WordPress rules. A small token of our appreciation is now near the bottom right corner of every page – proud to be powered by PHP!

Would you spend about one month in jail for a million dollars? Well, a man named Joe Vos is doing so about thirty times over!

This news item is note-worthy for the Niagara Region, since we have a Microage office in St. Catharines that many Niagara businesses deal with. Check out a report of Joe Vos defrauding Microage [and others] on itbusiness.ca for more details. In case the original article becomes unavailable, we printed/cached this article for our own records…

Joe Vos’ incredulously lenient punishment is yet another example of why it is very important to deal with people and businesses of the highest integrity possible – despite the fact that many lives are affected by such a multi-million dollar white-collar crime, we feel that the Canadian government has treated it incredibly trivially. Daniel Shakhmundes has terminated client relationships when encountering unethical behaviour on their parts, and strives to protect his own business and the clients involved with great discipline. Current and prospective clients can rest assured that when it comes to technology and business, Daniel Shakhmundes and his associates do their best to mitigate involvement with people like Joe Vos, while still planning for the potential disasters that may occur.

Daniel Shakhmundes is pleased to announce the signing of the Clickback Partner Program with Netstart eBusiness. Netstart is a Canadian Email Service Provider (ESP) that exclusively provides services to professional design firms across North America.

Daniel Shakhmundes now offers email marketing software and related services such as email template design to our customers. The software, Clickback MAIL has been on the market since 1999, providing companies with communication and retention solutions for their customers. Your customers are the most vital part of your business, and often it is hard to find the time to stay in touch, inform them or let them know about your business.

Clickback MAIL is simple to use and is self-managed. There is a LITE version for companies new to email marketing and a PRO version for marketers that want more powerful targeting features.

Click to learn more about Email Marketing.

Click to learn more about the Features of Clickback MAIL.

Call Daniel Shakhmundes at 905-321-9898 today to learn more and get started communicating with your customers cost effectively with email marketing.

WordPress version 2.6 was released just over a week ago. We made quick work of it today, thanks to the WordPress Automatic upgrade plug-in. We also upgraded the other plug-ins we use – it was all too easy!

We also added a new link to the Links page:

Searchme Visual Search

Another knock-off of an interface popularized by Apple/MacOS, this time with respect to the web and its various media.

A presentation by Marta Kagan

| View | Upload your own

Screenshot of Google News search: Google Viacom YouTube logs
Friday, July 4^th, 2008
http://w.shak.ws/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/google_viacom_20080704.png

We posted a video yesterday to this WordPress-based website, which prompted setting up the “Post to Blog” sharing option of YouTube, which makes it faster and easier to share content. In doing so, D.Shak felt that it would be appropriate to carry out an important maintenance task that has been due for a couple months – upgrade from WordPress 2.5 to 2.5.1 – so, he also tried the WordPress Automatic upgrade plug-in. Upgrades are important to keep up with, but they often result in issues to iron out. There were a couple burps (i.e. the process was repeated two or three times), getting through it error-free by the end, and it seems that all modifications have been preserved. Overall, today’s experience with WordPress and YouTube was impressively smooth and easy.

Considering the relative ease and success of upgrading this WordPress deployment, we were left motivated to also activate the Akismet plug-in, which checks comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. We needed to setup a WordPress.com API key to use it, which was quick & easy to do. Shak.WS is now showing off Akismet stats on the sidebar at the right! Hopefully the Akismet plug-in will save some time that was being lost to spam, of which I currently receive several per day.

D.Shak

With my 12 years of business on the World Wide Web (WWW AKA W3 AKA the Web), I have stayed rather quiet on the subject of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I have used Yahoo! and Google since their beginnings, and know full-well that the ranking properties/characteristics of search engines is generally proprietary and surrounded in secrecy. Even though best-practices and standards have been publicly published, technical aspects of quality in programming & design vary in importance to search engine ranking, and their relevance can change over time. Furthermore, there are other criteria factored in that are organic and otherwise. I have always designed & built to conform to the most obvious and expected elements, and the approach has evidently brought success to my endeavours & business.

Today, I began publishing a page on my own internal/proprietary trade-secret knowledge of SEO, starting with a couple points, and with many more to come.

D.Shak

Like Daniel Shakhmundes’ Links page, his Clients page went on vacation for a bit more than half-a-year, skipping the previous generation of his website.

For now, only a few of Shak’s many clients are listed…