In 2012, the old hypertext markup language (HTML), as we know it, will be quite different. The current version, still under development, is an all encompassing update to HTML4, Java Script and XHTML1. Its basically a standardization effort to avoid syntax errors, with new inclusions like the and tags. This improved mark up language also defines how invalid documents should be processed, thus ensuring that all browsers are able to treat syntactical errors in a similar manner. This new 2012 trend markup language to look out for is HTML5.

Another trend that has been quietly gaining momentum, with its explosion in to the hot trends list expected early 2012, is the use of large, over-sized headers and logos. The big idea behind this trend is to make an unforgettable first impression on your website visitor. This also takes care of the click-phobic visitor, who has, over time, grown to fear clicking due to years poor navigation experience. What your large headers and logos do is provide a platform similar to a splash page, minus the need for clicking. The visitor just scrolls down to get the details they need.

Single page websites, that have sliders, are also expected to hit the trends headlines. These websites will be more like a business card, showing all the necessary details a visitor may need, including your location, your social media hangouts and so on. The sliders too will improve functionality, by removing the need for the boring dragging the mouse over complicated navigation bars to access information. These sliders mean that instead of a slide show being incorporated in a website, the website itself, becomes the slideshow.

Finally, there is the mobile design, which is already starting to make a huge headway in to the top trends of 2012. With the increase in the popularity of smart phones and tablet technology, web designers will need to learn how to adapt their projects to accommodate this change in screen resolution and size. Luckily for them, there is CSS3, which allows a website designer to make a site that accommodates the mobile technology in to the web design. With more people buying smart phones and tablets, there is a need for websites to look as good on these gadgets. These are some of the 2012 web design trends that are expected to make headlines.

In the last few years, social media has become essential for success in blogging. Engaging socially with your users can help you build partnerships with other webmasters, gain more followers, and access people that can help take your blog to the next level. If done correctly over time, you can build a community that will allow you to sell products, hold events, and grow your brand. Social media plugins can help you easily integrate your blog into the social space.

Social Media WordPress Plugins

There are a few plugins that can transform your wordpress blog into a hub of social activity. The “Tweet – Like” plugin is essential for all blogs, because it allows a user to easily link to your article from their facebook or twitter accounts. It also supports the new “plus one” feature which will soon become important for site rankings. Tweet-Like is a free plug-in that can be setup in about 5 minutes. Tweet-Like gives you the ability to rotate headlines over your twitter, facebook, and plus one buttons. Try creating unique headlines that will draw a users attention straight to those buttons. A headline like “If you hate the recession but like this article, click like”, will grab attention and encourage users to share your story.

Another essential social plugin for WordPress is the “Facebook Social Plugin”. This is a widget that can be placed on your sidebar to provide “social proof” that you run a well-liked website. The plug-in shows images and usernames of every person that has clicked “like” on your website or story. This plug-in is especially important for websites that sell products. Showing proof that other users are happy with your service, will give users the trust that they need to use their credit card on your site. Social proof is a very effective way to show trustworthiness and professionalism, even if a visitor has never visited your site.

A “Twitter Counter” button can also add social proof to your site. You must have an active twitter account with followers in order for it to work. This button can be placed on the header of your site or on pages where users make credit card transactions. These buttons will show new visitors that you are a legitimate business, and are well liked by your customers.

Increasing User Engagement

One factor that is increasingly important to search engines today, is user engagement. Search companies have many ways to track a user’s activity on your site,, and if they visit other pages before leaving. Experts predict that user metrics will become an even more important factor in rankings. In this case you will need better content, more features, and better design to keep the search traffic flowing. One easy way to increase user engagement is to add a poll to your sidebar. The plugin WP-Polls is easy to use and free. It can create any type of poll you want, within minutes. A poll will keep the user on your site longer and more engaged with a attention grabbing question.

Another way to increase user engagement and page-views is a plugin called Outbrain. Outbrain adds 4 images to the bottom of every post, to other pages on your site. These images draw attention and make a user more likely to stay on your site longer. One drawback to outbrain, it that it rotates a paid ad into these images every once in a while. But, the benefits seem to outweigh this factor.

As social media and user engagement become more important, webmasters will have to adapt. Becoming more involved in the social space is essential to start any new site. Facebook is an enormous platform that site owners can no longer ignore. It is important to develop and change your site to stay ahead of the curve and keep your users coming back.

Mike runs the new relationship and dating site called Dating Tips 1. It provides users with online dating advice, how to read body language on a date, and tips to improve their success for meeting people online.

Most designers portfolios can be found on their website or provided upon request. A portfolio is simply a catalog that shows contracted websites previously handled by a designer. However, it should go without saying that designers with a sub-par website or those who don’t have websites should never be given any consideration. One should concentrate their search around designers who have very attractive portfolios placed on professionally designed websites.

The portfolios of some designers are normally filled with a lot of details. All the details on a particular portfolio must be considered. The portfolio of a designer who has been a web designer for a long period of time will definitely have a lot content. If the jobs handled by an experienced designer in the recent past are correlated to your needs, then you can feel comfortable knowing that designer is qualified for the task the client has at hand.

You should however obtain the contact information of several of their previous clients who were serviced by the designer. These previous customers should be contacted ether by telephone or by email. The previous clients will enlighten one on the competency and experience of a designer being examined. Be sure to ask about both the good and the bad aspects of their interaction. It is also important that you get a feel for how easy it was for the previous clients to communicate and get along with the designers as well as how close to what they requested the end result was.

The questions one will ask the previous customers should be prepared before calling them. Information the previous customers will give will center on how they view the service delivered by the particular website designer. Previous customers will also be able to furnish information on the time it took the designer to design and produce their business’ websites as well as any problems they may have encountered.

After enough information has been collected from a web developer’s portfolio and references what should follow is contacting the actual company. How well you get along with your web designer will dictate the tone for the rest of the project. Carrying out online research and consulting with friends and family members can help to validate information. Some friends and family members with experience in this area can help one during the process of searching for a highly experienced website designer. However, the importance of the use of online search engines should never be underestimated.

A business will be very competitive if it has a properly designed and managed website. Walnut Creek, California web design professionals like Fyresite.com normally develop high-end business and personal websites, often at a lower price than most other highly experienced professionals. When contacting a web design company like Fyresite.com, be sure to have all of the features, designs and content written down. This will help the designers understand the your wants and needs as a client. Be sure to discuss budget and timing to get understand what your dealing with. Walnut Creek, California has many web design companies, but determining which is best for your business is up to you!

Small businesses and entrepreneurial ventures have flourished in the Austin area, which has a number of resources designed specifically to support the ever-growing amount of startup businesses in the area. Austin, much like the rest of the state of Texas, is notorious for its tax structure, which is extremely commerce-friendly. To begin with there is no state personal income tax, nor does the state impose any corporate income tax. This city is a great location to be an entrepreneur, as it is popular for its support for business development, and even more so in the technology markets. In fact one-third of the Austin area’s payroll revolves around technological jobs. As Austin has the University of Texas, the city has a plethora of college students in the area, which not only increases entrepreneurial opportunities for youth markets but also provides skilled workers for these local businesses. In recent years Austin has developed a reputation for having one of the most educated workforces in the America.
However, growth in the metropolitan Austin consists of businesses of all sizes. Most notably it is a haven for small businesses, as it has become the 8th ranked best city for entrepreneurs to open up shop. Also, because Austin’s population growth has doubled itself in the last 20 years and it’s large minority population so closely reflects the nation’s future racial demographic, it is often used by national corporations or companies offering franchises as a test market. According to the most current federal data available Texas currently has 1,787,607 small businesses. In fact in 2010 alone, entrepreneurs started 565,000 new businesses each month. That is 340 out of 100,000 adult Texans started businesses each month in 2010.

Though there is this much business being done in the Austin area, there are far too few companies taking advantage of webdesign in Austin Texas. With the technological resources in the area many businesses are finding the companies offering these services too expensive to serve the small businesses around them. Because of this, companies are now looking to companies like Fyresite.com for their website needs. This day and age companies cannot afford to have a website that lacks a professional touch, but often times cannot afford more corporate webdesign and SEO companies. To rectify this problem Fyresite.com has entered the marketplace, offering professional websites at affordable rates. When Austin businesses are looking to beef up their online presence it is Fyresite.com that the turn to.

Many people are intimidated by technology or hesitant because they think that having a website created is going to be expensive. However, it all depends on what you need or want done. Websites can range from simple, easy and cheap to complex, difficult, and expensive. It is therefore extremely important that you check out all of your options and obtain various quotes before coming to a conclusion about the design and budget that you make available for its creation.

Therefore it is pertinent to check out at least several of the different companies that are offering this service. Of course each company will have their own website for you to look at and most will have a portfolio of some sort with examples of their work as well. This can often serve as a sample of what they have done in the past or can offer and at the least give you an indication of the quality of website that you can expect from hiring them.

One way for business owners to avoid unpleasant surprises is to talk to other business owners or people you know who have had a website designed for them and find out what they have to say about the process and the company that they used. This will give you an idea of whether or not those companies were pleasant to work with or not. Whether or not the person you are dealing with is approachable, understanding, and able to take any and all criticism or changes you may have in mind about the work that they have already done throughout the process is very important.

Some companies present pre-set prices for a website to be designed, while most quote prices depending on the number of pages, the types of content, and any tasks the website needs to be able to perform. However you decide to go about it, if you pursue a flat rate option it is imperative that you find out exactly what you can expect for your money, prior to entering into a contract. These deals tend not to come with any continuing support, however if you have a more static website that does not need updated it may be a superior arrangement.

Consistency in your requests of the web designers will help you get the end result that you want. This is often a reason people sometimes arrange to pay half the cost at the beginning of the project, and then pay the balance upon completion. This is especially common if your website is more complicated than normal. This solidifies the contract and also helps to build trust between both parties.

So when you are faced with trying to pick the best Tucson web design company the most important thing to remember is to take your time in making your decision as it pertains to who to hire. Also it is essential to make sure that both your and the design company’s expectations are clear. Keep in mind that there are a number of companies out there to choose from and there is no need to settle, only proceed with someone whom you feel will build a website that you will be proud to have represent your business.

The technology required and the desire to implement it has been around for years and is being perfected; there is just one problem. Though the technology is already being integrated in to millions of phones and is used overseas, extensive adoption of what is being referred to as mobile wallets is being slowed by a major battle between corporate giants in several industries behind the scenes. Mobile phone carriers, banks, credit card companies, payment networks and technology companies are just a few of the industries striving to produce and control these wallets. Before full implementation of this technology will happen these various corporations must first sort out which roles each will play in this new market and via what ways each will get paid.

The stakes in this battle are massive to say the least as the minute fees that are produced every time a consumer swipes their cards make up a market of tens of billions of dollars annually just from domestic use inside the United States alone.  Banks, mobile carriers, Apple and Google are all competing for domination of the new market. No one is seeing anything close to the actual potential profits and no one will until these powerhouse corporations sort it out. On one hand there are the long-established players in this game such as payment networks like Visa and MasterCard, along with banks who actually issue credit cards to patrons and want to stay at the center of any payment system and continue to collect the millions in fees from merchants, as they have for decades. However, on the other hand they are facing stiff competition battling with companies they see as intruders, invading their bread and butter market like Google, Apple, and Mobile carriers. These companies want to play a part in a new payment system by collecting fees via their control of the hardware themselves. Perhaps stuck in the middle of all this are the retailers, who provide and install the terminals that accept these mobile payments.

Visa and MasterCard currently dominate the market responsible for credit/debit card payments between banks and retailers. Currently, retailers are required to pay the banks that are issuing the cards a percentage of the total of each transaction, while payment networks like Visa receive their tribute in percentage of that ( typically for every $1 spent by a consumer the actual retailer is able to keep around 97 cents, the bank that is issuing the card swipes almost 2 cents while the one remaining penny is paid to the merchant’s bank for handling the transaction). Credit card and technology companies have talked about mobile wallets for well over a decade. But now, finally, the pieces are starting to fall into place and it is still unclear in what way all of the players will get paid. Will the number of hands in the cookie jar change or just how many cookies they each get, or even worse yet could the new costs make their way to consumers, possibly through new fees. Mobile carriers could easily force card issuers to pay them to store important payment credentials securely inside the phone.

Though there are multiple technologies that allow phones to transfer data wirelessly with other hardware, the front-runner for these types of payments is called N.F.C. (Near-Field Communication)

Past conversations between mobile carriers and banks have not been very fruitful because neither could agree on financial terms. According to analysts mobile carriers’ frustration with the banks, was the impetus for the joint venture between Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Discover to develop and implement their own mobile wallet. Called “Isis,” this system is expected to be introduced next year. Barclaycard, already a major player in Britain, will be the first issuer of the group’s in-phone credit card and sees it as an opportunity to expand in the United States.

Meanwhile, banks and credit card issuers have found a way to temporarily circumvent having to work with cellphone carriers. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp , JPMorgan Chase, and Visa, are all in various stages of developing wallets in order to provide this type of access to many of their own credit or debit cards. By designing their mode around a chip that consumers simply insert into a slot in certain phones, they were able to circumvent the need for the cooperation of mobile carriers. The long and short of it is that until the right companies ally themselves with each other with the right platform we may not see these types of technological advances.

How does it work?

Once you install the application on your mobile device you connect to it just like you would any Wi-Fi connection and it is ready to fly. the application has two flight-control options.  “In the beginner mode, users hold the left onscreen button to maneuver the Drone with the iPhone’s accelerometer–tilt it left and the Drone glides to the left, forward to move it forward, and so on. The right side onscreen button is a virtual joystick that increases and decreases the altitude, and also rotates the Drone. The advanced mode uses a single onscreen virtual joystick to control the Drone. Another major feature is the use of several AR.Drone on a network. Thanks to its own generated Wi-Fi network, players can create a game party where others players can join and play against each other. named AR.PURSUIT, makes it possible to have a battle between two AR.Drone. Hulls are available in three different colors to easily identify your AR.Drone.” (ardrone.parrot.com)

Specifications

Specs:

• Dimensions: 28 x 28 inches with hull; 29 x 11 inches without, 13.4 ounces
• Range- 50 meters / 160 feet
• Battery:
  • Fly time: 12 minutes
  • 3-cell lithium polymer battery
  • Capacity: 1000 mAh
  • Charge time: 90 minutes
• Motors: 4 x 15W electric brushless motors (3,500 rpm)
• Front camera:
  • VGA (640 x 480) CMOS camera
  • 93-degree wide-angle lens
  • 15 fps video
• Vertical camera:
  • QCIF (176 x 144) High-speed camera (CMOS)
  • 64-degree diagonal lens
  • 60 fps video
  • Horizontal stabilization
• Altimeter:
  • Ultrasound-based
  • Emission frequency: 40 kHz
  • Vertical stabilization
• Internal guidance system:
  • MEMS (micro electro mechanical system)
  • 3-axis accelerometer
  • 2-axis gyroscope
  • 1-axis yaw precision gyroscope
• Embedded computer:
  • ARM9 RISC 32-bit 468MHz
  • 128MB DDR RAM
  • Wi-Fi b/g
  • Linux OS
  • USB socket
• Cost: $300 on Amazon

1.         You have the ability to update or change your website as easily as you do your Facebook account. WordPress has a ‘Dashboard” that can be logged into from your internet browser. All of the editing or changes to your website can be made with a computer with an internet connection.  (You can control and edit your website from any computer with an internet connection.)

2.           No special software needed! You don’t need to know code or be familiar with software like Dreamweaver, Filezilla (file transfer protocol), Cpanel, or have other advanced programming knowledge in order to effectively change you website. You edit your site directly on the server. (Manage and Maintain your website with basic computer knowledge.)

3.         Easily change the look of your website with customizable website themes. This helps cut down on time and cost. There are hundreds of themes that can be customized and fitted to your specific business. As your business changes and grows your website can too, without the cost of hiring a skilled labor employee to manage your site. This is why most small businesses turn to companies like Fyresite.com to do this for them, with twice the skill and at half the cost of an employee.   (WordPress allows you to easily change and customize your website in the future with little website knowledge)

4.     Manage and update Meta Data for your site. As your business grows and changes, you can change your meta data on your website to affect search-engine optimization. WordPress has many SEO and Meta Data Plug-ins that can help in Search Engine Optimization of your website and because WordPress is a CMS, search engines can search content easier than traditional HTML websites.  (WordPress allows you to make your website or any publication easier to find in a search engine)

5.        You can download powerful plug-ins for you website in a matter of minutes. Plug-ins include sociable, contact form 7, translator, or buddy press. This allows you to turn your website into more than just a website, it allows you to optimize the various benefits you receive from you website. It makes you website more powerful, more functional, and more specific to your business.    WordPress MU makes it possible for those with a website to host their own blogging community, as well as control and moderate all the blogs from a single dashboard. (There are no limits to what you can do with WordPress, you can change your website as you business grows)

6.         WordPress is an Open Source software solution. The benefits of open source are it’s free to everyone and is updated on a regular basis. WordPress has over 50 million people using its software. (Free is always better!)