According to an article from DailyFinance.com, Microsoft has begun avidly undertaking a 'Google-bashing' stance in Washington D.C. In the truest sense of the phrase "the pot calling the kettle black," Microsoft is trying to portray Google as a slick, corporate bad guy. I would guess this to be a back-handed way to promote Bing, Microsoft's new search engine that is billed as a 'decision engine.' (We all know this from those TV spots where two people are talking, and one of the people begins spamming the words that the other says.) Microsoft and Google are both large companies, and they need to realize that the world is big enough for both of them. What Microsoft lacks in search engine popularity, Google lacks in browser popularity. Why can't we all just get along?

Fred Humphries, Microsoft's chief lobbyist, says that Microsoft is trying to work with policymakers to show them the light about the Microsoft and Yahoo partnership to sway people to use Bing in place of Google. In case you didn't know, Microsoft's Bing runs Yahoo search these days. I personally cannot break out of my Google routine. First thing in the morning, I check my Gmail, which has all of my other email accounts linked to it, then read copious new stories in Google reader. If I need to find an article for one of my classes, Google Scholar is the choice for me.

I'm sorry Microsoft, I love Google as a search engine and will continue to be loyal to it.

West Lafayette and Lafayette sit in the beautiful Wabash Valley, one of the defining spots of Indiana culture. Greater Lafayette is the home of Purdue University, an integral part of the academic world as well as a venue to showcase collegiate athletic ability in a multitude of Big Ten sports including Purdue Football and Basketball.

It offers many great attractions and things to see and do in the travel and tourism area. For example, the Greater Lafayette area boasts great camping, shopping, a historic downtown, wineries, water parks, sporting events, golf, parks & recreation, and much more.

Set in a historic area steeped in the culture of which it was founded upon, the Greater Lafayette area is filled with many things to do year round. For the history buff, Fort Ouiatenon, the Feast of the Hunter's Moon, and the Tippecanoe Battlefield provide insight into the era that the Greater Lafayette era came to fruition in.

The Greater Lafayette area boasts a wealth of dining opportunities, both chain and family-owned restaurants, from fine dining to some of the best Americana food in the Midwest. The nightlife does not disappoint, with a variety of bars and nightclubs throughout the area to suit any individual taste. Local merchants and purveyors of custom wines and micro-brewed beers often partner with local businesses to display their wares.

Numerous festivals throughout the year including Layflats Art and Music festival, Taste of Tippecanoe, and the Uptown Jazz & Blues Festival punctuate the year with live music and local vendors in a relaxed environment that is fun for people of all ages.

We hope next time you find yourself driving through Indiana you will stop by and checkout our backyard!

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 must die. There, I said it. This has long been the stance of many web development professionals, but has recently been brought into the public spotlight. Websites like ie6nomore.com are gathering momentum due to the uprising of support from internet start-up companies like Weebly, Justin.tv, and many more.

The website provides a very brief case for why the IE 6 must be abandoned to encourage modernization throughout the web. This site is more than just a complaint; it's a solution: embed a line of code that will tell your website visitors still using IE6 to switch to a more modern browser.

"As any Web developer will tell you, working with IE 6 is one of the most difficult and frustrating things they have to deal with on a daily basis, taking up a disproportionate amount of their time," the web site says. "Beyond that, IE 6's support for modern Web standards is very lacking, restricting what developers can create and holding the Web back."

Now I'm not saying that everyone MUST upgrade now or face the repercussions of the collective web design world; I understand that some companies have built in internet applications that run on said browser. It is the rest of the world, the estimated 10 to 25 percent that is still using IE 6 for everyday web browsing that needs to get with the program. It's the mothers and grandmothers that are simply unaware of they are using an old browser (it wouldn't surprise me if I went home and found my own mother using it). Lastly it's the corporations whose IT departments are severely behind in the times. The more of their users that complain about seeing these messages, the more pressure the IT guys will have to upgrade to something more compatible such as Firefox, Chrome, or even IE8.

For web development companies such as us, it is especially frustrating when a user comes to a site and has a bad experience because of a browser that was designed 8 years ago. Imagine someone complaining to Blu-Ray that their movie was fuzzy only to find out they are watching it on a 2001 projection TV!! Ridiculous!

In order for the web to move forward, IE 6 must die.

It is so very important to utilize the lessons learned in the past, and apply them to modern situations. This adage especially works with digital media. Although digital media is considered "new" and "the forefront," one must look to tried and true rules in order to create contemporary designs.

For example, just because a Van Gogh painting is old, doesn't mean it is obsolete. By taking certain aspects of the painting, such as composition, color scheme, balance, and line, a designer will be able to create a successful design for a website that promotes function as well as illustration. By employing these techniques here at Stormfront, we create websites that are more than just websites.

Looking into history as far back as 2003, Rob has compiled a video of the office in its current and haphazard 2003 state. The differences are uncanny! We are all thankful that we don't work somewhere where the Joker's lair could be. The office now utilizes the natural beauty of the building, but with tasteful accents to create an energizing work environment. Enjoy, and feel free to get up from your desk and dance to the music that is in the video.

While the basis of web-design may be long lines of code, the designer is required to have knowledge of all basic art principles; such as colour, line, depth, composition, and shape, etc. to create a successful product that appeals aesthetically as well as functionally to the viewer. Basic sites with little to no elaborate CSS styling, no flair, if you will, (another nod to 'Office Space') are simply not interesting to use. When functionality meets an appealing design the site truly does its job of providing information to the viewer. Ease of use, such as employing the Adobe Flash program, make the site visually stimulating as well as useful.

Digital art, including photography, has exploded all over the media world as the primary form of illustration in all print media, and digital photography's ease of use and instant knowledge of the photo makes film photography a hobby for people with lots of time.

Digital can also be equated with quick, (although our designers would beg to differ on some projects), and the image of a painter spending years in front of an easel as well as a designer working in front of a computer can both be equated with the word art.

Additionally, we ran nearly 1000 feet of new cat5 cable over three floors of our agency to increase capacity, network performance and reliability. The new network is almost entirely gigabit which is well worth it for larger internal file transfers!

Starting off, our APC rack is housing a Netgear ProSafe 24-port gigabit switch, two Dell PowerEdge 2650 web servers, two TalkSwitch phone systems (the 240vs and voip-based 244vs), a second Netgear ProSafe 8-port gigabit switch and a wireless Polycom unit all with an APC Smart-UPS 1400 battery backup system. We will be primarily using the rack for internal operations here at SFP.

Our staff is enjoying the increased network speed and reliability thanks to a great job by Michael and the rest of the team. The next step will be expanding our land lines to keep up with our increasing call volume, which will hopefully be up and running by the end of the week.

One of the first things we talked about together was the directions we wanted to take Stormfront and how it could benefit from our extra time, thought and energy. We were aided in our discussions by one of the two newest additions to the company, Trisha, as we offered ways we could improve the business. And then, before we could even finish our work day, Rob came down to deliver a pretty sobering "I'm going to need to see you all downstairs" moment. Uh-oh.

Overall, I'm very happy with the way it turned out. It's a good idea to upgrade a website every three or four years to keep up with current trends and technologies. I think the old site was pushing five years old, so it was definitely due for a makeover.

Aside from the great new design, one of the features I particularly like is the enhanced Customer Center. It gives clients the ability to pay invoices online, add new services to their hosting package, and update their profile information. Self-service is pretty big right now and hopefully soon we can offer the opportunity for new customers to submit an RFP directly from our site.

More new features include the rotating testimonials and featured clients, real-time RSS updates from our blog, and links from employee profiles to their various social networking sites. Speaking of the Agency section, I think that will be one of the first pages to receive more updates. Check back here soon and I will give an in-depth explanation of the technology behind it. Cheers.       

This Easter Weekend, I returned to my hometown of Indianapolis to spend some quality time with the family and to see old friends who would be doing the same. All weekend long I ran around the city to meet up with former classmates and coworkers, and during the course of a small party on Friday night a friend of mine in a similar field and I had a conversation that every serious marketer and entrepreneur needs to have (and this was before the high speed police chase I accidentally got first row tickets to that I'll elaborate on in an upcoming blog).

The shindig took place in the heart of downtown, just south of the circle on Meridian Street.

According to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation website, cystic fibrosis can be defined as "an inherited chronic disease that affects the lungs and digestive system of about 30,000 children and adults in the United States (70,000 worldwide). A defective gene and its protein product cause the body to produce unusually thick, sticky mucus that clogs the lungs and leads to life-threatening lung infections; and obstructs the pancreas and stops natural enzymes from helping the body break down and absorb food."

The events this week are a result of the Comm G 201 class' civic engagement project, led by teacher Trevor Potts. Of course, your favorite professional website design and development company always feels the need to support worthwhile causes, and when we received notice of this event we immediately signed up as sponsors to help champion the cause.

What you need to know:

• Events from April 13-16
• Go to IUPUI Campus Center to make donations
• Donate Tuesday and Thursday from 2:45-4:30pm
• Donate Wednesday from 11:00-2:30pm
• Learn how to help in other ways here

Each of the stores in the Englin's Fine Footwear company offers a wide variety of brands for most any consumer. From children to adults, brands such as Clarks shoes, Dansko shoes, Naturalizer shoes, Munro shoes, and New Balance shoes each have numerous variations and styles. All sales are backed with several guarantees.

Englin's Fine Footwear is a brick-and-mortar store with several locations throughout Indiana. They have been family owned since 1954, and offer a positive shoe shopping experience for customers new and old alike. As a locally owned family store this company has enjoyed serving the community, and as an online presence they have made a wonderful attempt to offer as similar an experience to sitting in their store personally while sitting in your home as they could.

The job consisted of fresh mulch, assembly and setup of a charcoal grill / smoker, new plants and the addition of an outside sitting / eating area. We found even more antiques in the basement here to add to the theme. It helps that this place was once used as an antique shop.

We hope to add outside lighting, an audio indoor / outdoor multimedia system and more antiques that fit with our southern "cantina" style as the summer approaches.

If you have any suggestions, comments or ideas drop us a line or even better stop by to check it out in person. 

Facebook is reporting over 236 million unique visitors worldwide this year, up 41% from last year, but that doesn't necessarily mean continual success for the social media giant. Now, with enhanced behavioral targeting (BT) methods taking shape, Facebook is looking to assert itself as a major money making enterprise. They want to realize some of the potential profitability so many analysts have seen in the highly trafficked site for years.

Just ask Microsoft, who spent $240 million in late 2007 for a small portion (just over one and a half percent) of the private company's stock. At the time, Facebook was valued at $15 billion (although this valuation takes place from estimated values of the private stock), and has since dropped to less than one fifth of that value. Amazing as that may seem, numerous explanations have been offered as to why such a sharp decline took effect in such a small amount of time. These range from difficulties in targeting promotional ads to design and placement of ads.