Curtis Carmichael

Here are ten of the best business review sites on the Internet — both regional and national (no particular order):

1. enetez.com
2. Yahoo Local
3. Local Businesses on Local.com
4. YellowPages.com
5. WhitePages.com Business Search
6. New Hampshire Business Review
7. NH.com (Business and Consumer Info Search)
8. Manta.com
9. Business.com
10. Hoovers.com

Google Local is another great site but users are initially greeted with a map which may be confusing to many people (they may believe they landed on Google Maps instead).

If you’re looking for customer service numbers fast, ContactHelp.com is an excellent directory.

If you’re like me and am trying the free Beta edition of Windows 7 and had a printer driver issue, this may help.  I have an HP LaserJet 1000 printer which is now 8-10 years old but still runs great and is a solid printer.

Since this printer is discontinued and a formal official driver has not been created by HP yet, you’ll want to download the latest printing solution for Windows XP.  From there, you’ll want to download the “HP LaserJet 1000 Printing Software Solution” item (when you click the download button, the filename of the download should be lj1488en.exe.

Once you download this file, you’ll want to extract the files from the archive (the file you download is an archive file).  Afterwards, find the files you extracted (i.e. c:/lj1488/) and right click on the setup.exe file, selecting “Properties”.  From there, click on the Compatibility tab, check the “Run this program in compatibility mode for” checkbox and select “Windows XP (Service Pack 3).  Click OK and run that file.  You may get a few error box windows and you may have to click on the “Skip” button when it asks you to power your printer or connect the USB cord but it should install the driver and the printer solution software.

Its that easy — the trick is to run the setup file in compatibility mode.  The same trick works for installing on Windows Vista.

Drupal Design Camp Boston was a 2-day event held between June 13-14, 2009 at the Stata Center on MIT’s campus. This was the first event focusing exclusively on how to design/create themes for Drupal. Drupal conferences/events in the past were primarily geared for ‘techies’ vs. those who have more of a creative/design background. Admission, lunch and coffee were free courtesy of the event sponsors.

Overall, I felt this was a great event. The speakers were primarily from the ‘techie’ side of the Drupal spectrum so it was a bit difficult to follow theming/design advice being more of a web marketing and design type and not presently having a solid understanding of Drupal’s terminology, but they provided an excellent overview/foundation for me and others like myself to grow upon.

I learned designing for Drupal can become easier by utilizing grid design tools and other utilities such as Blueprint CSS, NineSixty, Skinr, Studio, Yahoo CSS etc. Using a grid system/CSS framework can significantly reduce development time, address browser compatibility issues via built-in functions/code and allow you to be on the ’same page’ as other developers in creating web sites and thus set yourself up to get more support by utilizing well-known development tools.

Read the rest of this entry »