It seems that most everyone knows someone who has been affected by the massive 7.3 earthquake in Haiti. I myself have a friend who’s family started a hospital in Port Au Prince. I couldn’t help wonder what was going through his mind as he searched the photos of the destruction looking for any confirmation that the hospital might still be standing. The news out of Haiti has been a grim reminder that this can happen just about anywhere in the world.

But out of this tragedy, social media had helped to fuel a windstorm of support and donations for the area. A brief time spent on Twitter tonight and you’ll quickly see the tweets and retweets of all the various causes offering relief for the area.

Corporate America is also stepping up to lend their support. Home Depot and Lowes have both pledged donations for Haiti Relief.

For those looking to pledge their support in any way to the victims of the Haiti Earthquake, here are a few of the top places you should look:

1. The Red Cross is pledging an initial $1 Million for relief. You can donate online, through their toll free number (1-800-RedCross) or you can send a $10 donation by texting “Haiti” to 90999.
2. Living Water International is planning a coordinated response to help bring clean water into the area. The Executive Director of LWI has said, “In Haiti, clean water is a terrible problem even at the best of times. After a quake like this, it’s a crisis of epic proportions.”
3. It’s been rumored on Twitter that American Airlines is offering to fly doctors and nurses into Haiti for relief free of charge. For more information call 212-697-9767.

Other ways you can help:

World Concern: http://www.worldconcern.org/

World Vision: http://www.worldvision.org/

Mercy Corps: http://www.mercycorps.org/

Update: For those interested in up to the minute updates, here’s a link to someone on the ground in Haiti, that’s reporting on Twitter: http://twitter.com/RAMhaiti/

A new year and a new show. This year’s Summer Bridal Show utilized the design we created for them last year with some slight modifications. Of the changes, the most significant is the blog. Last year, we set up a Blogger blog for their site. This year, we changed it to a Wordpress.com blog. In addition, we’ve connected them with enhanced site tracking with Google Analytics.

Check out their website at http://www.summerbridalshow.com

Not long ago, we put the finishing touches on a new site for Nursing Careers Today, a sister site of Employment Source (another site we finished recently). In fact, this site contains many of the same features that we progremmed for Employment Source. We were able to utilize a XML feed that they provided to add custom rotating content onto the site and created an awesome new design that will help them convey the image of the publication

You can check out their new design at http://www.nursingcareerstoday.com.

We’ve been hard at work on some of our latest projects. One of the newest sites we’ve pushed live is a new site for Mark Stroud, a realtor for the F.C. Tucker Company in Noblesville. The site has a completely custom design, property search, community info and buyers and sellers resources. You can check out Mark’s site at http://www.salewithmark.com.

I have the best wife in the world! Happy Birthday Erin. You mean the world to me and to so many!

I love you, baby!

I’ve not posted in a while because we’ve been very busy over here lately putting the finishing touches on several new websites that we are pushing live over the next two weeks, plus we have some great news about some upcoming projects we’ll be working on in the near future. It’s exciting times here at InspireMedia!

Okay, this post has been delayed a bit, but I wanted to post the absolutely adorable picture of my new nephew, Gavin. For those whom I haven’t told yet, my new nephew was born last month. I took an evening to go visit him and the proud mom and dad and snapped a few pics. Check them out below!

So today’s the day. Apple released the new 3G iPhone. What is 3G, you might ask? 3G stands for 3rd generation. It’s a better technology that enables more efficient use of network capacity while allowing faster network access for smart phones. The new iPhone was slated to be cheaper than the original and employ the new 3G technology. Reportscame in of long lines of people (some of which started waiting on Wednesday night) who wanted to be the first to get their hands on the new iPhones. Some happy and patient people were rewarded… many weren’t.

Today also proved to be frustrating for many as two big problems plagued Apple. The first of which was the activation problems with the iPhones trying to update to the new 3G activators. The last step in the process was for the phones to connect to the iTunes App Store which was overloaded and couldn’t handle the traffic. The result was a bunch of bricked iPhones that couldn’t be used until the Apple network traffic died down.

The second was the upgrade issue with the iPod Touches (which I have). Apple made links available for iPod Touch users to upgrade to the 2.0 firmware (which enables the iPod Touch users the ability to add apps from the App Store), but it turned out to be dead, leading to a page that didn’t exist in the iTunes Store. Reports then came in that the link was made available, but when I tested out the update, nothing really happened. I spoke to an Apple rep who mentioned that the update was being taken offline and would be restored shortly. Hopefully I’ll have some good news to report on it shortly.

For weeks now, Mozilla, makers of the popular Firefox browser have been involved in a grassroots campaign to fulfill a goal. Their focus, was to set a record for the most downloads of a software in 24 hours. Marketing to the masses of users who utilize their software, Mozilla set the date for this past Tuesday afternoon and pulled the trigger. Aside from some early problems getting to the site due to the masses of people attempting to download the software, the event known by many as Download Day went off successfully. In fact, some eager users were posting the download link well in advance of the wide availability of the download page.

In the end, the folks at Mozilla did an impressive job promoting the event and surpassed even their own goals. They wrapped up the 24 hours with an impressive 8.3 million downloads of Firefox 3. Their original goal was 5 million. As of right now, they’ve reached 11.7 million downloads of the software. That’s impressive by any measure!

For those unfamiliar with the popular browser, Firefox is quite possibly the best browser out there. It’s faster, it can be improved upon with the addition of third-party plug-ins, skins and add-ons, because of it’s open-source nature, it can be utilized on a number of different operating systems and platforms including Mac and Linux distributions, and it creates a better browsing experience.

Here’s the link to the download page…