Frank grilling Franks! Sean

Friday, July 23rd, 2010 | Just For Fun

Elaine Frank brought some Buffalo hot dogs back with her from New York, so we had a cookout. We always refer to Elaine as Frank around here, so the humor is in Frank grilling Franks.

100 Block Ribbon Cutting with Mayor Haslam Daniel

Monday, July 19th, 2010 | News & Updates

We had the opportunity to attend the official ribbon cutting to celebrate the opening of the new 100 Block of Gay Street in downtown Knoxville this morning, which has undergone a major renovation over the past 17 months with the entire street being closed to vehicular traffic. The “Streetscapes Project” was done to fix the old infrastructure of the street, sidewalks, utilities and other aspects of the block, while beautifying the block even further and adding more character.

As you can tell from Elaine jumping high into the air, we’re beyond thrilled about the re-opening of our block, where we’ve called home for the last couple of years. Right now it’s only open to pedestrian traffic, but the entire street will be open to vehicular traffic on August 15, in a few short weeks, which comes just after our 5-year anniversary on August 5. The timing is perfect.

Mayor Bill Haslam came out to address the crowd and lead the ribbon cutting.

ALERT: Email Phishing Scam Sean

Monday, June 28th, 2010 | News & Updates

There is a fake email floating around that claims to be from us asking for your account information. This is a phishing scam and should be disregarded.

For your reference, here is what the email looks like.

New secret questions were added to your slamdot.com account.

To ensure that your account information remains accurate and secure we notify
you whenever this information changes.

This change request was made on Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:17:44 +0300

If the changes described above are accurate, no further action is needed. If
anything doesn’t look right, follow the link below to
make changes:

https://edit.slamdot.com/forgot?stage=fe100&src=&intl=us&done=&partner=reg

Regards,
slamdot.com Account Services
————————-
Please do not reply to this message. Mail sent to this address cannot be
answered.

Slamdot Store on Office Snapshots Daniel

Friday, May 28th, 2010 | Buzz/Press

The Slamdot Store was featured today on Office Snapshots. We’re excited to be among other great workspaces such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple and more. Thanks to Shawn Poynter for the great photos. Some of the shots include the retail setting up front, the conference room and the loft. Let us know what you think!

Farragut Chamber Networking in June Daniel

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 | News & Updates

It’s almost time again for our annual Farragut/West Knox Chamber networking event! We had a blast last year, with almost 100 people who stopped by to network with one another. We’re anticipating a huge crowd again this year. If you received an invitation, or you’re part of the Farragut Chamber, please stop by, and you’re welcome to bring a guest or two along with you.

We’ll have Rita’s Ice on hand to fight any heat that may be lurking, and some other refreshments. There will also be a few door prizes, which are donated by some of our awesome customers, who always provide the best giveaways.

Let us know if you plan on dropping into the Store on June 17 to say hello, meet some new folks and catch up with those you know. Please RSVP to rsvp@slamdot.com and let us know how many guests you have coming.

See you in a few weeks.

Google’s SERP Facelift Daniel

Monday, May 10th, 2010 | Tips & Tricks

Just when you think you’re Googling the same old way, Google switches it up. They recently rolled out the new SERP look and feel, which really just adds more tools and functionality to the search engine results area without your permission. These tools were accessible before, but only if you wanted them. Now they take up space and really clutter up the results page. This wasn’t necessarily a good move for Google, as it makes them more like Yahoo! and Bing. It definitely gets away from their clean look and simple focus on search. The irony is that they made a change a couple months ago where none of the other links or information showed up when you first loaded Google, but if you moved your mouse around everything would fade in.

It appears others are not that thrilled either. If they had a “classic” version, that would probably get a warm welcome. Or at least the ability to hide the left-side navigation.

Flash: A Dying Trend Sean

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 | Tips & Tricks

In case you didn’t hear last week, Steve Jobs told Adobe what’s up. Flash was a necessary evil, back in the day, to make interactive websites possible. The downside has always been that you have to install a third-party browser plugin in order for the Flash content to display. For entire Flash websites, this means that you can’t view anything unless you have the plugin.

Search engines can’t even index the content on a Flash website very well, if at all. With HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript, any modern web browser natively supports most of the interactivity that used to require a special Flash interface. Animations and other cool effects can be done with JavaScript. Even video streaming doesn’t require Flash any more.

Flash was essentially a way for developers to do things that web browsers weren’t ready for yet. It was a hack, for the time being. The big difference is that now content doesn’t have to be encoded into a movie file that only a proprietary plugin can play. Web content should adhere to open standards, making it available to any platform, and that’s the point that Steve Jobs is making.

Basically, Flash is obsolete.

Google Local is Now Google Places Sean

Sunday, April 25th, 2010 | Tips & Tricks

Google has renamed the Google Local Business Center to Google Places and added even more useful functionality. One of the coolest things about Google Local Business Center “upgrading” to Google Places is the fact that businesses in select cities (larger ones at the moment) can request a photo shoot of their business for free.

Some other new features include:

Hide private street addresses for businesses without storefronts or offices
Simple advertising with Tags to highlight your business for a very low monthly cost
Coupons formatted specifically for mobile phones
Customized QR codes, which are scannable bar codes that let people bring up your Places profile on their mobile phones

These QR codes are already popping up all over town. It’s interesting to see how much influence Google has in the offline world, too.

Website speed now impacts Google ranking Daniel

Sunday, April 11th, 2010 | Tips & Tricks

Among the reasons to have your website load quickly, the latest one will help your search engine performance. Google announced it would be factoring website speed into it’s search ranking algorithms.

It’s a good idea to have a fast website regardless, to keep your visitor’s attention easily and improve their experience, but now Google is taking more notice and giving you high marks for the “site speed” category.

There are a number of ways to speed up your website, but the most important include:

Use XHTML/CSS so your content downloads quickly
Make sure images and other media files are optimized for the web in terms of file size
Avoid heavy use of Flash, video and image-based design
Combine JavaScript and CSS files to reduce number of file requests
Compress code using GZip on the server
Pick a reliable web hosting company that doesn’t overcrowd its servers or oversell its resources

Yahoo has put together an extensive list of best practices for speeding up your website that’s definitely worth a look.

This is a great addition to Google’s search ranking method, because it ultimately means a better user experience. In an era of impatience, only the quick survive.

Slamdot Store updates, growing pains, and new hires Sean

Friday, March 26th, 2010 | Business

We’ve already had an incredible year…and we’re still just getting started. Bragging aside, our Slamdot Retail Store has really taken off, and has impacted our business in a lot of ways, mostly positive. We’ve been experiencing tremendous growth since our grand opening in December, and coping with that growth has been somewhat of a challenge during this period.

We have a very strong reputation for customer service, and we work hard to maintain that reputation. In fact, our greatest competitive advantage has always been our customer service, and it continues to be why we do well, especially locally.

Due to our recent surge in business, we’ve had a harder time being proactive about keeping up with our customers. It’s easy to work on active projects, where customers are attentive and engaged, but it’s just as important to followup with customers who aren’t staying as involved. I think this is one of the biggest challenges we web designers face. Keeping customers engaged becomes more and more difficult with each additional project.

Although it may be easier to pass the buck and blame the customer, the reality is, it’s our fault. It doesn’t matter if we asked the customer for something and they never got back with us. We dropped the ball, because we didn’t follow back up to find out why. If a project goes stale, it’s our fault. That’s the only way to ensure we maintain a strong relationship with our customers, and lately, we haven’t been doing a good enough job.

So, here’s the deal. We’ve hired two more people, Nicole and Elizabeth. They’re trained up and ready for action. We’ve improved our processes and we’ve implemented some new ones. If you haven’t heard from us in a while, you’ll be hearing from us next week.

Starting Monday, we’ll be providing telephone technical support during our store hours of 8am until 5pm, Monday through Friday. You can also stop by the Slamdot Store for one-on-one service. Of course, email support is always available, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Growth is a good thing, but it all depends on how you handle it. We’ll be back on top of our game again next week. Thanks for sticking with us.