By leveraging collective buying power, the NCP and NCG lower the cost of supplies and services for their partners and members. The online marketing galleries allow participating chambers to communicate these savings to their members by customizing promotional documentation and emails from within a single online tool.

“Working closely with the NCP and NCG teams, we collaboratively developed a tool that makes it easier for chambers and organizations to take control of their marketing assets,” Antoine Dubeauclard, President of Media Genesis, said. “The NCP and NCG supply the promotional material and the organizations customize it to fit their branding. It’s a win-win.”

Chambers and organizations can use these tools to customize PDF flyers and HTML emails with their organization’s logo and contact information. The co-branded marketing collateral allows diverse NCP or NCG participants to offer professional, consistent design.

Media Genesis created the marketing galleries as custom PHP developments to provide the NCP and NCG with dynamic asset repositories and digital asset management capabilities as well as a toolkit for developing consistent, co-branded documentation and email.

Media Genesis is a leading Internet services firm based in Troy, Michigan. Media Genesis serves more than 300 companies and nonprofit organizations. An in-house team provides a wide range of services including web design, search engine optimization, social networking and design and development of e-learning systems, mobile applications, intranets and content management systems. For web development consulting and online strategy, visit www.mediaG.com.

There are several web tools that can be used for creating a blog. WordPress is one of the most common and effective open source content management systems. This package contains a lot of features, including plugins and widgets for everything from ecommerce to calendars.

Plugins are easy-to-use tools to extend the functionality of WordPress. WordPress offers a bunch of different Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plugins that help to optimize and categorize pages for search engines. For example, HeadSpace2 allows you to tag your articles to create unique titles and descriptions, thereby improving the ranking of pages and their relevance to search engines. Other plugins can automatically generate titles, descriptions, and keywords, as well as avoid duplication of content.

Some plugins and widgets allow you to create an XML site map that is supported by search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask. The Sitemap Generator plugin creates a custom sitemap for your WordPress blog and lets you specify what to show and what not to show, including the order in which the pages should be displayed. WordPress plugins reduce long headers and save only the necessary keywords, making your blog more user-friendly for search engines.

Most blogs contain images, and they should also follow SEO best practices. There are plugins that automatically update the image attributes, such as the alt, and title tags. Alt tags act as an alternative description of your images and the title appears as a pop-up tooltip when you mouse over. These attributes are critical for image SEO. SEO plugins also support Google Analytics and ecommerce sites.

Media Genesis has developed blog-based websites and has helped our clients get better search engine ranking using SEO solutions. Our team will provide the best options for your business.

WordPress is by far the most popular content management system out there, beating Joomla, Drupal, Sitefinity, and others by a wide margin. Its popularity is due in part to its origin as blogging software. Its wide community of support also ensures timely updates for both the core and the plugins.

Building a WordPress website can be a cost effective solution for everyone, from nonprofit and startup companies to mid-sized companies looking for social networking and blogging outlets. In addition, ecommerce, e-learning, and other tools are all available in the WordPress content management system.

Media Genesis has extensive experience in planning and building WordPress websites, using both WordPress-provided and custom themes, widgets, and plugins, including e-commerce. Offering a start to finish solution, we will take you through a proven process of planning, requirements, analysis and design, implementation, deployment, and post-launch support.

An open source content management system is a great way to maintain your website, and most open source CMS solutions are PHP based. Among the most popular open source CMS solutions are WordPress and Drupal. However, there are some versions of .NET solutions which offer premium, commercial CMSs, such as Sitefinity. Selecting a CMS for your website should be based on the ultimate goal you would like to achieve with your site, whether it be simple content updates to improved SEO or managing and selling products through ecommerce. Media Genesis is here to guide you to the CMS that is right for your site. We are able to provide custom programming for a CMS to have your desired functionality.

To learn more on how Media Genesis can assist you in choosing an open source CMS for your site, please contact us for details.

Is it hard to upgrade from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7?

Like all the major Content Management System (CMS) platforms, a data migration from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 can be simple or hard depending on how complex your site is. I know that’s not much help. If your site is basic—a few minor modules, very little custom code, etc.—you should be in the clear. As your site grows, the more complex your Drupal 6 to 7 upgrade path becomes.

We recommend approaching your Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 migration very methodically and with a trained professional.

To get you started (and we hope you’re doing this anyhow), back up your database and CMS specific files. This should be ground zero no matter how complex your site is. If something does go wrong, and it will, you need to have a restore point.

Following your backup, start a couple status inventories. Log your Drupal 6, third-party modules, theme, etc. Start a list of the custom functionality that was created for your site. Even if you’re not sure if it was custom, keep track of the key functionality your site performs. Lastly, note if your site has any functionality issues. All these lists will enable you and your IT professional to have a clear starting point for your site and set the expectations as to what it should be following your upgrade.

Now, contact a professional.

App is just short for application – simple, right? Well, we’re not quite there yet. There are two different “types” of apps, cloud and local. Web applications are, by necessity, in the “cloud”. This means they are accessible anywhere and to anyone who has access to the internet (unless they’re blocked by China ) ).

“Ok, then, Media Genesis, but what are web applications made of??”

Good question. The answer? It depends.

I can throw a list of names and acronyms at you now, some of which you’re probably heard of before (like HTML or Javascript/jQuery) and others which are far more esoteric and obtuse (I’m looking at you, XMLHttP) – but I won’t. Or at least, not many…

The four basic categories are HTML/XML, CSS, client-side languages (which you could argue the first two are included in) and server-side languages. What are the differences? Well lets lay this out:

HTML/XML – HTML is all about the structure of the web. Each bit of text, each part of program logic is supported by HTML – without HTML you’d just have a big soup of text, and nobody wants that. HTML is similar in structure to a tree, and determines how each element relates to another.

CSS – CSS is all about the style of the web. Coloration, placement, spacing, borders, 3D effects – this is all CSS.

Client-side languages – What client-side language means is that the language is rendered on a user’s computer, normally inside of their browser. You can consider HTML and CSS client-side, but they aren’t full programming languages. The most popular client-side language would be Javascript. Javascript manipulates HTML in real-time, allowing for interactive websites.

Server-side languages – Server-side languages talk directly to the computer which is hosting the website. They write to databases, they can produce HTML, Javascript and even CSS. Some of the more popular server-side languages are PHP, Java, C#, and Ruby (of Ruby on Rails fame). If you ever see a web application that saves information for a long time, it was probably using a server-side language.

Are all of these required to build a web application? No, they’re not. In fact, all you absolutely need, is HTML and either a client or server language. This would look incredibly ugly, and be limited in functionality. The best practice is to use all four of these categories together, leading to robust, dynamic web applications that are also stylish.

A lot of effort goes into those new hot web apps, eh?

Converting content can be done in a variety of ways. There are conversion tools available, such as Adobe Wallaby (an experimental conversion tool that exports artwork and animation in Flash sources) and Google’s Swiftly (a tool where a SWF file can be uploaded and converted into HTML5 offering more compatibility with Chrome and Safari).

For more complex projects, these automated conversion tools could be too limiting, so it may be easier or better to manually convert Flash functions, content, and interactions into a combination of HTML5, JavaScript, and other technologies. Luckily, there are a great deal of similarities between ActionScript, the object-oriented language for Flash development, and JavaScript, so transitioning between these technologies is easier.

Migrating from Adobe Flash to HTML5 can have consequences for user experience. Flash SWFs, as a compiled output, provide a single file with embedded programming, database hooks, audio files, video files, and interactions with external content (in the form of XML or database content in MySQL or SQL). Such complex flash files often require a range of programming tools and conversion can lead to a reduced user experience.

For example, Flash video players converted to HTML5 will use more standardized controls, so custom features in a Flash video player may be lost in an HTML5 conversion. However, the developer will gain increased compatibility over a greater range of devices (Android, Blackberry OS, iOS, and more) as well as greater video player compatibility across browsers such as Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, and mobile browsers.

Media Genesis has extensive experience in Flash conversion to HTML5, including migrating e-learning content and marketing website SWF, FLA, and FLV files to a more HTML5 compatible environment.

For help, advice, or project support in HTML5 conversions, email us.

The largest online protest in history included, among its estimated 75,000 participating sites, Wikipedia, Google, Vimeo, Flickr, Mozilla, WordPress, Wired, Craigslist, MineCraft, reddit, and on and on. Some of the sites went completely dark, and others just censored their logo or something in between. They were protesting a couple bills that were coming up for discussion: SOPA and PIPA.

The full names of these bills are The Stop Online Piracy Act, SOPA, and its mouthful of a sister bill, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). I wonder how long it took legislators to come up with that clever acronym (PROTECT Intellectual Property Act).

The stated purpose of these bills was to give more power to those who police the web in order to prevent copyrighted works from being stolen. When artists have their work stolen and profited on by those without the will or ability to create anything of value for themselves, we all lose. The world becomes a bleaker and less creative place. Supporters of the bills include the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

So, what’s wrong with a bill to stop online piracy and copyright violation? The online community didn’t blow up in opposition to the rights of media creators, but where the burden fell and what that meant for the internet. SOPA would punish the websites that host the material rather than just the people stealing it. Should Facebook be blocked when one of its 800,000 users uploads copyrighted material? If so, goodbye social networks.

The online world gives the average person the ability to create and distribute music, books, movies, designs, and more. SOPA and PIPA are not expressly intended to stop you from sharing user created content, but the devil, as they say, is in the details. The platforms we use to share our content (YouTube, Tumblr, Wikipedia) would need to police their users, millions or billions of us, at their expense unless they want to risk being shut down when some dip uploads this summer’s blockbuster romantic comedy.

It would become easier for video and audio distributing sites to only distribute content from safe organizations like the studios and labels associated with the MPAA and RIAA. If this nightmare scenario played out, it would reduce the participatory nature of the internet, making it another way for companies to distribute content. A generation of individual content producers would revert back to being consumers. Mind you, the bill’s supporters say that this is just paranoia, and that may be true, but the bill does provide a level of power that would make such a scenario possible, and it’s therefore not thought to be right for the internet that is.

While SOPA and PIPA have been shelved, it’s not over. Other countries are passing SOPA-like legislation, and there will likely be similar bills popping up here in the near future.

I don’t want people making millions off of other people’s hard work, because I’m a producer of content. I also want the internet to remain a place where I can share, promote, or sell my content. I want to ensure that people stay motivated to make cool stuff. We may need better protection for content creators to make sure their copyrights are not violated and they have a platform to distribute the cool stuff they make, but we need these protections for all content creators rather than just those backed by millions of dollars.

Malls are scary: contagion glazed children touching everything, warring tribes of preteens lurking at each right angle, the caustic mix of air between Cinnabon and the perfume display in JC Penny, and of course you’re being followed. Your most trusted companion, your phone, is reporting your every move to servers for Path Intelligence, an England-based company. That little Benedict Arnold…

According to Path Intelligence, their product, FootPath, “can gather information on pedestrian behaviour [sic] and flow on a continuous basis, 24 hours a day 365 days a year, using mobile phone technology.”

FootPath works by placing monitoring units throughout the mall. These units pick up your cell phone signal and triangulate your position to within about six feet, allowing FootPath to track how you move about the mall and understand what makes you tick as a consumer. Do you gorge at Sbarro and then crawl with shame to Champs Sports? Spend an hour in FYE and then sneak out the back?

The malls using this technology do post signage to let you know, and you can turn off your phone if you don’t want to be tracked. Needless to say, there’s been an uproar by people concerned about their privacy, including U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), who sent letters to malls planning to implement the technology. In one letter, Schumer wrote, “A shopper should not have to choose between the ability to be in touch with friends and family in case of emergency and safeguarding her privacy.”

Some plans to install FootPath have been canceled or delayed due to security concerns. Path Intelligence is trying to assure people that the technology is safe. They state on their website, “At no time do we intercept any personal information and that includes mobile phone numbers. At all times shoppers remain anonymous to us.” Path Intelligence also notes that they do not collect or store information that could lead to identification.

Is this less imposing than security cameras that capture images of you and are really watching to see if you’re up to something? It’s a matter of degree. The cameras don’t seamlessly trace your path from the time you walk into the mall until the time you walk out. FootPath does. Like many developments in data mining, it’s the invasive potential of the technology that concerns people rather than the potential for a more feng shui mall experience.

Take, for example, Senzari. Still in beta testing and accessible by invite only, Senzari has an impressive number of advantages over Pandora. Most obvious is the selection of music—Senzari’s beta launch boasted 10 million songs (as opposed to Pandora’s roughly 900K), and it is available outside of the United States, something Pandora can’t offer. Additionally, Senzari integrates with Facebook seamlessly, allowing for a user to message friends and view their stations in real time. Although there are bugs to be worked out, the social media applications and the engaging design (including some fantastic artist photography) make Senzari a player. Senzari is scheduled to launch officially on three continents by the end of February.

Also relatively new to the game in the U.S. is Spotify. Spotify, a staple in Europe where it is headquartered, has been met enthusiastically in the United States by users who appreciate its unique part Pandora, part iTunes style. Spotify is downloadable software and can be used to manage an offline music collection as well as stream audio. Unlike Pandora, or most other streaming radio sites, Spotify lets you search for and listen to specific songs. With a base of 15 million tracks and a rapidly growing member base, Spotify is taking on Apple as well as Pandora. The drawback is that some artists are not available due to exclusive deals with iTunes. The Beatles and Led Zeppelin are two examples.

There are several other programs and sites fighting for space, like Grooveshark, Rhapsody and Slacker. But there’s no reason to believe there isn’t enough market share for several to flourish. Nevertheless, one thing is certain: the online music game is changing.