Just pushed the latest CMS build LIVE. Check it out.

Two big improvements to note:

1. We are now implementing the latest version of the FCK Editor, version 2.6.3. Hopefully, it will be a bit less finicky than the previous version we were running.

2. We now use HTML Tidy to keep the editor code clean and well-formed.

dynamIt users, login and have a look for yourself.

And, you know the drill, e-mail us quickly if you should happen across a bug.

Boulder is truly an amazing city. The people here swear by it. I’ve been here for a few months so far and I know that I’m not leaving anytime soon. There are three major things that contribute to my assurance: the people, accessibility to the outdoors, and the business culture.

From what I’ve noticed so far, the people in Boulder are awesome. Since I’ve been here I’ve found a group of people to play sand volleyball with twice a week, was welcomed in to an entrepreneur community that meets semimonthly, and have started hanging around with a fun startup-centric group that meets every so often to have drinks. Also, the community formed at the New Tech Meetups is awesome for meeting new people, finding jobs, or talking up your company. Overall, there is a huge sense of community here. Small communities with focused purposes extend in to other communities and eventually, everyone is a part of the largest community that is Boulder.

For those that don’t know, Boulder is bordered to the West by the Rocky Mountains. Nestled in to the foothills itself, Boulder lends itself to amazing activities and views. From almost anywhere in the city, the iconic Flatirons of Boulder are always in view and the trails that lead to their peaks are always open. The Chautauqua and Sanitas trials are reachable from most places in Boulder by a ten or so minute bike ride. The system of parks within the city is great as well. Its hard to go very far without running in to a well maintained and usable park. Other activities such as climbing, mountain and trail biking, backpacking, and water sports are all popular as well. The other outdoor activity that is popular here in Boulder that was rather new to me is community gardening. I hope to get my own plot next season.

Finally, the business culture in Boulder is overwhelmingly positive. It has a very strong focus on entrepreneurship and thus venture capital. This mix of interested and ambitious individuals with seasoned veterans from many industries, especially high technology and the internet, combines for awesome potential. It is hard to meet a person in Boulder that hasn’t or isn’t trying or succeeding at starting their own business. For example, a person that I randomly started conversing with at the BolderBoulder 10k had a work from home career and was also overnighting the creation of a business service to translate blueprints for multilingual construction crews.

All this being said, I feel like I have succeeded in finding a place that fits me right for my post-graduate life. I am inspired by the atmosphere here in Boulder and excited to make my own move in to the world of entrepreneurship, comfortable that this is the place to be.

P.S. :: If you want to get in touch with cool Boulder folk, check out Boulder+Me, a new project by Andrew Hyde to promote Boulder.

-Ryan Cook

A botanist by degree, developer by trade, and entrepreneur by aspiration, Ryan recently graduated from Miami University in Ohio and moved to Boulder to pursue his goals of using his multidisciplinary skills and interests to start businesses. You can get in touch with Ryan at ryan at wheretocaptain dot com or through his website :: where.to.captain?

dynamIt Confidant:

We’ve worked with some great people over the years, however, there are a choice few on which we bestow the title “dynamIt Confidant“. Our list of confidants is short and includes IA people, programmers, designers and a few bus. dev. guys who we know are ridiculously talented and who we also know we can count in our circle. Our confidants get dynamIt email addresses, are part of the family, eat Thurman with us, wear dynamIt t-shirts and are, in general, people we can count on in life, yes, but more importantly in WEB.

Ryan Cook:

One of our confidants is Ryan Cook (cook, cookie, ry-guy, vooder, etc). Ryan has worked with us in strategy, research, IA and programming capacities. He is absurdly talented and has an acute sense of detail. His curiosity and (to quench that curiosity) knowledge of web is seldom matched. Ryan take the initiative to be up-to-date on the industry/world (if that’s possible) and looks constantly to contribute to it. His skills include IA and database schema, XHTML, PHP, MySQL, CSS, JS, AS and anything else that he’s researching at the time. His official academic accomplishments decorate him with a degree in botany and minors in computer science and computer engineering (typical diversity exhibited by a member of dynamIt). I had the pleasure of gallivanting around Europe with Ry for about 6 months a few years ago including sailing the Greek Isles for a week. Those months gave us plenty of time for other conversation [read lack of consistent connectivity in hostels and on night trains]. Ryan’s complexity doesn’t end at algorithms. In fact, it only begins. Ryan happens to be a certified tracker and talented in wilderness survival. He’s a great skier, an entrepreneur, an avid reader (loves philosophy/religion), eclectic music lover and passionate outdoorsman and extreme athlete.

Ryan has recently, well, in the last 2 months, moved out to Boulder - an incredible natural environment and a hotbed for entrepreneurship, technology and business. He is currently the head of operations for VC Wear and  is also the founder and facilitator of TechTreks.

Ryan’s move to Colorado was somewhat catalyzed when he pursued an idea that came from StartUp Weekend Bloomington in the spring, but has since found his place in the diverse and progressive community.

Look for Ryan to guest post on the dynamIt blog soon. All of you StartUp Weekend Junkies may be interested as Boulder is where Andrew Hyde resides and where the whole idea was born. Ryan will be shedding some light on the scene out there.

Follow Ryan on Twitter: @protonron; Check out Ryan’s site: WhereToCaptain.com.

Who are your Confidants?

What does your network look like? Do you work closely with industry-folk, strategists, programmers or designers around the country?

one.

nick

It has been almost a month since my inaugural post on our blog and I get the feeling you all are in need of some music news. Ready or not, here it comes.

First up (and time-sensitive) we have the Jazz & Ribs Fest starting tonight right here in Columbus. It will run all weekend. Find out more here.. and if you’re in the Columbus area, I recommend following ‘ExpCols‘ on twitter so you won’t miss things like this in the future!

Next, I will be attending New American Music Union Festival in my hometown of Pittsburgh, August 8-9. Although heavily branded and sponsored by American Eagle (kind of lame, but whatever), the weekend is shaping up to be one to remember. Headlining artists include Bob Dylan, The Raconteurs, The Black Keys, Gnarls Barkley, The Roots, and Spoon (one of my favorite rock bands touring today). They have managed to assemble quite and eclectic and well-rounded lineup partly thanks to curator Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Kiedis said this about planning the festival:

“My experience tells me that concerts can be life changing. That is how I approached putting this lineup together. The thrill of seeing Bob Dylan next to The Raconteurs next to Gnarls Barkley next to The Roots is reason for us all to celebrate. Music is still the most inspiring creative force that I know of and this seemed like a prime opportunity to let it shine. Add to this the fact of a generously low ticket price and that it all takes place in the streets of Pittsburgh and we have the most rocking block party of the summer.”

There are also a number of college bands from across the country which will have the opportunity of playing at the same festival as many of the artists that have inspired them. Each one will be judged and the winning band will receive a full-day recording session in LA as well as lots of promotion from AE.

As of right now, all the tickets are sold out (!), but something tells me all of the South Side of Pittsburgh will be rocking regardless of admission. Feel like making a road trip? This might be just the time to do it.

In other music news, Pirate, a band featuring friend of dynamIt Nat Hagey (bass guitar), will be performing at The Basement on August 3. They are opening for We Are Scientists, a very good indie band hailing from England. I know I will be there, and I’m sure the guys of Pirate would like it if you stopped by too. Tickets are $12 and you can get them here.

_

Album I’m currently digging: Evil Urges by My Morning Jacket

Journalists lead interesting lives, their work takes them to unique places even in the local setting. This is a life that most of us will never know beyond what we see on the news and in the papers.

However, I have found that technology allows us to dig a bit deeper and have a stronger experience than traditional media. Consider this scenario:

Last week dynamIt was interviewed about StartUp Weekend Columbus, which was held over the weekend at TechColumbus. We were talking rather informally with the reporter and the camera man while they setup in our office. We developed a good rapport with the camera man and so I began following him on Twitter (@AndYL_WCMH).

Andy is an avid Twitter user and often tweets (to use the parlance of our times) from his mobile phone while on the job. For example, the day after the dynamIt interview, Andy was down in Cincinnati to shoot an interview with presidential hopeful John McCain. Twitter received periodic updates of the trip, including a few camera phone pics.

Meanwhile, back in the office, I was following along via Twitter, and I could not help but feel almost as if I were there standing right next to Andy as he was at work. When I watched this story on the news I recalled the behind-the-scenes story told by Andy via Twitter. I was captivated by this story because I knew how it came about. I got so much more out of a simple news program because it was supported by web and mobile technology.

The homepage of our website reads the following:

“We are passionate about web and excited by new trends and web technologies.”

We received an e-mail from someone who had visited the dynamIt site after seeing Nick and Dan on NBC 4 news last week. In his e-mail, this gentlemen informed us that we had a typographical error right on our homepage. He claimed that it should read, “We are passionate about the web…” We quickly thanked him for looking out for us, but confirmed that it is as we have intended.

At StartUp Weekend Columbus this past weekend the same gentlemen approached me about the exact same issue insisting that we were wrong. I was not looking for an argument so I smiled and said something along the lines of “it makes sense to us, we see web as not just a singular object, but as a much larger concept.” But, this man was not convinced. He claimed that it is grammatically incorrect and that the language makes zero sense to the average person. He told me that from a marketing standpoint using this language will just confuse our potential customers and they will not want to work with us.

The audacity of my inquisitor encouraged a range of emotions, but I stayed cool and sincerely thought about what he said. In certain contexts does it sound silly to use the word ‘web’ without the definite article preceding it? Why is it that I left the article off when I originally wrote that blurb for our front page? Why does it sound so natural as it is? What is (the) web, really?

To me, the web is not an object, it is not a thing you use, it is not a place you go. Rather, web is an idea. The web is does not exist to do to a denumerable number of tasks. I do not use the web to just do x, y, and z. Sure, you may just need to do x, and we can help you with that too, but we see web as an endless array of possibilities. When you work with dynamIt we want to open up all of these paths to you. Every application we’ve built is different than the last and every one in the future will be different still. This is what keeps us passionate and engaged. Each project we work on is its own unique little puzzle that we receive great pleasure in solving.

So, within a matter of minutes I was able to craft this argument.

“What is the definition of a noun?” I asked, to which I received the response, “a person, place, or thing.”

“Well, yes,” I said, “but, there is one type of noun that you are forgetting. A noun is defined as a person, place, thing, or idea.” He complied.

Next, I asked, “give me an example of some other nouns that represent ideas.” He responded quickly with two: philosophy and chemistry.

I concluded, “Does it not makes sense if I say, ‘We are passionate about philosophy’? When referring to the subject as a whole, Would you ever say, ‘We really enjoy the chemistry’?”

So, what does everyone think? What is (the) web, really? Did I win the argument? Or, is dynamIt just a little bit crazy? Comment below.