RVUSA.com, one of the RV industry’s leading interactive agencies, announces the launch of www.columbuscampercenter.com, a new web site for Columbus Camper Center, a recreational vehicle and powersports dealership and service center located in Columbus, Georgia.

www.columbuscampercenter.com

The site features information about Columbus Camper Center’s range of available campers and RVs as well as their selection of ATVs and motorcycles. The web site’s user-friendly inventory search is powered by RVUSA.com. The entire site is easily updated by the RV dealer’s staff, because it is based on the EZ-Site system that allows website owners to add, edit and delete pages quickly and conveniently.

RVUSA.com, a subsidiary of Netsource Media, is an award-winning interactive media agency dedicated to serving the RV industry nationwide. Visit their web site at www.rvusa.com for more information on their services and to view additional client web sites.

What would you do if the computer system storing your customer records or sales information suffered a hard drive failure or other catastrophic event that caused it to lose all of its stored data? Would your business be able to continue operating? Could you continue to market, advertise and fulfill orders?

With the growing value of data as a money-making asset, today’s businesses must face the challenge of protecting and maintaining their important information in the most efficient, cost-effective manner possible. To meet this challenge, business owners need to carefully define their business requirements and recovery objectives and then decide on the right backup and recovery technologies to deploy.

Here is a quick look at some important statistics gathered from a variety of information technology industry studies:

• 25% of all personal computer users suffer from data loss each year.
• 70% of small business firms that experience a major data loss go out of business within one year.
• 15% of all laptop computers are either stolen or suffer hard drive failures.
• Data recovery and productivity loss due to data loss cost US businesses nearly $12 billion in 2008.
• 96% of all business workstations are not configured for any kind of data backup.

Make no mistake about it: If your small business depends on data to make money, you need to have in place a system of regular data backups. Maintaining consistent, verified backups may add a little to the cost of ownership for your data systems, but in the long run failure to keep your data properly backed up can expose your business to even higher costs. Consider the following…

According to the National Computer Security Association, on average it takes:

• 19 days and $17,000 to recreate just 20 MB of lost sales/marketing data
• 21 days and $19,000 to recreate 20 MB of lost accounting data
• 42 days and $98,000 to recreate 20 MB of lost engineering data.

Data backups aren’t necessarily expensive – especially compared to the costs associated with data recovery and lost productivity. The catch is that there’s no such thing as a “one size fits all”  solution that can work for every business in every circumstance.

If you need help creating a backup plan for your business – or if you have questions or concerns about your current backup plans – please feel free to contact the data management experts at DataOne Networks (www.dataonenetworks.com).

In this article we will take a look at creating some great looking product photos on a budget. We will outline how to shoot a basic product shot. The emphasis will be on background, lighting, and the positioning of the product itself. You can use any small object to shoot that offers a great example to highlight the basics of lighting and shooting an isolated product photo. I have chosen a small friendly shaped incense burner.

Lets take a look at our final photo (unedited):

Our final photo (unedited).

Equipment rundown:

In both set ups I am using single lights – one diffused, one bare. Keep in mind that multiple light set ups can really increase your quality of lighting, and your budget. So for the sake of this article we are using one light, per example.

Example 1: Basic Lighting – single ‘bare’ light:

These are basic non-diffused light set ups. You can get some great quality lighting from these, and also use them as a platform to start your lighting set up. You can later add soft-boxes or umbrellas to these lights.

My single 'bare' light

You can purchase a set from amazon for around $40.

In action:

single 'bare' light set up

Example 2: Advanced Lighting:

There are so many more lighting options as your budget increases… you can use soft-box lighting or umbrella lighting, Continuous or flash. The list goes on. I used our in-house soft-box set up. Typically an umbrella setup is a bit cheaper with similar results.

Soft-box

Umbrellas around $80 to $100 on amazon

In action:

Single soft-box set up

Reflecting light:

You can find many things to use to reflect light, but hardly any will be as easy to use or as versatile as an actual reflector. And for about $30 on amazon you can get some great ‘5 sided’ reflectors. These will make a huge difference no matter how you shoot. If you purchase nothing else for your photos, purchase a reflector.

'5 sided' reflector

Location:

For our backdrop I used white paper on a roll. Very inexpensive and very reusable. There are many “portable” photo studios or “product booths” but those are pretty limited in size of product and a bit overpriced if you ask me. Our clean white paper will do just fine.

Our backdrop

Set Up Breakdowns:

Set Up 1 – Bare light:

Lets take a look at shooting our ‘product’ with our single bare light set up.

Bare light

I have left this image a bit underexposed to show how harsh your shadows can be with the bare light set up. But hard shadows aside, we don’t have a bad start to a great product photo. Let’s add a reflector to this set up.

No Reflector

With Reflector

You can see in these images with no other change than the reflector being added opposite of our light source, what a huge difference reflected light can make. There is still a somewhat harsh shadow on the paper from our single light. This is a great single bare light set up and a perfect one on a budget. Those shadows will disappear with our next set up, but so will some of your cash. So while there is a bit of shadow, this is still a very professional set up for some great shots.

Set Up 2 – Diffused Lighting:

Single soft-box

Compare this to our ‘bare’ light shot and you can see a huge difference in the lighting quality. I placed the soft box above and to the left of our product for this shot. You will first notice the wonderful soft shadows and great even lighting that we have with this set up. But it can get better.

With gold foil reflector

Notice in the image above I am using the gold side of the reflector, this helps to “warm” the lighting of our product. It also washes out the softer but still somewhat visible shadows on the white paper.

Once you have experimented around a little bit and have your set up adjusted to your liking, you should be taking some great product photos.

Final

Viral videos are one of the mysteries of social media marketing; most people assume “going viral” (getting people to share and view your video online, creating buzz) is pretty much luck or the domain of Fortune 500 companies with large ad agencies working for them. Steve Strauss’ article tries to present some concrete steps to help you plan and execute your own viral video.

Read it here: 7 Steps to Creating a Viral Video

Business cards are an extension of your branding, lending potential clients your information in a memorable package.  While business cards are usually an afterthought for conventions, business cards should be seen as small, personal advertisements for your company.  I believe that an effective business card clearly answers the following three questions in order:

1. What do you do?
2. How do I contact you?
3. Who are you?

What Do You Do Exactly?

The main focus of your business card is to quickly (think a millisecond glance) communicate your company’s service or product.   While an effective logo and/or descriptive company name can help with recognition, a name like “SunTech” does little to elicit a core purpose. Since most company names do not fully communicate their core service, these three devices are usually employed to help with recognition:

1. Taglines add a creative summary of your core services
2. Photography / Illustration of your core services for a fast visual comprehension
   

   An Illustration helps make the core service apparent along with a fun tagline "Tame Your Technology" instead of "We Fix Computers"

3. Media changes from the standard sized paper card can add instant appeal and create a memorable business card.
   

   Changing the media to an electrical wire made this business card memorable while advertising their core service

   A note on changing the media – while it makes your business card stand out, it also limits the use as the 2.5 x 3” business cards are standardized to fit into wallets and Rolodex for later retrieval.

How Do I Contact You?

There is a wealth of contact information that you can present to a viable customer including phone numbers, toll free numbers, cell numbers, fax numbers, physical addresses, emails, websites, and social media accounts. Unfortunately, business cards are small and space is precious. Usually a main phone number (local or toll free) along with an email address provides the two optimal venues of communication.  Contact information should be legible (larger than 6 point type) and easily located.

Who Are You?

With business card in hand, your potential client is looking to contact YOU, and probably needs a little memory jogger as to your name. Your business card should clearly display your name along with your position within the company for reference. Some industries, like real estate which depend on personal connections, also include portraits to aid in further visual recognition.

Other Design Considerations

While a business card is a great place to showcase creativity and design, keep in mind that the three main questions must be answered legibly. Black text on a white background has the highest contrast. Also san serif (no feet) fonts reproduce better at smaller point sizes.

Finally, the back of your business card can be seen in one of two lights:

1. A blank space to write notes or leave a personal message
2. A venue to review services or have larger graphics

How you decide to use the back of your business card will have more to do with your particular business and contact goals, but keep in mind that the back of your card can also reinforce and answer the three questions addressed above for maximum effectiveness.

Even here in usually-balmy Florida, winter means cooler, less humid weather. For folks who work with computer systems every day, the drier air can mean only one thing.

Dust bunnies.

When there is less humidity in the air, individual particles of dust collect higher charges of static electricity. And the more static electricity these tiny particles of dust collect, the more likely they are to band together into large collections of fuzzy, gray crud that can gum up the heat-reducing ventilation system and other inner workings of your desktop PCs and servers.

When is the last time that you cleaned (or had someone clean) your computer – or when did you last even take a look at your computer’s ventilation ports?

Chances are that your computer’s vents and case are full of dirt, dust, and other bits of unspeakable debris. If you have a pet running around near the PC, the system is likely to be loaded with hair, too. If your PC or server sits on the floor, under your desk, it’s gathering even more dust.

Most of the time, when a customer brings a computer into us for service, one of the first things we have to do is give the thing a thorough cleaning. While disposing of all the …stuff… we dig out of computer cases hasn’t turned our business location into an EPA Superfund Cleanup Site just yet, sometimes those boxes can be pretty polluted on the inside.

We recommend leaving a lot of the ‘open box’ cleaning chores to either professional technicians (like us) or, at the very least, experienced ‘power users’ who know what not to touch inside of a computer case. But there are a couple of things you can do to keep your computer cleaner, freer of dust and happily running at a lower operating temperature.

You can remove large clots of dust from the fan ports and air vents by vacuuming them from the outside of the case. We don’t recommend you attempt to vaccuum inside the case. Even if you’re using one of those specialized ‘PC vaccuums’, don’t touch the motherboard or any add-in cards. At most, just suck away the dust that is lying on the base of your case and on the bottoms of the system’s empty drive bays. Do not use brushes on any of your computer’s components.

Alternatively, if the weather is dry and not too cold, carry the PC outdoors, and bring along a can of compressed air. It’s best if you use a can that has an air hose attached; you can also buy tubing at a hobby store. The hose is perfect for clearing away dust throughout the case. It lets you hold the air can upright, as well; spraying the can at a tilt causes a wasteful blast of icy liquid propellant, and the resulting temperature change can damage components.

Note: Only use canned, compressed air to clean your PC’s vent ports. Do not use an air compressor as the air they pump out often contains a mix of oil and water. And for heaven’s sake, don’t try to clean out your PC with a leaf blower…

To reduce the frequency of future cleanings, elevate your PC off the floor. Raising your computer off the floor, even just 6 inches, will seriously reduce the amount of dust that gets sucked into the fan vents. You can prop it up by using castors or a small furniture dolly, both of which are available at hardware and home appliance stores.

If you’re new to the web and you’re undertaking the development of your first website, you’ve probably been hearing the term “browser” a lot lately. And most likely you’re confused.

Browsers are one of the most important parts of a user’s web experience; which browser you are using can have a very large effect on how the websites you visit look and behave.  So clearly, understanding how browsers work will be important for you so you can understand fully how your customers will experience your new website once it is complete.

Below I present an introduction to browsers, with the purpose of helping a business person better understand what their designers and programmers are talking about when they start mentioning things like browsers, browser compatibility and cross-browser testing.

What Is A Browser, Anyway?

According to Wikipedia, a web browser is:

…a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web.

Pretty important stuff… essentially, without a browser no one would be able to visit websites. The internet as we know it would not exist.

There are primarily 5 major web browsers, and you are probably using one of them right now to read this article (though you may not know it). They are:

1. Internet Explorer
2. Mozilla Firefox
3. Apple Safari
4. Google Chrome
5. Opera

And just to complicate matters, there can be several versions of each browser currently in use. I’ll discuss how this affects website development a little later in this article.

Typically, a browser is pre-installed on computer systems, and the person or program that set-up your internet connection automatically tied a browser to your internet connection.  That’s why most new users don’t know what a browser is; their browser is working silently in the background without user intervention.  However, several browsers can be installed on a computer if a user chooses.

To determine what browser you are using, check out the top left corner of this application window, then use the figure below to match the program icon displayed to the name of your browser:

It is worth noting that if you can’t find one of the icons above in the top right or left corner of your application window, then you are likely browsing the internet using AOL’s built-in browser which is actually an old version of Internet Explorer. I can’t recommend strongly enough that you download and install the latest version of one of the listed browsers above if that is the case. You might also be a power internet user, browsing this blog using a specialized browser or RSS reader… in that case, you probably are already familiar with browser basics.

All Browsers Are NOT Created Equal (or “Why your website looks different on your mom’s laptop.”)

Don’t worry. I’m not about to launch into a discussion of which browser is the best. That’s a topic for another day. Instead, I want to briefly explain how browsers do their job – delivering websites – and in the process help you understand how the internet in general and your website in particular works. The most important thing for you to understand though is this: all browsers do their job differently.

Your website exists as code, written primarily in a programming language known as HTML with additional information conveyed using languages like CSS, ASP, PHP, XML and more. When someone visits your website using a web browser, your web server (the computer that is hosting your site), sends a file that looks a lot like the figure below.

It is the job of the browser to translate that computer language into a visual presentation that is attractive to the website visitor, hopefully as the web designer intended, with images placed just so and text displayed at just the right size and color. But just as there are dozens of translations of “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy for sale on Amazon.com, the different browsers will translate the basic code for every website differently. Most of the time these differences are very slight – spacing and kerning differences in the font or tiny layout and display differences.  But sometimes entire functional features just won’t work in one browser, while the other browsers work just fine.

Cross-browser Testing

The differences in the major browsers’ display of websites is the reason for what’s called cross-browser testing. After a website is completed (and typically at intermediate stages during development), a web designer will test the new pages in the major browsers to make sure everything is working correctly.  As of the writing of this article, the browsers that NetSource Media and most other development companies will test include the following:

• Internet Explorer, versions 6, 7, and 8
• Mozilla Firefox, version 3.5+
• Apple Safari, version 4+
• Google Chrome, version 3+
• Opera, 10+
• AOL 9.0 Security Edition

While it is possible that a website visitor might use a different browser to view your site than those listed above, unless you have a specialized target audience it is likely that such visitors will account for much less than one percent of all traffic.

Accepting Limitations (or “Websites Are Not Brochures or Flyers.”)

Even with testing, most times it is impossible to present a single website in the same exact way in all current browsers. In particular, older versions of Internet Explorer have many limitations in regards to newer web innovations. However, keep in mind that web designers have user experience as their guiding principle when building and testing a website.  Unlike print designers who have rigid control of the layout of their designs down to the pixel, web designers must work within the fluid limitations of their medium to ensure that each visitor can interact with a website without it breaking.  For instance, that fancy rounded corner and text drop shadow might not be visible to visitors who are using Internet Explorer 6.0, and cool fading transitions that other browsers render beautifully might be gone, but as long as site clarity and function does not suffer a web designer can sleep soundly.

It is the immutable fact of a web designer’s existence: no two computers will ever display your website the same way. With browser differences, along with screen resolution, monitor settings, operating system differences and more, our goal is to make a website usable and enjoyable for as many visitors as possible. If that means only 80% of visitors see the cool Gallery transition, but everyone can easily browse the Gallery pictures, that means we’ve created a cross-browser compatible website.  People with older browsers and technology are delivered an optimal site for their browser, while people using newer technology enjoy some icing on their cake.

RVUSA.com, one of the RV industry’s leading interactive agencies, announces the launch of www.louisvillerv.com, a new web site for Louisville RV, a motorhome and recreational vehicle dealership and service center located in Louisville, Kentucky.

www.louisvillerv.com

The site features information about Louisville RV’s wide selection of rental RVs and their extensive inventory of pre-owned RVs as well as their RV service and parts operations. The web site’s user-friendly inventory search is powered by RVUSA.com’s industry leading inventory management system. In addition, the site was developed on our exclusive SiteSource and EZ-Site system, which gives the Louisville RV staff complete control of their website.

Louisville RV specializes in RV rentals. The dealership features a great selection of “Class C” rental units that are suitable for both weekend events and longer getaways.

RVUSA.com, a subsidiary of Netsource Media, is an award-winning interactive media agency dedicated to serving the RV industry nationwide. Visit their web site at www.rvusa.com for more information on their services and to view additional client web sites.

In this installment of my “Top Ten” tips to better Search Engine Optimization, I’ll be reviewing “10 Things to Avoid When Optimizing Your Website”.

SEO isn’t easy! Let’s just call it what it is, Hard and Time Consuming. A major mistake that a lot of people make, in an attempt to make things easier, is looking for short cuts to optimize their website. Many of these shortcuts provide short-lived result, but can harm your rankings in the long run (or even get you black-listed from search engines!). This is where I like to refer to a couple of old sayings to help remind people to stay focused:

-          “If it’s worth doing… It’s worth doing right!”

-          … and, “If it’s too good to be true… then it probably is!”

Keep your eyes on the prize folks! Don’t let other people take advantage of you and your business. Avoid bad neighborhoods, link exchanges and farms, don’t keyword stuff and… well… just keep reading, and Good Luck!

1. Avoid Bad Neighborhoods

Basically, a bad neighborhood is a website that uses any unethical techniques to help increase their ranking in search engines in general. So don’t link to websites that utilize any of the tactics that I’ll be listing in this article, and don’t let them link to you.

Caveat lector: While you have control over who you link to, it is often difficult to get your site removed from a link farm if it has simply added your site on its own. If you find that your website has been added to a directory of questionable character, check to see if there is a “Remove Link” button, or try sending an email to the site owner. Beyond these options, your choices become much more expensive and time-consuming.

2. Don’t Use Link Exchanges or Farms

You may receive an e-mail from another company asking if you will provide a link to their website in “exchange” for them providing a link to yours. Nine times out of ten this is a “Link Exchange,” and it provides no purpose except to try and increase the other site’s Page Rank and Link Popularity. Unless the other site has relevancy to yours, this is deceiving and malicious in intent.

Link Farms have the same purpose only on a greater scale. Links farms target companies with relevant content (real estate agent websites are a big user of this technique), and ask them to include a list of a number of other “out of state” companies that are generally in the same field. In return all of those companies will return a link to you giving you multiple links (farm links) from a number of different websites with relevant content. There was a time when this could work, but that was long ago (in a time far, far, away). This technique is viewed as deceiving and with malicious intent.

3. Don’t Keyword Stuff

Keyword Stuffing is self explanatory, but for those of you that are new to SEO… let me explain further. Keywords are words that you will expect people to find your site with when searching with a search engine. For example, if you have a website that is selling “chocolate truffles” you don’t want “chocolate truffles” to appear in every other sentence. That is Keyword Stuffing… don’t do it!

4. Don’t Use Cloaking Techniques and Doorway Pages

Cloaking and Doorway Pages are similar, but I’ll attempt to explain, in a nutshell, what they do:

-  Doorway Pages… are “keyword stuffed” pages that are set to redirect to another page. This other page is the real page that is meant to be seen, but is poorly optimized. What happens is that the search engines end up indexing the keyword stuffed page. Before you go thinking this is a great idea let me explain that search engines are “hip” to this and have been for years now, although they may sometimes not catch it right away they eventually will and when that time comes around you can expect to be banned from their index. (Note that Doorway Pages are NOT Landing Pages.)

-  Cloaking… is when your website detects who is visiting your website (search engine bot or real person) by the IP address. If your site detects the IP to be a search engine bot then it redirects it to a keyword stuffed page. Otherwise it will take the real person to the real home page of the website. Again… once you get caught you can count on being dropped from that search engines index.

5. Don’t Use the Same “Title” and “META” tags throughout your Website

When you are developing your website hierarchy it should be obvious that each page will tackle a different topic. Therefore it should go without saying that your Title and META tags should be unique from the others across the site as well. Unfortunately this is a big oversight that a lot of people make, because they don’t want to be bothered with the tedious task of keyword research for every page, and then developing more copy for the META description tag as well as the perfect Title Tag and META keywords tag. Well I’m here to tell you folks… it’s worth the time. But don’t make the mistake of using this as a place for keyword stuffing… keep the stuffing for the turkey and use these places to lay down your targeted keywords to help search engines better index your website’s pages.

6. Don’t Use Hidden Text

Ummm… Don’t use hidden text. What’s hidden text? Hidden text is when you put text somewhere on your website that is the same (or similar) color as the background color it’s sitting on top of. For example you place white text over a white background. Why not you say? Well think about it… you won’t be able to read it because it’s white on white. So you can’t read it, but guess what… the search engines can. So what some people do is use this technique to keyword stuff thinking that because visitors can’t see it then it must be ok. Right? Wrong! Once again the search engines are well aware of this Black Hat Technique and it’s only a matter of time until they find out if you are doing it.

7. Don’t Use Frames

Yeah… Don’t use Frames! For those of you still living in the 90’s, don’t you think it’s time to update that website? There are many reasons not to use Frames, but I only need one. Search Engines have trouble indexing pages with Frames… That’s enough for me… Don’t use Frames!

8. Don’t Forget to Optimize Your Images

Make sure to optimize all of your images for your website. One of the factors that search engines take into consideration is the overall download speed of you website. One of the main contributing factors to this is the size of your photos. There was a time in web design that anything over 30k was considered suicide, but nowadays with faster internet connections it’s considered great to be under 200k (80 – 150K is optimal).

9. Don’t Forget to Check the Download Speed of Your Finished Site

Hey! Check your download speed to make sure you are within the limits that you pre-determined for yourself. There are many free tools available on the web to test this, just Google “website speed test” and pick one. This isn’t simply courtesy for your potential website visitors (which is a good enough reason to me), but search engines also penalize web pages with excessively large file sizes and slow download speeds.

10. Don’t Believe Everything You Read About SEO…Except for this of course!

No, really. Everything I have listed here are things that need to be avoided at all costs if you want your website to rank high in the SERPs. But don’t just take my word for it. Do some research and find out for yourself. What you’ll find is that there is a lot of information out there that people will claim helps you, but until you try them it’s hard to know if they’re right or wrong, “Black Hat” or “White Hat”. That’s where NetSource Technologies comes in to play.

NetSource has spent years developing “White Hat” procedures that will help your websites reach specifically targeted audiences on the internet. Audiences who are relevant to your products and services will always bring your website a higher ROI. So if you find that Search Engine Optimization is a little too much for you to grasp, let our experts at NetSource Technologies Inc., take care of it for you and sit back and watch your ROI increase.

NetSource Technologies announces the launch of their redesign for www.rvcanada.com, an inventory and resource web site for RV dealers, RV manufacturers and RV owners in Canada.

www.rvcanada.com

The site features information about new and used RV dealer inventories in Canada, as well as Canadian-based RV service and parts operations and other RV-related services. The web site’s user-friendly inventory search is powered by NetSource Technologies’ recently enhanced, proprietary database system.

RVCanada.com is a subsidiary of NetSource Technologies, North America’s leading interactive agency for the RV industry. The databases and core technologies for the site span dealers and manufacturers across all of North America and are the same systems that power RVUSA.com, one of the RV industry’s leading search and marketing providers.

NetSource Technologies is an award-winning web design, hosting, e-commerce and consulting company that has been serving clients throughout the United States and Canada since 1995. Visit their web site at www.netsourceinc.com for more information on their services and to view additional client web sites.