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Artist Jerry Vigil just sent me an email about his new book Day of the Dead Crafts: More Than 24 Projects that Celebrate Dia de los Muertos. Jerry is a MosaicGlobe member and a very active artist in the Denver area. The book looks great and the timing is perfect. With Dia de los Muertos right around the corner (November 1st and 2nd), it's time to start thinking about those little Calaveritas. Read more about Jerry in a profile we did of him a couple of years back and be sure to visit his website. Jerry will be at the Tattered Cover Bookstore on Tuesday October 14th but if you're not in the area or can't wait to get your copy (like me) head over to amazon for a good deal - even if they did misspell the title.

Just wrapping up a series of upgrades to MosaicGlobe and thankfully the system did not come crashing down. This is the first major revision that the mosglo code has gotten in a long time and it should set the stage to a number of new features we've been wanting to get to.  JRay has also included the ability to add Google Analytics code in each site for detailed tracking!

With a complex application such as MosaicGlobe we sometimes don't know about an issue until it is pointed out to us by a client. Such was the case recently when an account holder complained that email from her site was not being received. After investigating the situation it became apparent that the email was being sent but was never being received by her Hotmail account. However, when we had her switch to a Gmail account it went through fine?

The culprit? New Hotmail spam filters. It seems that legitimate email sent to Hotmail accounts from MosaicGlobe are being blocked with no warning or notification being sent to either the sender or the intended recipient. The mail is not being routed into a spam folder, it is just being tossed and Hotmail users have no control over what email they can whitelist.

It would seem that Microsoft's new Spam filtering methods have affected a number of reputable email providers and there seems to be little recourse for us other than to advise our users to avoid tying their MosaicGlobe accounts to Hotmail.

An article on the subject at The Register suggests that this is an increasingly prevalent issue among email users and providers; "Of course, the biggest friendly-fire casualties in Microsoft's war on spam are the Hotmail users whose legitimate emails are killed before ever landing in their inbox."

Interestingly enough Microsoft has also recently introduced a white list "service" that will allow firms that put up a $20,000 bond to bypass Hotmail's spam filters. If you fail the strict guidelines, which are tighter that the Can-Spam Act, you lose your cash. While I applaud Microsoft’s efforts to reduce the scourge of spam it smells a bit like extortion from my end. This effort wouldn't end spam; it would merely introduce "Microsoft Certified" spam and make it profitable for Microsoft Partners.

I have spent the last week swamped with work and trying to get the MosaicGlobe Creativity Competition wrapped up. I am really pleased with the quality of work that was submitted. Each individual in the final rounds of judging were really talented and deserving of recognition. Check out Recipients (I'm taking a cue from the emmys and not using the word 'winners') on the MosaicGlobe website. Next week we should have time to launch a new competition.

Being able to tweak a MosaicGlobe design is one of the things I really dig about how we built MosaicGlobe. I have modified my own site of course as well as a few others and recently I have seen some new designs come on board. Mr. Vacano has put together a great theme last week and then I saw what Moxie whipped up. Wow. Moxie also did this theme for Inspired. Also sweet. I really should put together some css specification on the MosGlo support pages to try and encourage more of these personalized designs. Some day....

Spitbubbles has just received it's five year visual revamp. The old site design (circa 2001) was really showing it's age. Now I need to clean out the design portfolios to trim out the weak 10 year old web work done back when 60k was a broadband site (ok it's not that old). I also need to add some more current work. Paintings won't be updated for a while as I just got back into the studio after taking a year hiatus to get MosaicGlobe up and running.

- A MosaicGlobe Button.

JRAY is developing a sidebar module that will allow users to add misc. whatnot under the navbar. Then I can add little buttons like this one built using the easy to use and aptly named 'Button Maker' by the people over at BlogFlux.

MosaicGlobe (http://www.MosaicGlobe.com) completed a major code revision to the MosaicGlobe creative publishing system yesterday, November 29. The new code resolves usability issues that had arisen during beta testing and adds some new functionality such as increased drag and drop site organization, blog categorization and general bug fixes.

MosaicGlobe is a hosted web application built using Ruby on Rails. The application is a personal content management system that allows users to create and maintain online image galleries, pages, blogs and document libraries without any technical knowledge of the internet or related programming languages.

While JRAY and Larry have been busy preparing MosGlo code for a final beta testing stage I have been keeping busy with some client projects. These include setting Ajuaa up with a MosaicGlobe site and pushing some other projects closer to completion. I have however, put up the new MosaicGlobe templates this evening. Next week we'll start filling in some additional sections of the site at about the same time the new code goes up. I was planning on doing this over the weekend but I got an email asking why the site was so sparse and wondering if we were actually open for business.

From the commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and college drop out...

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

MosaicGlobe allows site owners to manage their website without any technical knowledge of the internet or related programming languages. Create and maintain online image galleries, pages, blogs and document libraries. Personalize your site with a large selection of style templates, or create your own style template with advanced CSS editing.