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Backup solutions and disaster recovery are a mainstay of technology, and they have been well-analyzed in the past — typically from an IT angle. But choosing a solid backup for a website is just as important, and it’s an oft-overlooked final step in the successful deployment of any web site or application. Backup technology has changed a lot over the years, and it can be a daunting task to figure out which solution works for you. This is not a technical guide — there are countless technical solutions to any given backup need. The intent of this guide is to help you understand the nature of your own website and data, and to narrow down the solution that is ideal for your needs. Without a proper understanding of what data your website has and where it’s stored, any backup solution has the potential to languish or be unrestoreable when the worst happens. Read on:

As an Operations Manager at CS, I spend most of my time trying to figure out how to make our internal processes smoother, so we can spend more time creating amazing applications. All that to say I don’t get to explore the web too often. However, sometimes our developers will tell me about cool new technology or web ‘initiatives’ that I have to check out. Such was the case with the Pepsi Refresh Project.

It’s happened to most all of us. We see some site that has great deals on products or services, and we sign up for an email list. But then, after receiving an email a month/week/day/hour, it gets to be too much noise and we hit that all-too-familiar “unsubscribe” link in the footer of the email.

We just wrapped up work on a site that we did for Ocean Futures Society, a non-profit marine conservation and education organization. The group’s chairman and spokesman is Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the legendary ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau. OFS serves as a “Voice for the Ocean” by communicating in all media the critical bond between people and the sea and the importance of wise environmental policy.

Our Director of Technology Chip Hayner was named the Software Programmer of the Year by the Nashville Technology Council at an award reception this past Tuesday. The picture is of perhaps one of the coolest trophies we have ever seen: a custom designed Gibson/Epiphone electric guitar!

CentreSource Interactive Agency was honored with four total nominations, including Technology Organization of the Year, Innovator of the Year for our Founder/CEO Nicholas Holland, who also earned a nomination for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Our hats are off to all of the nominees and winners for the work they do to make this an incredible city with a thriving technology community.

On Thursday, the Nashville Symfony Users Group met in the Centresource conference room to discuss the extension of the Symfony routing framework.  I lead the talk, but it did not take long for the presentation to become a round table discussion, with everyone contributing their own thoughts and snippets of Symfony wisdom.  Overall, the session was a lot of fun.  You can view the slideshow from the presentation here.

Doctrine 2.0 was also discussed.  We are hoping for a more complete presentation from Jon Wage next month.  Keep your fingers crossed!

The Nashville Technology Council today announced the finalists for the 2009 “Feel the Beat” Technology Awards.  The awards recognize those individuals and companies whose success has helped grow Nashville and the surrounding areas into a hub for technology.  The event will highlight outstanding achievements from the 2008-2009 year.

CentreSource is proud to announce that two of our own have been nominated for awards! CEO, Nicholas Holland, has been nominated as a candidate for the Lifetime Achievement Award (sponsored by ComFrame Software Corporation). And Director of Technology, Chip Hayner, has been nominated for Software Programmer / Engineer of the year.

We’re up for an award tonight… Nashville’s Future 50 award, in fact!

Kanye has already chimed in to share his thoughts.

Hehe.

Chip sent this to our team and I couldn’t keep myself from sharing it with the world. If a client read this, they’d instantly say “I don’t do that…” but in fact, most of them do. Only in the context of a REALLY ridiculous example (like below) does it become clear just how rough web design can be. I have my own theories as to why this is (Buy a mac, be a web designer!), but I’ll save that for another post :)

By: Unknown
January 10, 2002

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

In our weekly Wednesday company meeting, we typically talk with each other about what we’ve learned in the last week and the projects we’re working on. This week, however, Nick threw us a bit of a curveball.

We split into two groups to answer a big question: where will the web be in 10 years? Each group was required to deliver 5 concepts. We talked for 15 minutes, and neither group was short on ideas. The hardest part was whittling it down.