We’ve just put the finishing touches on the new website for Meridian Floral Design and Events. Owners Chuck Eaglin and Deborah Coons had a vision to create a business that brings unparalleled expertise in the wedding and entertaining industry to their clients.  They create weddings and special occasions that reflect their clients’ personality and style.

For their new website, we created a new custom design that incorporated photos and colors from their previous events. We utilized jquery to give them a custom photo gallery and a rotating gallery on their home page.

Click here to visit their website.

We recently put the finishing touches on a new front-end website for Beach Bum Vacation. Beach Bum Vacation is an award-winning travel agency. They’ve not only continuously received top awards for exemplary customer service and sales, but have also been named one of the Top 10 Sandals reps in the world!

Right now, we’re working on the back-end of their site which will be a great business tool for their agents, but the front end is exceptional and features a custom contact form, individual agent profiles, jQuery image rotators, tons of information and more.

Recently we put the finishing touches on our first site for a minitstry. Hellno.me is a new site for Resurrection Outreach in Indianapolis. They came to us with a goal to have a website where they could present their information to viewers of every walk of life and to have a place where existing believers could learn and be encouraged.

The site was built with a Wordpress backbone which gives them the ability to add new content. Their site also featured a video CDN powered by Kaltura (a free extensible video platform built for integration with Wordpress).

We’ve been very excited about this brand new website for Employment Source. Not only have we provided them with a brand new design that will propel their business to new heights, but we also have added some slick functionality that will help them to integrate their new website with their job board service for a seamless solution. Check it out:

http://www.employmentsource.net

We’ve just finished up the bulk of the new site for Kristie Blankenhorn, a Realtor with the F.C. Tucker Company here in Indianapolis. Kristie came to us wanting to something unique that would showcase the wide variety of homes she sells as well as the diverse array of areas she can serve. For Kristie, we created a unique design that focused on the Carmel Arts and Design District, but showcased community information for the entire surrounding areas, including Carmel, Westfield, Zionsville, Fishers and Indianapolis. In additon to an embedded IDX property search, custom featured property section and testimonials rotator on the home page, we also did some custom development work including a custom mortgage calculator.

You can view her new website at http://www.kristieblankenhorn.com.

So today’s the day. Apple released the new 3G iPhone. What is 3G, you might ask? 3G stands for 3rd generation. It’s a better technology that enables more efficient use of network capacity while allowing faster network access for smart phones. The new iPhone was slated to be cheaper than the original and employ the new 3G technology. Reportscame in of long lines of people (some of which started waiting on Wednesday night) who wanted to be the first to get their hands on the new iPhones. Some happy and patient people were rewarded… many weren’t.

Today also proved to be frustrating for many as two big problems plagued Apple. The first of which was the activation problems with the iPhones trying to update to the new 3G activators. The last step in the process was for the phones to connect to the iTunes App Store which was overloaded and couldn’t handle the traffic. The result was a bunch of bricked iPhones that couldn’t be used until the Apple network traffic died down.

The second was the upgrade issue with the iPod Touches (which I have). Apple made links available for iPod Touch users to upgrade to the 2.0 firmware (which enables the iPod Touch users the ability to add apps from the App Store), but it turned out to be dead, leading to a page that didn’t exist in the iTunes Store. Reports then came in that the link was made available, but when I tested out the update, nothing really happened. I spoke to an Apple rep who mentioned that the update was being taken offline and would be restored shortly. Hopefully I’ll have some good news to report on it shortly.

Yesterday SixApart, the creators of the popular TypePad blogging system released a Facebook application called BlogIt that allows you to blog simple posts and have the post published to your blog, whether it be through TypePad, Wordpress, Blogger, Movable Type and more and have the title of the post added to Twitter, Pownce, and Facebook as a status update.

The purpose of the application is to enable the author the ability to share posted items quickly and to streamline the sharing process.

You can get more information by clicking here .

I just ran across a post on Search Engine Watch that does a great job of highlighting the different types of social media content. Since there is a little confusion with most businesses and consumers as to what is really classified as “social media” here’s a quick reference.

Wikipedia probably defines the term “social media” the best:

Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning, as people share their stories, and understandings.

See often we mistake social media as just one thing or concept when it is really a whole lot more. Social media mainly thrives on the social interaction between users. A few years ago the most widely adapted concept was to add a forum or a chat to a website to enable the communication between users, giving the user control over some of the content that was added to a website as well as facilitating the social interaction between users.

More recently social media has been embodied in “social networks” like Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Orkut, LinkedIn and more. The idea of creating connections between friends, co-workers, colleagues and more creating what’s been called the social graph. Social media is those networks and more.

I say more because it seems that almost all new websites that have launched in the last two and a half years have had some form of social media. Delicious exists to allow “social bookmarking”: a website bookmark list that is public and accessible to consumers and tracks the general trends and popularity between new stories, websites, blog posts and more.

In fact, a major push behind Web 2.0 is the idea of social media. Web 2.0 embraces the concept that the internet has matured into something that can be utilized as a platform. Social media takes center stage in embracing this new era by enabling user generated content or UGC. User generated content puts the user in control of the content that appears on a website rather than just one or two webmasters. This is the principal concept behind many of today’s popular social media websites.

In general, here are the types of social media as defined by Search Engine Watch:

1. News Content – Time sensitive events and news stories. Through the proliferation of social bookmarking websites and RSS syndication technology, news stories are distributed, blogged, bookmarked and rated in a rapid pace. Businesses looking to track and monitor the daily flow of information that can affect marketing and online business can use a service like online reputation monitoring to help manage their reputation based on this information online.
2. Sensational/Entertainment Content – This includes things that are aimed at attracting attention to something online. This category is most like to include “viral marketing” – where an ordinary video, blog post, or story can be proliferate through many thousands of people in a very short amount of time. YouTube videos are a perfect illustration of this category. Often people will blog, email or forward a link to a YouTube video they find entertaining or interesting making the video popularity increase immensely in a short amount of time.
3. Resource/Educational Content -You noticed that I pulled something from Wikipedia. If you’ve done a Google search researching information in the past, you’ve most likely come across this website. Wikipedia exists to give the consumer the ability to create the authoritative content on a topic. This type of social media is a perfect example of user generated content and social media.

Social media can seem like a complex topic, but it’s more than likely that in the past you’ve engaged in some form of social media. Whether it be commenting on a blog or news article, asking a question or responding on a forum, creating a social network account, or even just creating an online account to share pictures with your family. It all is considered social media!

We’ve been very hard at work putting the finishing touches on a new website for Patti Jefferson, a Realtor here in Indianapolis. The new website features a property search, community information, resources for buyers and sellers and a custom designed blog. You can visit her new website at http://www.tuckerteamindy.com.

Also, we want to congratulate Patti on exceeding sales of 3 million in 2007! Congratulations, Patti!

I haven’t posted a blog post in a little bit because I’ve been working on several new websites, including our own. We’ve just put the finishing touches on it and you can now view the new home of InspireMedia at http://www.ImInspired.net.

It’s a bold, yet simple design with a sprinkling of Ajax controls and highlights the services you’ve come to expect from InspireMedia and some you didn’t know we offered. So take a peek at the new InspireMedia!