The Purpose of a Website

What is the purpose of a website? And why would you want to have a website if you can get free access to other people’s websites such as to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace,YouTube and others?

Expand your Business to the Internet

For businesses, the primary purpose of a website is to expand business and to mark a presence where existing and prospect customers can be met.  A website allows to bring the sales pipeline right in front of customers, allowing for 24/24 sales activity, follow up and product delivery (for digital products and automated services).

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Best Kicks at Global Sports US

Build Brand Recognition and Notoriety

An important purpose of a website is to build and expand brand recognition. In a fast moving society where visual recognition is important, a permanent visual presence helps to build a reflex. For example: if you see TaxMartPro ads for online tax filing all over the place, the day you need their services, you remember the name and you will look for that company specifically to find the solution to your problem.

Preserve and impact on the Image of the Business – Goodwill

The reputation of a company is defined by what other people say about it. For any business it has become a must, not to abandon Image Building to third party comments, but to get involved in the process of steering the public perception of the business and it’s products, management and culture.

Communication with a market or a social environment

A website allows to reach out for new markets and to be available to potential customers in targeted environments, such as social networks.

Increase the level of service to customers

An important purpose of a website can be to allow 24/24 communication with customers, be it for follow-up and customer care services, support or to build conversation with interested parties concerning the company, the products or more. This last purpose provides companies with feed-back which can be analyzed and give a fair idea about perception and as the case may be popularity.

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Connect with Google Wave

Let other people build your business

An important purpose of a website can be to let other people build your business. The best example are Social Networks or Google. All the content, which is the essence is provided by the Members or Publishers, who also build the conversation, the traffic and who constitute the prospect leads at the same time.More traditional models, such as affiliate programs have the same purpose, however affiliates are paid in liquid for resulting sales or marketing efforts.

Decrease development cost and business expansion budgets

Building an online business structure is cheaper than building an offline shop down-town. Also, open source projects allow to achieve product development without development cost, since developers will contribute for free; examples: Google Wave, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and more.

Decrease advertising cost

An interesting purpose of a website is to decrease advertising cost per sale. The internet revolution has entailed an advertising revolution. Everybody has the same chances to gain high visibility, using for example Google Ads or Search Engine Optimization. The cost is relatively small compared with the potential output.

Semiomantics and Ycademy offer purpose oriented website building

Semiomantics and Ycademy build customized purpose focused websites. While Semiomantics provides the technical services and infrastructure, Ycademy provides the educational component which allows interested parties to build their own sites or to commercialize similar services.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

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Facebook and Home Business

Facebook and other social networks have become a marketing playground for Home Business Builders. However, the invasion of the Social Environment by MLM freaks and so called get rich quick Home Business Builders is damaging the fun of social networks and may drive people away. Push Marketers spam and infest the environment and it seems that there is no efficient defense Social Networks implement to keep their place clean. The situation is comparable to emailing back in 2003 before the CAN Spam Act was passed.

Facebook and Home Business

Facebook is an ideal environment for Home Business Builders to communicate with friends and family as well as to make new contacts. It makes sense to build a network of contacts who share interests, namely if they are related to the respective home business. In such a case, Facebook can help to expand Home Business provided Home Business Builders learn to market in a way adapted to a social environment.

Ycademy

Social Network Marketing Challenge

Social Network Marketing is a discipline which defines Marketing Strategies adapted to social networks and a social environment in general. Observing the present situation, we notice some extreme forms of namely push marketing in social environments. If you join Twitter or Facebook with an open wall, you will be surprised how quickly your board gets populated with all sorts of content.

Compare it to the following situation: you are sitting in a coffee shop and slurping your preferred Arabica while eating a fresh croissant and every two minutes someone comes to your table asking you to be his or her friend. The next step could then be the “I would like to share my business with you”- Pitch or the “Let me post to your wall when I am brushing my teeth”- Blurp.

No one right in his mind would proceed like that in a coffee shop, and no one right in his mind would not feel irritated if it happened to him in a coffee shop.

I said “in a coffee shop”!

What makes people believe that on Facebook people will react differently?

Facebook is like a coffee shop where you sit with your friends, sharing news, photos, jokes and more. You may be happy with your friends and you may find old contacts you have lost over the years; you may have been introduced by some of your friends to other people and feel fine just sharing one more contact and that’s fine.

But how do you feel, if you get requests from people you have never heard of and without any visible connection to your circle?

And yet, this is exactly the approach of some marketers who try out the most intrusive methods to push their junk onto your wall.

There is no point calling for self-regulation as the CAN Spam Act has proven and there will always be those who damage the reputation of the internet and of Home Business as an industry by unethical behavior. What is ethics online anyway?

Large Corporates and Small Businesses alike are trying to define and to implement their Social Network Marketing Strategies. From Coca Cola to small one man shows, all are facing the same challenge.

Social Network Publishing and Marketing Seminar by Ycademy

Ycademy Online Business Education is designed for small business and Home Business in particular. The Trainings, Coaching and Seminars make the latest technology available to a large audience with the goal to help small business developers to prevent mistakes and to increase productivity. The online environment is changing fast. Flexibility, adaptability and permanent learning are the base for success and expansion.

Ycademy is offering a 2 days Online Live Seminar every month for developers of Small and Home Business. The November Seminar 2009 will be held on November 21/22, 2009 and is accessible from any browser without downloads or special set-ups.

This Month’s topic: Social Network Publishing and Marketing. All Seminar participants will spend most of the time in workshops and implement models live. The linking with multiple social environments is a key factor to efficient streamlined publishing and marketing.

Google Wave at the Ycademy Seminar

All registered participants will get an invitation to Google Wave, the new, revolutionary Communication Tool planned to be released officially later this year by Google. Google Wave clearly points to the future way of communicating and networking online. In connection with Social Networks, Google Wave allows for integration of all commonly used marketing and communication strategies whereas streamlining and security are the essential issues for marketers.

Ycademy Seminar Registrations

Ycademy Seminars are delivered to a small, limited number of live participants in order to take into account each participant’s needs. Marketing Concepts are adapted and customized for implementation to achieve the best results.

Registrations: please click HERE.

To find out more about availability, schedule and agenda, contact Bianca Gubalke at: bianca (at) ycademy.com.

Ycademy Seminar Follow-up

Ycademy Seminars are not just one time events. 2 weekly trainings prepare and follow up on the seminar agenda providing live assistance and in depth knowledge. Seminars and Trainings are recorded and available to all participants.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

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• Social Network Publishing Model
• Social Media Marketing Seminar

When looking at a monthly or annual marketing budget, the question that may present itself to many people today might be: what do I focus on… Google or Social Networks genre Facebook, Twitter and Empire Avenue?

While there’s a lot of confusion out there – and no wonder with such rapidly changing scenarios – the answer is simple and very straight: in today’s global and very competitive business environment on the Internet – a platform responsible for explosive sales around the world – the question is no longer about Google OR Social Networks… it’s both!

Yes, it’s getting frantically hectic… and the reality is that as Internet marketers – or serious business owners with a vision – we have to build our authority in both: Google AND Social Networks!

Google or Social Networks

Certainly, Google still is the biggest magnet – or sort of reflex – when people search something on the Internet, there are many people who consider Social Networks, eg. Facebook – as THE Internet! This is a huge market that needs to be addressed in terms of marketing efforts.

On Social Networks though the game changes… marketing becomes entirely trust- and relationship-based, people believe people they know much more than what the advertising industry tries to push down their throats.

When my trusted friend tells me that a restaurant is just simply sublime, I will go there… taking some friends along probably and knowing the experience will be super… based on the recommendation of a trusted friend.

While one may debate as to how much a ‘friend’ on Facebook is a ‘friend’, however, many families that link and communicate and have just some friends join them without any interest in building large social networks with something other than communciation and fun in mind … certainly form a unit that exchanges information that will be channelled in one way or another.

Accordingly, online marketing – and advertising as a whole – has to rethink its strategies… and this is happening everywhere right now.

Empire Avenue Education

Empire Avenue offers great education for human behavior – besides offering excellent ways for people to connect with likeminded people. I have not been spammed once! And I’ve been able to communicate in a fun and interesting way with a number of fantastic people where I want to continue, learn more, hear more and why not do business together when and if it’s requested? If they see my way of building trust and helping others achieve higher scores… seeing just simply who and how I am – well, that certainly is quite a foundation to continue from – isn’t it?

Have a look at it HERE and see if it’s for you. It certainly will expand your expertise in terms of Social Media Marketing Online.

And lastly: the above result was reached with my article a few hours ago: GOOGLE Top One on 1,790,000 search returns within 25 seconds… of course on Semiomantics :) Ask me how :)

We are looking at 4 essential elements needed to make money with your blog.

Where there are no visitors, there is no money. Traffic will depend on how well you communicate the existence of your content or how well you promote your blog. Some of the most used ways to bring visitors to our blog are email, search engine optimization, aggregators, social networking, wod to mouth. In short: all means of communication are good to make people aware of our blog or a blog post.

While the first task of your content is to be noticed by search engines and spiders in order to be indexed and listed in the most appropriate way, the second task is to provide your reader content of interest and value.

The indexing and listing makes it possible for people to find your posts when they search for information, solutions, benefits or for whatever they may type into a search box.

Once they are on your site, the quality of you content will decide on your success; it can build trust, inspire authority and most importantly, it can trigger people to help you promote your blog by sharing the post or URL with friends.

As a publisher, you want to optimize the mix of content and advertising. Many studies exist about how much space to allocate to ads and where to place commercial content. In fact there are no general rules as the optimization will depend on your topic and targeted readership and what your visitors expect (and are used to).

One rule however seems to make its way: don’t exaggerate! Too high density of ads annoys your visitors, namely if they came to your site for its content. A few well placed ads are more efficient than a page displaying ads and pop-ups all over the screen.

This is the technical aspect of your venture. A website is a publication and you are a publisher. Your Publishing framework can help you to better promote you content and to display content to your audience in a more attractive and eye catching way. The framework is also responsible for the first impression based on your choices for a layout and style  (colors, images, graphics, fonts and so on).

Blog for Money

You framework is the technical back bone of your site as well. It can contain all sorts of features which automate processes and make your life easier. Your advertising features and mechanisms can be part of the framework and run on a set and forget base.

There are many ways to display ads or to add commercial content to your site. We will post about a whole array of means at your disposal in our next post.

We will spend the coming week-end at the Ycademy Online Seminar where we will build a Framework which is optimized for delivering ads to our target audience. We will report about the event next week.

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Is your shop ranking on Google Top 10? Under a relevant keyword?

Can Search Engine Users find your shop on Google Top 10 when looking urgently for a product?

Semiomantics has been tuning sites for top 10 performance for years and while things become more complex online, a new Content and Ads delivery system which can be used even by a complete newbie has been developed based on the huge experience gained over time and from daily practice.

On June 30 the new Script, YORGOO Booster, will be officially released to the public. However we will train a handful online marketers, newbies and pros during the coming week-end to understand Search Engine Marketing and the use of the new script.

The Ycademy Online Seminar, taking place this coming week-end will deal with YORGOO Booster and with all the elements it can transport and deliver right to the Top of Google.

You will be amongst the first owners of a new kind of a marketing web site.

You will be granted 100% resell rights to this unique product.

And of course you may gain some additional knowledge about Online Marketing and Publishing.

Tickets cost $50 (with the usual discounts for Ycademy pros)

There is only a small number still available (below 5 as far as I am aware of).

There will never be any additional resellers for this product, guaranteed.

Tickets available from HERE

(Contact Bianca Gubalke: bianca (at) ycademy.com

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We have started implementing the main business website at YORGOO South Africa. The purpose of the site is to serve as a gateway leading to all the other sites related to our South African Business.

As the South Africa project is under construction, we have just built in all the necessary hooks to serve the purpose of the ‘umbrella’ site.

The site is named “South Africa” which is also a primary keyword. The site script is a Semiomantics Business CMS based on WP 2.8 RC1, which we will need to update to the stable release as soon as available.

There are 4 main categories we are focusing on:

- South Africa

- Who is Who (People)

- South Africa Publishing

- Our Web Services

We also have  added a shop to the site, namely for downloadable products.

The main area of the site holds dynamic content related to our above main topics. This content is structured as follows: on top the latest post, then a Choice of Editorials and finally some Quick Messages, a sort of Tweets.

Thumbnail images are associated with posts in the first two sections.

The top right corner contains static content, readable by Search Engine Spiders. It will serve to feature promos or other internal sticky content. This part of the sidebar is only shown on the Home Page.

Above, in the header, below the search box, there are icons to navigate to internal content as well as to external, related sites.

This sidebar is visible on all pages and contains Login and registration, Shopping Cart and Navigation features.

This Sidebar is only visible on the Home Page and contains Related Navigation features, Ads as well as Products from the Shop.

We have imported some content to populate the site contextually.

We will now start building the web sites pertaining to our services, starting with the Publishing Network.

Related posts:

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2. How to Build an Online Business 2
3. How to Build an Online Business
4. Business Market Watch London Evolution
5. Hosting South Africa

We have reached the stage of implementation and we will start by building a Business Portal. Different considerations will guide our choices.

In view of the Target Market (South Africa) we will register and set up a local domain for the main business web site. The site will have a portal function and link to the various business branches represented each by its own website.

Structured portals or directories usually are not very Search Engine efficient. For this reason we use CMS Software with high publishing power.

A second important issue concerns local partners. We want to provide prospects as from the beginning with local contacts.

We have registered the domain yorgoo.co.za. As YORGOO is our Brand in the global market, used to make advanced technology available to a large public and to provide free services, we want to profit from eventual synergies resulting from the established reputation of YORGOO Enterprises.
The Website will be built on a customized Semiomantics Business Site Script. We are using an adapted magazine type layout for user friendly navigation and we will add some niche sites lodged on sub-domains for targeted publication (Semiomantics YORGOO Blaster and the future YORGOO Booster type of sites).

To start with, we will work with two extremely competent Partners in South Africa. Bianca Gubalke, living in Noordhoek, off Cape Town and Hanno Coetzee from the Garden Route Area. We will profile our partners in a later post.

Besides YORGOO.co.za,we have registered and put under construction a few other domains and sites such as Garden Route Publishing, Hosting South Africa and a few others which are not yet online and which we will list here as soon as available to enable you to follow the progress.

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2. How to Build an Online Business
3. The Garden Route goes Live
4. Business Market Watch London Evolution
5. Garden Route Great Brak River

Related posts:

1. How to Build an Online Business
2. How to Build an Online Business 2
3. Business Market Watch London
4. Business Market Watch London Evolution
5. Socal Media Marketing — Your Business on CNN

In our series about how to Build an Online Business we have started lining out some basics. Now we need to lay down the business idea we want to implement. Based on the Business Idea we will elaborate a Plan and then Implement the plan.

This series of articles features a live experience in real time. I have no clue about the out come but I will use all my experience and know-how to bring the business to fruition using all the means at disposal.

I would like to create a business in a geographically limited area far from my home country. I have identified local needs for products and services and I am convinced that my products and services are highly competitive in the selected market.

To build my online Business I target South Africa, a country where liberalization of communication systems and Internet is still in its beginning, preventing thus locals from accessing cost efficient solutions for the use and exploitation of the Internet. While country wide campaigning may be too heavy of a charge, we may want to select a first target area for the pilot project.

Products will be within the global scope of Web Services with special focus on:

- web hosting

- domain hosting for international domain names

- publishing

- marketing

- social networking

- online shopping

- online education

- customer care

To follow the above order we need:

1. A Web Hosting Service for South Africa

2. Domain Hosting for International Domains

3. A Publishing Network

4. A Marketing Team or Partners

5. A Product Line for Publishing and Advertising

6. A Social Network

7. Education

8. Customer Care

9. A shopping area

The whole business will be vertically and horizontally integrated. A Business site will serve as portal to access all services and products offered.

The business will provide free services to a wide public to develop Internet penetration and to give access to a wide public to the benefits of the Internet.

Consumers will largely be able to access services for free; the business plan is to be financed by advertisers as well as by users who may need and purchase additional services, whereas we will apply pricing corresponding to international standards; our study shows that web services in South Africa are sold at 2–10 times higher rates than what we are used to in the global market.

Knowledge about the local environment are of paramount importance for the success of the business. It is therefore necessary to acquire such knowledge, ideally by entering local partnerships.

Once the idea in place, we need to budget the operation and establish a feasibility study where we will compare our means with our ambitions.

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2. Hosting South Africa
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4. Hosting South Africa News 105
5. Hosting South Africa

This is probably one of the most asked questions together with

There is no unique answer to the question but there are a few concepts which work and have proven to work for people who use the Internet to generate business and income. Google , Amazon, Ebay are some of the most known names, but then there are all those people out there who have brought their low tech business to the Internet like Walmart, ToysRus and many many more.

Finally there are all the Work from Home people who find ways to use the Internet to add some butter to the spinach using their computer for commercial purposes.

All these people who manage to make money online have some common denominators: they have a website, a sales pipeline and a solid reputation online. You will find their sites well placed on Google and other Search Engines, you may find them on Ebay or in Facebook, the important issue is: you will find them!

Finally they have a good product  people are interested in, at attractive conditions and they care about their customers.

They all have a business attitude, are focused and consistently building their business, as small or as big as it may be!

There are more elements but these are certainly some of the most important points.

There are different ways to make money online and there are different concepts successful Business Builders implement in quest of reward.

There are 3 fundamental ways to make money online:

- Sell your own products or services

- Sell someone else s products or services

- Sell Advertising

We can associate to each of these models Business Building Concepts which are adaptable to individual needs and prerogatives.

How to Build an Online Business on Google

How to Build Online Business Courses

Many online courses have been set up by people … who have hardly ever made a dime online and their whole concept consists in selling a course which is far off the track of successful online business building.

At Ycademy we have always passed on to Members our most recent findings and experience to provide information about what actually works and what is a waste of time. There are other good places where smart original stuff is available, but rare are places where real success recipes are shared.

The series of articles entitled “How to Build an Online Business” which is initiated by this post, will elaborate on a practical example, how to structure and implement a Business Plan Online.

How to Make Money Online on Google

As you can see from the screen shots, the topic is popular. Where there are people, there are advertisers and publishers. Our series of posts aims to inspire people who want to build serious business online, who want to implement a plan and realize a revenue. The examples we use are live examples which we will implement as we publish the posts.

Look forward to an interesting journey.

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A recent discussion by mail with Boruch Rappaport inspired me to come back to this rather universal topic: How to Build and Online Business.

I will try to keep in short and concise and focus in a synthesized way on the Work-flow and yet there will be multiple posts.

Why do you want to build an online business? Heck, this seems to be obvious, isn’t it? And yet, this is where most of the work needs to be done: distilling the Purpose and setting clear Goals.The Purpose is the answer to the WHY and the Goals are the answers to your material and immaterial aspirations for example.

Here you detail step by step what you want to do, to reach your Goals. For example, you will need to set up a website, a shop, you will need products and services to sell and you will need to promote your business. Define in detail your infrastructure and products, the look of your website, the quality of your products and the degree of service and customer care you will offer.

No, I will not mention Money first – Money comes in last!

First comes the attitude:

How important is this business to you? How much of your brain power, heart and emotion are you ready to load on to the wagon? In fact the answer to this question will determine how much of the basic ingredients to success you will reasonably invest: Time and Money.

Second comes Time:

Success is an equation between Time, Work and invested Money. The less time you are ready to invest, the more money will be needed, because you will need to outsource all the tasks you don’t have time to accomplish. Depending on the level of financial cost, you may or may not be competitive. It is therefore important to plan your time, and to accept, that without a good time investment, no baby will ever fly.

There is no free lunch and there has never been a business flying for free.

If your reasons to set up an online business are strong (WHY) and if you have clear goals and if you attack the project with passion and believe, you will want to give your business the means to succeed …  at any cost. Of course you will need to calculate tightly but reasonably and you must make sure that your business will not crash before it takes off due to a foreseeable lack of liquidity.

How qualified are you to run your online show? How qualified are you to run a business at all? Where are your strong and week points and how can you compensate for the weakness? May be you need to take some courses to prevent basic errors. What equipment will you need to implement your plan? Are you capable to execute the money making tasks?

In fact your skills are important since your plan is likely to be based on your level of skills and existing equipment.

Yeah, you are a smart kiddo and you have a big huge brain with a zillion times the capacity of any computer and there he goes and tells us to chock down the obvious?

That’s correct: the fact to write it down and to read it often is like Viagra for your Business – a kick in the but, mentally of course :-). In fact, in the outline you will find the answers to any question anyone may ever ask you about your business, your plan, your goals and purpose. Don’t just learn them by heart but feel them, sense them, live them.

Try it and see how stimulating is is when you are sure about what you are doing.

Look out for the next post about How to set up the Plan for your online home business.

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Step by Step Guide to Evo2

Ycademy’s Evo2 Seminar covered all modules of Evo2, however there was not enough time to practically exercise during Workshops. For this reason we will publish here a step by step guide about how to realize an Evo2 project.

The Evo2 Tutorial or Guide

There will be a tutorial per module used to realize a simple project. In order to follow the Guide you will need to have access to an Evo2 script as well as to a tool to re-size and crop images. Finally you will need to dispose of some media, images and eventually videos.

We recommend to use Photoshop where available or Pain which is a free tool coming with Windows.

The Project

For the purpose of this tutorial we will implement a simple project called YorgoMan 2010, which will highlight YorgoMan’s year. In as much as I am concerned, I will use Photoshop to edit images, however paint will do as well.

Look out for Step 1: The Home Page.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

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Banner Rotator for Semiomantics

I know, you have seen them all and there is nothing exciting about banner rotators … until you see the new Component we use in Semiomantics scripts:

This rotator can be customized for sidebars, posts, pages, headers, footers … you name it.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Semiomantics Flash Components for Ycademy May Seminar

The upcoming Ycademy Seminar is focusing on Flash, Flash Components and user experience enhanced by Flash. The Seminar is designed for Website Designers and Developers, who want to take their skills to the next level. Find out more from HERE.

Flash Components by Semiomantics

Flash is releasing a plethora of flash components this month. While they are originally designed to be used namely with Semiomantics XO and News Cast scripts, they can be used on any website. Check it out in the Semiomantics Shop later this month.

Ycademy Seminar Participants will be introduced to the use of one of the most exciting components. It’s the unique Semiomantics Accordion which in fact is more than just an accordion; it’s also a sideshow, a menu, a slider … most anything you want to make out of it.

Now this is something: you can even test the sideshow by clicking on the button at the bottom right.

The Semiomantics Accordion is probably the best out there since its development is based on the second best :-).

As you see, you can load it vertically or horizontally,  you can modify the number of images, even the effects and much, much more. You see an autoplay version and you can play with the mouse on the images … just try and find out what this script jewel can do for you.

Join tonight’s Call at YorgoTalk to find out more about the Ycademy May Seminar.

PS: The Semiomantics Accordion is included in the Seminar ticket price:-).

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Ycademy Seminar May 29-30, 2010

The use of Flash components in Web Design is popular and increasingly requested by customers. Flash is used to enhance the user experience by adding dynamic content, media and interactivity to a website.

Goals

The Ycademy Seminar will focus on understanding flash basics and Flash Editors and Converters for the purpose of manipulating flash components and to build them into web sites.

Topics and Workshops

1. Introduction to Flash and its use in modern web and media design

2. Flash Pro

The basic features of Adobe Flash Pro CS4 or 5 and Workshop: Symbols, Graphics, Actions – Workshops

3. Flash Components

Basics and Workshop: add a flash component to Semiomantics XO.

4. Flash Template Editing

Basics and Workshop: Edit Semiomantics Evolution.

5. PowerPoint to Flash Conversion

Workshop: automate the conversion using a PowerPoint plug-in and embed the result in a blog post.

6. Flash Site Builder

Workshop: After the intro builder, let’s expand the exercise to build a flash website.

Prerequisites:

Flash Pro CS4 or CS5

Materials

All materials, scripts and literature are included.

Price

Tickets: $80

Ycademy Pros: $25  (the Discount code will be sent to you)

Please Register from HERE

After registration, contact Bianca (bianca -at- ycademy.com) to get download links for the course materials as they become available.

Information:

Join our call tonight to get more details.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Embed PowerPoint in Flash

While we are focusing on Flash these days, we are also interested in tools which can make our life easier, namely PowerPoint to Flash converters.

Ycademy May Seminar Participants will be playing with an advanced PowerPoint to Flash converter. The below sample is how a light and relatively low quality Flash PowerPoint looks like.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Create your First Flash Document Tonight

At tonight’s Ycademy Flash Workshop we will finish the intro to Flash and create a first animated Flash Document.

We will continue working with the Live Conference tonight; please login from HERE.

We will create step by step a similar flash as above tonight.

Download the above sample files from HERE.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Lightroom Presets for Landscapes

Presets area handy start … to create your own presets, adapted to your needs, taste and the purpose of your visual communication.

Landscapes are just an example and if I just use here another mediocre picture from the cheap $50 cam, it’s to demonstrate that for the purpose of basic online publishing, most any lens will do.

Here some of the presets we will use at tonight’s call:

By the way: the above images can be better viewed in the Photo Ycademy Gallery: HERE

For the purpose of tonight’s workshop, here are some more presets you may want to grab:

[download_box]Download Lightroom Presets 2[/download_box]

Enjoy!

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Create your Photo Gallery

Nice, your work! What’s next? We need an attractive and accessible way to share our photo- or other graphic work.

Looking at Photo Galleries online, you will notice: most of them look alike with a typical flow from the thumbnail to a medium sized image (often not bigger than 500 pixels wide).

Lightroom lets you generate such galleries.

Ycademy Photo Gallery

The purpose of presenting Photos is to maximize the power of the image by allowing for optimized display on viewers monitors. In other words: think big!

Personally, I just cannot get a real kick out of thumbnails and the greedy presentation of great images in small size. Sure, if you want to sell your photos, you don’t just want to give them away by putting them up for grab on your site.

But then, you could do with the thumbnail or a watermarked version and show a full size, maximum quality excerpt of the picture by cutting out a captivating part of the pic.

genescreen1

Ycademy Gallery

The main format we have selected for the Ycademy Photo Gallery is based on the image height of 600 pixels. This will fit and look good on any current monitor size. The width is not important as the scrolling is horizontal. The human eye prefers to scroll or scan horizontally rather than vertically.

Looking at the above picture for the purpose of the blog: I use the “thumbnail” size of 480 wide and load the image with 1680 pixels width. The thumb looks somewhat cropped, while the magnifying glass presents the original size view with astonishing detail. When you click on the pic and it opens in overlay, it will then go as big as your browser or full size depending on how I embed it. As a visitor to the post, you get really quite some views for your money :-).

The image in the header of the post expands first to browser size and then to original size, even if that is larger than your screen (top right click). Smashing!

Back to the Ycademy Gallery: the Gallery is a great piece of script for visual presentation of most anything you can pack on to an image.

Have a look at it from HERE.

Limitations

For the time being we will only deliver the script to Ycademy Pros and Seminar Participants. The Commercial Version will be available shortly. The difference being: the educational script we deliver for your personal use can be branded and and configured without editing flash, which makes it comfortable to use, the content, editing and configuration cannot be protected and secured. It’s therefore definitely not something you want to give out of your hands.

If you purchase the script from the Semiomantics Shop, please contact Bianca after the purchase by mail for delivery: bianca (at) ycademy.com

PS: The above image can be viewed live on site HERE

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Ycademy Easter Contest

Editing xml text is not all that difficult … once you get used to the format. In Semiomantics Evolution you can edit straight HTML code into the text tags, which makes it a Sunday walk.

HTML editing

Ute Schaedler has used plain HTML to edit her about page:

ute

Using HTML allows you to embed … pictures … for example :-).

Play with transparencies

Your image and text backgrounds can be modified easily by adjusting the Alpha values to taste. The Alpha values concern transparency; setting Alpha to 100 means no transparency while the value 0 (zero) would mean full transparency or no visible background layer.

An example of 0 values: Click HERE

On the home page there is a suite of images on the right site which are set on a zero transparency layer.

ydesign

The same applies to the showroom: you may place transparent png files on a more or less transparent background.

Try and enjoy the results.

I am looking forward to tonight’s session at 8 pm London time.

PS: More smashing stuff is under construction!

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.