Visionary Web will be hosting a business seminar on e-retailing on January 24, 2008 at the Wabash County Chamber of Commerce. Mark Sapusek, Visionary Web’s Director of Web Solutions will be the presenter.
Mark will cover topics such as: e-commerce and selling products online, merchant services, EBay, PayPal, Authorize.net, Security, and Shopping Carts. Mark will also take questions and provide insight from over ten years of experience in the industry.
The seminar is $59.00 and reservations can be made by calling the Chamber at: 260-563-1168. The seminar is part of the Triple Play Business Seminar Series sponsored by the Wabash County Chamber of Commerce and the Indiana Small Business Development Center. Other sessions included a Guerrilla Marketing seminar in November 2007 and an upcoming seminar on Customer Service on March 27, 2008.
PHP made me upset today. I’ve noticed this issue for a while, and it’s been addressed in forums, but few know of what seems to be the second most common reason for it. First, check the symptoms of you ill-returned web document. Does it ever popup as a download dialog box instead of the usual I-trust-you-Zend handling? Did you then download it only to find it is nothing more than a blank page? Stop sifting through your http.conf file! Stop changing those permissions! Well, you could do all this, but it’s most likely not the problem. For me, it was the amount of memory I had allocated to PHP script execution, specifically the memory_limit value. Oddly as it sounds, sometimes giving your PHP a little more memory seems to clear up this problem right away. Works so far for me with all the times I’ve seen this issue. You can either change the value in your ini file as:
memory_limit = 32M
…in your .htaccess file like…
php_value memory_limit = 32M
…or directly in your PHP file if you wanted to.
ini_set('memory_limit', '32M');
Hopefully, this can help someone out there.
I was thinking today on the importance of community involvement and realized that our management team is involved in a ton of community and civic-related activities. We are involved with our local chambers of commerce, school boards, economic development, small business development centers, community theater, main street associations, Kiwanis, Key Club, and various other activities throughout our community.
Why is it so important for us to be involved in our local communities? We stay really busy at work, but we find time to be involved because the communities in our area support us. It is right for us to give back to them our time and our talents.
Being involved in the community is more than just “our job.” Being involved means providing our communities with the necessary things they need to grow. Growing communities mean more business, more business means more jobs in IT in our small towns and more employees for us. Being involved is reciprocal. You get back what you put into it.
Our team and our company are dedicated to the communities in which we live and work and to that end I hope that everyone becomes involved in their communities. It is a much better place to live when you have had a hand in making it a great place.
This new website was developed to provide better and quicker access to important information to our existing and potential clients. The site is the result of a development process including several people:
Toby Sapusek implemented the core Joomla! content management system and provided development assistance throughout the process.
Scott Munday implemented the WordPress blog and developed all original functionality for the site.
Andrew Duffy led the project implementation, worked on the original design, and developed the content.
Christina Sapusek provided strategic direction, edited content, and provided designed feedback.
Mark Sapusek provided strategic direction, worked on the original design, and developed style specifications.
Eric Sanson provided design feedback.
Konrad and Julie Willmert participated in the sitemap development.
Justin Ross contributed to the original design development.
YouTube can be a great way to grow your audience. Two of our clients, Chris Bowers and Ryan Moran, both run successful motivational speaking companies. Chris and Ryan recently decided to utilize YouTube to help get their messages out. Check out one of their recent videos:
[youtube s27DmegVrys]
I talk about programming a lot. I can’t help it. It is my life. But now I feel obligated to talk about something of a non-programming topic. Like puppies. No, not puppies. It’s about writing. If you can’t tell by my writing here, I do enjoy writing and when I am not programming, I am always reading or writing short stories. It’s a great release that exercises the other part of my brain. Plus it gets my eyes off a computer screen for a while (and my eyes definately need the break). So there you have it. I do other things than programming. Next blog: probably something about programming again.
Well, I have talked about good programming practices before, and when I did, I talked about understanding error messages and learning to fix your code’s problems to become a better programmer. Well, now I’m talking about another type of error: your own. Understanding your own limitations and being able to accept other people’s help is the sign of a great programmer (and a great person). Know that you can’t do everything, and there are people out there who are better than you in certain regards. So don’t feel bad if you ask for someone’s help in developing a better layout or something computer-related that you THINK you should know. The sooner you realize that you don’t know everything the less time you’ll fake that you do and slow down the completion of any project you do.
My one and only complaint about my WACOM is the inability to fully mimic traditional art techniques with the stylus. Once the line is down the textures that are applied in the program of your choice is sufficient enough to get the idea across but not enough to sell the concept to an experienced artist (or a perfectionist like me).
At least three quarters of traditional art technique involves how one holds the pen, brush, etc. and the how one moves it to make the desired mark. The WACOM allows you to do the movements, to a degree, but allows no tolerance for how the stylus is held. I cannot hold the stylus like I would a block of charcoal but rather it forces me to hold it like a no. 2 pencil. The way the stylus fails in movement recognition is that it does not register the rotation or the stylus while drawing a line. During my days in architecture classes I developed the habit of spinning the pencil while drawing my lines. Doing this keeps the point of the graphite from being warn on only one side, thereby distorting your line. The act of spinning the pencil wears the graphite more uniformly and keeps you from having to re-sharpen more than is absolutely necessary. There are a few techniques in painting that call for you to rotate your brush while performing a certain length of pull to create different effects as well. This is where the WACOM and stylus fail in their mimicry of traditional art.
It could be related to the fact that I have not experimented with different nubs. WACOM does distribute 5 different nub styles that fit specific stylus types. These nubs may allow for the ability to spin the stylus and get that effect to translate to the computer, but I do not know. I know no one who has these nubs and have not found any reviews on their performance either positive or negative.
One of the most singularly powerful and useful aspects of Adobe Photoshop is the brush sets. What makes this so portent is the dynamics that are possible with many of the tools when paired with the stylus of a WACOM. The size adjustment and opacity changes that occur depending on the pressure you apply to the pen makes for a near perfect imitation of traditional art techniques. Brush sets however are the patterns in which you are laying your strokes down with, regardless of the tool you use to do this. These brush sets are typically just referred to as brushes though they can be applied to many of the tools in Photoshop. The default brush is some size of rounded pattern with either a hard or soft edge. This default brush is usually enough to suit most situation you are dealing with, but if you are trying to imitate a paintbrush, pallet knife, chalk/charcoal, pastels, etc. it is often not acceptable. The best ways to mimic these mediums is to use differently textured brushes.
In traditional art these methods are also affected by what you are applying them to. Wood obviously would cause a different effect than paper should you write on it with a pen. The same applies to different grades of paper, boards, canvases, etc. to mimic this typically some sort of patterned or faux texture is applied to the layer beneath the one that the actual “art� is being produced on to simulate the correct canvas type. Generally though, the brush itself can produce the desired effect. Because of this versatility and flexibility the brush is, in my opinion, the most important aspect of Photoshop. Knowing how and when to use it is the next.
For several months we have been receiving Website Magazine (The Magazine for Website Success) in our office. I’m not sure how we originally started to receive it… although I assume somebody signed up for it. Anyway, I’m mentioning it today as the current issue (which we received this week) encourages readers to recommend the magazine to others.
This magazine provides a great deal of information on tools for web success. This month’s articles including topics such as blogging, search engine strategy, local search tools, building natural links, and site security. They also have several regular columns and news briefs.
As you work to grow the success of your online venture, I encourage you to check out Website Magazine. Reading the magazine will give you insights to consider as you continue to evolve your website.
Oh, and the best news??? If you qualify (basically meaning that you really are in the business), they will provide your subscription for free (they make their money from their advertisers).
Click the following link to apply for a free subscription:
Free Website Trade Publication >> Website Magazine
Cheers,
Andrew
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