via Does Google Not Understand Women Or Just Geek Women? | The Mary Sue.

Much of this week I have been extremely aware of the usability (or lack of it) for all the websites I visit. As you may know, I am reading Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think for this months Pagebreak Podcast and I am really enjoying it. Anyone interested in web design or improving the site they own should pick this up.

Lastly, I’ve been working on a project I have wanted to work on for a long time now… and I may have even mentioned it before on the blog. I have some great content in this sites archives, so I have gathered it all up and I am not in the process of editing it, piecing it together and adding all new content to create an Ebook. I’m still in the starting stages of this, but It’s going to turn out to be about 2 parts freelancers advice guide and 1 part personal memoirs. It’s a big project to take on, but I’ve gotten excited about it!

On Thursday, Gap tried to defend it’s decision — and then announced it’s plan to crowd-source a solution that might save them from the huge blunder they made. As if that eyesore of a logo wasn’t offensive enough, now the design community was being asked to bail them out?

Exactly one week after the logo was unveiled, it’s gone. Yesterday’s press release announced that they would be returning to the classic blue box logo and that they had no plans to crowd-source a new one.

This whole fiasco has been incredible! Last Monday it was all anyone was talking about! This weekend, friends of mine who have absolutely zero interest in design were talking about how dreadful the new mark was! You thought the backlash to the Tropicana rebrand was bad? This was unlike anything I have seen… some of the comments on the Gap Facebook page were almost violent with RAGE about the design.

I’m not going to bother asking what you thought of the new mark… you hated it! But man… what do you think of how people basically used the power of the internet to shame away a logo in only one weeks time? Also, does anyone know who designed this logo?

So the wait is finally over, Niki and I have been scheming about this for a long time now and then over the last couple weeks pulled it all off…

PageBreak is a design, business and marketing-themed book club and podcast, started by Liz Andrade and Niki Brown. The main goal of the club is to build a strong online community of designers, developers, freelancer (like ourselves) and to discuss and enjoy books about the stuff we love to do!

We’re starting out with the plan to pick a new book and record a show at the end of each month, so if you have a suggestion we’d love to hear them! You can subscribe to the show via iTunes or stream the show at pagebreakpodcast.com (we’re working on a site with commenting and all that jazz, so stay tuned…)

Book #1? Rework by 37Signals Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. Make it through the show (or download it and skip to the end) to find out what we’ll be reading for September, maybe you’d like to read along? If you’ve read Rework and you want to discuss it with me and Niki or other listeners of the show – head over to the GoodReads PageBreak group!

One of my dear friends and clients, Seattle Wedding Photographer Laura Marchbanks won a contest last month that was put on by another Seattle company (and another client of mine!) CreativeLive! They were hosting a contest for a free wedding, so that they could broadcast it live and make the process part of a photography course taught online by Jasmine Star.

(I know, crazy huh?)

It was just a couple weeks ago when I got a frantic call from Laura asking for help with her invitations, the two of us have worked together on marketing for her Photography company so she was confident I would be able to quickly tune into what she wanted on the invite and get her something that she loved. We talked about the style she was after and after about 8 emails back and forth and less than 2 hours we had the design done and sent off to the printer. (That is NOT a normal turnaround, but Laura was putting this wedding together in 4 weeks with the team that CreativeLive compiled, and I was happy to have her back and be a part of this awesome experience!)

So this evening, I will be headed to celebrate Laura and Billy and you can check out the whole thing yourself, cause it will be happening live online at creativelive.com/billymarieslaura.

First, I want to say thanks to Thomas Hardy who including me on that list. There’s so many faces and names included that are people I admire, who have been both supportive and entertaining members of the web design community — so to be bunched into that group is flattering in the extreme.

Second, thanks to any new people who are finding this blog now because of that post! Welcome! In a nutshell, I’m a (still barely) 20-something internet nerd and crazy cat lady who resides in Seattle, WA where I run a one woman design studio. I specialize in Web Design and WordPress, but I have a full background in branding and print work — so i do all that stuff too. CMD+Shift Design is all about delivering work I am proud of to business that I want to see succeed. This blog aims to help other designers, developer and small business owners to learn from some of my experiences.

Lastly, I just want to say that I’ve met so many cool people just by publishing what I write here, so both new visitors and regular readers — thank you thank you thank you for being a part of this blog with me!

First, why I prefer Google mail to other set ups…

Storage Space, Archiving and Ease of Access

Having your emails in the cloud (stored on Google’s servers that you access via the internet) means you don’t have to worry about storage space on your local drive. Like many Google Mail users, I never delete anything! Having a full archive of your emails comes in handy! Just yesterday a client emailed me because he had accidentally deleted a font off of his system that was essential to his brand. He had remembered emailing me that file about a year ago when we did some work together and sure enough, I still had the email and the attached font that I forwarded along to him within a couple minutes.

If cloud storage makes you nervous, don’t be — Google Mail allows for you to download and make a local backup of all your emails! (I do this about once a month, just in case.) While having a backup of my messages on a local drive is reassuring, keeping my correspondence in the cloud allows me to have access to my mail anywhere an internet connection is, no mater if I have my computer with me!

Setting Up Google Mail with your Domain

This is simple, I promise — but first let’s make sure you have all your ingredients…

• a domain name (This is your websites address (i.e, cmdshiftdesign.com) if you don’t already own one, they got good prices at godaddy.com)
• web hosting (This is where your website lives. If you don’t already have this, I am very happy with my home at Dreamhost. I have also had good experiences with MediaTemple and BlueHost. Just don’t host your website with Network Solutions if you can avoid it.

So — when you first go to the Google Apps page, the options seem limited. But.. there is a free option! Choose Google Apps for Business and then click the Apps Editions menu and choose Standard. This doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the Premium edition, but for most of us is MORE than enough!

Click get started and follow the set up guide. Once you enter in your domain name and some basic information, you will choose your first email address (but you can have up to 50.)Next you will have to verify that the domain you specified is infact YOURS. The easiest option for this just involves creating an html file and uploading it to your root directory.

Goolgle will take a couple minutes to check on that and once it does you are in with one small step left!

On your main dashboard, under Email, you will need to click the configure option — Google will have here specific directions on changing the MX settings with the host you are using. Just login to that account and follow the step by step instructions.

After this, it can take up to 30 minutes for all the dust to settle, but then you are good to start sending and receiving at your new address! :)

As I said, I’ve given Network Solutions chances to step it up on security again and again – and in the multipile times I have had my site hacked they have historically been unwilling to do much to help me. Well last week, they finally put forth some real effort on solving the problem! It seems that the issues finally started effecting a lot of their users and they were speaking up — so after many updates over the week, they tell me today that all the security issues have been isolated and resolved.

I hope this is true, but I am still very skeptical. On Wednesday morning, I pretty much resolved to leaving them because I just COULD NOT loose anymore business because of these security issues and I was so tired of not getting any help. Even though I am payed up with them through 2011 and would end up loosing $200+ dollars if I jump ship now (yep, they told me they will not refund my unused months of service!) – that’s a small price to pay to not have my site hacked every 6 weeks!

So as of now, I’m thinking I’ll stick with them and see how things go, I’m keeping a close eye on my site everyday for any funny business, if the scurity is lapsed on their servers again – I am gone!

Thank you to all of you who have been so helpful to me during this week – offering support, advice, referrals to new hosting, etc.