Everybody seems to have a website, but how do you make yours stand out?

Have A Reason

Don't just build a website because you are suppose to, do it because you have a objective or goal to complete with it.  When you have this goal, be sure to make it clear to your website firm, it will improve the quality of your website, often save you money because you go back-and-forth less, and you get exactly the result you want.

Use Local Resources

Far too often, people use some big international company to build their website, either via a web interface, or hire from hundreds of miles away.  With a local company, you will tend to get better service, and typically face-to-face meetings because their reputations is on the line, whereas to an international company, you are far too often just another number.

Keep It Up To Date

This is by far one of the most important rules to apply to your website.

Keeping your website up to date is essential to it's success.  When your website falls behind, you not only hurt your website, but you hurt your reputation.  This is why it is imperative that you can make changes yourself, and not have to wait for your company to make them; it is your reputation on the line, not your web companies. 

Get a Quality CMS

Your CMS, or Content Management System, is the very framework of your website, so picking one is a very important decision to make to be sure it will fit your needs.  It is more then just a place where you update your information, each is very different, and a correct selection is imperitive.

Make Sure it is Easy to Use

If your CMS is too difficult to use, you will hate it and natually tend to avoid it, hurting your website and furthermore your company.

Ask for a demo of the CMS before you begin any project so you know you will be able to use it in the long run.

Is it Secure?

Very simply, be sure that updates are either easy to do, or automatic.  If you cannot update your website, it will eventually get hacked.

Is it Seach Engine Optimized?

You want to be found on Google, right?  So be sure that your CMS is pre-designed to work with Google nicely.  If not, then you will likely have to hire a SEO company to even get listed (generlly starting at $500 for a starter package).

Many web companies today offer their own CMS, but be sure that you like it, and are comfortable with that company.  Follow these steps, and you are on your way to a successful online presence!

If you want to talk more with us about this, just give Brunswick Web Design Addo Solutions  a call: (330) 558-1230

Best of Success!

We are sitting at the MADD chefs talking about the ease and portability of writing blogs on an iPad.

We hope to get his blog up and running soon!

If you are looking for a web design comapny in Brunswick Ohio, Addo Solutions Brunswick Ohio Website Design Company is the key for you.  

We are going city by city and doing whatever we can to improve companies dealing with the web market in each city, starting with Brunswick Ohio's Website Design Market.  If you are in this area, give us a call to get special discounts and oppourtunities for your website today!   We can offer dicounted prices, and our nortorious iPad package, where yes we as a Website Design Comapny are giving away iPads in order to improve our Brunswick Ohio Website Design Clients.  

Periodically we help local Brunswick / Medina Ohio companies with their websites, even if they are not on our system.  On this latest project our client was using a eCommerce platform called Magento.  On Magento, it seemed that no matter what you searched for it would return all the results.  This is a problem on many sites because it is a fundamental feature and needs to work on Magento (versions 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6).

The Cause

Apparently when the layered navigation block is not enabled, Magento seems to generate all products in every search result. Magento seems to generate all products in every search result

The Solution

With this knowledge a fix becomes very simple, so you have a few options depending on your situation.

People Who Dont Want Layered Navigation

In this particular case, the client did not want to have the layered navigation show up at all, but when we did so Magento returned all products no matter what the search terms.  So in order to remove it we used the following in our local.xml file:

<remove name="catalogsearch.leftnav" />

Because this caused Magento  to no matter what you searched for it would return all the results.  So what we did was to in the Magento Admin, we set: System / Configuration / Catalog / Catalog Search/ "Apply Layered Navigation if Search Results are Less Than" we set this to "1."  This hides the layered navigation, and keeps magento showing the proper results.

People Who Don't Want Any Columns

This becomes tricky, our solution to Magento returning all products no matter what the search terms in this case is to on your 1-column.phtml file is to display the left block, but place that inside of a hidden div

<div style="display:none"></div>.  

Feel free to post if you have questions or concerns about Magento seems to generating all products in every search result!

Alright, so if you are here that means you are interested in the project on the ACM board. I will be setting up a website and will post the link here when the time comes.

I called it Project Aeta because I needed to call it something (to give it a logical link), and in Latin it means: a time, an age. This is the age of robots, let's do it!

I am typing this on my iPad, and have class so I don't have time to write everything on the board. I will do this later today.

People in charge of this project I will grant access to be able to edit various parts of the site when it comes about.

Summary

So what is this project all about?  We are building a system consisting of a central cloud computing system that controls an array of robots that can perform any number of functions.  A few ideas that have come by in the way of functions:

• Physical mapping system, that can map a floor, building, room, etc.
• Polling system that we can market to companies in which the bots can directly interact with people and ask them questions, as well as hold a conversation
• Household bots that perform various functions
• Flying helicopters with networking functions and possibly cameras in which they communicate with the could and direct, control, and locate the ground units.

Essentially, we are laying the groundwork for these bots to do any given function that we need them to.  A.I. will improve the bots functionality and give them more versatility.

Dr. Chan Notes

Dr. Chan and myself spoke earlier today about this project and he likes the idea and says to begin we should research (ie. Goole) the following: "system of systems."

He likes the idea and will be talking with Computer Engineering people and other sources on getting support and ideas in order to benefit this project.

Recruitment

If you know someone who is interested in the following, please give them this link and tell them to hop on board:

• C Programming
• Network Security (ie. WPA2 Programming/Implementation)
• Network Programming (setting up a device to interact using standard network protocols)
• Cloud Development
• A.I.
• Speech Synthesis/Speech Recognition
• Robotics
• Acoustics (audio technology)
• Aeronautics
• Or is well funded ;)

Feel free to email me with questions, ideas, or corrections.

Nick Artman - design@addosolutions.com

Every city is a little different then all the rest, and Brunswick Ohio is no different.  Every city has its pro's and its con's, as does Brunswick.  So we as a web design firm are going to go city-by-city and review the trends, pros, and cons, that each city has and how improve on each; starting with Brunswick.

Brunswick's Website Trends

One very notable thing about Brunswick's market, especially on the web, is its restaurants.  Brunswick has huge quantities of restaurants relative to its size.  This makes for a very tough market as a restaurant owner.  The question then is, how do I get to the top of the pile when it comes to web searches, or how do improve my websites SEO level?  

There are hundreds of local map entries, but getting to to the top is very difficult, and there is no easy way of getting there.  Very simply, if you want to get your website to be SEO and get to the top of Brunswick listings, you are going to have to put time and in many cases money into it; however it is usually less expensive then most other marketing venues.  It is also good to note that the more time, and more importantly effort, you are willing to spend on improving your website, the less of an investment it will be for you and your company.

Another fairly unused resource in Brunswick is social media.  With social media you can get directly into peoples daily lives without spending a single penny, yet today it is one of the most unused tools.  When done correctly, it can not only grow your business, but you can be beneficial to those who follow you.

The Pros of Brunswick's Market

A very good aspect of the Brunswick market is that most businesses has some form of web presence.  This is not only good from a business standpoint where you are getting some form of web marketing. It is also good from the standpoint of a possible customer, where they can get your basic information without extensive effort.

Brunswick has a number of stunningly beautiful locations, particularly MapleSide farms.  The city of Brunswick has a huge auto market (we often call it the Brunswick Auto Mile).

Areas of Improvement in the Brunswick Market

Brunswick also has a few areas in which it has room to grow.  One of the major issues that often occur is having out-of-date information on their website, and on Google.  This is not only inconvenient as a customer, but damaging to a companies reputation.  The major cause of this is due to compenies like Yellowbook, where you are charged for each individual update, and for each additional page, and anything else they can bill you for.  This is why we offer free transfer from these companies; becaue we believe that this blatent overcharging is hurting businesses and we want to do our part to stop it.

In concolusion, the city as a whole is in fairly good shape, however if you would like to know how you compare to your competition, give us a call for a free consultation.

One of the common ideas that we hear in the Greater Cleveland and Medina area is that the iPad is just a big iPod, just another toy. We would argue that this is completely wrong. This is why we are giving iPads away free with our higher end package (and we would do it for the lower packages if we could).

We feel that if you truly have the desire to improve your company, that the iPad can greatly increase you capacity to do so (even to those who are not tech savvy).

Website Owner's Uses for the iPad

For our web development clients in particular, they have access to update their website without ever touching their computer. In an effort to keep our clients website, not only #1 on Google by keeping up their SEO ranking, but to keep their customers informed. In fact, I am writing the blog you are reading right now on the Addo Solutions iPad, with the very same website management too that our customers do.

Business Owner's Uses for the iPad

Other great ways to use your iPad is simply keeping up with email. For example, sometimes I just want to get up from my desk, but I don't want to take my laptop, so I can just take my iPad and go wherever I feel comfortable, yet be able to keep my email in check all the while.

Academic and Student Uses for the iPad

But you don't have to own a business, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote provide most of what the average student needs to get all kinds of things done for school, try taking organized notes during class.

Graphic Designer/Photographer  of the iPad

With Apple's camera connect adapter, you can directly connect your camera to your iPad and you can manage and update your photos with Photoshop for iPad!

You can also manage your Picasa albums with the iPad. For our clients, this means managing any kind of portfolio page, as we utilize Picasa 

Musician Uses for The iPad

But that still is not all; like music? You can connect your guitar to GarageBand and record with a 1/4" input adapter,

Keep all your chord music in one place with OnSong. Try tuning your guitar, or most other instruments with PitchPerfect to name just a few uses for musicians.

Even More Uses of the iPad

Keep your day planned well with the built in calendar app, access your Dropbox, run some digital Sound Boards, read your kindle books, read the latest news with a plethora of apps.

This does not even scratch the surface of all the possibilities that the iPad provides.

Visit the apple store or the nearest retailer that sells iPad. See all you can do with your new iPad.

Many people go into the web business totally blind, taking whatever the nice sales-person tells you, and sign up not knowing what you are getting in to.

Check out the Competition

The first thing you want to do is see what your competition is doing. Are you the only one in the market with a website, or are your competitiors all seasoned pros in the web? Another thing you want to see is what you do and do not like about your competition's websites.

Be sure to get the input of whoever you are interested in using for web services. Any quality web firm should be able to answer these questions without any kind of obligation.

Do you Need a CMS?

One very difficult decision many businesses have to make is whether or not they should pay the extra money for a CMS. While in many cases, you will not have to update your website often, it is usually best that you do simply because you will rank better on Google listings.

This is why we provide all clients with a highly affordable and highly easy to use CMS with every website installation.

How Much Will it Cost?

The big question left is how much will it cost to get your website going? The going average is anywhere from $2,000 to $9,000 depending on what you are interested in having on your website.

There are some sources where you can get a generic, low quality website for less then $1,000, however you often get locked into something that you end up changing in the future anyways, costing you time and money.

Our pricing plans reflect our highly optimized and highly efficient website deveoptment process which allows us to spend almost no time re-inventing the wheel, and spending as much time as we can on you and your company.

Give us a call, we would love to hear about your new project!

For those of us who are in need of some math help, I found 2 excellent math help tools that help us with our math problems.   

Wolfram Alpha

The first is Wolfram Alpha.  This website is by far the best self-help math help tool I have ever used. It essentially allows you to enter a formula, and this math help tool will solve it for you.  Yes, I know you can do this on your fancy $150 TI-89 calculator, however the best part about Wolfram Alpha, is that it gives the steps to get to the answer it gives.

If you dont know the syntax for example, differentiation is diff([your equation]).  You can also just type in integration, and it will give you step by step instructions on how to solve it.  Have a sequence? Just ype in sequence, and it will tell you what you need to do for Wolfram, this excellent math help tool, to solve it.

StackExchange Math

I recently discovered this website, made by the same people that made Stack Overflow (an excellent website/community for programmers).  It is called Stack Exchange Mathematics, and it is a really good math help tool.  Essentially, you go through and you can search the website for your question, for people that have looked for help with the same math problem you have.  If you can't find what you are looking for, simply go to Ask a Question, and you can write your math question.  Once you write it, your question will be submitted to the community, and typically you can get an answer well within 10 minutes.  The people there are extememly smart, and should have no problem with any kind of question you have.

I would advise however that you do not just post your homework/test question, they can usually pick up on it and do not like it when you do so, at all.  If you have a question, ask them where to get started, and they will be hallpy to help.  I have worked with them and the community there is very nice, good humor, and just overall good peronalities.  This site is more then a math help tool, it is a math help solution.

Between these two math help tools, you should be able to excel in any math you may undertake.

We at Addo Solutions would like to thank our brave men and women on the battlefield this Christmas season, they are the reason we live in a country that allow us to freely celebrate our religious holidays and traditions without government persecution.

Recently there was a statue created that currently stands outside the Iraqi palace, now home to the United States 4th Infantry division.  It will eventually be shipped home and put in the memorial museum in Fort  Hood, Texas.

The statue was created by an Iraqi artist named Kalat, who for years was forced by Saddam Hussein to make the many hundreds of bronze busts of Saddam that dotted Baghdad.

Kalat was so grateful for the Americans liberation of his country; he melted 3 of the heads of the  fallen Saddam and made the statue as a memorial to the American soldiers and their fallen warriors.

Kalat worked on this memorial night and day for several months.   

To the left of the kneeling soldier is a small Iraqi girl giving the soldier comfort as he mourns the loss of his comrade in arms. 
    
Although the media tends avoids it because it does not have the shock effect, we can do something about it.  Next time you see a soldier (retired or not) give them a hug or handshake thanking them for their service to this country.
     
We can also pass this along to as many people as we can in honor of all our brave military who are making a difference.

And please pass this on! Feel free to link directly to this page:
http://www.addosolutions.com/blog/to-our-soldiers

Feel free to copy and pase this to an email if you would prefer, and send it to your friends and family to have them do the same.  

Who knows, you can change the lives of those who helped shape yours...

After failing to find a suitable comparison chart for NetBooks, it was decided we would create one.  Please keep in mind that this is a very technical comparison, and is designed for computer professionals.  I incuded things such as price, retailer, Gigibit Network Support, Wireless Info, Ram Type (ex. DDR2 and DDR3), Display Types, Battery Life, Case Material, Processor Modes, etc.  

Most of them are ACER (in fact almost all of them are at this point) namely because I have heard good things about their netbooks.  If you would like to contribute to this, feel free to modify it and I will update the changes.  

Take a look at it here: NetBook Comparison Chart

To better serve out clients, Addo Solutions has decided to adopt the new name of Addo Solutions. We plan to offer the same quality service we always have, with a new name. You will be able to check out our new website at http://www.addosolutions.com/.

The process has just started, but will continue until all aspects have been addressed. Check back soon to read on what caused this change, and how it can help you.

We believe that too many businesses are locked into over priced website companies, and cannot afford to get out. We now offer FREE transfer from most other website companies, no startup fee at all! Here is how it works; after we transfer your website for free, you just pay us what you were paying your old provider for just one year. After the first year, you pay our low monthly rate.

Don't be confused and trapped by over prices web companies. Find out if you apply today:

Call (330) 558-1230
or email us at design@addosolutions.com

One of the easiest ways to boost business, is via a website. Addo Solutions offers numerous affordable packages to get your website up in no time at all.

The web is becoming more and more popular amongst possible customers, a website is just one way to reach possible customers. Other methods include using social media, utilizing internet advertisement services, and more.