“It was a good time, regardless of the outcome,” said Seyffer, who took home a gold trophy and a Stonewall Kitchen gift basket sporting a blue “First Place” ribbon.

Anne Gale produced a strong chili that barely took second, edging out third place by a single point.  The evening’s hosts, Tim Brooks, whose chili was immensely flavorful but contained too much heat for the judges, and Fiona Brooks, who ordered the bulk of her ingredients from Mexico, graciously shared third place.

Cooper Pickett submitted a Cincinnati chili that was good enough to receive one first place vote.

“Will’s chili was good,” said Tim Brooks.  ”He took no risks, played it safe, and produced a very descent traditional chili.”

The event was stage-managed by Hannah Brooks, who deftly devised the scoring procedures and ensured complete fairness for the event.

About Integra
Integra Strategic Technologies is a full-service Web design and development company based in Portland, Maine, with 16 years of experience offering strategic planning, Web site design, custom database solutions, ecommerce applications, Web hosting, and search engine optimization and marketing.

The site went live on Monday, 12/19.

Maine Restaurant Week starts March 1 2012, so check out the site and start whetting your appetite!

The Maine Technology Institute (MTI) announced at its September meeting that Integra would be one of the twelve companies to receive a portion of the over $141,000 in funding ($220K in matching contributions).  Integra was awarded the grant for their Client, a web-based application for small businesses.  The software includes project management, client invoicing, issue tracking, and customer relationship management among other features.

“We are extremely grateful to MTI for its continued commitment to Maine’s technology industry,” said Integra Strategic president, Tim Brooks. “This grant will allow us to continue development of an innovative and costeffective client coordination application unlike any that is currently available to small businesses.”

Integra Strategic Technologies specializes in developing and designing Web sites as well as Web-based applications and online tool-sets.

The sites goal is to connect commercial buyers of Salmon (large scale) with commercial suppliers of Salmon (large scale).

You can view the site here: Salmon Suppliers

Integra Strategic specializes in developing and designing Web sites as well as Web-based applications and online toolsets.  They work to improve their clients’ data management and collection processes to improve functionality in the online ordering process, streamlining the overall business process.

“The Tech Hub provides a fantastic opportunity to bring some of Portland’s leading technology companies together in the same building,” said Tim Brooks, Principal at Integra Strategic.  “The goal is to create a collaborative, synergistic environment where companies—even competitors—are able to work closely together.”

Through support of its members, CBTH will become a geographic focal point where technology culture fuels business growth.  The Casco Bay Tech Hub offers many great benefits for Maine technology companies that will aid them in recruitment, building partnerships, networking, education and funding growth.  Through CBTH, local tech companies can share, learn and work together as they build relationships with other tech companies, educational institutions, service providers, funding sources and government entities.

For more information on the technology hub and leasing information please visit: http://www.cascobaytechhub.com.

About Casco Bay Technology Hub

CBTH is located at 30 Danforth Street on the second and third floors in Portland, ME. There is no membership fee or any associated costs, prospective members only need is desire to build a tech culture in Maine and the ability to vote for that desire by leasing space at affordable rates.  If you’re interested in the TechHub please visit, http://www.cascobaytechhub.com/leasing-information.php.

The blog post, written by Software Engineer Kevin Wilson, states, “Many of you have asked us for a version of the YouTube player without a YouTube logo, so the video plays without any branding nearby.”  To remove the YouTube logo, you added the following string at the end of the embed code:

?modestbranding=1

Do note that the branding is modest according to this string.  A small “YouTube” text still appears at the top right when you hover over a paused video, but this is far less noticeable than the YouTube brand.

The one I received today had a new twist:  contacting the sender somehow would help fight terrorism and otherwise facility peace.  Here’s the text:

PAYMENT NOTIFICATION!

Again, we plead that you accept our apologies for the delay in your payment completion,so final payment approval has been given in your favour. Therefore, we hereby wish to allay your fears and assure you of the final release of your delayed payment.Therefore you are to make contact immediately for final payment processing. Funds will be released within 7 working days from the moment your information is confirmed with all requisite legal payment processing completed.

You are therefore advised to contact following:
Contact Person: Mr. WADE KAHN.
Email: [removed]

Furthermore, we notify your good-self of the fraudulent activities of an International fraud syndicate out to defraud innocent and unsuspecting beneficiaries. To this effect, we must all team up to fight against this menace just like the present and on-going war against terror for the sake of peace and mankind. It is our duty to guide,guard and protect all beneficiaries and ensure they do not fall into wrong hands. Please again, accept our apologies for the wrong done to you in the past while assuring you that justice will be done; so that you will receive your funds without any further delays. Website: [removed]

Regards, Ms. Jill Colman.
for: Mr. Wade KAHN.
Alternate Email: [removed]

The fact that Jill Colman wants to protect my “good-self” from fraudulent activities is quite reassuring.  I’m not sure what wrong has been done to me in the past, but it’s good to know that justice now will be done for the sake of mankind.

Outlook 2007 bases it’s html rendering engine on Microsoft Word (What? Really?), which was a step backwards from Outlook 2003, who happened to use a sort of ‘Internet Explorer Lite.’ I’m assuming the engineer that thought using a browser to display HTML was a good idea, has since been fired.

Unfortunately, ‘recent’ reports regarding email client market share are incredibly expensive as they are typically based on large scale polling, but I was able to find a few different reports that have since been ‘free-ified.’

http://litmus.com/resources/email-client-stats
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients/
http://visibleranking.com/2010/05/most-popular-email-clients.php
http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/market-share-of-web-email-services/5322/

As you can see, Outlook is still top dog. Regardless of what people say about Microsoft losing their grip, they are still alive and well in the business sector. GMail/Yahoo/etc are not currently acceptable for major corporations for a variety of reasons, archiving/data retention being a big one, so services like Outlook/Exchange are still in demand. With this in mind, grit your teeth, forget everything cool you learned about CSS, and prepare to send 1,000′s of test messages into Outlook to get your fancily designed html newsletter up to snuff.

If you don’t have Outlook, try signing up for a free account at Contactology–They have a free email client simulator that should cover most of your needs as it simulates all major email platforms, as well as giving you a spam analysis of your code for one low price of $0.00. Not too bad.