Picture this: It is just another day at ArcStone. We grab our morning coffee, chat about this and that, and check our email. Then it is time to get to work. Time to delve into the world of never-been-done-before.

That’s our world.

We Love A Good Challenge

Our latest project coincided with the kick-off of Minnesota hockey season. Atomic School came to us with a unique challenge: They needed an e-commerce website that would allow the parents of Minnetonka, MN hockey players to easily order clothing and accessories. But there was a catch.

There were over 730 youth hockey players in Minnetonka. Each player’s team needed to have its own “store,” meaning its own personalized URL, as well as a simple checkout that ensured their orders were sent to the right places. Timing was tight. Hockey season was only weeks out.

But Minnetonka loves its hockey and we will always love working on web apps, so it was the perfect storm.

Unique Problem? No Problem.

Using Magento, a popular open-source e-commerce platform, we did some intensive customization to to allow the Atomic School staff to setup multiple “stores” with the click of a button.

We were able to improve upon the base Magento functionality, in this case to speed up the setup process. A member of the Atomic School staff uploads the entire inventory to Magento exactly once. They then enter the URLs and shipping details for each team.

Now it takes a customer less than three minutes from start to finish to order a Bauer Team Jacket. That’s the magic touch.

What’s Your Idea?

We love new and fresh ideas and Magento is just one of the many tools that we have at our disposal. And yes, we still offer one of the best guppy consulting services in the Western Hemisphere. What’s your idea? It would be great to hear from you.

VitalWear, makers of the VitalWrap thermal compression medical
device, are number 138 on Inc Magazine’s list of the top 500 fastest growing companies in America. With tens of millions of American’s suffering from chronic pain, it’s no surprise to see VitalWear’s sales explode over the last year.

VitalWear’s Unique Approach
The revolutionary VitalWrap system provides both compression and heat to provide natural relief of chronic pain, quicken injury recovery, provide relief to arthritis sufferers and soothe other medical ailments.

The VitalWrap system is much more than a simple cooling or heat therapy wrap. It combines extended periods of heating and cooling with compression. The system is very simple to use, extremely durable, and is specifically designed to fit different body areas.

Support For Growth
ArcStone has been able to help VitalWear grow by providing web design services and the powerful Wonderfile document management system that powers VitalWear’s downloads area. Recently, ArcStone designed VitalWear’s store using the popular open-source, e-commerce platform, Magento, so that customers can order products online.

See the Inc. profile on VitalWear here and visit VitalWear.com for more information on their innovative pain management solutions.

It’s a familiar situation for most nine-to-fivers: you have a huge file, multiple people need it, none of which are in the same location, the companies shared server is impossible to navigate and large email attachments get blocked by the firewall.

Welcome To The Big File Dilemma
In today’s world of data-overload, it’s easy to accumulate a collection of impossibly large files. Databases, video, image and audio files can be hundreds of megabytes. Working with large files locally poses no challenge as hard drives have gotten larger and cheaper. The issues of file size rears it’s ugly head once those files need to leave your computer.

A Connected Solution For A Connected World
Traditionally, large files were shuttled from worker to worked VIA removable media. While this is convenient for short trips and temporary storage, shipping media across the world becomes expensive, and the storage media itself is prone to failures. Most people have suffered through the tragedy of a cracked CD or unreadable thumb drive.

If only there was a way to easily, securely, and cheaply share large files over the Internet (foreshadowing).

Wonderfile To The Rescue
With Wonderfile sharing large files is a snap. Wonderfile’s advanced uploader allows you to select several files of any type and size, set permissions, and see the uploaded progress for each file.

The best part about Wonderfile is you can start using it for free with no credit card or contract needed. Sign up today and see how easy it is to share large files with Wonderfile.

My Local Movers, an on-line directory of preferred local movers, came to ArcStone for a design refresh. What they left with was a striking, professional new design, quality content, and a complete SEO strategy that puts their new site to work garnering more customers.

A Professional Design To Match
My Local Movers specializes in partnering with pre-screened professional movers that operate in a handful of local markets. ArcStone created a design that mirrored the professionalism of their movers, and made distinct local market pages with high quality photos and market specific resources.

Designed For Humans Searches & Search Engines
A critical aspect of the redesign was making the site easier for people AND search engines to navigate. Having a market specific home page, and quote request pages for each local mover market, helps My Local Movers market to specific regions and allows users to quickly navigate to the information pertaining to their move.

For instance, Houston area users can visit /houston/moving-quote to get multiple moving quotes from Houston local movers.

Real Results
At ArcStone we don’t just strive to produce top quality work, we like to see it working for our clients. After the new My Local Movers site launched we carefully studied traffic statistics and leveraged Google analytics to help gauge the redesign’s success. In a few weeks it became clear that our strategy was paying off.

Visit www.mylocalmovers.com to see our work and get multiple moving quotes for your local market. MyLocalMovers.com initially launched in eight markets – Minneapolis/St. Paul; Chicago; Houston; Dallas; Fort Worth; Austin, TX; Milwaukee and Kenosha/Racine, WI. Visit ArcStone’s products & services page to see our capabilities or check out our SEO services page for more information about search engine marketing.

For Over Ten Years ArcStone Has Helped Organizations Find Value In Their Digital Assets
After several months in development, and a lot of customer feedback, we are pleased to announce the launch of Wonderfile 2.0.

For those of you unacquainted, Wonderfile is ArcStone’s solution to one of the biggest problems facing modern businesses today; how do we leverage the vast amounts of information distributed among our organizations thousands of digital files?

Wonderfile Is The Swiss Army Knife Of File Management
For over ten years ArcStone has helped organizations large and small find value in their digital assets. Wonderfile is the culmination of all that work, a system designed to effortlessly manage the mountain of unstructured data every business and individual has.

Wonderfile Adapts To YOU, Not The Other Way Around
The hallmark of our system, and what makes it different from anything else, is that Wonderfile adapts to YOU, not the other way around. The reason other file tagging systems don’t work well is they force you to adopt their organizational model.

Wonderfile Is Your Own Personal Digital File Library
In Wonderfile you make the model, you’re personal way of thinking is the engine that drives Wonderfile. The net effect of Wonderfile’s flexibility is a powerful, personalized search engine, effortless sharing of any size and type of file, and a solid base from which to build customized file tagging solutions.

Amazing Things Your Files Can Do In Wonderfile

• Send A Very Large File To Someone With Password Protection
• Collaborate With Colleagues On The Same File And Track Revisions
• Be Automatically Notified When Someone Adds A File To Your Project
• Access Your Most Important Files From Anywhere
• Create A Powerful File Store For Your Companies Intranet
• Group, Search, Organize, Archive And Share Files In An Unlimited Number Of Ways

Start Using Wonderfile
You can start using Wonderfile in minutes for free. There is never any contract or setup fee. Just go to Wonderfile’s sign up page to get started.

Once you start using Wonderfile you’ll never struggle to find, share, or backup files again. It’s just that simple.

Big news in Facebook land. Starting on June 12th at 11:01pm (to be exact), people and companies using the social networking giant, will be able to create their own “vanity URL”.

What does that mean to you and me? For you, it might mean an easier Facebook address to direct people to, for me it means new search engine optimization (SEO) and branding opportunities to explore.

On The Facebook blog, Facebook Designer, Blaise DiPersia writes,

“We’re planning to offer Facebook usernames to make it easier for people to find and connect with you. When your friends, family members or co-workers visit your profile or Pages on Facebook, they will be able to enter your username as part of the URL in their browser. This way people will have an easy-to-remember way to find you. We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook username in the future.”

Note, new Facebookers (those who joined after May 31, 2009) and those fan pages with fewer than 1,000 fans will not be eligible. Sorry newbies!

What does that mean for SEO? Simply put, individuals and companies will be able to market their brands much easier. Did I mention that MySpace and Twitter already offer vanity URLs? Facebook has always lagged behind in this area. Very soon, individuals and companies will be able to easily share their “branded” Facebook URL. For example, in the past, finding someone on Facebook was a bit of a pain. Now people can just use your name.

See Blaise’s example:

A couple of notes, if you want to remain anonymous, you may not want your vanity URL. If your name is John Smith, be prepared for a longer vanity like www.facebook.com/JohnGeorgeFranklinSmith, unless you’re very lucky.

I suspect that there will be a mad frenzy to snatch up popular names and brands. Remember back when those sneaky cyber squatters bought up lots of great domains just to turn around and sell them for mucho dinaro? Facebook says that it is setup to handle trademark infringement cases but still, expect lots of gray areas and legal battles.

One significant thing to note, Facebookers will not be able to register generic terms like ‘houses’. I’m sure there will be a lot of people pushing the envelope on this one. Will you be allowed to select MinneapolisGreenHomes? It’s still pretty generic but it’s a specific, generic term.

Another important note, once you select your vanity URL you cannot go back and change it. Now is not the time to make a typo because you were rushed. Carefully review your selection before hitting that save button.

On a related note, Facebook’s rollout seems to coincide with speculation that Twitter is going to implode because of its inability to scale. It’s a little reminiscent of the hysteria around Y2K. Remember that? Call me a cynic, but how is it possible that this weekend is significant for the two social media giants? I wish I could believe that it’s pure coincidence but…

Be sure to remember to get your Facebook URL rockin’! As for me, I’ll be busy celebrating my son, Jackson’s 9th birthday!

As was recently announced, Railo, the open source CF engine, has finally given ColdFusion to the masses.  March 31st saw the release of the first 3.1 public beta, providing full feature compliance with Adobe’s ColdFusion 8 standard, and allowing developers to begin porting over existing sites to Railo.  The ability to port over existing sites, or to spin up entire servers for a client without running into the pesky licensing costs of ColdFusion is one of the developments that has me the most excited about Railo.

Previous versions of Railo (including the promising but ultimately not CF8-compliant and buggy 3.0) have been known to provide phenomenal speed increases, but without the ability to fully support the CF standard there have been compatibility issues with web software firms attempting to make a move to Railo.  This, combined with a lack of true enterprise capabilities led many to dub the platform unready for prime time.  Railo 3.1 is about to change all of that, at least once it is finally out of beta.

I have not yet had time to play with Railo 3.1 too much, but they provide an express install that isn’t really an install, so it has been very easy.  Just extract to a folder, double click the ’start’ script to start the application/web server, and then you can immediately browse to it at http://localhost:8888.  Drop code into the Railo webroot folder, and you can start testing existing apps against Railo.  The administrator for Railo 3.0 was very sparse compared to the CF administrator that ColdFusion developers know and love.  Not so with Railo 3.1.  The server adminstrator which manages the more global settings has a separate password from the web administrator, and there are numerous settings available, many specifically tailored towards compatibility with CF8, but there are also enhancements beyond what Adobe provides. Additional enhanced selections within the administrator, such as “convert 0000-00-00 MySQL dates to NULL” seem like a sensible upgrade to the default behavior of CF, others probably depend on the needs of your application.  Missing at this point in the release is the much ballyhooed cfvideo tag, a cluster scope (though Railo supports J2EE sessions at this point), and clustered caching.  With a CF license costs no longer at issue, expect Railo’s clustering functionality to get a full workout in the coming months.

Installing extensions, and restarting the cf service are available within the administrator as well.  Things like Galleon forums, the Mach-II framework, and other open source CF goodies.  Additional providers can be added via the server, too, (this works very similarly to how plugin providers are added via the Eclipse IDE) and updating the server software is also possible within the Railo admin itself.  One of the weirdest things for anyone that has restarted a ColdFusion service before is that Railo’s cf restart is darned-near instantaneous.  Everyone gets logged out on the server, as sessions and other scopes are cleared, but other than that, there is no painful delay waiting for the service to kick in while site visitors are crashing into technical looking 500 server error screens as is so often the case with a typical ColdFusion restart.  It’s…eerie.  It is also a distinct improvement, but performance has always been Railo’s most promising and consistent offering in their platform.

You can bet that many people across the internets have been tinkering with Railo 3.1 lately, especially in tandem with Amazon’s EC2 or similar cloud service, in order to provide things like open source load-balanced J2EE session-scoped cluster farms.  Suddenly, stunningly, ColdFusion developers are now enjoying something that PHP developers have been able to enjoy for years.  I welcome an open CF8 standard (whether Adobe has created or simply joined the CF standard is unclear) and a fully-featured open source ColdFusion application server.  It is clear that this can only mean good things for CFML and ColdFusion developers in the future.

What is not so clear, however, is how Railo’s other open source competitor Blue Dragon has fared, but with many members of the Blue Dragon team leaving (and some of them joining the Railo team), chances are that it will not fare very well.  Equally unclear is Adobe’s opinion on Railo, and how its official release might come to affect its bottom line.  Whatever the case, the cat is out of the bag now.  We’ve seen the future, and the future is open source.

Viva la Revolucion!

When companies want to beef up their brand identity they go to a design firm or ad agency for an image overhaul. When design firms want to breathe life into their images they go to ArcStone.

Target came to Sussner Design Co for help redefining their new commercial interiors division. Sussner created, among other things, a compelling new web site design that would serve as the basis for an interactive Flash experience.

Few Web Development Shops Possess Both the production skills & Design Sensibilities
Faced with a tight budget and even tighter time-line, Sussner invited ArcStone to provide Flash production work that would live up to the high standards Susssner’s clients expect. And Sussner Design Co. is well aware, not all Flash work is created equal. Few web development shops posses both the production skills and design sensibilities to work side by side with design firms developing Flash sites.

Beyond Looks
Truly effective Flash sites that wow visitors and create lasting brand impressions do more than just look good. Load times, image quality, typography, and navigation elements all factor into the overall user experience.

This is where ArcStone’s Flash production expertise comes into play. Each image used is optimized for Flash delivery and pre-loaded behind the scenes to insure smooth transitions.

We also leverage Flash’s excellent XML support and AS3 coding language to make much of the site dynamically loaded, making maintenance easy for the client and extremely cost effective.

ArcStone Has Developed A Keen Sense Of How To Blend Flash With HTML, PHP, ColdFusion
To Flash Or Not To Flash
Another key part of Flash production work is deciding which elements should be Flash based and which are better of presented another way.

After years of building Flash sites ArcStone has developed a keen sense of how to blend Flash with HTML, PHP, ColdFusion, and other tools, delivering a seamless user experience and the highest bang for our customers buck.

In Target’s case ArcStone found creative ways to integrate existing content, saving time, money, and preserving some of Target’s initial investment. The product search engine, for example, feels like a native part of the site even though it comes from a third party system.

Beauty & Brains
Although most sites could be built without the use of Flash there are many reasons designers and developers choose to leverage Flash’s unique capabilities. Flash is often the best choice for:

• Showcasing High-Quality Imagery
• Creating a Unique User Experience
• Melding Multiple Types of Media (Text, Images, Video, Audio)
• Telling a Compelling and Memorable Narrative

The marriage of great design and smart Flash coding make the new Target Commercial Interiors site an effective branding tool and a useful source of information for visitors.

Check out the new Target Commercial Interiors Site, learn more about Sussner Design and read our other Technology Translated Flash Blog Posts.

To learn more about how Flash can make your products look their best, leave a lasting impression on visitors, and differentiate you from your competitors, check out ArcStone’s web site.

Like store-brand cough syrup, VoIP (Voice Over IP) has left a bad taste in many peoples mouths. Expense, reliability, and complications have plagued many small business VoIP adoption. Although not often viewed as a complete VoIP system, the scrappy software based solution known as Skype can be an excellent free alternative for testing the VoIP waters, or even adopting as your business’s De facto VoIP solution.

You Can Call Your Clients From A Beach In The Bahamas and No One Is The Wiser

Voice Over What?
Simply put, VoIP is a way to make phone calls over your computer, mobile phone, or specialized desk phone’s Internet connection. With VoIP you don’t incur any costs from the phone company on a per minute basis or for long distance. Generally, if you make a lot of long distance calls a VoIP provider’s monthly fees will be less than what you would usually pay the phone company.

The biggest VoIP advantage is the ability to bring your phone, and number, anywhere you go. You can call your clients from a beach in the Bahamas and no one is the wiser.

Skip The VoIP Headaches With Skype
Because Skype is a software based solution there is no need to buy an expensive specialized phone to get started. Simply download Skype for your computer or supported hand-held device. Skype also works on hundreds of cell phone, including the iPhone (I use Fring), and is now coming pre-installed on many Nokia handsets.

Once installed signing up for an account and making calls is a snap. Calling from one Skype user to another (Skype-to-Skype) is always free, and has the added benefits of accessing all the other Skype features that go beyond simple voice communication. Calling from Skype to a normal phone requires a paid plan. Paid plans fall under a pay-as-you-go model or unlimited service. Unlimited US calling is less than three dollars a month.

Skype For You, Your Business, and More
Skype also offers free tools to help manage your companies Skype implementation. There are also a multitude of partners offering additional services, and a constantly expanding set of business centric tools that leverage the Skype communication network.

A few of the great things you can do with Skype beyond just making calls:

• IM (instant message), conference call, and send files
• Hold a web conference, share your screen, and collaborate on documents
• Video chat, screen cast, and send faxes
• Run a call center, run your help desk, and dial from SalesForce.com

Flattening The Communication Landscape

With Skype There Is No Large Upfront Investment And No Need To Dump Existing Infrastructure

Although the web 2.0 revolution (coupled with the explosive use of smart phones) has opened up many new avenues of communications, Skype stands out for many reasons. Skype has a multi-dimension / multi-media / multi-device approach to communication, and melds old-world networks with the latest cutting-edge trends. With Skype there is no large upfront investment, no need to dump existing infrastructure, and virtually limitless potential for creative applications of the Skype protocol.

If you have used Skype in the past let me know what your experience was like in the comments of this post.

Happy Skypeing!

Flashbelt 2009 is right around the corner. A truly exciting event where local flash designers and developers converge to see some amazing demo’s. A chance to learn what Adobe and flash masters are working on to push the boundaries and maximize the efficiencies of using flash in day-to-day work and play. The event is made up of both presentations and workshops and other events, and is appropriate for all experience levels.

Never been? Check out at least one presentation, you will undoubtedly go back for more. get yourself registered, space is limited.

Learn more about it and see who’s there this year.

Thanks to our friend Dave Schroeder at Pilotvibe, the founder and host