As usual a web site offer is not tested before going live. I actually called the hosting company “PixelMedia” at 10:10 and they assured me it would be back up. Who launches a project and doesn’t test or even try to determine the load their site will get? As a fellow web professional (web developer) I take extreme issue with this growing trend.

This of course wasn’t the first high profile site that offered a great savings, some of you may remember the Sparkfun “Free Day” back in January. The slight difference with Sparkfun was they did order new servers, just still must not have tested it properly.

Its of course very possible for a large web presence in a matter of minutes to be successful, just look at Adobe when they debuted CS5, Amazon whenever they run any sort of a promotion and of course news agencies when tragedy and breaking news hits.

Those examples show it is possible, so if you don’t test your work, don’t post it.. and above all, don’t give people false hope. Now all Mass Save has done is pissed off Massachusetts residents and brought bad press to their agency.

Update: I would like to mention Mass Save finally did come up for us at 11:15 EST, it seems they moved the site to a new location and got things online (slowly).

After looking at digital Hollywood’s web site I quickly realized they need a designer, and quick. For an organization that is about digital content, they cleary missed the meeting on usability and overall presentation.

Its not even mediocre, it just downright sucks.. sorry to say, but its true. See for yourself.

The concept behind the events are interesting, but if this is the presentation layer, it really scares me as to what the training/sessions will contain.

This is a paramount example of putting your best in anything you do, web site for event included.

While reading some comments on a popular design site I decided to do a little poking around the posters site and quickly was introduced to “The38thSignal” which if you know design is some non-original attempt to be like 37 Signals a wonderful design and development web site as well as a group of the top people in the industry. Now this isn’t a direct rip, but clearly without an sense of originality and to even go as far as to host it on Blogger and use the same color scheme.. wow, just wow… well, I am off to register a new idea now 10Rules and AColumnApart

Update:  After getting an email from a friend it has come to my attention that the site is in parody, but for reasons I have yet to understand.