Web Development

July 31, 2012 by Leave a Comment
5:40 am
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Every month, someone creates new improvements, in web development.  Here are a few of the best web development improvements that became popular in July.

      Nitro is a task manager that interfaces with Dropbox or Ubuntu.  It helps bloggers become more productive.  It offers lists for organizing tasks, due dates, search, recurring tasks, and themes.
     Spin.js is a CSS generator that lets a user create a CSS-based loading spinner that has no external dependencies, no images, and no external CSS.  It’s very configurable.  It’s resolution independent.
      The Designer’s Survival Guide is a blog that offers often-updated lists of design tips on many topics.  The articles are written by leading designers and industry pros.  It’s a good resource, especially for novice designers.
      All of these innovations, in web development, should help bloggers and webmasters become better organized and/or write better articles.
Filed Under: Blog, Web Development

Daily Motion

July 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment
11:30 am
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  Millions of people know about www.youtube.com, and more people should know about the second-most popular video website, www.dailymotion.com.  In June 2012, that site had about 27,000,000 unique monthly visitors.  More businesses and political candidates should use Daily Motion, to post their videos, for free.

Daily Motion was founded on March 15, 2005, in Paris.  In July 2007, the founders opened a U.S.-based office.  They knew that, if they had a U.S. office, more Americans would use the site.

Daily Motion is a good site for professional and personal use.  It offers a mix of professional content, contextual advertising, and paid top producers, through their Motion Maker program.  Some of their video categories are Movies, Games, Music, Sports, TV, Geek Out, Funny, Motion Makers, News-Weird, Caleb, Animation, and Viral Pick.

Daily Motion has a localization feature that allows users to easily search for videos, for their area.  This feature was customized for 15 countries.  The Daily Motion staff drives the localization use by reaching out to local content providers for each region to increase the local offerings for each area.

Although youtube is popular, more people, who want to share videos, on the internet, should also use www.dailymotion.com, to ensure that more people will see their videos.

Filed Under: Print and Video

Twitter facts

June 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment
3:03 am
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     Many people have heard of twitter, but they don’t know how it’s used or how they can get started.  Twitter is a real-time site because it’s used to share short messages, to many people, as soon as the event happens.  Twitter can help make lasting friendships and business contacts.     If someone wants to create a twitter account, he or she should go to www.twitter.comand sign up for a free account.  This can be done by entering a name, email address, and password.  A follower is a user who can read your tweets.  When a new user wants to get followers, that new user should follow people, since some of those followers will follow that new user.  Another way to get followers is by replying to tweets.  When that happens, some of that other person’s followers will see the reply, and some of them will follow the new user.     When someone sends a message to all of that user’s followers, the message is a tweet.  A tweet can include a maximum of 140 characters.  As someone types a tweet, the site gives a countdown of how many available characters can be in that tweet.  If the number is negative, that means that the tweet is that number of characters too long.  Another important term is retweet, which means sending someone else’s tweet to all of the retweeters followers.  If someone clicks on “Retweet,” it states, “retweeted from @username” and it shows the tweet.     Each twitter user may create lists of people he or she follows.  This can be helpful, if a user follows many people, for different purposes, including politics, businesses, and/or charities.  To create a list, the user needs to go his or her profile page and click on the “Lists” tab.  After that, the user will click on “Create list.”  The user will type a name of the list, a description of it, and whether it will be seen by the public or only that user.  After that, the user will click “Save list.”  To add someone to a list, the user will click on a person’s icon and choose “Add or remove from lists.”  A list of the user’s lists will appear, and that user will check the list to which that icon will be added.     All of this information can be helpful for new twitter users.  Twitter can help users promote their blog, business, church, charity, and/or political campaign.

Filed Under: Promotions, Social Media Tagged With:

Foursquare Checkin

June 2, 2012 by Leave a Comment
4:38 pm
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Not enough people know how to use foursquare, but they should learn about it, since the site has been gaining popularity and because it can help businesses.  Foursquare is a social guide that people can use to recommend places based upon the user’s activity, activity of the user’s friends, and activity of other foursquare users.  Users must use a phone to “check in” at many places, including bars, restaurants, parks, museums, and grocery stores.
To start using foursquare, the user needs to download one of the mobile apps onto a phone.  The have apps for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.  Unofficial apps are available for Nokia’s S40, S60, and MeeGo platforms, along with Windows Phone 7 and Palm.  If an app doesn’t exist for your phone, you can check in through Foursquare’s mobile site or via SMS.
To check-in, at each location, the user opens the app, on the phone, and Foursquare uses the phone’s GPS to find the phone’s location.  Click the “Check in” button or tab, to find a list of area locations where  you can check in.  If that location isn’t on the list, you can add it.  When you check in, you can share that information with Foursquare friends, as a facebook status update, and/or as a twitter tweet.
The Explore button gives recommendations of places it thinks you’d like to visit.  The recommendations are based on places you’ve been, placed that have been visited by your Foursquare friends, and places that have been visited by foursquare users who visit places similar to places that you visit.
Foursquare has more than 15 million users and about 3 million check-ins per day.  More than 500,000 businesses use foursquare.  More business owners should encourage its customers to use Foursquare, since the check-ins will be seen by other users, providing inexpensive advertising for the businesses.  The person who checks into a business the most is the mayor, and some businesses give discounts or reserved parking spaces to mayors.  This encourages customers to check in, at those businesses.  When they do that, more of their foursquare friends, facebook friends, and/or twitter followers read about the check-ins.

Filed Under: Local Internet and Archway News, Promotions, Social Media

Amazon tax law in Illinois removed.

May 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment
7:16 pm
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In March 2011, the Illinois legislature passed the Main Street Fairness Act, a bill that states that all companies who have any type of presence in Illinois and sell to Illinois customers, online, must charge an Illinois sales tax, from each of the company’s Illinos residents. Gov. Pat Quinn signed that bill. Gov. Quinn and many legislators thought that the law would help the Illinois government increase revenue by about $153 million, in 2011, but that didn’t happen, since some Illinois companies left the state, to avoid collecting the tax from their Illinois customers. New York, Rhode Island, Hawaii, and North Carolina passed similar laws, so those laws might affect many businesses who sell products, online, or consider doing that. In 2011, the Performance Marketing Association filed a lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Cook County, to challenge the law. In April 2012, Cook Co. Circuit Judge Robert Lopez Cepero ruled that the law is unconstitutional. However, the Illinois Department of Revenue might appeal, so we still don’t know whether the law will be enforced. For small companies who are considering selling products, online, the effect of paying state sales taxes could be large, in terms of the cost to comply. Those companies might need to pay C.P.A.’s for many hours of work, if the companies are required to charge different amounts of sales taxes, depending upon the homestate of each customer. One of the reasons for the large increase of ecommerce is that it’s relatively easy to start a website and sell products, online. If many states enact laws that charge sales taxes on online sales, in those states, many new companies will decide that it’s not worth the work of complying, causing the companies to not sell, online. No one knows the affect of Illinois law, since it might be overturned. If the state appeals and wins, the law will probably discourage some companies from selling, online, to Illinois customers. If the law isn’t enforced, that will probably cause more companies to sell, online, to Illinois customers, creating more jobs.

Filed Under: Local Internet and Archway News, Web Development

Musical Jingles History and More

May 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment
4:45 pm
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The first commercial jingle was used in a 1926 General Mills cereal radio commercial that included an a cappella quartet. Ad jingles become more popular in the 1930s, and they later become an important part of TV advertising.  For at least 50 years, millions of people, throughout the world, especially the U.S., have heard radio and TV commercials that have songs.  Some of the songs are easy to remember and help people remember the products.
In 2011, the University of Basque Country, in Spain, conducted a survey, about music, in ads, and the researchers found that people had different reactions, depending upon who announced the product and the type of music that was used.  The researchers used jazz, swing, and classical music.  The survey included 540 people, ages 15-65.  The ads mentioned a fictitious brand of mineral water.  The survey included four ads.  One didn’t have music.  Two had music that wasn’t familiar to the listeners.  The other ad used an instrumental version of “What a Wonderful World,” by Louis Armstrong.  The majority of the subjects had the highest emotional response to the ad that included “What a Wonderful World,” but they had the lowest response to the ad that only included talking and no music.
McDonald’s has had some of the catchiest commercial songs, including  “You Deserve a Break Today,” “We Do It All for You,” and “Good Times, Great Taste.”   For a few years, they’ve been using “I’m Loving It,” which is catchy, for many people.
In the 1970’s, Coca-Cola had a popular commercial song, “I’d like to Buy the World a Coke,” by the New Seekers.  Many people called radio stations and requested the song.  The New Seekers recorded a longer version, for a record,  “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.”   Both songs were popular, in the Billboard charts.
Many companies know that songs, in their ads will help people remember the ads and the products, so the companies try to air ads that include unforgettable songs.

Let us know if there is anything we can help you with regarding a musical Jingle!! www.archwayinternetmarketing.com

Filed Under: Local Internet and Archway News, Promotions, Social Media

Why video is so important!

May 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment
11:00 pm
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There are many reasons why using www.youtube.com and other video websites can be important and helpful for many people. Video sites can help businesses tell about their products. Video sites can help political candidates, since more people, who aren’t able to attend campaign rallies, can listen to the speeches, on the websites. Charities can use the sites to show speeches about how their money, from donations, will be used to help people. There are more than 50 video share websites, and the number continues to increase. The majority of those sites have very helpful features. Those features include a search box, the ability to search by category, screenshot previews of the videos, a short description of the content, user submitted video ratings, and other features that improve the viewing experience. Some of the best video share sites include features that help users produce and post their videos. The sites, sometimes, offer video creation tools, educational resources, and the ability to add a description and choose whether the video is public or private. The majority of video sites are easy to navigate and use, with organized categories and a search box. Although the sites are free, they usually include good help, through FAQ’s, user guides, and customer service, by email, phone, or both. Here are some statistics that show how popular youtube is. Each month, more video is uploaded to youtube than the three major U.S. TV networks created in 60 years. An auto-shared tweet causes six new youtube.com sessions, and there are usually more than 500 tweets per minute that contain youtube links. 10% of youtube videos are available in HD. Youtube has 490 million unique visitors per month. The average youtube user uses the site for five hours and 50 minutes, per month. More than half of youtube videos have been rated and/or include comments. More than 4 billion youtube videos are viewed, each day. Since video websites are very popular and easy to use, it’s important for more Americans to use the sites, to promote their work and other organizations.

Filed Under: Print and Video, Promotions

Want to Create an Awesome Website? Read This!

May 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment
5:28 pm
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If you ever want to get noticed, if you want to make your business a success then you simply HAVE to get it online and here are the tips and tricks to make your site the success you want it to be.

The design of your web site is the crux of how your site begins, you wan to start with a site that is eye appealing yet professional and tasteful. Do not use garish and extreme colors on your site unless for some reason you would need to, you don’t want people to come by your site and say; “Oh my, this is tacky and I am going elsewhere!”

When designing your web site take into consideration who may visit your site. Is the site for a business person? An athlete? A banker? A cook? Whomever your site audience is is exactly who you are building your site for.

Web development can be super easy once you know how everything in a website fits together and how it all comes together to make your site the best of the best.

Web development is when you take the updated content that you have, make sure you place tags so that others can find your site among all the others and make your site clean and simple, no gaudy and had to maneuver in and you will have what we call web development.

Site description is the information that lets a customer who visits your site what your site is all about, information about you and your company, what you are selling or offering as well as how to contact you and other pertinent information they may need.

Site description is the crux of your site, without it your clients will not know anything about you, who you are and what you are on the web for, whether you blog, sell or simply have a message board, a website and its’ description is most important.

Another aspect of site descriptions is the use of tags along with how you will be describing your site, tags are words used in search engines to decipher what each website offers on its’ home pages as well as the overall site itself, make your tags as useful and concise as possible, else you will loose both your search engine rankings as well as followers to your site.

Another web development that you need to keep in mind is the content or better still the evolving content of your site.

Content site management or more commonly referred to as CMS is applications that will endeavor you to make your site unique from any and all others, with tools that will help you to engage your readers and buyers, you can pick out the right words to place the right content in the areas needed on your web site.

Evolving content is king on any website, ever been to a site that hasn’t changed in oh, say…months? Well, you won’t be going there anymore I bet!

Your content needs to be fresh and up-to-date if you want to keep repeat clients and loyal customers coming back.

Evolving content needs to be updated at the very least, once a week, any less than that and your customer base is going to slide off quick, better yet, updating your site every two to three days can boost your sites’ rankings a hundredfold.

Usability of a website is being able to navigate the site and find what you are looking for quickly and easily without having to hunt yourself to death.

When you find yourself at a site that is ‘busy’ and ill-arranged where none of the links are connected with each other or the links are ‘dead’ meaning they go nowhere and no useful information is found, then that site is no longer usable.

Usability is just that, making your website usable, if it isn’t then, if you build it NO ONE will come.

The call to action on getting your site ranked as high as possible in the Search Engine Optimization game, otherwise known as SEO require diligence on your part.

You must remember that anything doing is worth doing well and making a superior web site is no different. Be prepared to spend days even weeks to tweak your site so that you have poured out everything you have into it and making it look professional and ready for business is what you are aiming for.

Remember the days of doing book reports in high school and even college? Well, you do an outline and from that outline you do a draft and from that draft you make the final presentation, pretty much works the same way with your web presence.

A call to action means getting the site you want up and running the way that you want it with all the steps we have mentioned. Such as call us at 1-877-50-TWEET(89338)  for more information archwayinternetmarketing.com

Filed Under: Local Internet and Archway News, Promotions, Web Development

The 10 Most Important Things to Include on Your Website

May 8, 2012 by Leave a Comment
3:47 am
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Never underestimate the potential of a great website. Businesses can increase leads and sales, media publications can increase readership and non-profit organizations can increase exposure to their cause if their website is picked up in search engines and keeps readers on the page with engaging content, eye-catching images and features to boot. There are many important aspects to developing any website, but here are the 10 most important features and functionality you should consider including upon development to help boost your cause:

 

Mobile Website: Nearly everyone has a smart phone these days, and many people spend more time on their smart phones, as they’re on the go, than they do in front of their computer. So consider developing a mobile website in addition to your regular one. This way, it’s easier for people to navigate your site from the small screens of their phones and tablets, without having to zoom in on small wording, which could be a turn off to your services.

 

App: Piggybacking off the previous point, many people have smart phones, so consider developing a mobile app that your customers and clients can download to stay up to speed with everything your site has to offer. Considering including special features on your mobile app that they can’t get by accessing the website as a further means of enticing them to download your app.

 

Log In: To get an accurate estimate of exactly who is checking out your website, consider making people log in, or share simple information about them selves before they can access your site. This can be a turn off for some people, but if your site is good enough and worth checking out, people will still come and won’t mind revealing some of their information to log on. This could also be a great way to increase revenue with your website by selling advertising based on the types of readers that are visiting your site.

 

Members Only: Similar to logging on, consider developing your website so that you have to be a registered member in order to access certain content. Again, doing so allows you to gauge just how many people and what types of people are checking out your site, which gives you a better idea of what markets to go after. Membership can be free or paid, though if it’s paid, there needs to be a good incentive for doing so.

 

Free: Why pay for something that you can get elsewhere for free? Consider that question when developing your site, because chances are if you’re charging people to access certain content on your website, they’re just going to go somewhere else where it’s either free to access the same content, or cheaper to do so. Keeping content cost-free will help keep customers coming back. Note: You can still require people to log in to your site or become members without charging them a cost.

 

Social Media Integration: Everybody is on Facebook and Twitter these days, so make sure that your site integrates with such social media platforms. Consider developing your site so that it can be accessed via Facebook and so that people can opt to share certain content on your site via Facebook simply and easily. The additional exposure and ease could help you get more business leads.

 

Easy to Navigate: This one is self-explanatory. If people aren’t able to easily find what they’re looking for, they’re going to look elsewhere for it.

 

Videos: Engaging content is key to a good website. And one way to spice up what’s on a website is by adding different things than just text. Videos are an example of things that developers can embed in websites and allow people a different way to attain valuable information.

 

Attractive: Develop the website to be naturally engaging. This means making it stand out. Don’t strive to make your website appear bland and boring. Add in colorful graphics, pictures, special text and other things that separate your website from your competition. This will help build up a clientele and help your website gain credibility. Just think, when people recognize your brand by “the guys with cool website,” it’s a good thing.

 

User-Centric: Perhaps the most important aspect of your website is making it user-friendly. In other words, you don’t want potential clients to feel like it’s a chore being on your website – you want to give them more than that, so you’re creating a fun virtual environment. If your website isn’t user friendly, you’ll lose business. People don’t want to waste their time on something difficult; they want an easy, user friendly experience.

Filed Under: Local Internet and Archway News, Social Media, Web Development

Content Management Systmens in review Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress

May 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment
10:41 pm
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There are many types of content management systems that can be used, when building a website.  The three most popular CMS’s are Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress.

Drupal, which was founded in 2001, is sometimes called the Developer’s CMS.  It’s used by developers because of the flexible code and more advanced features, for a complex website.  It has fewer steps, to install, compared to Joomla and WordPress.  A disadvantage of Drupal is its advanced features, which cause it to be expensive and time-consuming for beginner developers.

 

Joomla, which was founded in 2003,  has an easily customizable interface.  It has features that allow users to easily personalize their sites, without editing the original code, keeping its functionality.  A disadvantage of Joomla is that the coding can be inflexible.  It can be difficult for a less-experienced developer to integrate the software.

 

WordPress which was founded in 2003, is a free service that allows users to create blogs.  It’s easier to use, including for beginners.  It allows developers to use comments, trackbacks, blogger profiles, and pining services.  A disadvantages is that it isn’t developer-friendly, and it has fewer users than Drupal and Joomla.  Some WordPress software and plugin upgrade cause more glitches than fixes, harming the site.

Google seems to give the most koodo’s to wordpress sites which is why I still suggest it to most of my clients.

If you have any questions feel free to contact us at anytime.

Archway Internet Marketing Inc.

 

Filed Under: Local Internet and Archway News, Promotions, Web Development
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