MINDSCAPE

Have you ever attempted to work on a Microsoft Word document with friends? You created the document, emailed it to six friends, and suddenly found yourself struggling to merge all of the different changes that came back to you.more

The internet is down in the office. My productivity just came to a screeching halt.more

Any good web company will tell you that one of the most important stages of development is the testing phase. However, with so many different types of machines, operating systems, and browsers, how can you test sites efficiently without having an arsenal of computers littered around the office? The answer is to go virtual.more

The other day I got a postcard from a local B2B firm inviting me to a product show. To attend, just register online. So I entered the website listed on the card and there I was on their home page. So…now I need to search the site to find where to fill out my form to RSVP? What a pain. It would have been great if they’d created a landing page on their website specifically for the show instead of forcing me to click all over looking for the form.more

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Most of the stories of our lives begin with a natural curiosity. It’s prevalent in us as children when we’re figuring out the world around us. And as we take on the responsibilities of adulthood, our natural need to quest sometimes falls by the wayside with the pressures we face. But, this need to be curious, to journey forward is a necessity in our survival.more

How to better connect sales and marketing management to impact the bottom line. Sales and marketing management can be complex, often with marketing and sales teams becoming dissatisfied with each other. Why? Many of the areas where the wedge between sales and marketing teams can come from is the feeling of each “owning” the customer, or the customer experience. Yet, no one department owns the customer. Marketing is there to identify who the best target audiences are and pursue them. Then your sales team begins the sales process with qualified prospects.more

On April 10th many of our team members had the chance to attend an American Marketing Association of West Michigan luncheon featuring speaker Jure Klepic. The Web as we know it is undergoing fundamental change as it moves away from its current structure of information and links. The new Web is being built around people not data; a profound change that impacts business strategy, design, marketing, and advertising. Therefore, Jure contends that influence is no longer about numbers - it’s about people.more

Title: Front End Manager Jason has been at Mindscape for a number of years and has grown into our leading front end coder. He pushes our team to be better all of the time and to embrace new technologies so we are more efficient and can do cooler work. He joined Mindscape with a passion to be a coder, and not much else. Previously, he had not done a lot of work with websites, but he had a desire to learn and be the best. We liked him and the fact that he played bass, so we gave him a shot. We are glad we did! Read on to learn more about Jason Van Vuren.more

Brands Get a Facebook Face-Lift! You've likely noticed a few changes in your Facebook brand page lately. In case you haven’t, you will soon. Facebook announced that the Timeline feature is now available for brand pages. The new pages will mimic user profiles, allowing brands to display their history and provide a rich experience for the user. With the recent upgrades, it's important to make sure that your Facebook page conveys the right message! The new interface changes a variety of commonly used features currently available to page admins. Here is an overview of the most important changes that page admins need to be aware of:more

As the customer service rep for Mindscape, one of my biggest challenges is breaking down the communication barrier that exists between tech-heads, like myself, and clients who may not have a strong background in computers. I often find myself explaining the same few topics over and over to many of our users; so I’ve decided to make a quick reference guide to some of the most common ideas that come up during web development. This should help you wrap your head around some of the more complicated areas of your website and hopefully provide some insight as to how your site and the web in general works. And don’t worry, I’ll leave out all of the technical blabber in an attempt to make it as easy to understand as possible. Enjoy!more

Have you ever had a house built, or an addition added to your house? Did it go like this? ***** “Good day, Mr. Architectman, I would like you to build a home for me,” Chris VonClient said. “I would be happy to help, Chris. How big do you want the house to be?” Andy Architectman responded, tilting his head to the right so that he could hear Chris better. “I was thinking we needed three bedrooms and two bathrooms. So I don’t know, two thousand square feet?” Chris was not really sure what he wanted, but he had a vague picture in his mind. “Two thousand square feet, eh? Hmm. Yes. I can see it now. That’s enough for a big kitchen, vaulted ceilings, a den in the basement, a living room upstairs. Wait, you do want a basement, right?” “Oh, that’s a great idea, Mr. Architectman. A basement is just what we need!” Chris was excited. He could see the house better already. “Alright then. We can get started next week. How’s $150,000 sound and we’ll be done by September?” Andy was quite sure he knew exactly what Chris wanted. “Perfect! Thanks Mr. Architectman!” *****more

If you are like me, you are longing for the days when social media was easy. And FUN! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love all the things we can do with social media now days. But lately, being on Facebook has become a chore for me. With all the political nonsense to worry about (both nationally and the internal politics that exist between human relationships), I’ve found myself losing interest quickly and longing for the days of customized (albeit insane) MySpace profiles! Luckily, the latest crazes in social networking are starting to bring the social aspects of media back to the forefront. Their clean, focused designs (and targets) are actually allowing for some FUN in social media again! Below is a breakdown of three of the latest social media platforms, along with main target audiences and some ideas for how you can leverage them for your business:more

Life as a Project Manager at MINDSCAPE used to be pretty nice. I know, because I was a project manager for a couple of years. We had a solid team and plenty of work to keep us busy. What made it nice is that it was manageable. Between two designers and two or three programmers, it was not so bad keeping their schedules straight. We had a nice process. The salesperson would enter a form with the information I needed to make the schedule. I would take the form and create a Basecamp project using the information provided. The Basecamp project would hold all of the tasks we needed to complete and the communication that we had on the project. Basecamp still works pretty well for this, and we use it daily.more

There has been a lot of buzz around the office of the new LogMe In service called Join.Me. If you have not heard of it yet, then I would suspect you will within the next year. It is an easy-to-use, no sign up required, screen sharing, mini webinar, Web application. That is a lot of very positive descriptive words for a single product, but they pulled them all off quite elegantly. Last week, I had a perfect situation to test it out, and the following is my quick review of their product. For those unaware of my after-hour endeavours, I am one of the founders of a local cycling team. We call ourselves D2 Racing (self promotion never hurt anyone!) One of the benefits of having such a group is the endless supply of guinea pigs for my learning and testing; unfortunately, they are always the ones to receive the brunt of my “experiments.” With the vast majority of us having very busy schedules, it is almost impossible to have a physical meeting so a virtual meeting appeared to be the right solution for our problem.more

Some people are simply born with great writing skills. For others, it’s an acquired and practiced skill. Whether you want to simply become a better writer or are looking to strengthen your writing skills, these four tips can help.more

The Super Bowl has aired, along with the much anticipated commercials those in our industry - and even those not in advertising - look forward to each and every year. In years past, a few would leak out on the Internet here and there, and buzz would generate prior to their actual air time. This year, we've seen an increase in ads leaked and viewed online before the Super Bowl which has created a lot of buzz on social and traditional media channels. The buzz spurred debate around the office about whether or not this takes away from the excitement of watching the ads during the big game. Our resident advertising junkies Christina Torri and Renee Achterhof debate the pros and cons of ad previews:more

Do you know what front-end programmers dream about? It is not an answer to the national debt, or if Democrats and Republicans can get along, or even if there is life on other planets. No, front-end programmers dream of something that seems entirely more difficult to attain. A front-end programmer wants a world where they can do their work one time and be done. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Most of us go through life completing a task and knowing that having completed the task, there is nothing more to do.more

I recently came across a problem in an ASP.NET MVC Web Application where it needed to upload an image with some extra form fields, but still have the controller’s post action testable. This seemed like an easy enough task, but I soon realized that in order to get the uploaded file from the view I had to grab it from the request object’s files collection. Doing this would make my testing harder, and, more drastically, decouple this action from the view model. I scoured the Internet to find out why the magic behind binding the view model to the controller would not put the posted file in an argument alongside my strongly typed model. After coming to the conclusion that no direct articles or examples with my scenario existed, I turned to learning more about the binding that was taking place behind the scenes.more

Last year I had a few rooms in my house repainted. In order to determine which company I would use for the work, I invited them to the house to quote the work. I showed them the rooms, told them the type of paint and color I wanted, and told them when I wanted the work done by. Each company was able to calculate the amount of paint they needed, the cost of the paint and how many people would need to work on the project in order to have it done by my deadline. Having painted a multitude of rooms before my request, they were able to imagine potential obstacles before they happened and be fairly sure that they were not missing anything in their quote. The resulting quotes were very precise and given to me with a high degree of confidence.more