Author: Brent Kobayashi

Around the Office: The Year’s Top Plugins, Input from out of Thin Air, the Value of Mind Share, and More!

Posted on January 6, 2013 by - News

Around the Office is a weekly group blog of what the Kobayashi Online team has found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. A Year in 100 WordPress Plugins Andy was interested in seeing where his favourite new WordPress plugins ranked in ManageWP’s top-100 list of free WordPress plugins for 2012. The top plugin was Types, which lets site administrators create and manage custom fields and post types for better site organization. Given the great volume of useful plugins,…

Social Media and Online Marketing Trends for 2012

Posted on December 31, 2012 by - News

It seems that social networks and the Internet in general have been playing an increasingly important role in our lives. While the online world hasn’t completely displaced our real-world connections, we certainly rely on it as a way to socialize, follow news and events, shop, find information, and otherwise live digitally. As we said in our year-end review of web design and development trends, we welcome new industry developments but are mindful to take them with a grain of salt.…

Creating an Online Experience for The Real Estate Experience

Posted on December 21, 2012 by - News

The Real Estate Expereince combines the knowledge and experience of RE/MAX First Realty Ltd. Brokerage Sales Representatives Elizabeth Haug and Kevin McCullough, who serve Scarborough and communities in the Durham Region (including the Ajax-Pickering area). The website and logo we created showcases the quality of service clients have come to expect from TREE. Project Details therealestateexperience.com website was created using the WordPress Content Management System. The site, which has a private area only for members, includes a dynamic News page that allows editors to create…

Web Design & Development Trends of 2012

Posted on December 21, 2012 by - News

As web designers and developers, we trust our core design sensibility to create websites around principles of taste and usability. But we also love seeing new ideas and new current website trends. In this post, we’ll run down some of the web design and development trends we found captivating in 2012. 1. Single-Page Websites Navigating through single page websites is faster than clicking through multiple pages. You can easily browse through text and media by scrolling, sliding, or flicking –…

Around the Office: YouTube Monetization, Heuristics, Small Business Design, and More!

Posted on December 17, 2012 by - News

Around the Office is a weekly group blog of what the Kobayashi Online team has found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. Psi Makes Millions on YouTube Video Daveed was happy to see Korean pop star Psy make more than $8 million from YouTube for his hit song “Gangnam Style”, signaling a change in how pop artists can turn a profit from their work. One of the key ingredients of his success has been his reluctance to strictly enforce copyright over…

4 Reasons Design is Crucial for Small Businesses

Posted on December 13, 2012 by - News

A diagram showing that many considerations such as usability, professionalism, and simplicity are all manifested through design.

People sometimes think design is superfluous to something’s function – like the sprinkles on a cupcake. But when it comes to the mission of a company, great design can help bring to the surface everything that makes your business unique and great at what it does. Whether it’s the product itself, or a logo, flyer, business card, or website, everything employing design helps customers understand a business. It can be particularly useful for a small business, which doesn’t have a large budget or wide brand recognition, to invest in…

Around the Office: Emailing Iframes, DJ Fees, and Creative 404 Pages

Posted on December 9, 2012 by - News

Around the Office is a weekly group blog of what the Kobayashi Online team has found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. Iframes and Email Don’t Always Mix Roberto would never send you an iframe in an email message because iframes don’t consistently work in email. Why does this matter? Whether they know it or not, people use the iframe tag when embedding video from services like YouTube. When you, for instance, copy one of these online videos into an email, you’re not…

Around the Office: Internet Freedom in Syria, Windows 8 Gestures, Email Messages that Hit the Mark, and More!

Posted on December 2, 2012 by - News

Syrian protesters with a sign reading "The Syrian people are slaughtered; where is the world?"

Around the Office is a weekly group blog of what the Kobayashi Online team has found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. As a believer in Internet freedom and democracy, Daveed was saddened to hear that Syria had essentially blocked its citizens from the Web, an action that many attribute to the authoritarian government’s desire to disrupt rebel communication and the online reporting of civil conflict. We couldn’t help but be reminded of Hosni Mubarak’s similar actions, just weeks before being…

Around the Office: On the Importance of Websites, Building a Brand on Pinterest/Instagram, Making Meaningful Content, and More!

Posted on November 26, 2012 by - News

Around the Office is a weekly group blog of what the Kobayashi Online team has found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. Social networks are, of course, a great way to drive traffic to a website, and David and Daveed found it astounding this week that some major companies ignore the marketing potential of image-oriented social networks including Pinterest and Instagram. If you need some inspiration, Donna Moritz. provides some great tips on how businesses can use Pinterest, a social network that has grown to 10 million users faster…

Building an Internet that Includes Everyone: Accessibility Camp Toronto

Posted on November 22, 2012 by - News

Over the weekend the Kobayashi Online team had the pleasure of attending and sponsoring the second annual Accessibility Camp Toronto. Held on November 17, 2012 at OCAD University, this “un-conference” gathered accessibility experts and those hoping to make websites and applications that everyone can use. The basic goal of accessible web design is to create online content that’s more usable to those with disabilities. But one of the great side effects is that it can also improve the overall usability of a website for…