I’ve been keeping an eye on the Firefox 3 beta releases for a while, and they’re nice. But today, I finally found a reason to get really excited.

That’s because today, I noticed that there’s a 1.1 beta release of Firebug out! Which is awesome, because I can’t imagine having Firefox without Firebug. It’s the #1 utility for web designers. And it runs great under Firefox 3.

I don’t like Angie’s List. It was recommended by a friend, so I decided to give it a try, and started the signup process. Halfway through, they asked me for money. Apparently there is a membership fee, something they don’t bother to mention in any meaningful way on their website.

So I stopped then and there. I’m not interested in paying for that service… I’m perfectly happy with Google and Yelp and Craigslist and other services that are 100% free and arguably more useful. In fact, I went ahead and found a great plumber on Google that same day.

But then it started. A barrage of emails. So last week I managed to find the “unsubscribe” link in the footer, and painstakingly un-checked each and every checkbox on their unsubscribe page. Wow. I didn’t even become a member, and they had subscribed me to two dozen email lists. Thanks Angie’s list!

But wait. Today, another email. How is this possible? I went back to the unsubscribe page, and sure enough, I’m off all the lists. But still they send me emails? What kind of company does this? Should I expect phone calls soon? Or visits to our office??

So I don’t like Angie’s List. I can’t support a company that behaves this way. I don’t particularly like their business model, anyway, and I think people would be better off looking elsewhere!

It really does a lot of catch-up with the features we use every day in Firebug. Which is nice, because I much prefer Safari to Firefox.

Some of the most fun I have as a designer is playing with typography. And no typeface can really satisfy unless it’s in the (relatively new) OpenType format.

Be sure to read HF&J’s excellent Introduction to OpenType. They sum up the benefits quite well, as usual.

Looking for a little tax season accounting information boost? Perhaps some lawerly words of wisdom? Join us this evening at 7 pm with the PDX Web Innovators for a presentation by both a local accountant and lawyer focusing on issues directly relating to web designers here in Portland.

AboutUs offices
107 SE Washington St., Suite 520,
Portland, Oregon 97214
RSVP here or just show up!

Some of the topics we’ll cover are:

• Should you be an LLC? LLP? S-Corp?
• Just how much of your studio apartment can you write off when you work on the couch? What are the rules for deducting my home office as a sole proprietor? How about a corporation? Can my company pay me rent?
• Is it okay if you just swipe someone else’s privacy policy or terms and conditions?
• I work a lot from coffee shops. Is anything deductible?
• What are the 10 top accounting / legal mistakes made by web developers? (For some ideas on the legal side, see this paper from the Harvard Business School:
• And so on..

Special thanks to our accountant, Lynn Hoyle of Hoyle & Company, for graciously giving a presentation this evening – we know how busy this time of year is in the accounting world!

This is really handy. It’s a rate calculator to help you figure out how much you should be charging your clients per hour.

We have developed this hourly rate calculator to give you a guide based on your costs, number of billable hours and desired profit. It is a simple tool for you to play with. Remember your hourly rate should always take into account factors like market demand, industry standards, skill level and experience – things that unfortunately we can’t put into a calculator!