We have a financial request for anyone who can help.  We are desperately in need of a new computer to provide services to even more.  We are able to obtain what we need for under $1000.  If you can help in any way, PLEASE donate on the website and help spread these important services to other charities, churches, schools, groups, and individuals.

Thank you,

Robert Losch

I went with a similar design as before. Now each article has a larger banner graphic, comment listings are clearer, each “most popular” article will show the banner image (as a small thumbnail), and a few other minor changes have taken place.  The site should load a little faster for most users as well.  Stay tuned for further updates and more articles to come!

CoffeeDaze Design was founded as a way to provide graphic design, tech support, web integration and advertising for free to individuals, churches, schools and other organizations.  The project quickly grew into the local community (Salem, Oregon) and has been a bigger success than ever imagined.  Design services are often an expensive option for companies and groups.  With our economy in uncertain times it is a cost many can not afford or even consider.  By being able to provide design services to these local groups it can help them advertise and voice their needs to the public in a time when funding and outreach are needed most.  Eventually I would like to see this project grow into a larger entity by involving other designers, tech support specialists and advertisers so we may offer even more to groups.  I am dedicated to making this project continue and grow.

I am able to provide these services for free thanks to donations.  There is little upkeep costs since I am able to dedicate my work freely to the project full-time.  I am asking bloggers to help spread the word about the free design project so we can do greater things.  Generous donations have already come in the form of technology, software and support!  I still have the need for a mobile computer so I can work on location with groups and run the donated new software.  The goal for fundraising is $2000 to cover the cost of computer, travel and software.

If you would like to help this project please donate via the website at http://designoffering.com

All donations will be used to launch and maintain the design project.  If we can raise beyond our goal the remaining money will go towards hosting costs for clients.

Thank you to all who have supported the design project so far and with a little more help we can make this an amazing opportunity for so many!

Thank you,

Robert Losch

Design Offering

Over the past five years, 200,000 civilians have died due to violence, malnutrition, and disease in Darfur and an additional 2.2 million people have been displaced. We want to do something about it.

Fed up with watching humanitarian crises on the evening news and not doing anything to help, a group of bloggers (most notably, Leo Babauta of Zen Habits) have created and founded the non-profit Train for Humanity, which is an online humanitarian awareness and fundraising organization.

Over 150,000 new blogs are added to the internet every day. Train for Humanity’s mission is to utilize the web, social media, and blogging, in tandem with athletes in training, to support organizations that help prevent suffering and alleviate the pain of children, orphans, and refugees who have been displaced due to genocide or internal strife and war within their country.

Quite simply, they believe - getting fit + social media + blogging = social good

The three pilot project athlete-bloggers, Mark Hayward, Dan Clements, and Leo Babauta are hoping to raise awareness for the current crisis in Darfur and funds for the organization Darfur Peace and Development. All three are training for endurance events of varying distances ranging from a triathlon to a marathon.

They hope to show people that with a little creativity and innovation, anyone can assist and make a difference in the world. If you would like to learn more, have a look at the Train for Humanity website and please consider sponsoring one of them or spreading the word.

There are quite a few CMS design services out there but many are costly and unavailable to those without direct knowledge and disposable income.  CoffeeDaze Design Design Offering offers free CMS (Joomla and WordPress) for people!  Here is what I am offering:

• Installation of WordPress or Joomla on your site.  If you do not have a host I can recommend some affordable options.
• Modification and design of a theme for your site.
• Optional plugins and elements such as a galleries and forums (forums are Joomla and SMF only)
• Setup and configuration of your site for optimal SEO and database management.
• Tech support for future development of your site.

I am accepting orders for services on the order page of the site.  Hopefully in the future I will be able to include other designers so we can expand these services and help spread the design love!

I am accepting donations to help this service grow.  All donations will go towards advancing these free services.  One of the biggest hurdles for me currently is a lack of competent technology.  I work on an older desktop computer but am on the go often because of my family and life.  One of the first goals with donations is to acquire a laptop to be able to work on the go and be able to accept even more orders for free site designs.  If you would like to help this service grow you can donate on the site (at the bottom of every page) and spread word to others about this endeavor.  If your interested in becoming involved as a volunteer designer, programmer or developer please contact me and we’ll see how we can work together to help provide this service to more and more!

New Design - The most obvious change is the new design and look of the site.  I wanted to update the look to something a little more modern and sleek.  While I greatly enjoyed our old design this one is a little more complete and fluid across the entire site.  I feel the contrast and deeper colors make it a little more interesting as well.  The new design feels like we moved from a light latte to a dark espresso.

New Forum - We used SMF (Simple Machines Forum) for our old forum.  Joomla (The engine behind our site) and SMF had a falling out a while ago over licensing and it has been a nightmare ever since for web developers.  Our site was held together with “bridges” and hordes of database tricks.  All these hacks made our site slow, hard to upgrade, and a headache to maintain.   Our new forum is called FireBoard ad was designed specifically for Joomla powered sites.  There is no need for hacks and bridges to make it work and it leaves us plenty of room for upgrades and improvements.  What all this means to our members is that the site can grow and run faster than ever before and truly be the complete community site we all desired.  The new forum comes with a bunch of fun new features like support for many video and media formats as well so it makes conversations easier and more enjoyable for all.

Messaging System - It’s nice to be able to send private messages to other members and now we have it easy.  Our new messaging system allows members to contact each other and read their own messages in various ways.  You can contact a person through the toolbar on the menu of each screen, through the messaging tab, by clicking the “PM” button under avatars in the forum, or through a member’s profile page.  Members receive a notification of new messages at the top of each screen right away so it’s easy to stay in touch.  You can also set different settings such as whether or not to receive email when you get a message.

New Profiles - A few new features have been added to our member profiles.  Members now have the ability to add YouTube and Google videos to their profile with a very easy tab system.  You can also send quick messages to other members through their profile and check your message inbox in your own profile.  Forum settings can be changed with the profiles as well as invite people to come join CoffeeDaze.com with ease.

There are more features to come in the future but I hope these changes make the experience all the better.  If you haven’t joined yet please take the time to register and join the fun.  Everything is free and ready for you!

It’s been a few weeks since I bought my LG Dare and I have discovered quite a few fun tricks with the phone.  There is a fan site LG-Dare.com that has been a great resource for lesser known tweaks and I highly recommend it to Dare users.  I wanted to share some of tricks I’ve learned.  Some may be applied to other phones as well but most are for Dare users.

1. Custom Web Browsing – Most PDA/Smartphone/Feature Phones come with an HTML browser that makes surfing the web fun and quick.  One of the biggest downfalls to these mobile browsers, besides lack of flash support, is the simple bookmarking systems they utilize.  Verizon has a start page for the Dare’s browser that is great of you like a lot of Verizon services and choices, but if you want something custom you are limited to the text based favorites system they have.  After looking at some other browsers I decided to build my own start page for my Dare.  (the start page link no longer goes to a custom start page.  sorry, but too many were using it on their phones and were killing my bandwidth.  You will now find a zip file with the parts needed to build your own start page) Using simple HTML I was able to build a web page that displays my daily favorites in an organized and visual manner.  After setting it as my default start page I have found my browsing to me more fun, faster and easier.  I also created a second choice using smaller icons.  I found the first version looked great but having to scroll every time became annoying.  The second version smaller icons so it displays on the Dare’s browser on one screen.  If your interested in having me build one of these start pages for you I can do them for a $20 donation to Design Offering.  Please email me or find me on AIM and I’ll try and get it for you as soon as possible.
2. Custom Start Screen – The Dare has both a main menu (located at the bottom of the screen) and a shortcut menu (located to the right of the screen).  The shortcut menu has some neat tricks.  You have the choice to either show a small tab to it or hide it altogether.  If hidden all you have to do is tap the main screen to bring up the shortcut menu.  You can also drag icons from your shortcut menu to the Dare’s main screen where they can be dragged around and placed anywhere.  This gives you a desktop experience unlike any other phone I have used.
3. Easy Wallpapers & Ringtones – While you can use BitPim to manage your pictures and ringtones you can also email them to your phone as well.  All you have to do is send your formatted wallpaper (240×400) or ringtone (MP3-30sec. or less) to YOUR-TEN-DIGIT-NUMBER@vzwpix.com and they will show up as a text message and give the option to save to your phone.  Images and tones can not be too large for this method to work but I have successfully emailed myself quite a few.
4. Voice Text Messages – If you click the small face icon while reading a text message a female voice will read it to you.  The cadence and enunciation is actually very nice and is a useful tool while on the road.
5. Browser Zoom – As with many mobile browsers, the Dare allows you to zoom web pages.  A little known feature is that the volume rocker will zoom in and out while browsing and the camera button will give you a full page zoom.

There are so many other great options to this phone that I could spend all day typing up lists.  If you have a neat trick you would like to share leave a comment!

It is great to finally be out of B.F.E. and into a larger town/city again.  My wife and I are not cut out for rural living and clashed with the locals quite a bit.  Our new home is in a nice neighborhood in South Salem.  The greatest change is that we are now within four miles of my wife’s work (instead of 40) so the commute is quick and gas costs have dropped dramatically.

I’ll start posting more within the week as things settle down a bit.  There are boxes everywhere and my focus is on the kids and reorganizing.  Stay tuned.

I have added a mobile version of this blog at http://m.coffeedharma.com

It has been optimized for PDA/Smartphones/iPhone browsers.  There is a link at the bottom of the site to easily switch from either standard view or mobile view.  Hopefully this will make it easier for readers to quickly check the blog while on the go.

My first impressions of the Dare are stronger than I actually expected.  This phone is small, sleek and built to shine.  Smaller than the iPhone and styled similar to the Prada phone, the Dare is a sleek little machine.  The black and chrome facing give it a professional look.  The screen is bright, clear and colorful.  The features are impressive and the quality is top notch.  There are a few minor flaws with the Dare though and I’d like to cover both sides with some pro and cons.

Pros:

• Slick design
• Host of features including 3.2MP camera, 120fps video camera, tactile vibration feedback, VZ Navigator, email, full HTML browser, SMS/MMS, music/video player, VCast video, and much more.
• Excellent reception and call quality
• Great sound quality (both ringtones and music)
• Loud ringer
• Light and proximity sensors
• Handwriting recognition is excellent
• expandable MicroSD slot (up to 8GB)
• flush 3.5mm headphone jack
• Stereo bluetooth support
• Fun drawing pad program
• GPS
• Great battery life

Cons:

• Kind of hard to read outdoors in bright light
• Fingerprint magnet
• HTML browser is nice but could be better
• BREW still sucks

Overall the Dare is a pretty amazing phone.  What it lacks in “iPhone-esque” features is more than makes up for with it’s own extras.  Witht he era of the touch phone upon us the LG Dare is a strong competitor and a winner for Verizon.  For only $199 it’s going to move fast too.