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Design and Tech News

Ironpaper announces their upgraded member database CMS

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

Ironpaper produces member-profile and membership database websites powered by their scalable CMS framework. The CMS is highly customizable and is great for both small and large organizations--whether non-profit for business network.

member database cms

Ironpaper membership CMS

Recently, Ironpaper has invested in expanding the capabilities of it's membership database CMS. Currently the core member profile module supports a range of needs for both non-profits and for-profit organizations. With recent expansions, the system has grown to become quite dynamic--allowing for a range of expressive and highly customizable options.

Learn more: membership network website design

Hotmail combats “grey mail”

Monday, November 7th, 2011

Microsoft has declared war on "grey mail."

Grey mail is that legitimate email that you receive but you don't really want. Hotmail has introduced a set of tools to help weed out your inbox full of this unwanted garbage.

Beautiful infographic by Microsoft to illustrate the concept:

Microsoft's new email tools - info graphic

Commercial Factoring Website Launched By Ironpaper

Monday, October 17th, 2011

Ironpaper recently launched Midland American Capital, an invoice and purchase order financing company--located at midlandamericancapital.com. The site is largely an information and education website for prospect clients, but the site does contain a blog on industry and market issues.

Midland American Capital website

Midland American Capital website

Above: A view of the Midland American Capital homepage. The focus of the site is invoice and purchase order factoring. Essentially, Midland American provides cash advances to businesses that need on-going growth capital.

Learn more: Midland American Capital

Palermo Bakery launches Facebook photo contest

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011

Palermo Bakery of New Jersey launched a Facebook photo contest titled "First Cuts,"  which showcases the events of Palermo's extended community--from weddings to birthdays and anniversaries of all types.

Palermo Bakery has truly adopted the web as a platform for extending engagement with their customer base, which has primarily been focused in NJ, but is beginning to extend into NYC, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The launch of the photo contest shows a new approach that Palermo is taking with their marketing--having some fun while engaging their customer base interactively in a dialogue.

The NYC and NJ Cake Bakery offers top of the line custom cakes that are designed collaboratively with the client and Palermo's design team.

NitroSell new report feature to help improve conversions in time for shopping season

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

NitroSell recently launched a new report feature that helps eCommerce website owners understand and manage missed opportunities with customers. This is a great feature for store owners wishing to improve their conversion process and better refine their shopping experience. The new feature was announced this summer of 2011, and is in time for the fall and winter shopping seasons.

nitrosell registered customers for ecommerce websites

Nitrosell registered customers report for ecommerce websites

If desired, you can select any customer from the list to reveal their contact information, send them an email or, perhaps if you’re on the phone with the customer, to login to their account and guide them through the sale.

NitroSell customer CRM

Capturing this information will enable the retailer to contact the prospective customer to invite them back to your site or perhaps gain critical feedback that may help drive future conversions.

This great feature will help strengthen  NitroSell ecommerce websites and improve their conversion rates.

Content protection for all: from blogs to websites, thanks FBI

Saturday, September 10th, 2011

anti piracy insignia for websitesGreat news for bloggers and website owners. The FBI “Anti-Piracy Warning Seal” is being extended to all content--not just movies and music. Even personal websites can display the logo now without violating the federal law. (The federal law pushes a maximum six-month sentence and other penalties for using the insignia without FBI approval.) Prior to this moment only certain content organizations could use the insignia--namely Recording Industry Association of America, Business Software Alliance, Entertainment Software Association, Software & Information Industry Association, and of course the Motion Picture Association of America.

Should I use a hosted blog?

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

Blogging functionality

Blogging can be a fantastic marketing process if done properly. It can help build trust, demonstrate experience, build a relationship with one's visitors and strengthen a website's standing in search engines. One common question for businesses is whether they should self-host their blog or rely on a hosted blogging software. Ultimately, we generally recommend hosting the blog yourself so that you have more control over your investment.

Here are more reasons from the NYC Business Network about the disadvantages of a hosted blogging platform

Google Toolbar Nolonger Supported For Firefox 5 and Above

Sunday, July 31st, 2011

We know this is old news for some, but nevertheless important. Google has discontinued it's Labs program, which means that the Google Toolbar will not be supported going forward. The company is trying to focus it's efforts on primary tools and initiatives, rather than spread itself too thin.

Google claims the capabilities of the Google Toolbar can be found elsewhere, which is true. The problem is that none of the other options currently offer the same level of ease for doing things like: site search, finding a website's Pagerank or quick access buttons to other handy Google services for heavy Google users.

Yes, there are quite a bit of good SEO toolbars out there, which can show Pagerank for a domain or web page, but the all-in-one Google access is a bit harder to come by.  Some have suggested that by dropping the Google Toolbar and thus reducing one of the most popular Firefox add-ons, Google is clearly pushing users to it's own browser instead--certainly there is some truth to this.

Facebook users to get Skype video chat in-site

Sunday, July 3rd, 2011

Facebook and Skype will be launching a new service that provides Skype's video chat service to Facebook users as a new product part of the social network. The Facebook extension of Skype will be an incredible boost to the service--resulting in hundreds of millions of new users. There is debate (pending the official unveiling) whether the new video chat product will be a part-desktop application or a complete in-browser experience for users. This new product could be a good win for Facebook, which now may find competition with the advent of Google+.

New mobile ad formats extend to the smartphone

Saturday, June 11th, 2011

Google introduced two new ad formats that are an extension of two regular (computer) ad types to smartphones: Product Extension Ads and Product Local Ads.

The new ad extensions give marketers a way to include product images and other related data within ads displayed to mobile devices. One example of such an extension is inventory. If enabled, a user searching on a smartphone (iPhone, Android, etc) would be shown regional, inventory information for a product they are searching for. This new Google ad format, Product Extension Ads, are intended to drive eCommerce from mobile devices. Their counterpart, Product Local Ads, are intended to effectively do the opposite, drive foot traffic into local stores--by using the smartphone's GPS feature to put purchasing into a regional context.