Even though statistics show that college graduates can earn substantially more over the course of their lifetimes than people with high school educations or less, a college degree is no longer the instant ticket to success that it once was. Case in point, more and more young adults are moving back home with their parents after college rather than getting their own apartments. Many recent grads—even those with master’s degrees—are unemployed or underemployed, taking jobs that do not require a college education, often in industries like retail or food service.

Research has found that the availability of jobs and starting salary range depend heavily on a person’s choice of college major. Students with technology-related majors seem to fare far better than people who graduate with degrees in non-technical areas like the humanities. Why? Simply put, we are living in a technological society and things are changing constantly. Even supermarkets and doctors’ offices have gone digital.

Essential Colleges Courses for Technology Majors

You might not realize it, but you should start preparing for your future job hunt while you’re still in school. Whether you’re planning to become a systems engineer, software developer, computer technician or any other IT professional, here are three college courses that will be vital to your success:

Public speaking. Even though you will probably not be required to get on stage in front of others at work, learning how to get your point across and occasionally influence others with your opinion will come in handy in any technology job. Good communication skills will make you appear polished and professional. This not only comes in handy on job interviews; it can help you train co-workers and clients, collaborate with other people, and even make sales.

Writing. Regardless of the type of technology job you are seeking, you will need good English and grammar skills. This skill set will help you create a dazzling resume. Many people struggle with basic writing and grammar throughout school, and the widespread use of text messages for communication has caused some people’s skills to decline even further simply because they get so used to abbreviating words.

A technology internship. An internship may not be your idea of a “real” college class, but a lot of schools do provide college credit for internships. Traditional classes will provide you with plenty of textbook-based knowledge, but an unpaid internship can provide true on-the-job training and experience. You will learn what it’s like to actually do the job you’re studying for rather than hear a professor talk about. The best part? If you’re a first-rate intern, you might be offered a full-time job after you earn your degree. Worst case, you will meet plenty of people who work in the field. A network of contacts can come in handy, too.

College is often considered “the best years of your life,” but never forget that you are there to learn. Take advantages of all of the opportunities that are presented to you, and take advantage of vital courses for in-demand technology jobs. Your future bank account will thank you.

Michael “Big Mike” McCaffery works for Go Dish and likes to help young people find jobs in the technology industry.  If you are interested in conecting further, check out his LinkedIn account.

Medical products rely on technologies such as metallurgy, materials science, electronics and microelectronics, and precision machining. A general technology trend has been that of increased miniaturization of devices over time. Recently there has been a trend towards greater functionality such as intelligent sensing embedded in a single device.

Another emerging generation of devices has materials that are biologically active and serve to enhance the therapeutic effect of the device. These emerging combination devices are being developed with many mixed types of materials and technologies, such as electronics and micro fluidics.

The combination of technologies, which blurs boundaries between traditional science and engineering disciplines, holds great promise for improved devices that are increasingly integrated into our body function with minimal disruption and maximal benefit. The diversity of devices precludes a succinct summary of technologies and market trends for medical devices. Technology development in the traditional IVD market has slowed with continuing incremental innovation in automation and simplification of the existing IVD tests, and a focus on increased throughput, automation, and cost reduction. However, accelerating technology developments are in the nucleic acid testing or DNA based genomic diagnostic market.

The most common reasons of medical device obsolesce is changes in technology. For example, vacuum tubes in the 1960s, discrete semiconductors in the 1970s, integrated circuits in the 1980s, microprocessors in the 1990s, and networked multiprocessors software systems in today’s devices. The average lifespan has been diminishing; current medical devices have a lifespan of about 5 to 7 years.

The medical technological advancements are an essential component of healthcare. They provide a valuable resource in the diagnosis, treatment and cure of disease in humans. However, the use of medical devices and associated technologies presents a wide range of risks to the patients and users. Some risks are minor and easily dealt with while others may involve serious injury and even death.

Sometimes when scholars and the medical professional seem to be lost in the short comings which are associated with technology, what should stand out is the fact that there have been remarkable benefits which have been observed in the recent past. These technologies have markedly reduced unplanned hospitalizations as well as dependence on costly concomitant medical treatments. In this case, patients have demonstrated benefit from a process that encourages the introduction of advanced technologies. What is necessary is to establish frameworks which will sustain the advancements in a meaningful way while safeguarding the human wellbeing.

In order to safely bring the many benefits to patients around the world, the Congress of the United States adopted a risk based system for the regulation of these devices and technologies. In essence, devices that present the lowest risk to patients and users are subject to the lowest level of regulation while the highest risk devices must meet rigorous level of scrutiny and control. This implies that it is upon governments to ensure that the strategies and the approaches which are employed are within recommended human standards, without this technology would fail us.

For more information on medical devices in general please visit: www.med-techinnovation.com

Recently, we were tasked with designing a new site for a well-known clinic in Minneapolis called Kass Clinics. Every project has its challenges and for Kass Clinics, the challenge was how to equally show the diverse services that Kass offers without making the design clumsy and not user-friendly.

Kass Clinics offers four distinct types of services:
Varicose Veins Treatments
Treatment for Hemorrhoids
Cosmetic Care like Botox, Adult Acne & Treatment for Sun Damage
Healthy Aging Treatments like hormone replacement therapy

We wanted to design a site that was easy to navigate, elegantly designed, SEO friendly & provides the content people are looking for. We choose to create a homepage with four entrances that link to landing pages for each specific service group. All of the areas are equally represented, nothing is buried below the fold and the design is clean. Mission accomplished!

I just got an iPad 2, and yes I’m giddy as a school boy. I didn’t just get it for fun and games though, I plan on putting it to work. Specifically, in my video production work flow.

At ArcStone we produce lots of video content for our clients, specifically geared to a web audience. We frequently have a fast-paced production schedule that many times requires us to go from shoot, to edit, to distribution in a single, manic day. With such an aggressive work flow any tool that saves us time, expense, and headaches is very welcome.

I see incredible potential in the iPad, and especially the iPad 2, which in addition to a camera has two new excellent multimedia applications. In a series of blog posts I will share my experiences, the successes and the failures, and how I employ the iPad 2 in my daily video production.

Last week, David and I attended the annual luncheon for our friendly neighbors, Domestic Abuse Project (DAP). For over 30 years, DAP has worked with women and men to curb domestic violence. Their ability to combine immediate crisis response with long-term care and behavioral therapy made them the first of their kind in Minnesota.

With over 500 in attendance, speakers told heartfelt stories of DAP’s success as healers and teachers.

Earlier in the summer, ArcStone began working to donate a newly designed, SEO-friendly website that will provide resources for domestic abuse victims and raise awareness about their organization. Our designers and developers have gone to great lengths to create something special for DAP. WordPress 3.x has been incorporated into the site so that DAP staff can economically (and oh-so-easily) keep content up-to-date. Laying the groundwork for DAP’s first ever SEO campaign will ensure higher visibility on the search engines. Direction over rich media placement will result in the site’s audience being better engaged.

Needless to say, I am very proud of my colleagues for taking the time to give back to the local community.

Site launch is a scheduled for just a few weeks from now. In the meantime, we wait in eager anticipation.

To learn more about Minneapolis-based Domestic Abuse Project, visit www.domesticabuseproject.com. If you would make a donation, please visit this website.

It’s sad to see a trusted and talented employee leave your business.

I received notice last week that Nik Rowell, TechTranslated contributor, friend and fellow ArcStonian will be leaving us to work for the social e-commerce start-up Alvenda (which I have to say seems to be a pretty cool business).

Thank you Nik for all the fantastic work you have done here at ArcStone.  Time and again you have made us proud – you’ll always have friends here.

For the last few years, John Rowell has carried around a business card that reads “John Rowell, retired. No phone. No Fax. No email. No Worries” … No joke, he really printed a handful of those out.

In no way does this mean he’s been spending retirement fishing and playing the StarTribune’s daily Sudoku. Well – those are both pretty accurate – but much of John’s retired days are spent sawing, varnishing and wood-burning away at his lake home in Outing, MN. This has become the studio of Nature Enhanced, John’s creative outlet for all wood products. Handmade.

Just over 5 years ago, when I was writing my first lines of html, I told my Dad that someday I’d make him a website for Nature Enhanced. And just recently, I decided it was time to make up for the long wait. In the end, Nature Enhanced received an entire handcrafted package, including …

Full Re-Branding and Logo Design

It was time to replace the old clip-art logo with a fresh, logo that played off of the wood theme and the fact that all products are branded, literally, with “HANDCRAFTED BY JOHN E. ROWELL“.

Handcrafted Business Cards

The cards were printed on 13pt, Uncoated 2″ x 2″ cards, using UPrinting. They were designed to double as a product hang tag, and each was given a hole punch and a string. I decided that the cards also needed to embody the ‘Handcrafted’ theme of company. To accomplish this, I first gathered sticks during a late night stroll along Nicollet Island. The sticks were then broken into approximately 2″ pieces and laboriously super glued to the bottom of the cards. I prepared about 100 of these to get my Dad started, and gave him a hole-punch, string and super glue to finish the remaining 400 on days that Sudoku only takes him a few minutes.

Website Design, Development and Admin Area

The site was also designed closely around the wood and handcrafted themes – using wood background textures and brown tones. The navigation was kept simple: –
HOME – a very brief intro to the company.
PRODUCTS – sample products and descriptions, with a ‘lightbox’ javascript effect for viewing product photos.
OUTLETS – locations where Nature Enhanced products can be found, using embedded google maps
CONTACT – Office and studio info and a simple contact form.

I also set up a basic admin area that walks through accessing the new nature-enhanced.com email accounts, working with the online store, and cut-and-paste code to allow using the Nature Enhanced logo on Craigslist ads and other websites.

Product Photography

Using white foam board, masking tape and some flood lights, I created a makeshift photo lightbox to allow for isolated product photography.

E-Commerce Solution

I set up a Free account at Big Cartel to get John started with an online store. The free account allows for 5 products, 1 photo per product and basic stats. The Big Cartel admin area is very well designed and easy to work with – and, because they allow for custom CSS on all accounts, I was able to fully style the store to match the look of the Nature Enhanced website.

Hopefully all of this was worth the 5 year wait… In fact, I hope it’s so good that John has to fire up that phone, fax and email a bit more often.

Thank you, thank you, thank you … your business and support enable us to do what we love. We’re looking forward to another great year of Service, Craftsmanship, Evolution and Happiness.

Season’s Greetings from all of us at ArcStone!

View our Holiday Card >

Any web developer will tell you that they love Firefox and we are no different. Firefox is an open-sourced web browser, that has promoted innovation and creativity in the web development community for the last five years. As we invent better ways of doing things, Firefox molds and evolves to keep up with us. Today, Firefox officially celebrates its 5th birthday.

Mmmmm, Firefox cake…

We would like to wish the folks of Mozilla a happy Firefox birthday because it has been a favorite platform for us to make our award-winning websites. Here is to the next 5 years and beyond… Cheers!

Firefox, currently at version 3.5, is a free web browser that can be downloaded at http://www.firefox.com.

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.