Posted: June 15, 2011
Spring 2011
Seemed like it was never going to get here.
Over the past few months, Pixel Army has been very fortunate to have worked with such great clients and marketing companies. Together we have built some great projects that have been receiving rave reviews.
1st Quarter Record!
Pixel Army is very proud to announce that through the 1st quarter of 2011, we’ve surpassed our previous quarterly record by a whopping 45%. A special "Thank You" goes out to all of our clients, referral partners and staff! It takes a team effort to accomplish any goal, and we couldn’t have accomplished this without any of you!
New Website
It’s in progress! Within the next month or so, we’re going to be rolling out the red carpet for our new and improved website. Plenty of new functionality and cool effects will be used to display all of the talent our team of developers has to offer.
Looking Forward
As the web is always evolving and new technologies are always being developed, here are 5 very exciting items that we are super stoked for.
1. HTML 5
There has been a lot of talk about HTML 5 in the past year. Basically it adds many new syntactical features. A few of these features are designed to make it easy to include and handle multimedia and graphical content on the web without having to resort to proprietary plugins and APIs. Other new elements, are designed to enrich the semantic content of documents.
2. Geolocation Services
This service has the potential to revolutionize the way we display content on a website. For example, wouldn’t it be great if you could detect the exact location of the user (mobile device or computer) and display relevant content and images that are targeted to that location? Well that’s exactly what Geolocation has the ability to do!
3. Social Media Integration
Well this is a no brainer. With all the Facebook and Twitter integration that has been done in the past year with "Like" buttons or "Tweet" boxes, it was only a matter of time before we could go gather and manipulate more information. While Twitter seems to be a more one dimensional medium, Facebook now has the ability to send and receive events, notes, comments, news feeds and much more, to and from websites.
4. Typography
Have you ever heard, "We can’t use that font on your website, because it’s not cross-browser friendly." from your web designer? Welcome to @font-face. This little snippet of code allows us to use any font you like, giving all of your marketing material a more consistent feel.
5. Full-image Backgrounds
Do you want a website that immediately grabs your visitors’ attention? Well having a beautiful image as your entire background is a good way to do that. These types of sites are growing in popularity, especially for organizations with portfolio-friendly work. Are you showing off your products, services or work through photo galleries? Why not just make those images the background instead?
As always, below are a few sites we have launched recently with a quick bio about each client. We would greatly appreciate you taking a few minutes from your day and browsing through these sites. Let us know what you think. Your feedback is always taken into consideration and helps us to continuously improve.
Have a great day,
The Pixel Army Staff
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Geek Speak
Nerdy Word:
Keyword
Explanation:
In web terms: A word used by a search engine to search for relevant web information.
Nerdy Word:
Payment Gateway
Explanation:
Allows the secure transfer of credit card funds from users on your website to your merchant account.
Nerdy Word:
FTP
Explanation:
Stands for File Transfer Protocol. FTP allows you to copy or send files (HTML-documents, graphic images, spreadsheets) from one computer to another via the Internet.
Nerdy Word:
SSL
Explanation:
Software to secure and protect web site communication using encrypted transmission of data.
Nerdy Word:
CMS
Explanation:
CMS is short for Content Management System. This is an secured online area that administrators can login to and manage their websites. Functionality of a CMS can range from adding and editing pages, to sending newsletters, viewing website statistics and tracking online orders.
Nerdy Word:
RSS
Explanation:
Short for Really Simple Syndication. This allows you to subscribe to content on blogs and other social media and have it delivered to you through a feed.
Nerdy Word:
Royalty-Free Photos or Images
Explanation:
Photos, graphic images, or other intellectual property that are sold for a single standard fee and may be used repeatedly by the purchaser. Typically with royalty-free clauses, the company that sells you the images still owns all of the rights to the images, and they are allowed for use only by the purchaser (i.e., the same images cannot be used by another company or individual without repurchase).
Nerdy Word:
Hosting
Explanation:
A service that stores your information (or website) on a server, allowing it to be accessed by users on the Internet.
Nerdy Word:
Cookie
Explanation:
Information from a web server, stored on your computer by your web browser. The purpose of a cookie is to provide information about your visit to the website for use by the server during a later visit.
Nerdy Word:
Bandwidth
Explanation:
A measure for the speed (amount of data) you can send through an Internet connection. The more bandwidth, the faster the connection.
Nerdy Word:
Domain Name
Explanation:
The name that identifies a web site. (like: pixelarmy.ca)
Nerdy Word:
Blog
Explanation:
A website which presents content in a more or less chronological series. Content may or may not be time sensitive. Pixel Army blogs use a custom Content Management System rather than individually built web pages. Because of this, the Blogger can chose to concentrate on content creation instead of arcane code.
Nerdy Word:
Encryption
Explanation:
To convert data from its original form to a form that can only be read by someone that can reverse the encryption. The purpose of encryption is to prevent unauthorized reading of the data.
Nerdy Word:
Web 2.0
Explanation:
A term coined by web designers to describe blogs, wikis, social networking sites and other Internet-based services that emphasize collaboration and sharing, rather than less interactive publishing (Web 1.0). It is associated with the idea of the Internet as platform.
Nerdy Word:
SEO
Explanation:
Short for search engine optimization, the process of increasing the number of visitors to a Web site by achieving high rank in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that users will visit the site. It is common practice for Internet users to not click past the first few pages of search results, therefore high rank in SERPs is essential for obtaining traffic for a site.
Nerdy Word:
WYSIWYG
Explanation:
Abbreviation for What You See Is What You Get. Commonly used to describe software that does not have any hidden attributes.
Nerdy Word:
Google Analytics
Explanation:
A program which assists in gathering and analyzing data about website usage. Google analytics is a feature rich, popular, free analytics program.
Nerdy Word:
Browser
Explanation:
The software used to view, manage, and access web pages by interpreting hypertext and hyperlinks. Web pages often appear differently depending on the brand and version of the browser intended to view them in. All Pixel Army sites are tested thoroughly in Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera.
Nerdy Word:
Database
Explanation:
A collection of information stored in one central location. Many times, this is the source from which information is pulled to display products or information dynamically on a website.
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PHP
Explanation:
Abbreviation for Hypertext Pre-Processor, a server language used to produce dynamic content on web pages.
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Google AdWords
Explanation:
Google Pay Per Click contextual advertisement program, very common way of basic website advertisement.
Nerdy Word:
DNS
Explanation:
Stands for Domain Name System. The DNS translates URL text addresses (such as pixelarmy.ca) into a numeric Internet address (such as 209.163.249.14).
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IP Address
Explanation:
A unique number identifying every computer on the Internet (like 209.163.249.14)