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Feb 21 12

The Latest and Greatest Social Networks (And How to Use Them For Business)

by Christina Torri

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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:

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Feb 20 12

Scheduling Sucks (Or The Problem With Rampant Success)

by Aaron Brander

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.

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Feb 16 12

Join.Me: A Review

by Eric Patterson
There has been a lot of buzz around the office of the new LogMe In service called Join.Me. If you have not heard of it yet, then I would suspect you will within the next year.  It is an easy-to-use, no sign up required, screen sharing, mini webinar, Web application. That is a lot of very positive descriptive words for a single product, but they pulled them all off quite elegantly. Last week, I had a perfect situation to test it out, and the following is my quick review of their product.
For those unaware of my after-hour endeavours, I am one of the founders of a local cycling team. We call ourselves D2 Racing (self promotion never hurt anyone!) One of the benefits of having such a group is the endless supply of guinea pigs for my learning and testing; unfortunately, they are always the ones to receive the brunt of my “experiments.” With the vast majority of us having very busy schedules, it is almost impossible to have a physical meeting so a virtual meeting appeared to be the right solution for our problem.
Feb 9 12

How to Become a Better Writer

by Renee Achterhof

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.

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Feb 6 12

MINDSCAPErs Debate: Super Bowl Ad Previews

by Renee Achterhof

The Super Bowl has aired, along with the much anticipated commercials those in our industry – and even those not in advertising – look forward to each and every year. In years past, a few would leak out on the Internet here and there, and buzz would generate prior to their actual air time. This year, we’ve seen an increase in ads leaked and viewed online before the Super Bowl which has created a lot of buzz on social and traditional media channels. The buzz spurred debate around the office about whether or not this takes away from the excitement of watching the ads during the big game. Our resident advertising junkies Christina Torri and Renee Achterhof debate the pros and cons of ad previews:

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Feb 2 12

What Makes Front End Coding So Difficult (or HTML Black Magic)

by Aaron Brander

 

Do you know what front-end programmers dream about? It is not an answer to the national debt, or if Democrats and Republicans can get along, or even if there is life on other planets. No, front-end programmers dream of something that seems entirely more difficult to attain.

A front-end programmer wants a world where they can do their work one time and be done.

It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Most of us go through life completing a task and knowing that having completed the task, there is nothing more to do.

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Jan 30 12

Can a Mobile App Help With SEO?

by Paul Ferrier

I recently had a client ask me if developing a mobile application would help them with their SEO and search engine ranking.

I love the question, so I thought I would write a quick post on it.

From an SEO perspective, an app actually COULD influence ranking, but not how you might think initially.

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Jan 26 12

ASP.NET 4.0 – Strongly Typed Model on Form Uploads

by Eric Patterson

I recently came across a problem in an ASP.NET MVC Web Application where it needed to upload an image with some extra form fields, but still have the controller’s post action testable. This seemed like an easy enough task, but I soon realized that in order to get the uploaded file from the view I had to grab it from the request object’s files collection. Doing this would make my testing harder, and, more drastically, decouple this action from the view model.

I scoured the Internet to find out why the magic behind binding the view model to the controller would not put the posted file in an argument alongside my strongly typed model. After coming to the conclusion that no direct articles or examples with my scenario existed, I turned to learning more about the binding that was taking place behind the scenes.

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Jan 19 12

Quoting a Project (or How Deep is that Rabbit Hole?)

by Aaron Brander

 

Last year I had a few rooms in my house repainted. In order to determine which company I would use for the work, I invited them to the house to quote the work. I showed them the rooms, told them the type of paint and color I wanted, and told them when I wanted the work done by.

Each company was able to calculate the amount of paint they needed, the cost of the paint and how many people would need to work on the project in order to have it done by my deadline. Having painted a multitude of rooms before my request, they were able to imagine potential obstacles before they happened and be fairly sure that they were not missing anything in their quote.

The resulting quotes were very precise and given to me with a high degree of confidence.

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Jan 10 12

Email Subject Lines: Increasing Your Open Rate With Problems?

by Paul Ferrier

I just received two emails from Internet marketer Trey Smith. The first email’s subject line read:

“Update”

I didn’t read it.

But then about 90 minutes later, I received another email with the subject line:

“SERVER CRASH! (Woooo hooo!)”

I immediately opened it to learn what happened. It’s curiosity. The email read:

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