Apple researching universal touchscreen remote with adaptable user interface for future TVs

Reblogged from 9to5Mac:

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A patent application published by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office earlier today reveals Apple is flirting with the idea of a universal touchscreen controller capable of controlling multiple devices including a “television, a video tape player, a video disk player, a stereo, a home control system, or a computer system.” The patent application is titled “Apparatus and Method to Facilitate Universal Remote Control” and was filed Sept.

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Can't wait for the talking TV

Check out the keynote iCloud at http://ping.fm/HESz3

Flexible / Responsive Web Design | Web Design Greenville, SC

What is Flexible or Responsive Web Design?…..Is it important for my web site?

Flexible or Responsive web design is ability of your website to interpret the user’s behavior and accommodate the user no matter what platform, device or browser they are using. So if the user is on an iPhone the pages loads correctly, images re-size and scale down in size for bandwidth, the same goes for any other mobile device, laptop, or desktop.

So does this mean I need to develop 20 different versions of my web site as well as be on the lookout for new emerging technologies and then re-create a whole new version of my web site? The answer is no. You do need to have a web site that uses fluid, or flexible layouts that can recognize when it switches from a laptop to a desktop and so on. To sum it up in a phrase you need a “smart-web-site.” A smart web site will respond to the user’s browser, screen size, or device.

Just like you can have a “Smart Home” that can associate you entering a room in your house and dim the lighting, adjust the heating or turn on the TV or Stereo via a PIR (Passive Infrared). Your web site will automatically know that a user is using Android phone and in response will show him/her a screen that fits in landscape mode or portrait mode. It will scale the images on your site accordingly or remove them all together to conserve bandwidth. Minimize your logo and present mobile information at the users fingertips. You can interface with certain phone functions, such as: SMS, Maps, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare and of course let’s not forget the actual phone.

So the answer is Yes, this new form of developing and serving up web sites is very important and if you plan on your web site being able to be accessed by a wide variety of users and platforms it is an absolute necessity. Especially, if you have a social campaign in mind or wish to stay connected with your customers/users no matter where they are.

If you would like to learn more about Responsive Web Design please feel free to comment on this post or you can email me at dwerne@mojoe.net or call 864-859-9848.

Also if you would like further reading on the subject of Responsive Web Design you can visit the links below:

Smashing Magazine
A List Apart

Content Management Systems AKA (CMS) | Web Design Greenville, SC

Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, and DotNetNuke….Oh My!

Which content management system to use? What happens if my site is done in one content management system but my developer quits, takes up another job, or decides not to be a web developer anymore? Then, with some CMS, the developer or the company that created your site you are stuck. Why, you may ask? Well the reason is easy: Most CMSs are fundamentally complex because they are powerful; require time to learn; and most web hosting companies only know one or two major CMS. Here at Mojoe.net  we have used all of them—at least the four major types– in some form or fashion and we have to say that while some are free to download and use they require the user to navigate risky file downloads from the internet and navigating ‘permissions’ on web server for files and databases.  Here our expertise is critical.

The two main ones that we use and support are WordPress (WP) and DotNetNuke (DNN). We have also used Joomla and Drupal for clients who have required that we use their preferred or ‘legacy’ CMS when deploying or developing their web sites.

WordPress, is a great free CMS that allows anyone to maintain their web site; WP  includes a blog, e-commerce, videos, slideshow, or 1000s other plugins– a vast majority of them free. WordPress has been around since about 2001 and has grown into a well-supported CMS with themes, plugins, and mobile support. WordPress, can be installed with Apache or IIS Web Server and uses MySQL as the database engine. We recommend this to our clients that would like a small to medium web site that they can grow themselves. We even use the system ourselves for our own blog. We have the ability to customize our clients theme by styling each WordPress via a custom cascading style sheet (CSS); plugins; Google Analytics; tags; categories; and then submit the site to search engines.  You can find out more about WordPress by visiting: http://wordpress.org/about/,

DotNetNuke (DNN) is our premium CMS and is the one that we recommend for clients that are looking for medium to large business web sites. This CMS is based off of ASP.net which is conveniently integrated into other business applications based on Microsoft’s .NET platform. DNN can be installed in IIS and typically uses SQL Server for its database engine. DNN has a free version as well as an enterprise version. We use the enterprise version for our clients which allow for developer support as well as we can customize each web site ‘portal’ to each specific client. This CMS allows the installation of modules which can be added some for free but the majority cost to add to the system. The cost can vary depending upon the type of modules that you wished installed, modules can vary from chat systems, ecommerce, newsletters, email blasting, blogs, video, slideshow rotation, wiki, RSS feed, announcements, Google Analytic, and many more.  The great thing about Mojoe.net is that we can program our own modules, custom design your ‘skin’ (the look, feel, layout, fonts, and colors of your web site), create a custom CSS, optimize your site, add Google Analytics, and then submit the site to search engines. If you would like more information you can visit:http://www.dotnetnuke.com/

Drupal. This is a free content management system that is community supported but can be troublesome at time. This system uses PHP and can run on Apache or IIS while using MySQL as its database engine. In the last year,or so though the support and the community have grown a great deal, and the number of themes that are available run in the thousands. Drupal, is a good content management system but to integrate into other business applications without long development times and bugs can be an issue that can cost time and money. To find out more about Drupal please visit: http://drupal.org/

Joomla, this is another free content management system that is community supported and has its bugs.  This CMS can run on Apache or IIS web server and uses MySQL as its database engine. Joomla, is the most recent CMS (2005) from the 4 CMS in this post. We recommend this one the least because of its issues as well as the fact that the support base for this CMS has not grown has fast as the others. This CMS uses PHP and is primarily deployed on Linux-based OS (Operating System) but can be deployed on Windows Servers just like Drupal. To find out more about Joomla please visit: http://www.joomla.org/

Ask Questions, Questions, Questions
So in conclusion, do your homework about what CMS you would like to use, see if your web design company or web developer knows more than one CMS, check and see how difficult or easy it will be to move your site to another hosting company / provider. Find out what platform your web site is using, such as Linux or Windows? What CMS is your web developer using? Do they know more than one CMS? If so what are they?

What about Mac and Magento? – I will save this for another post all unto itself.

www.mojoe.net and www.liquidvideotechnologies.com just posted business profiles on LinkedIn, you can check them out by going to http://ping.fm/73h2l and http://ping.fm/AQdTo for