Featured Web Sites

EnvironmentalChemistry.com

This is the oldest and most popular Web site produced by Kenneth L. Barbalace. Its mission is to be an educational site that makes the subject of chemistry a little less daunting to the average student. The goal was to make this site as classroom friendly as possible so that it can help students have a positive learning experience. First going online as YOGI'S Behemoth in 1995, this site has been through many evolutions as Web development practices and technology have evolved. This site runs on an Apache/FreeBSD server using PHP and MySQL. It is designed to W3C's HTML 4.01 Strict and CSS specifications. This site is also designed to meet "Priority One" compliance of the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0) and as compliant with "Priority Two" and "Priority Three" recommendations as is practical.

The site is designed for easy navigation and to be very search engine friendly with multiple navigations methods being present on every page. Even though this site contains over 17,000 pages, no page is more than three hops from any other page on the site.

EnvironmentalChemistry.com receives around 8,000,000 page views and 4,000,000 visits per year. According to Google around 49,000 web pages have been found that link to EnvironmentalChemistry.com. Between 05/01/2008 and 04/30/2009 users found EnvironmentalChemistry.com using over 400,000 different search phrases. The primary means of marketing this site is via natural search engine placement and organic link accumulation from other sites with no money being spent to market this site. By focusing on producing vast amounts of quality content on a tightly integrated topic areas EnvironmentalChemistry.com consistently ranks very high in search results for related search phrases.

Featured pages: 70s House Eco Renovation, Pseudoscience - A Threat to Our Environment, A Brief History of Asbestos Use and Associated Health Risks, Asbestos, its Chemical and Physical Properties, Asbestos - A Manufacturing Health Hazard Dating to Prehistoric Times, Environmental Justice and the NIMBY Principle, 2004 ERG (Emergency Response Guidebook) - Online, US DOT HazMat (Hazardous Materials) Transportation Placards, Periodic Table of Elements, Editors Blog.

InternetSAR.org

InternetSAR.org is an all volunteer organization whose mission is to develop and promote the use of the Internet to conduct collaborative analysis of aerial and satellite imagery during search and rescue operations to help locate down or missing aircraft.

Founded by Kenneth Barbalace this is our most ambitious project to date. The main site is built upon our proprietary content management system with its private forums running on vBulletin. To participate in InternetSAR.org searches volunteers log in to the main site and then request imagery assignments, which open up in Google Earth overlaying new imagery taken after a plane went down over top of Google Earth's default imagery. When volunteers find something they think might be of interest they file reports via a special reporting form. Reports are then evaluated and scored by report evaluators. If reports score high enough at the report evaluator level they are forwarded on to a senior evaluator level staffed by professional imagery analysts who make the determination as to whether or not reports will be forwarded on to ground teams for further investigation.

Google Earth is tightly integrated into the functioning of InternetSAR.org with PHP and MySQL based dynamic KML overlay generators. These overlay generators produce Google Earth KML overlays on the fly to issue imagery assignments, report evaluation overlays and search mission information analysis overlays. The system can track who has been issued what imagery and for what reason. Everything is permissions based with different user groups having access to different levels of functionality on the site and different sub-forums based on their level within the organization. The entire site runs on PHP, MySQL and Apache.

White Environmental Consultants

White Environmental Consultants (WEC), headquartered in Anchorage, AK, offers a wide range of consulting services to environmental and general construction companies.

Built upon our proprietary content management system this site can easily adapted and enlarged as WEC's online strategy is fully developed and their needs change. Most routine website maintenance needs can be handled in house by WEC personnel reducing their need to return to us for web development work to rare occasions when a major new feature is desired. This not only reduces the overall cost of ownership for their website, but improves their ability to keep the site up-to-date.

English Russian Translations

Provides professional English-Russian translation and onsite interpretation services in Portland and Southern Maine. Featured articles: How To Work Effectively With Interpreters, Interpreter vs Translator

This website was built using our proprietary content management system to facilitate its long-term maintenance. One unique feature for this site is the ability to request a quote via a special web form that even allows for documents to be attached and uploaded with the request.

Western Maine Finishing

Western Maine Finishing finishes & restores log, clapboard & cedar shake homes. The objective behind their site was to create a low cost "Web brochure" that could be easily updated via a Web management tool including the ability to upload before and after photos of projects they have worked on. This site showcases programming methods we can use to reduce the cost of Web site development. To reduce programming time, we draw upon an ever-growing cache of core code components that can be used time and again on other sites we develop.

With this design concept, we can bring the down cost of designing a small professional Web site that could be easily maintained. This makes such sites more affordable for companies who in the past would have had to settle for a static site that would be rarely if ever updated because updates could only be done by a someone who knew HTML or had special software.

SimCity Forum

This forum based on the vBulletin forum system, is primarily a hobby. It did; however, serve as a testing ground for building the skills necessary to deploy and manage forums.