New and improved Tech Source and CIO portals have been launched on the Technology First website, www.technologyfirst.org. TDH Marketing was instrumental in designing and developing both applications. The Tech Source interactive tool was created to help connect IT users and providers based on the alignment of products, services and solutions. The CIO portal was developed to facilitate communication of critical yet confidential information among regional CIOs.

Initial focus groups indicated that the key to the success of these applications was ease-of-use. The main functionality of Tech Source allows each member company to log in to the Technology First website and create a company profile that describes the products and services they offer, as well as the technologies they provide and their contact information. From this profile, companies can connect with potential users or prospective customers through the search function.

To ensure ease-of-use, TDH created and implemented  a ‘tagging’ system that easily allows a user to search for, add, or create relevant ‘tags’ that align with their company description, be it a service or product that they provide. The tagging system is interactive, evolving, easy to use and most importantly, up-to-date. The CIO portal operates under the same tagging system.

TDH also... Read More

Today, I had the opportunity to see a preview of Tom Skill's opening keynote presentation.  It was the Rickey Henderson of presentations.  It was the perfect lead-off to a great day.  The presentation touches on and can be referenced by every presentation for the remainder of the day.  Tom Skill and his colleagues at UD used 80 sources to research what the technology landscape will be in 2013.  Attendees will learn their findings and also walk away with something else.

If you found this article, chances are you were looking for it so I won't go into great detail on defining exactly what IPC is, but the short description is that it's a method in which you can pass information to and from another process on the server. In my example today, I will be using IPC to build a translator that essentially takes text submitted via a web form and passed it through command line tools and returns your text with a funny dialect applied to it.

Step one in this project is to first get your hands on the command line translator itself, and for that I found the following source archive at this link. My apologies, but the scope of this article doesn't cover how to compile these translators, and there's no guarantee it will run on your server, but for informational purposes I will say that I had no trouble building them on a Debian Linux machine.

Now that the translators are compiled and running, we need to build an interface for it in PHP. The interface I'm going to build will be nothing fance, it will consist of a textarea field for our text to... Read More

Flash banner ads are everywhere, and if you have even a little bit of experience with Adobe Flash, you may be tasked with creating an online advertisement. If the ad is fairly simple with little content and/or imagery you will probably have little to no problem meeting file size restrictions. On the flip side, clients may have an abundance of information and want an exciting ad that seems impossible to squeeze into 40k!

Squeezing out those final kilobytes

Step 1: Cutting Back

Don’t be afraid to cut out fluff. The client may want 10 photos, where maybe 2-3 will get the message across. There may be room to tighten up copy and/or the number of transitions in the ad. As always, keep an open line of communication with your client. Explain to them the steps you have taken to conserve file size and why things will need to be cut to meet file size restrictions.

Step 2: Go Vector if Possible

Vector graphics are incredibly small compared to raster images.

A little explanation:

Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon(s), which are all based on mathematical equations, to... Read More

When the 20th Century Fox picture “Jumper” staring Hayden Christensen was being released on DVD, the launch event was scheduled to take place at the Appenzeller Visualization Laboratory in our very own Dayton Ohio. We were tasked through our partner, daytaOhio, to come up with a compilation of video clips that could be played using their virtual reality CAVE environment.

With footage from 20th Century Fox we decided to create a “moving” fight sequence. The video would jump from wall to wall, depending on the direction the characters were taking. For example, in one instance the characters are falling off of a building so the video would jump down to the floor of the visualization CAVE during the fall. Each wall of the CAVE uses its own projector controlled by a separate PC.

We took the original footage and broke it down into 4 different clips: left wall, center wall, right wall, and floor. Each clip either displayed active video, or black (when not in use). Now for the tricky part: Create a method where the video clips start at the exact same time at the press of a button and run in perfect sync.

We... Read More

TDH Marketing, Inc. celebrated its 16th Anniversary on March 1, 2010. Since it’s founding in 1994, the firm has grown significantly and employs a talented staff with proven experience and capabilities in web site development and interactive marketing, video production, research and planning, advertising, public relations, creative design and branding. TDH offers a full range of marketing and interactive services to clients on a local, national and international level. TDH Marketing is often recognized for its innovative, results-based approach to marketing and business development. Based in Dayton, Ohio, TDH serves organizations of all sizes in a variety of industries.

I began my career in Information Technology back at Wright State University in 1974.  I didn't know anything about computers when I started, but a friend that was at WSU at the time showed me some programs and I was attracted by the logic, their math-like quality and the promise of avoiding a bunch of annoying liberal arts classes.  But little in my college experiences prepared me for how much emotions play in the technology field, either good or bad.  I've collected a few of those experiences in this article to share with you.  And if you're ever needing an ice-breaker when in the land of techies, just ask then about their most hair-raising experience.  You're sure to hear an earful and get the conversation going.

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Paul Moorman and I often talk about different software we use and web sites that we visit.  I liked his blog posts about what he uses but I did not think that anyone would care what I used.  I am in a unique position of being close to the IT industry, without the need to answer to regulations or an IT department, and without sensitive data on my computer.  That gives me the unique freedom to try new software.  Additionally, I have a great computer that lets me clog my registry with these new programs.  Credit for most of these finds goes to Lifehacker.com.  Here is what I use.

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