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…
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4 Reasons Design is Crucial for Small Businesses
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
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!
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!
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
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…
Around the Office: Accessible Talk on Accessibility, Weekly Knit Fonts, Mobile Design Beyond WebKit, More!
Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the Kobayashi Online team has found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. As far as we’re concerned, inclusiveness should be one of the key features of the web – everyone should be able to experience webpages. This is why Kobayashi Online sponsored and attended Accessibility Camp Toronto, a gathering of people who want everyone to experience and enjoy the Internet. For an introduction to accessible web design, Brent…
Around the Office: Procurement with Diversity in Mind, Treating Customers Equitably, A Raspberry PI Update, More!
Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the Kobayashi Online team has found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. Brent thinks Toronto businesses can benefit from diversity. That’s why he’s encouraging business leaders to attend the “DiverseCity Counts Procurement” event on November 28. Event organizers, Maytree Canada, will also be releasing the next DiverseCity Counts report that night, which will explore the extent to which diversity in procurement has taken hold in the GTA, and how it compares to other…
WordCamp Toronto Developers 2012 Inspires and Educates
Some incredible things can happen when you gather dozens of WordPress developers into the same room. Kobayashi Online was a silver sponsor of WordCamp Toronto Developers 2012, which brought together roughly 260 attendees to discuss everything to do with building websites with the WordPress Content Management System. Because we do most of our web development and design on WordPress, we were especially excited to see so many people learning about WordPress and realize the full potential and power of WordPress. Incredible things…
Around the Office: Patternizer Backgrounds, Shopp E-Commerce, Marketing as Storytelling, and More!
Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the Kobayashi Online team has found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. Building an e-commerce WordPress website? Savvy developer Scott recommends the Shopp plugin, which he decided to use partly because it works, and partly because of the depth of documentation for both developers and users. After all, we prefer plugins that we can figure out how to customize easily. And our clients appreciate having something they…