Tortured Orchard
Tortured Orchard, a local seasoning sauce company came to us looking for a full re-design. justin designed this beautiful layout with the client highlighting their products and the many ways you can use their tasty sauces!
The new site is Search Engine Optimized and connects to both Facebook and Twitter so every new blog post gets posted seamlessly to the top two social media outlets.
Check the site out at: http://torturedorchard.com
Elizabeth Winthrop
Award winning children’s author, Elizabeth Winthrop, is a client we have been working since our beginning. Her website looked like it was done ten years ago, cause it was. She needed to enter the 21st century and turned to us for design and technical help.
Building a custom theme for Elizabeth was tons of fun! Her site needed to reflect the fun of her kids books and the seriousness of some of her adult focused work. What came out is a site that we are all proud of.
Check out Elizabeth’s site here: http://elizabethwinthrop.com and look for her books at your local library.
Albert Cummings
Blues guitarist, Albert Cummings, was in need of a new website. Over the years we kept patching his tired site and it was time to update. Always on the road, we needed to highlight his tours and since he is an independent artist, highlighting the store was key. He was also in need of a new logo, justin created an awesome design for shirts and a logo for the site.
We also customized the rest of Albert’s web presence including custom graphics on Facebook, Myspace, and Artistdata. A new mobile phone app is coming out soon as well, brought to you by the Brainspiral team!
Check out Albert Cummings on a stage near you, and online at: http://albertcummings.com
Fundora Jewelry
Fundora Jewelry is a new online store and home show bead business based out of Pittsfield, MA. Fundora needed a full web store on a budget, since they are just starting up. They also needed to highlight their show locations. Sometimes home parties, sometimes at local festivals and markets.
The site is as fun and simple as their business concept. Fun, high quality, low cost beads, necklaces and more!
Check out fundora and grab your mom a bracelet while you are there! http://fundorajewelry.com/
Brainspiral offers full e-commerce and SEO solutions. All of our work is built on the WordPress framework. However, we do extreme customization. We build 98% of our designs from the ground up. Don’t get charged more for a free theme, go to a team that knows the design and tech end of building websites! Do it local, do it custom!
QR Codes
I’ve been asked a lot about QR Codes recently. In fact, I had two clients call me today because they saw local forward thinking businesses using QR Codes. I used to just call them mobile scanners but I guess I gotta catch up to the times as well.
QR codes are not for every business. Just like facebook is not always good for business. Please, do not just use them cause they are trendy and you saw them at a bus stop in Brooklyn, think before you use QR codes. That is why my first recommendation is… Decide why you are using a QR code, what is the point?
No need to ask me when you want to generate one… you can generate your own.
First, what are QR codes?
QR codes are basically a link in print. You can print an image and when someone with a mobile device that has a QR scanner, such as an iPhone, scans the image then the link you place shows up. QR Codes can be used for many things such as, a link to a song in itunes, a link to your contact information, or a link to a webpage.
I use the Bakodo scanner on my iPhone because it can scan more than just QR codes! (in fact, I just learned that it could be used for more than finding out the price of spaghetti sauce (my past use of it)
Want to generate and track QR Codes like a web geek?
Decide why you are using a QR code, what is the point?
For something other than a link to a webpage on your site:
- go to: http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/ (there are many generators out there. this is the one justin likes)
- choose from the dropdown what kind of content it is
- fill out the fields
- choose your size (the size of the image)
- click generate
- then… you can either download the image or use the url to link to it (if for instance you are putting it in your email signature)
- test your image by scanning with your mobile device
For a link to a webpage of your site there are more steps because we want to track the code to see how many people use it:
- go to: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578
- put in the url that you want to link to example: http://brainspiral.com to link to the Brainspiral Homepage
- for the campaign source put “the name of the magazine, etc” cause that is what we are gonna track here. For example for this I would put “websiteqrexample”, if this was in the Transcript on May 22nd, “transcript522″
- for campaign medium, Id put “qr” cause that is what the medium is
- for campaign name… give it a name
- click generate URL (I got: http://brainspiral.com/?utm_source=QR&utm_medium=qr%2Bcode&utm_campaign=qr%2Bweb%2Btest)
- now that is one LONG URL…let’s shorten it! so, copy that long URL
- go to: http://goo.gl/
- paste the long URL you just generated into the box and click shorten
- For mine I got: http://goo.gl/5UcsV (nice and short!)
- NOW go to: http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/ (there are many generators out there. this is the one justin likes)
- choose from the dropdown URL
- paste in your nice short URL
- choose your size (the size of the image)
- click generate
- then… you can either download the image to use in print or use the url to link to it (if for instance you are putting it in your email signature)
- My image looks like this:
- test your image by scanning with your mobile device
Ok, that is it!
-justin adkins
Get a website today with Brainspiral!!!
Diana, Brattleboro
Many thanks for Brainspiral’s help in making Core Flow Yoga a success. Justin is a great designer! Good luck with everything.
Jane, Williamstown
Thanks,Hunter! So glad I got a Mac!
TV is working out great….HUGE improvement!
**********
Regarding: Mac Laptop Updates and Installation of a new 40″ LED TV with matching Blu-Ray player for streaming Netflix.
A Look At Google
Just a few thoughts about Google.
I just received an email introducing a new high definition media player running the GoogleTV software.
And it occurred to me almost immediately: Google is turning into Microsoft.
Does that mean in 20 years Google will be making bad software that costs way too much money and yet everyone will buy it anyway while Apple works very hard to give away their superior alternatives? Looks like it.
Google doesn’t make any of their own hardware. They are relying exclusively on other hardware and software developers to build the appliances that run their software. All of them, in fact – their phones, tv software, web browser.
In comparison, Apple develops all of their own hardware. The end result is that the overall product – the thing that the consumer actually uses – is much more functional because the hardware and software work seamlessly together. That’s the sticking point with technology. Software isn’t a sole solution. You need hardware, too.
I have to believe this is why the Droid phones have atrocious battery life, Chrome crashes all the time and (I suspect) Revue won’t be able to dual output digital and analog audio.
So Google – Are you going to start improving your company model by developing better products? Because as it stands now, your software is only so-so. You just have the luxury that Microsoft has – you’ve duped people into thinking that it’s the best solution.
HP Pavilion dv6 Trackpad
I recently had to set up a new HP Pavilion dv6 16″ Laptop. It came with Windows 7, 64-Bit. Aside from the fact that HP stole the keyboard design from the Apple Macbook and attempted to make their crappy plastic case look like Apple’s brushed aluminum, it’s not a bad computer. Except that it runs Windows.
Though no direct fault of Microsoft, the trackpad is the worst piece of pointing hardware I have ever used. The trackpad vacillates between totally dysfunctional and so aggravating I feel like moving back to pen and paper. I can only blame the limitations of the trackpad on HP or at least on HP’s choice to by cheap Synaptics hardware . Microsoft’s own poor software development habits are not at fault this time. Though some of the quirky behavior of the trackpad may be fixable with better software, the current driver support offers very limited maneuverability. The sensitivity is all wrong, it’s physically too small, and like many artifacts in the PC world that are core components of a computer, this one just doesn’t work well.
Amanda, Michigan
Posted by webadmin@brainspiral.com on September 1, 2011 · Leave a Comment
You’re a rockstar. Thank you
_____
Regarding: Remotely installing a virtual environment for Windows XP on a Macbook Pro.
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