Webtoast Media

What We're Up To

noreply@blogger.com (Butch) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:59:00 +0000

It's been a while since our last news entry so here goes. After about 10 months at TVP, Butch and I have moved back to the Sugar Land office (which is being renovated) to tackle a new and exciting project. Although this project will take the bulk of our attention and resources, we would still love to consider taking on new work- we just have to do it on a case by case basis. Please feel free to contact us.

To our present clients: As a gesture of both our gratitude and integrity, we WILL continue to service your needs. Our turnaround will vary depending on our workload at the time of the request but always know that we will get it done in a timely manner.

We have put up this minimal site to show a few of the latest projects we have worked on and will continue to update from time to time.

While at TVP, we were able to develop some cool new products like Pop-O-Gram which is a video overlay that plays on your website. It's a great way to create excitement or deliver new info to your viewers. Another great product is called On Point. It is a video presentation that automagically advances web page slides to create a personalized feel. Be sure to check out both of these products.

Grandma Headbutts Soccer Ball

noreply@blogger.com (Butch) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:53:00 +0000

Jack at TVP directed this video. The grandma actually headbutted the soccer ball!

TVP Goes Green!

noreply@blogger.com (Butch) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:05:00 +0000


TVP's newly remodeled, 60-foot Greenscreen™ studio package including: high definition camera, digital sound, teleprompter, lighting, and professional operator, is now available at short notice, at a low hourly rate. Now, it's quicker and easier than ever to shoot.

So get in touch, and we'll switch the lights on for you. In fact, call us from your car and we'll be ready to go by the time you arrive. Just give us 10 minutes!

TVP \| 8964 Kirby Drive Houston, Texas 77054 \| 713-667-5000

Re:Thinking A Better Way To Serve

noreply@blogger.com (Freddy) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:02:00 +0000

Over the past 10 years, I have done many websites. During that time, we have all experienced the shift from having "webmasters" to comprehensive CMS that enable clients/users to update/create new web content on the fly. In fact, we at Webtoast Media have our own which is presently named the myWebtoast Dashboard. I have noticed as of late that the novelty of having full control of their websites has worn off for most of our clients. In fact, so much that we have clients that have not gone live with their site after 6, 7 even 10 months later. We realize that not everyone enjoys writing clever, creative things for hours upon hours. We also realize that not everyone posseses the necessary skils to create kickin' graphics. In the quest to keep on truckin' down the information superhighway, it seems we have lost some of the foundational focus that built our little company. This has us scratching our heads, thinking "What really is best for our clients?".

Our solution: Be all things to all men.

In the very near future, Webtoast Media will offering different "products" for present and future clients to choose from- one that specifically fits their web situation. For instance, let's say you already design cool sites but have no clue on how to program- we'll have a dashboard solution for you. We will also be able to affordably offer design services so if you need a new look for your existing website- no problem, we can do that for you. We are also sensitive to the current economic funk and are developing new methods to address that situation. In a nutshell, we have kinda come full circle to the "webmaster" times- but this time with a wealth of dynamic capabilities and backend solutions.

Webtoast Media is in the process of rethinking the way we do business. We started this company because we love being creative and people. We will never lose sight of what is most important to us- the relationships we have with our clients and friends. If you have any feedback or suggestions, I'd love to hear it.

Before You Hit "SEND"

noreply@blogger.com (Jeremiah) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:35:00 +0000

A few months back I received a very violent threat via text message towards my family and I, from a number I didn't recognize. Since I had recently gotten a new phone and hadn't saved many of the numbers from the old phone, my mind began scrambling through all the possibilities of who it could be. I recognized the Area code and prefix because they matched mine. I responded, asking the sender to identify themselves. No response. I tried calling the number but the voicemail hadn't been set up yet. Could this be a joke? I did some basic searching for the number on the internet and found the number registered in Witchita Falls, Tx, about 2 hrs away from where we used to live. I called several times and sent several more text messages, threatening to call the cops if they didn't identify themselves. Four hours later the number text me back and apologized profusely saying that they had accidentally dialed the wrong number. I imagine that person felt very stupid and careless for their mistake. In a way I'm glad they sent the message to me. In realizing their own stupidity, they will probably think twice before sending another message like that, not to mention, double check the number before they send anything again.

If you are ever the victim of any violent messages, if it isn't immediately life threatening, here's my recommendation of what you should do.

If it is a phone number,
the best thing to do is contact your phone carrier. tell them to ZAP THE CRAP out of the sender. Really, just ask for their account to be deleted immediately.

If it is an email or an im,
forward the email to abuse@whateveremailcarrieritwasfrom.com, and make sure to include the full header so that it can be traced. Dont edit the email in anyway. at the top of the email, describe the situation, and ask the email service to, again, ZAP THE CRAP out of the sender. Really, just ask for their account to be deleted immediately.

In this day and age, where the average persons sends more text messages in a day than they have hair on their head, its easy to be careless with our itching thumbs. No one wants the awkwardness of sending an "I love you" to and ex girlfriend instead of your wife, or sending an inappropriate message, meant as a joke, to an unknown person you thought was your friend. All I say is please pay attention next time you send an email or text message. One number or character out of place can bring you more harm than you ever wanted to deal with. Im going to stop now as you probably have received 17 texts in the time it took you to read this blog. Say something nice for me.

What is What is Intellectual Property, really? pt. 2

noreply@blogger.com (Butch) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:30:00 +0000

I've been thinking a lot about the whole idea of intellectual property since I first released part 1 of this blog post. I was reminded that when anything is published that it immediately has full copyright. Which then reminded me about Creative Commons.

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved." When I read "Some Rights Reserved" I perked up. That's it! That best articulates how I feel it should be. Many times a full "All Rights Reserved" is too restrictive.

In light of the recent news of Facebook's terms of service that trying to cling to their own intellectual property and that of their users. It seams to be a far cry of the Creative Commons.

Facebook and the limits of free speech
Facebook Thinks You're Stupid
Facebook backtracks on terms of use after protests
Facebook terms of service compared with MySpace, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter

Creative Commons makes it very easy to generate a license that clearly defines what you allow to be done with your work. Everyone deserved credit for the work that they've done. And no one wants to be left high and dry if someone else profits on their creation. The old school model was to horde everything to yourself. The new school model is to loosing your fist and allow others to build upon what you have done. This way everyone wins! It's about being more "friendly" or playing nice with others. That's the way I want to be.

Webtoast Media has recently decided to start giving some things away. We are doing it with a Creative Commons License. We feel that art is supposed to inspire others to inspire others. By letting go a little bit of our intellectual property we make an environment that can do just that and still keep us in business at the same time.

Eight O'Clock Coffee gets a new look

noreply@blogger.com (Butch) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:52:00 +0000

After my last post I was surfing around looking at Eight O'Clock Coffee stuff and found an article that said that Eight O'Clock Coffee is having a contest to choose their new packaging design. When you vote you are also entered into a sweepstakes for cool prizes, including two first-prize $500 Bed Bath & Beyond gift cards and FREE groceries for a year! 150 instant prizes in all. The site is coffeemakeover.com. I think that is pretty clever.

Eight O'Clock Coffee

noreply@blogger.com (Butch) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:26:00 +0000

Jeremiah likes to read Yahoo News. There was an article recently that said that Eight O'Clock Coffee beats Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts and Folger's in Consumer Reports taste test. At first Freddy and I thought he was saying that coffee tastes better at 8am as apposed to any other time of day. It took us a while to catch on but we decided to give it a try.

So, Jeremiah picked up a 12oz bag of Eight O'Clock Coffee at HEB where it was only $3.77! One star for that. That is a great price, but let's see if our discerning taste buds will agree with the latest consumer reports. I brought my personal grinder from home and we brewed up a pot. Everyone in the office was very interested. Some have heard of Eight O'Clock coffee from the Yahoo news feed. Others knew of it for years. Turns our it's been around for 150 years! We where not alone in our ignorance however, there were plenty of people in the office that have never heard of such a brand.

The initial test was of course the aroma test. The three of us agreed (an uncommon occurrence) that it smelt very good. Another star goes to the under dog coffee.

Once brewed and poured we took our first sip. It was very smooth. Not at all bitter. It was delicious! We were pleasantly surprised. Could this be our new coffee brand of choice. Have we snobbishly passed up the lowest priced and best tasting coffee for an over priced trendy brand that burns their beans. Ashamedly, yes. But no longer. We at Webtoast Media now prefer to drink Eight O'Clock coffee. I guess I need to add two more stars to give it Four Stars. Or should it have five? Whatever is the best.

The ironic thing is that we don't usually get a cup until about 9am. Perhaps our next test will be to find the perfect hour to drink coffee. Nah.

Look out Loopt there's a new big brother in town...

noreply@blogger.com (Butch) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 18:05:00 +0000

You had to guess that before long Google would jump on board the personal GPS friend locator social networking bandwagon. Introducing Google Latitude. You can use Google Latitude on your phone, computer, or both.

Google Latitude is a feature of Google Maps for mobile on these phones:

Android-powered devices, such as the T-Mobile G1
iPhone and iPod touch devices (coming soon)
most color BlackBerry devices
most Windows Mobile 5.0+ devices
most Symbian S60 devices (Nokia smartphones)
many Java-enabled (J2ME) mobile phones, such as Sony Ericsson devices (coming soon)

So, we know what's next, right? Google will allow advertisers to send ads to us that relate to specific locations. So, if you're at the corner of 5th and Main you may see an ad for Starbucks that is right across the street. And if one of your friends are there I'm sure the ad will tell you that. This is cool for small businesses because right now the only reason to get ads with Google is if you have a website. But what about small mom and pop shops that don't have or really even need a website? Enter Google Latitude. Now the little guy will give Google money to advertise to people that are within walking distance of their location.

You can set your location on your computer to whatever you want. Since it does not have GPS installed like your phone does Google doesn't know where you are. But, really they do if you're on WiFI. The cool thing about setting your location manually is that you will be able to see ads for that location. We'll right now there are not any ads, but they will come - mark my words.

You can read a nicely written article about Google Latitude on Tech Crunch.

Spelling Bee / Grammar Champion

noreply@blogger.com (Butch) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 03:17:00 +0000

You never realize how bad you are at spelling and grammar until your wife points out every error. I'm terrible. I try to be accurate. Sometimes it's just type-o's. But, mainly I'm just not that good at English. Freddy is constantly laughing at my mistakes. Freddy's wife will even point out my blunders every now and again. I am, however, reassured when I see similar mistakes from Freddy. All be it not nearly as frequent as me.

So feel free to notify me of all my ~

aberration, blooper*, blunder, boo-boo, bungle, confusion, delusion, erratum, false move, false step, fault, faux pas, flub*, fluff*, gaffe, illusion, inaccuracy, inadvertence, lapse, misapplication, misapprehension, miscalculation, misconception, misinterpretation, misjudgment, misprint, misstatement, misstep, muddle, neglect, omission, overestimation, oversight, slight, slip, slip of tongue, slipup*, snafu*, solecism, trip*, typographical error, underestimation

I will gladly correct them.

I may have said too much...

noreply@blogger.com (Butch) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 03:54:00 +0000

I recently read an article, "With Friends like these" by Tom Hodgkinson, that made me second guess what information I have flippantly put on the web. I've always said that you should be careful what you say, but you should also be careful what you type. A co-worker recently signed up for Facebook and was commenting on how much data they ask for in order to set up the account. I warned her to only put information that she wanted everyone in the world to see. I may have coined a phrase, "cyber stalking", or maybe I stole it. I'm not sure. Social networking is the only socially accepted form of cyber stalking. That's my phrase in a sentence.

All of this made me wonder what's stored in countless hard drives and servers around the world with my username assigned to it. Will that come back to haunt me? Have I typed something that I may later regret? I'm sure of it. So, what do I do now. Change my passwords? Delete personal stuff from my ever increasing list of online profiles? Start going by an alias? Maybe I'm just a paranoid conspiracy theorist. Wait, should I type that?

Twitter tweet tweets

noreply@blogger.com (Butch) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 03:33:00 +0000

I recently took the plunge and set up a twitter account. At first I wasn't sure what it was. I had heard about it a few years ago, but despite what I may believe I don't actually sign up for every social networking account out there. I was pleased with the registration process. It was fun! (Yes, I'm a nerd). After signing up I started trying to figure out what it did and how it worked and what the point was. I've got to tell you at first I was disappointed. It's just the "status" update like on Facebook!?!? What's the point? I knew that it was really popular and many people smarter than me have twitter accounts. But, why? So, I thought that I would give it try for a little while and see if I would eventually "get it". That's exactly what happened.

I first made several posts just like I would on Facebook, pointless random things that I did throughout the day. I also started following other twitter users. I did searches for twitter users with keywords of things that interest me. Then, I found out about twellow.com and twittetroll.com. I then did power searches for other twitter users that interest me. It didn't take long before I noticed that there was some great information that was beeing tweeted. I stopped following several of the users that just posted dumb things about their day and only kept ones that posted things that I liked. I also started changing that things that I posted and more and more people started following me. I made me feel some what popular. Twitter is not for everyone, but I dig it. Hmm...digg.com? Do I need a digg account as well?

Free Free Free

noreply@blogger.com (jeremiah) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:35:00 +0000

So I love to find free stuff. I am not one to try and keep things from people that I know would help them. Besides, I didn't make the content, I just found it. So can I really take any credit? If you are into design, then I recommend, checking out Vecteezy, a site that offers (FREE) awesome vectors for you to use in your designs, and programs such as Illustrator, Freehand, etc. Now, for the times that you don't want to bother paying papa Istock for a graphic, you can get your hands on some good freebies.

What is Intellectual Property, really?

noreply@blogger.com (Butch) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:12:00 +0000

I had no idea that this question was the beginning of many more questions. Over the years of building websites the idea of intellectual property has come up numerous times. Whether by a client or in my own mind it has been something that I've never really been able to wrap my head around conclusively. Today, I had a couple of conversations that got me thinking about it all over again. Since I'm an internet junkie I quickly did some searches only to find that I'm not alone in this foggy ideal of intellectual property.

Here are some interesting links that I found in my searching:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property
http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hcqhpLfgHpcIipb1rVGvAoa5BusAD9652OD01

One question that I get a lot is, "Who owns my domain name?" Clients always want to be assured that I am not going to run off with their web identity.

First off, my answer is, I don't know. But since that doesn't make any client feel more comfortable with giving their domains username and password over to me, I usually give the answer that I was given. The name that is listed on the WHOIS under the Registrant Contact is the owner of the domain. That makes sense to me.

At Webtoast Media we recommend to all of our clients to either let us register their domain names or transfer them to our registrant under our account. This is not to get some kind of dominance for the domain. But it is to make it easier for us and them. Many times our clients don't really understand the in's and out's of a domain name and domain registration. I don't really expect them to. We want our clients to focus on the mission of their organization, not spend countless hours researching basic internet protocol. That's our job. We are familiar with how we have things set up with our registrant. The last we need or want is to figure out some no name domain registrars non-user friendly interface. Secondly, we want to help protect our clients from scammers that try to take advantage of the fact that most people don't understand basic internet protocol. It just makes it easier on our clients to know that anything relating to their website is going to come from Webtoast Media.

I've had a client tell me to purchase a domain for them and then the next day tried to purchase it on their own. When they saw that it was taken they checked the WHOIS and saw that it was purchased by Webtoast Media. They then accused me of trying to steal their domain name! I reminded them that they told me to get it for them and explained that until I have all of their contact information (which was the next step) I would not be able to put their name as the Registrant Contact. I also explained that I already have lots of domains that I plan on using in the future. I would never steal a domain name and had no need of a domain name that included his name in the URL.

As a side note, back in the 90's people used to be cyber squatters. They have always been looked upon in a bad light. We at Webtoast Media like to play nice with the internet and all of his friends.

Another relating question that we get is, "Who owns my website?" This starts to get a little more undefined. First of all, let's remember that websites and domain names are just virtual. It's just data. It's just ones and zeros. There is not a physical place or an actual object to hold or grab or move or even steal. Next, we have to address what it means to "buy" a website. What is it that you are paying for? Of course we do know that the reason why you buy a website is because you don't have the knowledge, skills, tools or time to do it yourself. When you buy a website from Webtoast Media you are getting a service. In most cases the cost is derived from the amount of time it takes us write the code, draw the graphics and build the databases. We have the skills and the tools to do it and you are simply buying our time. For the most part websites are disposable. No one really wants to keep an old website. Generally websites will either evolve or be completely rebuilt. In either case the client never wants any of the old files. Technology is quickly changing and the web is changing with it. Keeping an old website would be like keeping an eight track without an eight track player. Or keeping an analog television after June 12, 2009. So what about a new website or current website? Just like domain names we advise our clients to allow us to host their websites on our servers so that we can keep everything running properly and we know that everything is compliant and works properly. It also makes things simpler for our clients in that they know that everything web related is with Webtoast Media. But, what happens if a client wants to take the website that they bought and host it somewhere else? We thought of that. All rendered pages and data is yours. You can save the pages from your browser or there is software to extract rendered pages as well. We will extract that data from the databases and email it to you or put it on disk. All code and sources files and of course The Dashboard are all property of Webtoast Media. Since every website we build is custom we have no need of the way your site looks and we have no need of your data. I should mention that we have only had one client leave us and take their site with them.

What about CD Artwork and Logos? When you hire Webtoast Media to create graphics for you we send you every file type that you need to print the artwork. We send it to you in varying formats and sizes. However, we do not give you the source files or the layered image files. We think that stuff if private. Perhaps we're just stuck up. So, I guess that's what we consider intellectual property.

Ready, Set, Go!

noreply@blogger.com (Butch) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 03:47:00 +0000

We are starting an official Webtoast Media blog. We will be posting business related things like web design and development, PHP, MySQL, CSS, XTML, Bulk Email Service, MySpace Layouts, cd artwork, print design, browser and email security, podcasting, RSS, social networking and more. We will also blog about random office happenings like Taco Bell Tuesday and Sonic Happy Hour. I'm sure that we will blog about projects that we are working on and new technologies that we are getting into. In addition, we will try to be a source of new and wondrous things on the internet. Some posts will be very insightful others will be boring. Some will be funny. Some will be stupid. Some will be polite while others will be rude. We plan to post frequently. We would love to see lots of comments on every post. Tell us that we are right. Tell us that we are wrong. Tell us that we are dorks. Tell us that you love us in spite of us. Welcome to our Blog!