webDowling: About

Who are you?

My name is W. Gregory Dowling. I am a thirty something web designer, father, husband, only son and all around comp-u-boy. Additional details and specifics can be found in my resume.

My wife Laura is an Artist/Illustrator and former Art Educator for the Stamford Connecticut Board of Education. Examples of her work can be found in the portfolio section of this site.

What's this all about?

webDowling is the personal web site of the Dowling family. It is an outlet for several passions: my comp-u-boy musings, Laura's fine art creations, and the desire to share videos and photos with friends and family.

When did this site go live?

My first post was on November 17, 2003. I had originally planned to host the site with Yahoo! but quickly realized that they did not support Movable Type and moved my domain to aPlus.net.

Where is all this taking place?

We live in Southern Connecticut – which is not quite New York City and not quite New England but a pleasant blend of both. We are not too far from just about anything you would want to do and try to take advantage of it whenever we can.

Why are you doing this?

After working in the industry for ten years, building and maintaing web sites for other people, I decided it was time to have one of my own. I wanted a way to share videos and photos of my son with my parents and to create an online gallery for Laura to display her work. I discovered the weblog phenomenon in Movable Type and webDowling was born.

How does this site work?

webDowling uses the Movable Type personal publishing system and employs five separate web logs to produce the various sections that create the site. There are separate web logs for the main site blog, links blog, videos blog, portfolio blog, and blogroll blog. The photos section utilizes PhotoStack to create and organize the various photo pages and archives. The moblog portion of the site is hosted through TextAmerica while digital photos are hosted through Flickr. Commerce portions of the site are hosted through CafePress and Amazon, while sponsored links are managed through Google AdSense.

webDowling utilzes Google Analytics to measure visitor traffic and as such, the following applies:

This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyze how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.

Do you have an RSS feed?

webDowling is available as several RSS data feeds. What is an RSS feed you ask? Well... RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, although it is really not so simple. Basically, it is a data format that allows news aggregator software to display elements of a web site without having to actually visit the site yourself.

So why would anyone want to do this? Well... if you read content from several different web sites with any regularity, the ability to "aggregate" this information into a single user interface becomes very attractive. For example, you can download my list of daily sites and read them in your news aggregator without actually having to visit each site individually.

As far as software goes, webDowling recommends FeedDemon for Windows users and NetNewsWire for Mac OSX users. For those of you with a My Yahoo! homepage, or those interested in having one, you can add posts from webDowling directly to your homepage by clicking here.

The following syndicated feeds are available:

webDowling – main web log
webDowling: Links – Links web log
webDowling: Photos – Photos web log
webDowling: Portfolio – Portfolio web log
webDowling: Videos – Videos web log

If you have any issues using these feeds please do not hesitate to contact me.