On April 10th many of our team members had the chance to attend an American Marketing Association of West Michigan luncheon featuring speaker Jure Klepic.
The Web as we know it is undergoing fundamental change as it moves away from its current structure of information and links. The new Web is being built around people not data; a profound change that impacts business strategy, design, marketing, and advertising. Therefore, Jure contends that influence is no longer about numbers – it’s about people.
Title: Front End Manager
Jason has been at Mindscape for a number of years and has grown into our leading front end coder. He pushes our team to be better all of the time and to embrace new technologies so we are more efficient and can do cooler work. He joined Mindscape with a passion to be a coder, and not much else. Previously, he had not done a lot of work with websites, but he had a desire to learn and be the best. We liked him and the fact that he played bass, so we gave him a shot. We are glad we did! Read on to learn more about Jason Van Vuren.
Brands Get a Facebook Face-Lift!
You’ve likely noticed a few changes in your Facebook brand page lately. In case you haven’t, you will soon. Facebook announced that the Timeline feature is now available for brand pages. The new pages will mimic user profiles, allowing brands to display their history and provide a rich experience for the user. With the recent upgrades, it’s important to make sure that your Facebook page conveys the right message!
The new interface changes a variety of commonly used features currently available to page admins. Here is an overview of the most important changes that page admins need to be aware of:
A Guide to Internet Lingo
As the customer service rep for Mindscape, one of my biggest challenges is breaking down the communication barrier that exists between tech-heads, like myself, and clients who may not have a strong background in computers. I often find myself explaining the same few topics over and over to many of our users; so I’ve decided to make a quick reference guide to some of the most common ideas that come up during web development. This should help you wrap your head around some of the more complicated areas of your website and hopefully provide some insight as to how your site and the web in general works. And don’t worry, I’ll leave out all of the technical blabber in an attempt to make it as easy to understand as possible. Enjoy!
Technology is full of confusing terms, and building websites is no different. As a developer or as a person in need of a website, you will no doubt encounter a number of acronyms and words that you either don’t understand, don’t want to understand, or that just plain make you want to cry a little bit out of sheer frustration.
DNS? PHP? .NET? IIS? Apache? Joomla? Drupal? CMS? IE? FF?
The list grows longer and your attention span grows shorter. I’ll not bore you with all of the acronyms now, I’ll just save that for another post. Instead, I want to shed a small ray of sunshine upon a dark corner of confusion.
Have you ever had a house built, or an addition added to your house? Did it go like this?
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“Good day, Mr. Architectman, I would like you to build a home for me,” Chris VonClient said.
“I would be happy to help, Chris. How big do you want the house to be?” Andy Architectman responded, tilting his head to the right so that he could hear Chris better.
“I was thinking we needed three bedrooms and two bathrooms. So I don’t know, two thousand square feet?” Chris was not really sure what he wanted, but he had a vague picture in his mind.
“Two thousand square feet, eh? Hmm. Yes. I can see it now. That’s enough for a big kitchen, vaulted ceilings, a den in the basement, a living room upstairs. Wait, you do want a basement, right?”
“Oh, that’s a great idea, Mr. Architectman. A basement is just what we need!” Chris was excited. He could see the house better already.
“Alright then. We can get started next week. How’s $150,000 sound and we’ll be done by September?” Andy was quite sure he knew exactly what Chris wanted.
“Perfect! Thanks Mr. Architectman!”
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If you are like me, you are longing for the days when social media was easy. And FUN! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love all the things we can do with social media now days. But lately, being on Facebook has become a chore for me. With all the political nonsense to worry about (both nationally and the internal politics that exist between human relationships), I’ve found myself losing interest quickly and longing for the days of customized (albeit insane) MySpace profiles!
Luckily, the latest crazes in social networking are starting to bring the social aspects of media back to the forefront. Their clean, focused designs (and targets) are actually allowing for some FUN in social media again! Below is a breakdown of three of the latest social media platforms, along with main target audiences and some ideas for how you can leverage them for your business:
Life as a Project Manager at MINDSCAPE used to be pretty nice. I know, because I was a project manager for a couple of years.
We had a solid team and plenty of work to keep us busy. What made it nice is that it was manageable. Between two designers and two or three programmers, it was not so bad keeping their schedules straight.
We had a nice process. The salesperson would enter a form with the information I needed to make the schedule. I would take the form and create a Basecamp project using the information provided.
The Basecamp project would hold all of the tasks we needed to complete and the communication that we had on the project. Basecamp still works pretty well for this, and we use it daily.
Join.Me: A Review
How to Become a Better Writer
Some people are simply born with great writing skills. For others, it’s an acquired and practiced skill. Whether you want to simply become a better writer or are looking to strengthen your writing skills, these four tips can help.
