Johnson’s fountain, tween crowds at North Beach, tribute bands on First Fridays, summer has officially hit Racine. Summer is the season for relaxing, rejuvenating, and recharging. The weather is hot, the pools are open, and the school doors are shut.
At the birth of the World Wide Web, website designs were just that – static, unchanging pages of text connected to one another through “hyperlinks.” Eventually web development came to include images, sounds, and video, but their nature remained the same. When truly interactive features were necessary, website developers often created them for proprietary browser plugins like Java and Adobe Flash. This meant confining the most interesting interactive elements to a small box within the webpage.
For years, Apple has defined success with innovative product releases. What started with the iPod years ago rolled into a cultural phenomenon. But weighty competitors like Google and Microsoft have since upped the ante. They’ve thrown their own products, powered by Android and Windows 8, into the ring. A volatile market has never been more competitive. Now, Apple, the company that redefined branding, has the enormous challenge of branding itself all over again.
It was a snowy, blustery night on March 8th, 1999. I remember it vividly as I walked to the window of the Gateway Technical College classroom just minutes before 7pm as I was about to teach my Medical Terminology class. I recall peering out at a particular tree which was being blasted by the wind. I thought to myself, “What an awful night.” It was at that very moment some 250 miles northeast of me, that my only brother, Allen Saint John Weslaski, age 33, tragically died in a car accident.
Social networking can help a business large or small increase their public awareness, gain contacts, and get their business’ “face” out to millions. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are in a sense a modern concept of the six degrees of separation. A business can follow certain people or companies and those in turn can follow your company. Followers from all over the world can find your company. Being able to increase your viewing public without actually going to each individual person or business is a huge advantage for the modern company.
Microsoft recently released their new Internet Explorer 10 browser for the home computer Windows 7 market. Internet Explorer 10 is the standard Microsoft browser on Windows 8. Windows 7 users can now take advantage of the latest of the IE browsers. There are plenty of reasons to do so.
IE 10 provides two modes of operation: a Metro mode for touch screen operation and a Classic mode that looks almost exactly like IE 9. Windows 8 users are greeted by the tablet-PC friendly Metro mode while Windows 7 users will start up with Windows mode. The two modes may be alternated as you wish.
When it comes to Internet speeds, the country that created the Internet lags far behind much of the developed world. The United States has about an average 6.7 Mbps (Megabytes per second) download speed compared to a global average of 2.6 Mbps. South Korea leads with 15.7 Mbps, followed in order by Japan, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, and Latvia. One of the primary reasons for America’s poor performance is our obsession with wireless networks, which simply can’t compete with the speed of wired networks.
Though social media has diminished its use in other ways, email is still a crucial communication tool in the business world. According to a recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute, the average office-based employee spends as much as a quarter of their day reading and responding to email. With everyone spending so much time on email, it may be easy to think that one has mastered the art of email writing.
As predicted, we are swamped with website work and proud of it. Currently we have at least 15 websites in progress, and a dozen more quoted and coming soon. Along with the 450 current website clients, Image Management is going gangbusters.
We knew the economy was picking up, as I gave proof of in my previous blog post. This is only the beginning of what is expected to be a banner year for Image Management. We stand by our reputation as being the leader of website design, development, and hosting in southeastern Wisconsin.
Are you a procrastinator? Let’s hope not. We have enough of those in Washington, supposedly running our country. Of course I am not someone in debt either. That is another problem with our country’s leaders. I am not usually argumentative as I know in order to be successful I must also be agreeable. This is another trait, unlike our national leaders, I am proud of and attribute to being a successful business man.