Ever Attended a Webinar?

Michael here, with just a year of web industry experience under my belt, I recently attended my first Webinar. The presenter was CrossTech Partners and the topic was Business Strategies for Content Management, Part 1: Evaluating Web Content Management Solutions. As I mentioned, I had never attended a Webinar before and wasn't entirely sure what to expect. For those of you in the same boat, perhaps a brief summary of my experience may help you decide whether you'd be interested in attending your first as well.

After I had registered to attend, I received a few helpful reminder emails in the days immediately preceding the event. For some, this may have the same effect as SPAM, but on this occasion it helped me stay on track.

Once I had entered "the room", I was presented with two scenes. Off the left were the CrossTech presenters (TJ and Mark) and off the right was a large view of the slideshow they'd be taking us through. Once the Webinar began, the attendees were able to follow the slides and the presenters simultaneously exactly how you would in a traditional seminar.

On the day of the event, I received an email with a link to the Webinar. All I had to do was click it and my browser handled the rest. No software was needed to install, and the Adobe automated setup process took just seconds to complete--web-based applications performing at their finest.

The Webinar lasted about an hour and 10 minutes--a bit long for me, but included valuable information and was presented in a professional manner. Attendees had the ability to submit questions to the presenters through a chat box which were answered in real time during and immediately after the formal Webinar.

Some positive elements of my Webinar experience included: 

• the reception of informative and valuable information delivered through the internet to my computer 
• seamless boot of the web-based presentation software
• a format which encouraged productivity by permitting its attendees to multitask.
  

The one area where I felt the presenters came up short in was the lack of motion throughout all elements of their presentation. Both presenters sat behind a table, hands folded, remaining relatively motionless while the slideshow shambled along at a fairly slow clip. The most exciting part of the presentation was when they switched to a screencast of their propietary software (a way of accentuating the allure of their product perhaps?). By adding more activity to the screen, I believe the presenters could have held the attention of their audience much better.

All in all, I'm glad I took a chance on one of these "Webinars." It was an interesting way of receiving information pertinent to our industry and at the very least provided me with a sense of what to expect in the future.

Resizing Images in Microsoft Paint

Resizing images is a fairly standard task for web content managers. Reason being: most images come in a native resolution far too large for efficient display on the web. For that reason, I finally sat down to write a tutorial on how the Windows-based user can utilize the preinstalled Microsoft Paint to handle their image resizing needs.

Check out the full tutorial in the Evergreen Resources section of our website.

Google Chrome v Internet Explorer: Pt. 1

Internet Explorer (IE): if you're one of the millions of people out there owning a PC, chances are you've used IE at some point to browse the web, check your email, or stream viral video. For most of you, IE is all you've ever used. Perhaps you didn't know that you had options or maybe you just don't like change. Or maybe, Internet Explorer never gave you a reason to doubt (why fix what's not broken right?). Well, this article, and the posts that follow, all seek to inform you that a) you do have options when it comes to internet browsers and b) Google Chrome is one of them.

By now, you've probably heard of Chrome, the new internet browser by Google, Inc. But if internet statistics on browser market share can be trusted, chances are you haven't installed it yet. This will be the first in a series of posts describing the Top 5 reasons you should ditch Internet Explorer in favor of Google Chrome.

We'll start from the bottom and work our way up with #5, Tabs.

Sure, Internet Explorer has tabs (at least starting with Version 7) but they're slow to load and restricted to the window they were born from. In Chrome, tabs load snappy and you can freely manipulate their placement either within the same window, or entirely new windows, allowing you to reorganize your tasks on-the-fly and work (or play) the way YOU want to. Watch the video below to see what I mean, then check back next week for my #4 reason, the Amazing Address Bar.

Download Google Chrome

Durable Bags, from a Memorable Brand

Naked bicyclists, vintage Portsmouth, and tons of beer cans. What do these three things have in common? They are all themes of our most recent launch of the BaileyWorks e-commerce website!

BaileyWorks is a privately-owned handmade bag manufacturing company headquartered in New Hampshire. With a flair for the unique, the company has made a name for itself by promoting its rich culture and strong products.

After 15 years of successful business development offline, the company recently decided to focus on achieving similar success online. For BaileyWorks, that meant an entirely new website from the ground up.

To provide BaileyWorks with a scalable solution that would evolve to meet the changing demands of a growing business, we (Cascade Web Development, Inc.) built the foundations of their website on the Evergreen platform and customized its content management system to handle a number of specific business processes. From managing their product inventory and its dynamically-distributed display to overseeing shipping options and tracking orders, BaileyWorks now has the tools at its disposal to handle nearly all stages of the business cycle.

Blog  |  Videos  |  Community Videos

In addition to equipping the company with a custom-tailored solution to managing their e-commerce system, we also focused our efforts on leveraging the power of social media to enable BaileyWorks to play an active role in their online community. These efforts included the development of (screenshots) an embedded blog, the production of two online videos streaming through popular YouTube.com and Viddler.com, as well as the creation of a video-upload feature on their site for customers to share their own stories. BaileyWorks is now in a position to be as much a part of their community as they please without feeling constrained by technology.

In its first month alone the company experienced an increase in traffic of 3 times the historical average with over 3 times the number of bags sold compared to the previous month!

Cascade Web Development's support for BaileyWorks daily business process did not stop at the website. E-mail, document sharing, calendar, collaboration video and more is now possible with the set-up of Google Corporate. Cascade Web Development has been very excited about this new Google Apps service and BaileyWorks jumped right on board when we explained the benefits of the e-mail interface, collaboration features and custom API's.

Visit the Official Cascade Web Development Website
Visit the BaileyWorks E-Commerce Website