It didn’t take long after speaking with Frank and Lisa Fik, the owners of the Alpenrose B&B, about their desires for a new website that I decided that this project was not going to be just another brochure site. No this site needed to be flexible, fast, and most of all it needed to be easy and intuitive for Frank and Lisa to update, edit, and manage all of the sites content. What this site really needed was a tailor made solution.

Enter Django, a Python based web framework that emphasizes re-usability and “pluggability” of components, rapid development, and the principle of DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself). For a little background, the Python programming  language has been around since the late 1980’s, and Django has been around since 2005. When combined you get the strict, efficient, platform independent of Python with a fully functional web framework.

Using Django Rev Software was able to meld Frank and Lisa’s vision of an easy to use fully self maintained website with the sleek modern design created in regular html by Rev Software’s newest designer. The website features a blog, availability calendar, multiple web forms, Flickr and Google Maps integration, multiple layers of available customizations, and more.

Now enough about the website, lets talk about the Alpenrose. This Bed and Breakfast is truly breath taking, from the brilliant Christmas light display on it’s snow covered exterior to the beautiful warmth and tasty home baking inside. The location is just moments away from the ski hill, the breakfast menu is fantastic, and the hosts are warm and welcoming. If you are travelling from out of town you need look no further than the Alpenrose B&B.

http://www.alpenroserevelstoke.com

You can feel it, summer is fast fading and the cool crisp days of fall are upon us. For many businesses in Revelstoke this means a changing of gears, a small reprieve before the onslaught of winter tourists and gear hungry winter sports enthusiasts descend. Rather than sitting back and waiting for winter to come, I have 5 great reasons why your business should get out there and get a quality website. (Now of course we would love it if you got us to build it, but get out there either way)

1. Online Advertising – This year online advertising dollars surpassed that of TV advertising in the US. Advertising follows consumers, and consumers are rapidly transitioning from dead or dying media sources like newspapers, TV, and radio to the web. If you want your business to take advantage of this you had better get yourself a website, because you can’t click on an online ad that takes you to a brick and mortar store. Want to advertise on Revelstoke’s hottest new media property, The Current ? Not gonna happen without a website.
2. Expand Your Audience – There is absolutely no cheaper, easier way for your business to reach a new market and attract a ton of new visitors to your store. For the price of a single fancy display unit you can reach out to literally millions of potential new customers for your products.
3. Affordable – Startup costs for a beautiful website are under $2000 and maintaining the site is under $300 a year. When you compare that with rent and upkeep for your meat world location you will be wondering why you didn’t get a website earlier.
4. Maintain Your Own Site – Web technology has changed a lot since the early days, the websites we build today are completely updated and operated by business owners and staff just like you. With little to no technical knowledge you can update and maintain your own website (for free) using custom tailored content management systems like Wordpress, Joomla, or Drupal.
5. Your Customers Expect it – Anyone under 30 these days just expects you to have a website. They don’t have a phone book, and they don’t want one, they already make many of their purchases online, and they would rather read reviews online than go to a store and ask for an opinion. If you don’t have a website, they might not even know you exist. I read a tweet (A micro-blog post on the Twitter social network site) the other day by a 30 something that said, and I quote, “I don’t care if you’re a plumber, if you don’t have a website I won’t use you”

I hope you find this list useful, as always I would love to hear your feedback and suggestions.

It has been a flurry of activity at Rev Software since the announcement that we would be designing the website for Revelstoke’s new (and only) online newspaper, The Revelstoke Current. In just over one week we were able to create the current out of a modified theme based on the Wordpress content management system and we had it up and running with time to spare for the July 1st launch date.

Thanks to the Wordpress system installed by Rev Software the website is easily managed by David through an intuitive WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) system allowing David to spend his time doing what he does best, writing and reporting the news. No fuss, no muss this is just another example of how in a short amount of time you can have a website created by Rev Software that you can maintain and update yourself.

Having a daily, professional, online newspaper is something I, as a fellow Revelstokian, am very excited about. David is an excellent reporter, and a driven man who is committed to the community and to his beliefs. So I encourage all of you to head over to The Current and check out the latest news.

During my previous posts I had mentioned a list of things that needed to be changed in the Kindle in order for me to consider purchasing one. While Amazon may not have completed everything on my list they managed to hit the two big ones, PDF support and a larger screen with landscape mode for displaying textbook style documents. This was enough for me to warrant spending they money and giving the Kindle its fair shot.

Some of you might want to know how I managed to get a Kindle DX, since I live in Canada and only have Canadian credit cards and addresses and the answer is really quite simple. I have an Amazon.com account and there is a gas station just across the US border that allows deliveries and holds them for Canadians, so I used my Canadian credit card with Canadian billing address and had the Kindle shipped to the gas station, simple as that.

Now without further adieu, the un-boxing:

Kindle DX Fresh off the Greyhound

Once Upon a Time

Interior Packaging

Kindle, Meet Canada

Shiny New

The Kindle DX is Even Thinner than I Expected

Wall Plug and USB Combined... Genius

Booting up the Kindle

Welcome to Kindle

Now since I have only had the device for several hours I really can’t comment a great deal on all of the aspects of the device or any particulars to using it in Canada. So far I can only say the obvious, the whispernet does not work so you need to do all of your transfers through your PC, this really makes a daily newspaper probably more hassle than its worth, but doesn’t bother me one bit for my books. As I get more familiar with the Kindle DX I will be sure and update this post and/or answer any questions people have.

For more generic Kindle DX information you can visit the Kindle DX page at Amazon.com

First impressions: nice packaging, super slick, thin, light, attractive, and most importantly, incredibly crisp readable text with no noticeable eye strain. I look forward to getting to know my new Kindle DX.

Side Note: The kindle was entirely packaged with recyclable material and packaging was not excessive either, so kudos to Amazon for their apparent environmental conscience.

After all of my ranting about the missing features on Amazon’s Kindle E-Reader it seems that most of the features I had been seeking have finally been implemented on Amazons new large screen Kindle, called the Kindle DX.

Kindle DX provides users with free 3G wireless network support, native PDF support, a larger, 9.7 inches,  textbook friendly screen with 16 shades of gray, smart auto-rotating screen, and a price tag of $489.

This new offering by Amazon ups the ante in the EReader marketplace and finally provides me with the features I require to make the purchase make sense. I will be ordering mine soon and if all goes as planned I will never buy another dead tree reference book again.

Let me know if you think that Amazon’s latest offering is enough for you to give up paper books?