One of the services we provide here at BKWLD is producing brand new sites for our clients. One of the difficult things about a brand new site is getting the word out about it. I’m mainly a developer here, so I thought it might be a cool exercise to research more about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and put it into practice on a new site we’ve built for our new product, Elastic.

About Elastic

Many of our clients are in the “Outdoor Sports” category. Elastic is a software tool that ties together retail dealers to the sales representatives of our clients so dealers can easily order product for their stores directly from our clients. Currently, the market consists of paper based order forms, catalogs, and phone calls for inventory checking. Some of the bigger players in the industry have their own custom software solutions for this, like Trek or Burton, but they can be a little unwieldy and they only work for the one brand. Other competitors in this space force clients to adhere to their limitations and conventions. We recognized an opportunity here, so Elastic was created.

Elastic is based on Adobe Air technology, so the software runs on the desktop (Mac or PC), but  can also run in an offline mode. We designed it this way because typically sales reps would have the software loaded up on their laptop and bring it to the dealers directly. WiFi isn’t exactly pervasive yet in these environments, so always having an Internet connection is not an option. Sales Reps also travel a lot, so not relying on the Internet directly keeps them productive on the ground or in the air. Once the sales rep reconnects their laptop to the Internet, orders are placed and inventory totals are synced.

After the break we’ll get into it!

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While BKWLD may be one of the most Apple/Mac centric companies I’ve worked at (only 1 guy in our Seattle office uses something other than a Mac), Microsoft has been whittling away at their next monster, Windows 7. I’ve been really impressed with how Microsoft has been handling the lead up until its release of Windows 7, namely, its free release of the Release Candidate that will work until June 2010. I decided to check it out by installing Boot Camp on my iMac at home, so I could play some good old video games on Steam.

I won’t post a full tutorial here, there are plenty a Google search away, (I ended up with the 32-bit version because of some issues with the RC on a Mac).

Windows 7’s install is much improved from Windows XP (I have never used or installed Windows Vista) it was simple, non instrusive, and smooth.

However, I got everything running great, when I rebooted back into Mac OS X, my wifi would simply not work. DHCP would simply not grab an IP address from my router no matter what I tried.

I decided that it was time to try a good ol’ Archive and Install of Mac OS X, but I was worried about the reinstall messing up all my recent work getting Boot Camp up and running. I googled for hours and could not find a definititive answer to my question, “Will Boot Camp still work after a Mac OS X Archive and Install?”

I couldn’t find any definitive answer, so I just decided to screw it all, and try it out. Reinstall worked flawlessly, my wifi was back in Mac OS X, and Windows 7 on Boot Camp still works great!

Update: You can download Windows 7 at microsoft.com.