Hey everyone!

We hope you’re all doing well gearing up for the holiday season. We just wanted to give everyone a glimpse of what we’re doing behind the scenes at BlueFur!

• PHP 5.3 has been added to all servers! There are two ways to utilize PHP 5.3. The first way is to simply use a .php53 file extension for each PHP file you wish to use 5.3. The second way is to add the following line to your .htaccess file:
  
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php53 .php

• We have added the web.py python framework on all servers! For more information on web.py, please visit their website: http://webpy.org
• Work continues on our VPS offerings! We have not yet nailed down pricing or specifications for the VPS plans, but they will naturally be on high-end, top of the line servers located in Canada.
• We are in the process of assisting with the transfer of domain registrations to our new partner registrar. This move allows domain registrations to be easily managed right from within BlueAdmin. Additionally, the move to the new partner registrar allows us to offer more TLDs and provide more competitive pricing as well.

As always, please feel free to post any questions or comments here on the blog or via support@bluefur.com!

There’s always something new to read in the blogosphere, so let’s see what the bloggers had to offer this week.

Jonathan Bailey starts us off by discussing some copyright concerns, providing a primer on Creative Commons. This is one the most common (no pun intended) ways to license your content on the Internet, but you’ll want to know what the different licenses mean and how it all works.

Maeve Maddox recognizes that language can change substantially over time. We don’t talk the same way today as they did during Shakespeare’s time. Similarly, when someone says refers to something as gay, it has an entirely different meaning today than it did in a few hundred years ago. Back in the 14th century, something that was gay was noble, beautiful, excellent, and fine.

James Chartrand is perhaps one of the best authorities on the subject, because “James” doesn’t really exist. He’s actually a “she” in real life. In a recent post, “James” asks whether you should use a pseudonym in your professional work. Many authors have had pen names over the years for a myriad of different reasons, but you have to make your own decision given your own specific circumstances.

Raul Pacheco is a very busy guy. In fact, he’s booked up for months ahead of time. That’s why he is quickly coming to the realization that he can’t be everything to everyone. There are only 24 hours in a day and seven days in a week, so Raul has to be more selective with where and how he spends his time. The good news is that he is incredibly happy as a result.

LaToya Irby provides some very simple advice for all the freelancers, consultants, and other entrepreneurial professionals out there. Nothing quite says “Pay me” like an invoice. A casual e-mail message can only go so far, but a formal invoice allows you to outline your fees in black and white. This way, the client knows exactly how much he owes and exactly what he’s paying for in the first place.

The biggest shopping day in the United States is just one week away and you can be sure that all the different retailers will have more than a few deals to entice shoppers into their stores. If you happen to be one of these kinds of businesses, whether online or offline, what can you do to draw those customers in your direction rather than toward your nearest competitor?

It is for this very reason that so many retailers keep their Black Friday deals so secretive leading up to the important shopping day. They don’t want their competitors to unleash a marginally better deal on exactly the same product, effectively snatching the rug out from under them for just a few dollars. The money will be spent; the question is where it will be spent.

Given that we are in the middle of the digital age, hiding the deals in an upcoming flyer or mail-out can be a concern, as the printers need lead time in order to get the printers sent out in time. That’s why unleashing the deals in a digital form may be a more effective strategy, particularly if you have a strong mailing list already at your disposal.

Provide some teasers through traditional media and let people know about some of your deals, to be sure, but you may not want to reveal your ultimate “door crasher” until a few hours before the actual deal can take place. Update your website in this shorter time frame and you can prevent your competition from adapting their deals to compete with yours. This is certainly a delicate balancing act, but it can be one to work in your favor.

Comments are great for a blog. It helps to continue the conversation and this adds value for everyone involved. The blog owner gets additional content and visitors are offered different questions, answers, and perspectives. However, the trouble with comments is that they apply to a post as a whole. What if you only want to highlight a single word, image, or section?

That’s the rationale behind Highlighter, a WordPress plugin from the team at Unique Blog Designs. In addition to the usual commenting system that you find on many other blogs around the Internet, Highlighter allows visitors to highlight any part of the blog post and provide a comment specific to that word, sentence, image, or section. This helps to spark more specific discussion.

According to its developers, Highlighter is designed to provide a better overall user experience. This is because they no longer have to scroll through a long list of comments just to see if anyone else has mentioned something about a specific passage in the post. With better context comes a better experience. Highlighter also promises to help build your email marketing list and enhance your ability to make money from your blog.

There is a demo video set up at Highlighter.com, which is also where you can find the free download link for this WordPress plugin. It is still in beta, so the developers would very much value your input and feedback.

From a business standpoint, it’s understandable why someone would want to be all things to all people. By doing so, the assumption is that you can capture the largest possible demographic and, as a result, generate the largest possible profit. However, this is not necessarily the case.

It was observed by respected American psychologist and New York Times contributor Barry Schwartz that more could really be less. As it turns out, consumers are typically more likely to spend more money when they are offered fewer options. His book describes a case regarding presale homes and how the buyers were more likely to pay for upgrades (and more expensive upgrades) when they were offered fewer choices.

You can take advantage of this human psychology when it comes to your own business. Yes, you want to offer your customers some degree of choice. You don’t want to be the kind of company that offers jackets in every color that the customer wants so long as that color is black. However, you have to careful about overdoing this approach, as it could simply paralyze the customer with too many possibilities.

Consider the business strategy employed by Apple. With each successive generation of product, they quickly phase out the old generation. If you want to buy an iPhone today, you realistically only have the choice between the different capacities of the iPhone 4. This simplifies the decision process. The same can be said about each iPod model, each MacBook model, and so on. With this simplicity, Apple is able to enjoy incredible profits. And you can too.

The new Dell Venue Pro is quite notable for several reasons. For starters, it represents a major part of the resurgence of Dell in the portable electronics market. The old Axim PDA line was met with very limited success, but Dell is keen to grow in the smartphone and tablet market with devices like the Venue Pro, as well as the Dell Streak. Secondly, the Dell Venue Pro is one of the first smartphones to be powered by Windows Phone 7.

This is an entirely new mobile operating system from Microsoft, taking a major leap forward from the Windows Mobile 6.5 environment that preceded it. With Windows Phone 7, users get access to a series of dynamic tiles that will automatically update with information from Facebook, Twitter, and other services. The point is that a rich environment is provided that allows users to get what they need as quickly and efficiently as possible. The Zune and Xbox integration is impressive too.

In terms of this specific smartphone, the Dell Venue Pro features a 4.1-inch AMOLED display, portrait slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 8GB internal memory, five-megapixel camera, 720p HD video recording, and a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. It will be made available in the United States exclusively through T-Mobile.

For more on Windows Phone 7 and the variety of devices powered by it, check out the Windows Phone area on the official Microsoft website. Other noted smartphones in this series include the HTC HD7, LG Optimus 7, and Samsung Focus.