Pictures of speakTECH offices..not sure how long we'll be here, we're outgrowing the space fast..

Couldn't resist taking this first photo while at a stop light - they seed the central divider here with wild flowers.

Today I opened another business venture, this time to help businesses make their websites work better.

"Work better" covers a lot of ground, sure. But after toying with the idea for over a year it seems like a good time to put my technical knowledge of search engine marketing and conversion to good use.

The final push was when I met some local business owners last week who had established websites that were making money..yet one had a site where every page had the same page title. Another had no idea that meta descriptions were a key sales tool - they had none.

Basic stuff.

I realized then that even though I spend my time in forums with other geeks and experts in online marketing there were plenty of people who just didn't have the time - or desire - to learn all this. But they did have the ability to hire someone to help them.

So, duh.. I bought a domain and threw a site up. It's at www.HelpYourSite.com and I'm going to focus first on local businesses in Austin, TX and surrounding area. That way I can meet with them regularly, in person, and I think provide a better level of service.

Wish me luck!

My latest website is www.ResistAttack.com - a site dedicated to educating people about how to keep themselves and their families safe, and sell them the products to do it.

Obvious products like stun guns and pepper sprays, but also hidden surveillance cameras too - even dummy cameras. There are some related products too, like hand held metal detectors that are popular with security firms, police forces and prison authorities. We have sold quite a few of those already.

Open since June, there is a long way to go, but i'm patient and know what I'm doing so in a year or two it'll be another successful website closer to retirement :)

My two latest ideas for small niche ecommerce sites: www.resistattack.com and www.sharpenem.com were setup on the server last night. It'll be an interesting next step after the success of the other ecommerce sites we've started.

It won't be without risks though - Jerry said that one of the niches was going to be a lot of work after looking at the NicheWatch results. Time will tell!

hi, my name is jesse, i love to skate board and eat chocolate, and coockies "an" cream icecream.i like georgia bulldogs, and love to throw the football with my friends.

Tara and I have been going to the local Summit Racing (McDonough, GA) every Monday for their weekly show-n-shine just to park up and open the Wagon trunk and shamelessly promote a couple of our pedal cars - namely the red fire truck pedal car and the orange Champion fifties-style pedal car.

We're getting a great reaction from people who seem to globally love these and hate the plastic pedal cars you can buy in the toy stores. But no sales as yet. :(

Still, you get to see a little bump in the web traffic on Monday night & Tuesday, so people are at least looking. If you see us there, drop by and say hello. If we're not with the car, pick up a card and call us and we'll come running!

Yesterday Jasmine died at a traffic stop. Everytime we put it into Drive the engine would stall - but Reverse worked just fine. Conclusion?  The transmission is messed up internally and I'll need to find a local expert to fix it. That's not going to be easy or cheap I suspect.

In the meantime, I have a wagon with a crummy engine and great transmission and a convertible with a great engine and crummy transmission. Which one will win?

After a little bit of thought I'm going to sacrifice the convertible and swap its engine into the wagon. Tara will get a fun car to drive and the convertible will be off the road until.. well, further notice.

Reason being, I want to drive around the pedal cars to local events like Summit, HAMB & Grits and get the work out. I got the first one, a fire truck pedal car (shown here) yesterday.

Hi! I'm James Shaw and my wife Tara and I moved to the States in 1998 from Portsmouth, England. We love it here in Atlanta, even with the humidity. 

I'm a serial entrepreneur and complete car nut and can only ever be found in two places; in the garage working in the latest project or in front of "the damn computer" as the family call it. I'm a professional computer programmer (yeah, nerd) by trade.

Clever Chaps, Inc is the company that my wife and I run for our retail web sites. We're always growing to include other web sites focussed on specific niches that interest us.

For a variety of reasons this blog will be leaving the Royal Tiki site permanently in the next few days.

It will reopen on my personal website in March when that site is updated.

See you on the flip side...

You may not have heard of a donkey jacket in the states, but I've always loved them since having one as a teenager in England. A few years ago now!

Anyway, I got inspired by all the recent talk of car club jackets on the HAMB so I tracked down someone who imports them over here. I could only find one importer, and luckily he was only 45 minutes away in downtown Atlanta!

I just picked mine up early this morning (gotta love that 7am traffic) and thought some of you might be interested. It's thick wool with PVC on shoulders and top of back.

Best part? $65!!!

I was looking at my YouTube favorites this evening and found an old gem that I still love. Taken from the Nicolas Cage movie Gone in 60 Seconds - I think it was on the DVD under special features - you can find the music video here on YouTube.

Looking on iTunes came up empty though, and although Amazon lists it, it's out of stock.

Of course, Google is now completely overrun by spam-like sites that display the lyrics of songs so little joy to be found by searching for the name.

Does anyone know if it is available somewhere?

This weekend I got a few hours in the garage so I worked on my dry sump tank, water header tank and both catch cans.

I had one small setback where I put the header tank too close and forgot that the rocker covers are on studs so I needed more room to remove them, but at the second attempt I'm happy with how everything fits.

Now I have to start planning the hoses and hose ends to plumb them up.

I got $50 from the in-laws today (my birthday) so I think a trip to Summit is in order for hose ends!

Sorry about this folks, but starting tonight (Friday, January 18th) I am going to be renaming the categories on the site.

Inevitably this will cause some broken links for a few days. The site itself should be fixed up overnight, but Google will update its links "in due course" as always.

I know this reflects badly on us, but it's important enough that I felt it should be done sooner rather than later. In the big scheme of things, it's no big deal. As I get older I'm trying to not stress the little stuff. That said, I wanted to at least post an apology for those of you that hit a missing page.

To try and distract you, here is a picture my kid drew..

Yes, it's that time again - join us at the Southern Skillet on Sunday at 9am. We'll be the bunch of guys at the back talking hot rods...

Read more on the HAMB

Continuing on my journey through tiki world, today I am listening to the syrupy tones of Vegas Vic in his Tiki Lounge podcast.

I use iTunes to listen to music while at work, so I simply subscribed to the podcast using this iTunes link and got all episodes.

I'm currently on episode 3, back from June 2005

Believe it or not, I've only just joined at the Tiki Central forums. I've been there before of course, but only quickly and never to linger long enough to read much. 

Too much time spent on the HAMB I guess.

Last night I jumped on and introduced myself. One question came up quite quickly - is music on web sites more acceptable nowadays? Obviously myspace is the big fish and every profile page plays music. So the kids are used to it. It was always a laughable offense to put blinking text and music on web sites - but now I'm not so sure about the music.

Many tiki and hot rod sites play cool music now. I visited www.thehukilau.com and loved the music!

What do you think? Tell me below.. cos otherwise the next time you visit you might find music here..

Last night we completed adding George's awesome art work to the store. I love these cartoons, they are so cool.

My favorites are Chopped and Channeled (opens in new window), My Girl, Dinner is served, Optical Delusion, Way, Not Yet, Honey...I'm Home, Freedom of Religion, Bump'n Grind and of course Large Pizza with everything shown here.

We just returned from the World of Wheels show in Atlanta - I enjoyed it but I was dragging the kids around by the time we left! My 13 yr old daughter said she was going to die from boredom unless we left soon.

There were a *lot* of stock muscle cars that weren't floating my boat, but enough hot rods to keep me happy. I loved seeing the showboats too - for a change. It's amazing how much time and money goes into some of these cars showpieces.

And of course I had to pony up for a socal tin sign and get it autographed by Jimmy Shine (from the Hard Shine TV show). He was a nice guy, chatty and talked to all my kids too.

When Tara tried to sell skateboard racks at a school fall festival it was a bit of a flop. No-one understood we were selling the racks, not the borrowed skateboards!

But December has been a big month for skateboard racks, that's for sure!

Obviously they're an ideal Christmas present for all the little skater dudes out there like my son, but still, it's very cool to be able to get your products out there on the web and sell them against all the big boys.

There's just one more day to order yours though, if you want it under that tree...

During a recent hot rod gathering I mentioned one of my favorite movies "The Loveless" to a couple of people only to get blank looks!

Ok, so it's not a famous movie by any means - it certainly qualifies as a cult movie by most measures in fact - but I was lucky enough to see it many years ago and it stuck with me much like I remember the first time I saw American Graffiti.

The loveless is a biker flick - no hot rods in this one. But it is set in the late fifties, in rural Georgia, as a small biker gang stops on the way to Daytona to "hear them howl". It is period perfect.

The atmosphere of the movie is thick, and with rockabilly musician Robert Gordon co-starring in the movie and writing the soundtrack most hot rodders will love it. This is not some sugary movie like Hot Rod; be prepared for a dark movie that nonetheless still makes you wish you were one of the gang..

I see that you can still buy it at Amazon.