They will meet up for a casual get-together at The End Cafe. There will be a chance at the beginning to do introductions around the group, then let people throw out any questions or topics for the group to discuss. We will keep it unstructured and open it up for people to freely network. Hang out, chat about anything you want, have some food and beverages.

When is the event happening?
Saturday, June 14, 2008 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Where is it happening?
The End Cafe, 2360 Commercial Drive - Vancouver

Registration
To register for this free event you will need to register at meetup for the group here.

What can you do as a small business owner when a mega-giant rolls into town, selling exactly the same products as you do? This is the scenario faced by a lot of mom and pop stores when a company like Wal-Mart makes its presence known in a city, driving prices down and effectively putting many of these smaller shops out of business. But what if the Goliath is not trying to compete on price?

This is the situation that arrived in Vancouver on Saturday when the city’s first Apple Store opened in Pacific Centre. Located upstairs in the shopping mall, across from Harry Rosen and next to the newly-opened H&M, the Apple Store drew quite the crowd on opening day. Yes, there was a promise of a free t-shirt to the first 1000 people who showed up, but I’m thinking that wasn’t the primary motivation for these folks. They wanted the Apple experience. They wanted to visit the Genius Bar.

Granted, if any of these people wanted to have the Apple experience, they could have taken a quick jaunt south of the border to any number of Apple Stores in Washington state. By the same accord, if they wanted to purchase the latest iPod, MacBook, or iMac, they could have done that at any number of existing retailers in the Greater Vancouver area. Why is it, then, that people would be so interested in Vancouver’s first Apple Store?

While big box stores like Future Shop and Best Buy have little to worry about, where does the arrival of the Apple Store leave other retailers like Simply Computing and Westworld that had previously been the only Apple-only game in town? They can certainly try to compete on price, because the Apple Store sells their products at full retail. An alternative strategy would be to compete on value, possibly offering an extended warranty or some other customer-oriented gesture.

If you were running Simply Computing, how would you respond to the arrival of the Apple Store? Will the Apple Store help create more Apple brand recognition for your store or will it ultimately just snatch your customers away?

Up until now the easiest way to add a job board to your blog was to use a service like JobCoin but your visitors had to pay to post jobs. If you were a ProBlogger you could have a custom job board script built for you. Thanks to our staff now you will not need to worry about that. You can add a job board to your site now just by installing our BlueFur WordPress Job Board script.

Installation

1. Download the zip file.
2. Unzip the files and upload them to a folder where you want the job board.
3. Create a MySQL database, a user for the database and add the user to the database.
4. Open the jobs.mysql using notepad and do a Find & Replace for jobs.bluefur.com with your own domain where the job board will end up. Be sure to save the file before proceeding to the next step.
5. Using PHPmyadmin import the jobs.mysql file into the database you just created.
6. Edit your wp-config.php file to use the database name, database user and database password that you created above.
7. Login to to the wp-admin (yourdomain.com/somefolder/wp-amin/) with username: admin and password: password.
8. Update your admin login details and change any settings you require.

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We’ve decided to make this script Open Source and release under the GNU General Public License version 3. This means you can download the script and use it how you want.

Future Releases

I am thinking that an ecommerce version would be a good add-on for this script. You could then charge people through PayPal to post a job.

Problems?

Post any problems you have in the comments.

This download is no longer available.

Being able to record decent quality video doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg anymore. Most point-and-shoot digital cameras are capable of recording video, but the file sizes that emerge from these recordings can be rather large. Devices like the Flip Video Ultra, however, are able to capture VGA resolution videos at a much more manageable file size. Following in the footsteps of the Flip Video is an even more affordable offering from Creative.

The Creative Vado pocket video camcorder takes on much the same form factor as the Flip Video Ultra. It has a built-in USB connector to make uploading the videos to your computer an absolute breeze and the majority of the operation is done by a single button. There is a main button that is used to start the recording and the same button is used to stop it. The Creative Vado is thinner and lighter than the Flip Video Ultra. It is slimmer than a deck of cards! The internal memory provides enough space for up to two hours of video.

Other features include a rechargeable battery, two-inch anti-glare display, and the included software makes it easy to upload and edit videos. The best part is that the MSRP on the Creative Vado pocket video camcorder is less than $100. You can find it at most major electronics retailers.

Congratulations to this weeks geek Jeff. This weeks questions are…

1.  What year was MacGyver cancelled?

2.  What type of knife was first used on MacGyver?

3.  What state did MacGyver grow up in?

4.  What was MacGyver’s first name?

5.  Who played MacGyver?

Last week we worked on adding an email signature to increase traffic to our site. This week we will look at how well our site is accessible to those with various disabilities. The W3C has created Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines to make sites more accessible. The full guidelines and more details are available at the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Overview page.

If your to busy to read through the many pages of the guide there is an online accessibility check. This weeks project is to go to accessibility check, enter your domain and fix the issues it returns.

If you get stuck let me know in the comments.