I recently headed west to visit my son in Palo Alto, California, home of Stanford University. The lodging costs in Palo Alto and nearby towns were very high, so my wife and I decided to stay a little farther south in Santa Clara, one of the many pulses of Silicon Valley.

Right outside my door were the headquarters for Sun, Yahoo, and Mcafee. Up the street in Mountain View were one of Microsoft’s California offices, and the mother of all search engines, Google.

I expected a monolith tower to the mighty Google god, but instead found a quiet business park as non-descript as any other you might find in San Antonio. They did occupy quite a few buildings, so it was more akin to USAA’s campus.

Nothing remarkable on the outside, but a world of innovation on the inside. I guess that sums up the whole Silicon Valley experience. But I’ll have to find out for sure another day. This time it was just a quick peek as I wandered around Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay area.

It’s been a while since I looked over my own website with a critic’s eye to see how it stacks up. Overall not bad, but missing some elements that I’ve been pounding over everyone else’s head for a couple of years.

Plus, I just finished reading “Don’t Make Me Think”, a handbook of web design and usability by Steve Krug. If you’re a web designer and want to refresh yourself and pick up a few tips, I highly recommend it.

Most of the content was very familiar to me and I was proud that I followed the same tenets as other leading designers. But I spent a lot of time on a little section that talked about taglines.

Taglines are supposed to define what your site is all about without visitors having to…[wait for it]…think.

I had no tagline and a lot of content to wade through to find the answer, so I immediately re-designed the website logo you see today. I hope it accomplished my goal.

While I was at it, I made a concerted effort to standardize this blog to the rest of the site and I also re-designed the portfolio so visitors could browse through each portfolio detail without having to return to the portfolio index pages. » Go to the portfolio index.

Happy Halloween 2007!

We’re pleased to present the newly updated website for Maria T. LoRusso, P.C.

Ms. LoRusso is the owner and principal attorney for Maria T. LoRusso, A Professional Corporation.

Located in the Stone Oak area of San Antonio, the firm selected Desktop Consulting Service to completely re-vamp their website. We added some contemporary design features, a bold new layout, and an interactive Google map.

Visit the website at www.lorussobusinesslaw.com