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The Mobile Web: A Developer’s Overview
The Mobile Web: A Developer’s Overview

When a customer requests a website which scales well between mobile browsers and full screens (better known as "responsive design"), often they don't understand why it requires so much extra work. But designing a responsive site requires a unique sort of design...

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How to Write Effective, Reader-friendly Content
How to Write Effective, Reader-friendly Content

Do you need to write content for your website? Content writing can be a challenge, especially for those individuals who aren't experienced writers. But the following approach can be helpful to anyone who's uncertain of where to begin and how to go about authoring an...

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Using HASHTAG Part 2
Using HASHTAG Part 2

Now that you understand more about the basics of hashtags and how beneficial they can be to your business, here are some helpful tips on the etiquette of using hashtags. Understanding the “Do’s and Don’ts” of using hashtags is helpful in keeping your online image...

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Using HASHTAG Part 1
Using HASHTAG Part 1

You’ve seen them everywhere from Twitter posts to late night spoofs with Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake - the hashtag.  You may be asking yourself, what exactly is a hashtag, what does it do exactly, and how can it help strengthen my marketing efforts?...

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Matcha Design Earns Silver Winner at 2014 W3 Awards
Matcha Design Earns Silver Winner at 2014 W3 Awards

The Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts announced the winners of The 2014 W3 Awards today. Receiving over 4,000 entries, The W3 Awards honors outstanding Websites, Web Marketing, Web Video, Mobile Sites/Apps & Social content created by some of the best...

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The Art of Creating the Right Content
The Art of Creating the Right Content

There's a saying that 'content is king' when it comes to creating a successful website or web-based marketing materials. But that 'content is king' phrase refers to high quality content only. Poorly-written content can do much more harm than good! So when you're...

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How to Build an Infographic
How to Build an Infographic

Infographics have gained tremendous popularity in recent years, as they're an extremely effective and aesthetically-pleasing method for conveying information such as statistics, facts and figures. Infographics feature a graphical depiction of the information to be...

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The 5 Keys to Understanding a Client’s Needs
The 5 Keys to Understanding a Client’s Needs

Whether you're designing a website or crafting a printed marketing piece, it's absolutely essential that the client and the designer share a common understanding, as miscommunications can result in disaster. For instance, a client may indicate that they would like a...

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Using iPad as a Light Source for Photography

Using iPad as a Light Source for Photography

I've seen people on websites talking about using iPads as light for photography, and videos of people holding a panel of three iPads to illuminate a face to snap a portrait. Although the result is good, attaching several iPads to a rig can be quite complicated,...

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Creating HTML Email Part 2

Creating HTML Email Part 2

This week I want to get into some more details along the lines of last week's info on creating emails for varied mail clients. For starters, I got some statistics on email client popularity from CampaignMonitor.com. Here are the clients with more than 5% market share....

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Creating HTML Email

Creating HTML Email

When building a web page, one must always keep in mind the differences between the way browsers implement (or don't implement) web standards. When building emails, this is much, much worse. For starters, there are no specific standards regarding what should and...

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PCI Compliance Tips

PCI Compliance Tips

Everyone who accepts credit/debit card payments online needs to be familiar with and implement the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. This is easiest for merchants who don't directly handle any cardholder data. For example, if your store hands the shopping...

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Image Scaling Tips

Image Scaling Tips

Recently Matcha president/creative director Chris Lo and I were hashing out a solution to a problem. We needed to create print-quality images for a client, and use those same images on their website, which we were also building. The problem is that print requires high...

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Image Manipulation in PHP – GD vs IMagick

Image Manipulation in PHP – GD vs IMagick

Recently I've been working with image manipulation in PHP, using GD and ImageMagick. Both libraries are very useful but they're quite different in a number of ways. I thought I'd take this opportunity to go over some of the differences and provide some suggestions on...

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Web Design and SEO

Web Design and SEO

A great website design is an important part of a good marketing strategy. However, it's also important to realize where the website fits within that strategy, and that it isn't the whole strategy. Even within the website itself, a great design is useless if nobody can...

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QR Code Demystified – Part 6

QR Code Demystified – Part 6

We've covered almost everything we need to create QR Codes. The next thing we need is version information blocks. The version information blocks simply tell the reader what version the symbol is, and therefore how many modules wide and tall it is. Table 11 shows the...

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QR Code Demystified – Part 5

QR Code Demystified – Part 5

Now that we've got the data and error correction sorted out, we're almost ready to place it in the symbol. As seen in Part 2, the data and error correction modules basically go everywhere that isn't taken up by something else. The reason we're not quite ready to place...

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QR Code Demystified – Part 4

QR Code Demystified – Part 4

I had planned on holding off the error correction until later, but it really fits better right here. Before error correction is done, the data that we've generated must be broken down into "code words", which are just 8-bit bytes. All we have to do is take our "bit...

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QR Code Demystified – Part 3

QR Code Demystified – Part 3

Now we'll cover how the data is encoded. There are several steps involved. First, the encoding method is chosen, then the raw data is converted to binary based on the encoding method, then the error correction algorithm is applied, and then the data is placed in the...

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QR Code Demystified – Part 2

QR Code Demystified – Part 2

The next important thing we'll look at is the structure of a QR code. The below diagram shows names of the different sections of a QR symbol. Then I'll go over each one in more detail. Keep in mind that below if I mention one copy of something being the original and...

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