Aside from Obama's inauguration, today kicked off the beginning of the Spring Semester for the University of Houston, which means my first day of classes is tomorrow. I'd love to say I'm excited, but the classes I'm up for are looking pretty tedious this time around (this would include Statistical Analysis for Business Applications and Service and Manufacturing Operations).

On a completely separate note, I've been learning Adobe Photoshop Lightroom's ins and outs and that's been fun. There's definitely a lot more to this photography thing than one might initially think. I'll be looking to add my Flickr photo stream soon.

And Something Halfway Useful

I've also been doing a lot of thinking and having a few conversations about the concept of copy on websites. One would assume most wouldn't think to hire for copy writing, but the more I talk with people about their clients, the more of an issue it seems to be. Few understand that even an in-house writer for a company won't usually understand the concept of optimization or the "mind" of a search engine.

Web designers are producing empty websites while their clients are never getting around to producing content. That or the content is useless from an optimizing perspective. I would urge those looking to invest in new websites to not shove copy to the side, and instead truly evaluate the order of importance of aspects in a website. It should go:

Functionality - How does my site work? Is it clean and easy to use?
Content - Is my site useful? Is it informative?
Aesthetics - Is my site visually appealing?

Refer to Facebook and Google as perfect, working examples. They function before they dazzle with color and graphics. This is actually a part of their charm; they just work.

That isn't to say that certain people don't need pizzazz. Artists of all sorts work off of their ability to sway people with vision and sometimes sound (a whole different issue in web design). In those cases, I would encourage creativity.

In summation, consider the order of importance of things. Your ways will be much more efficient in doing so.