When it was discovered that the Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, got one of his weapons from online dealer TheGunStore.com, you’d think some sort of restrictions would be enacted to keep people with a mental illness from purchasing guns over the internet, or just in general.

You’d be wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

Spring cleaning – Ah, yes. That time of the year when we sort through the junk drawer in the kitchen, organize and file paperwork, and dust the china. I’ve done a little spring cleaning myself. My “Bookmarks” is like the junk drawer in your kitchen. For 365 days I have been throwing in cool website, useful websites, and the totally unnecessary websites. Here are some that I’m definitely keeping in my bookmarks:

Cool websites:

www.makeusof.com

Blog site filled with software and internet tips. With posts like “1 Awesome Gmail tip You Don’t know about. Seriously” to “4 Firefox addons= 6 Solutions to Popular problems” it’s difficult not to click on the posts and get lost within the blogsite.

www.behance.com

One of our Project Managers came to me with a request to purchase these notebooks and pads designed specifically for creative individuals. After checking them out, and recently adopting the GTD method, I had to have one. They are awesome. And so is the Behance website. Check out the website for cool articles within the creative industry, focusing on graphic design, entrepreneurship, web development, art direction, and lots more.

Useful websites:

www.creativecommons.org

Creative Commons is a non-profit org dedicated to helping individuals and small companies protect their work on the web.

“Too often the debate over creative control tends to the extremes. At one pole is a vision of total control — a world in which every last use of a work is regulated and in which “all rights reserved” (and then some) is the norm. At the other end is a vision of anarchy — a world in which creators enjoy a wide range of freedom but are left vulnerable to exploitation. Balance, compromise, and moderation — once the driving forces of a copyright system that valued innovation and protection equally — have become endangered species.”

Recently we revisited our BOA and “revamped” (as our attorney likes to call it) our intellectual property clause. There were several issues to who owns what? Is this a work made for hire … does the client or the consultant own the code … will there be a license involved … what are the industry standards!? This site takes you through the set of conditions to take into consideration when thinking about protecting your work. Avoid exploitation – always think of the worst case scenario and do what you can to protect yourself (or your company) from being taken advantage of. Which leads me to the next site:

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The New York Times blog, BITS broke the story last week that Google is now testing video ads in search results in order to offer even more diverse opportunities and media expansion for AdWords advertisers.

Google has been offering pay-per-click video ads on the Content, or AdSense, Network since 2006, but never has there been the option to show the ads in Google search results. With the advent of last year’s Universal Search index where videos, news feeds, and images were incorporated, attention has been further divided with images and videos winning and text ads leaving cooler spots in the heat map.

“The eyes of users automatically gravitate to the images more than the text,” According to Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience.

Traditional listings and ppc ads compete for attention in Google’s search results with video links from YouTube, MySpace Video, and images, so it is only appropriate, she argues, that their be corresponding advertising formats. Fortunately, Google has eased into being able to offer paid opportunities outside of 72 character text ads and this should be no surprise to users or advertisers.

How will the ads integrate? Apparently the video ads will be accessed through clicking on a plus sign (+) next to the corresponding company text ad, similar to Google Maps’ address plus sign seen in organic listings for brick and mortar companies. Still inline with Google’s philosophy to provide unobtrusive, highly relevant advertising, Mayer preemptively answers concerns that Google is about to go too far.

“If you search for golf clubs, you get ads for golf clubs, not a banner ad about Pepsi that you may drink on the golf course,” Ms. Mayer said. So far no screenshots have been provided to corroborate Google’s experimentation.

Some purists will still be remain opposed, some even threatening to use another search engine.

Here are some comments from the blogosphere:

The day Google launches this is the day I stop using Google. It is the duty of every American to avoid as much advertising as possible so that our economy has something to do.
— Posted by Walter

This is the last straw. I’ll never use Google again and their servers are going in my hosts file. Oh, for the days when they swore that they would NEVER be anything other than a Web search engine…

— Posted by Joe Dixon

Others feel more positive, or OK with the development.

If it’s done carefully & leaves the user in control it could be ok. It’s possible to do non-intrusive video ads as long as they don’t autoplay, don’t take up too much of the screen and are clear as to what they are. Here’s hoping it isn’t too bad, anyhow.
— Posted by imma

Watching a few ads is not a big price for Google’s superb services. Besides, those ads are context-sensitive.
— Posted by AB

What do you think?

Two weeks from today, a group of LevelTen-ers will be headed down to the beautiful capital of Texas for the South by Southwest Interctive Festival. This yearly event is an opportunity to learn about the lattest trends in the online world as well as meet other interactive professionals from across the country. This year’s panels will focus on topics such as “Creating Findable Rich Media Content” to “The Top Ten Lessons Learned in E-Commerce” and “What Teens Want Online & On Their Phones.”

Since 1987, Austin has played host to the SXSW events which include festivals for music, film, and of course interactive. What started out as a major event for the music industry, has now grown into a two week event for all three. The interactive and film industries were added in 1994 to “mirror the ever increasing convergence of entertainment/media outlets.”

The highlight of this festival for me will be Sunday’s Keynote speaker, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and Founder of Facebook.com. Not only have I been obsessed with Facebook since before it came to my university and I was able to become a member, but I am also fascinated by social networks and the way people flock to them. The fact that Zuckerberg, who is younger than me, has taken what started as a college networking platform to one of the most visited sites on the internet is so captivating and I cannot wait to hear what he says about the future of social networks.

While we are in Austin, I hope to recap all of the events and share all of our newfound knowledge through the LevelTen Blog. So stay tunned, only 14 more days to go.

We’re working on a new community-driven website and one of the required features is the ability for users to crop and scale an uploaded image live in their browser.

I put together a short javascript that takes an uploaded image and places it within a set frame size, scaling the smallest side of the image to the largest side of the frame. The user can then pan and scale the image to the desired size, clicking enter when done. All adjustments are placed in hidden form inputs that way when the form is submitted the backend image library (GD, ImageMagick, etc.) will have all the proper measurements to make the desired adjustments.

It looks a little something like this:

The bar below the image is used to size the image and the inputs on the side are what receive the new adjustment data (displayed as text inputs for the example).

You can play with the example and download the source here.

This script requires the latest Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries (it will not work on Prototype < 1.6)

When I think of Valentines’s Day, chocolates, flowers, and those little chalk-tasting hearts with the messages come to mind. But Dr. Pepper is taking a gamble that people who associate Valentine’s Day with Vegas marriages will also associate its new Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr. Pepper drink with the holiday. That’s the idea behind a new microsite from Cadbury Schweppes in partnership with Yahoo and Vegas Tourism.

On February 14th, visitors can watch live web-stremed weddings from the three chapels at the Hard Rock Hotel, propose to someone, book their Vegas wedding with e-card invitations or crash another person’s wedding. But the fun doesn’t end after the big day, Cadbury Schweppes has bought Yahoo’s front page for February 15, according to Enid Burns at ClickZ. The article also states that a large budget has been allocated to search and display ads to promote the site and create buzz.

The site sounds catchy at first; it’s like reality wedding television on your web browser, but if you are like me you were probably left wondering, what is going to make the average person stay on this site for more than 30 seconds or for that matter, visit the site again the following day? And why would this make me want to buy and/or drink more Dr. Pepper?

My guess is having Pauly Shore as the host.

Over at Bitt Box.com a blog was posted today alerting designers to the growing importance to tailor web design to the increasing number of iPhone and iTouch users.

WebClip Icons are strictly for iPhone & iPod Touch users, but since they are quite the popular little devices, website owners might want to think about adding a WebClip icon soon. A WebClip icon is the icon that the iPhone/iPod Touch uses if a user adds your site to their (now customizable) homescreens.

The icon itself gets cropped a bit when the iPhone adds the glossy effect to your icon. So, you’ll want logos and text to fall within 47×47 pixels within the 57 pixels. Also scaling the icon a few pixels larger than 57×57 will increase its resolution a bit when the iPhone scales it back down.

Here is an example that apple provided for scale & image optimization.

Did you know you could support your favorite charity just by searching the Internet? You can if you use GoodSearch.com, a search engine powered by Yahoo. When founders Ken & JJ Ramberg realized that search engines generated nearly $4 billion in advertising revenue, they started their own, aiming to donate 50 percent of the profits to charity.

It’s easy to use: Just go to GoodSearch.com, enter the charity you want to support in the provided field, and search. Don’t see your favorite cause represented? You can add it. Want to spread the love? Change your charity as often as you like. The search results are as good as those on Yahoo, so you can find something good and do something good at the same time.

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Well, after a little break, we’ve decided to revisit our seminar series on Synergy Online Marketing! Tom McCracken, President of LevelTen, will be giving his presentations over the next three months. The first presentation will cover the principles of online marketing and will be held on Tuesday, February 19th at Arcodoro & Pomodoro in Uptown Dallas. If you would like to recieve an invitation to this industry insider event, please email us at seminars@leveltendesign.com.

You can download the previous seminar slides for this particular presentation by clicking the link below. These particular presentations will be revised for the actual event, as to offer some fresh, new ideas on synergy online marketing. Please join us in learning and networking with other professionals!

Seminar Part One - Principles of Online Marketing 09/18/07

Despite many objections, Google Page Rank is an inescapable metric in the online community. Two forms of Page Rank exist online: what Google lets you see in the Google Page Rank Toolbar and what your Page Rank actually is in the Google servers. The Google Toolbar PR is seen by many on the Internet as a be-all and end-all in gauging the credibility of a particular site.

As a metric of website effectiveness and marketability, many critics have denounced the usefulness of Page Rank, especially when observed in the convenient medium of the toolbar. Akinola Akintomide of SEOChat highlighted two main criticisms of Page Rank as a valid metric this past week:
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