February 2007 – Nate Whitehill

Want to Abduct Some Humans?

I am not a big gamer, and I usually don’t give plugs to gaming-related web sites, but when my friend and Flash-programming genius, Jared Riley, gave me sneak peak at a new Flash game he had been working on for the past several months, I couldn’t resist not blogging about it.

Ordinarily, I am not very impressed with most Flash games, but this one is pretty special. It is called Alien Abduction II and it features 10 levels of awesome abducting action (try saying that 3x fast)!

From the website:

Alien Abduction II follows the never released Alien Abduction I, in which you must abduct people while staying out of sight of the agents. If an agent spots you, you can drop ANYTHING on them to kill them. Everything, from igloos to people, can double as weapons when dropped from on high.

The game will feature 10 unique levels (4 from the unreleased AAI game), numerous enemies aside from agents including tanks and hell demons, and various other twists. The game will tie into Bagunkâ€™s very brand new High Score System, making it the first game to promote the API. The game also sports an â€œunlockâ€ mode where you can spend bonus points to purchase content that didnâ€™t make it into the game. This includes the elusive â€œbonusâ€ level and the original ship design.

The game is both challenging and rewarding as you try to progress through the myriad of levels. Jared did a great job with both the soundtrack and the graphics to this game. It’s hard to believe it was designed entirely by one person. The other very cool thing about the game is that if you are a member of the social-gaming site, Bagunk, your high score will be saved to their database and you can compete against all of your friends.

I recommend checking out Alien Abduction II as it is a very well-designed Flash game which is both fun and rewarding.

For more information, please visit:

Hello? It’s the First iPhone Commercial.

In cased you missed the Oscars the other night, Apple ran its first teaser commercial for the upcoming iPhone.

Apple has always been great at marketing by keeping it simple. I believe simplicity is the best way to get your message across to an audience and I always design with simplicity in mind.

BTW, if anyone is interested in buying TheiPhone.net from me, make me an offer.

On another note, I am working on a redesign for my web development company, infinFX. We are planning to integrate a blog into the site containing useful articles about web development, design, marketing, and reaching your target audience. It is taking up a ton of time, but look out for that soon.

I will also have a special guest blogger on the infinFX blog. Some of you know him around the blogosphere but I will keep his identity secret for now.

The New Toyota Sportcar…A Hybrid?

The New Toyota Sportscar...A Hybrid?

There have been rumors for years now that Toyota has been prepping a replacement for its flagship Supra sportscar.

The Supra was one of the most popular tuner cars of the ’90’s and continues to be regarded as one of the ultimate Japanese rockets.

At the recent Detroit Auto Show, Toyota shocked the world with what may be the actual Supra replacement. Currently dubbed the FT-HS concept, this super-Toyota is actually a hybrid! It is powered by both an electric motor and a 3.5 liter V6 motor, good for over 400 horsepower. You know this is car is coming close to supercar territory when it promises to propel you to 60 mph in around 4 seconds!

This sports car is a 2+2, meaning that it seats four. These photos don’t show us how big the back seat actually is, but I’m assuming that it’s painfully small. Rather than call the FT-HS a 2+2, Toyota should just say that the FT-HS has a deep package tray behind the front seats.

Many modern sportscars have engines in the 300-400 horsepower range, but the acceleration isn’t always there as today’s rides are heavier than ever. The FT-HS, on the other hand, is designed to be as light as possible. Given that, it is impressive that the FT-HS contains an automatically retractable hard-top!

Personally, I think this car is an amazing achievement in engineering. It will get excellent gas mileage being a hybrid and promises to be a true enthusiast’s sports car. Now you can impress your environmentally-conscious mom and wow your girlfriend at the same time!

Before getting too excited about this wonderful offering, remember, it is still a concept, meaning it has not gotten the final word to go to production just yet. Toyota should be revealing more details about the FT-HS concept within the next 6 months, including its planned release date.

A few people have asked what the estimated price point might be. I have read several places that Toyota is looking to price this car in the mid 30’s. Seems a lot more reasonable than the last car I wrote about — the 8 Million Dollar Mercedes-Maybach!

Click on a picture for a larger (1400Ã—1050) desktop-size view.

Why a Sitemap Is Your Blog’s Best Friend

Why a Sitemap Is Your Blog's Best Friend

How would you like to increase your search engine traffic easily and significantly? My site receives around 30-40% of its traffic each week from Google and other search engines.

As you probably know, Google is the most widely used search engine, and if you are not in Google’s index, you are missing out on a significant amount of traffic.

Today I will explain why a sitemap is so beneficial to blogging and how it can easily increase the amount of search engine traffic you receive.

What is a sitemap?
In a nutshell, a sitemap is an XML text file which contains all of the links on your site and their respective priority. By using a sitemap, you are showing Google that your site is well organized and ready for indexing.

When a search engine spider, such as the Googlebot, gets ready to crawl your site, it first looks for a sitemap. If it does not find a sitemap, it crawls your site manually and has to determine for itself the most relevant pages. The advantage of having a sitemap is that Google will take less time to crawl your site, crawling will occur more frequently, and the Googlebot will automatically know what pages are the most relevant.

How does Google know when to crawl your site?
Everyone should use Google Webmaster Tools. By using Webmaster Tools and adding a sitemap, you can boost the chance that Google will crawl your site more often.

The first step is to verify you are the owner of your web site. You do this by adding a meta-tag to your site which shows Google that you own that particular site. Upon verifying site ownership, you can add a sitemap.

Google Webmaster Tools also contains a variety of other useful tools that show you how you rank for various keywords and what possible 404’s Google has found in your site structure. Here is a picture from Google Webmaster Tools showing the last time my site was indexed.

Google Webmaster Tools

How do I create a sitemap?
Luckily, there is a very handy WordPress plugin called Google Sitemap Generator which will automatically build a new sitemap everytime you publish a new post. The great thing about WordPress is that it is already very SE-optimized as far as onpage structure and source code. If you use this plugin in combination with Optimal Title, you are virtually guaranteeing that your site will rank well for a variety of different keywords. For more information about Optimal Title and its benefits, see this post.

The other advantage of using the Google Sitemap Generator plugin is that it will automatically ping Google telling them to reindex your site when you submit a new post. My site is now recrawled by Google almost everyday. This plugin also gives you the ability to set the priority of pages and posts on your site.

In conclusion, all bloggers should build a sitemap. Every post you write contains a variety of keywords people search for everyday. Wouldn’t it be nice to get more targeted traffic for free? The combination of Google’s Webmaster Tools and the Google Sitemap Generator WordPress Plugin make it is very easy to increase the amount of SE traffic your site receives.

For more information, please see:

Weekend Update

Some of you may have been wondering why I haven’t posted an update in three days. That is the longest I have gone without publishing a new post. However, I have decided to take the weekend off from all things work-related and just relax and hang out in the real world.

The past few weeks I have gotten slightly burned out from work 6-12 hours a day on the computer. I decided I need to balance more real life with online life. I will be back Sunday night with a new useful article.

Until then, have a great weekend everyone and don’t forget to get outside into the real world! Weird thing, I know!