News
-
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 recommends checking out the sides from Mark Sadecki’s presentation. Accessible websites make online friendly. Our font-focussed designer, Eva is always on…
-
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 regions. Setting up appointments based on customer convenience and recommending solutions based on customer needs (and not higher margins) are just…
-
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 can happen when you gather dozens of WordPress developers into the same room. WordCamp gives us the opportunity to chat…
-
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 can use more easily.Designer Eva played with Patternizer to create some nifty CSS 3 website backgrounds. The Patternizer web app…
-
Around the Office: The Truth in Taglines, Finding Images with Photo Pin, the Cult of Disruption, 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. Believing that marketing is a promise, Brent was pleased to read Andris Pone’s blog post on less-than-truthful company taglines. Does grocery shopping at Metro deliver on the promise of “Food at its best”? How does Telus live up to the tagline: “The future is friendly”? And is Tim Hortons actually “Always fresh”? Sometimes a tagline can actually draw attention to a brand’s shortcomings. Andy discovered Photo Pin, which is an incredibly useful site that helps…
-
Around the Office: Meme-Inspired Commercials, Google+ SEO, 19th Cen. Futuristic Predictions
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. Caroline was excited to see an advertiser use the popular “Charlie Bit My Finger” meme as the inspiration of a new commercial for Ragu pasta sauce. With its 489 million views, the YouTube video, which depicts youngster Charlie gleefully biting his older brother Harry, has achieved widespread popularity on the Internet. Some have attributed its success to the “visceral emotions it arouses in viewers”. Regardless, it seems inevitable a popular meme would be used in…
-
Around the Office: Opening the Curtain of Online Privacy, 3D Printing, and Vanishing Facebook Likes
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 and Daveed are excited for the possibilities of a 3D-printing revolution now that the price of this technology – which has been around for years – has fallen. This will have huge creative potential for printing out original designs and products, and inevitable legal hassles over counterfeit products created using 3D printers. Still, it is exciting to see if this technology will evolve from the realm of large corporations and dedicated hobbyists to the…
-
Teaching and Learning WordPress at the WordCamp Happiness Bar
Helping people people out at the WordCamp Toronto Happiness Bar turned out to be really fun. And we learned a bunch of new things too! One of the great things about the WordPress community is how we’re all able to learn and grow together. Some of the people I talked with included a high-school teacher whose students use WordPress to create sites for clubs and year book; a designer who wanted to know the best way to structure the menus on a site he’s building; and a photographer who wanted to get more control over her site and not rely…
-
Kobayashi Online’s WordCamp Ticket Giveaway Ends
We had a tremendous number of entries in our WordCamp Toronto ticket contest, and we’d like to thank everyone who took the time to enter. The contest closed on Monday, and the following winners were randomly drawn and notified by email: Neil G. Lynn J. Leonard S. Catherine G. Colleen C. Mara S. The contest had been originally for five tickets. As a Silver Sponsor, however, Kobayashi Online was given a number of tickets, and we had one left over after our team members had gotten their tickets. We added this ticket to the draw. See you at Toronto WordCamp!
-
Around the Office: Preparing for WordCamp Toronto, Text-Only Art Text Books, and QR Code Generators
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. David will be going to WordCamp Toronto with a fully charged phone and some favourite apps for events to help make the most of it. He also put together a list of other things to bring to WordCamp Toronto such as business cards, a plan, an elevator pitch, and questions.We’re all really excited to be sponsoring WordCamp Toronto, and we’ve also been getting lots of entries into our contest for free tickets to the event.…
-
Mobile Apps to Use at WordCamp Toronto
WordCamp Toronto, the “unconference” on everything WordPress, is coming up and we want to help prepare you to get the most out of it as possible. In this post, we’ll go through a few different iPhone and Android mobile apps that you can use to record observations, connect with other attendees, schedule your time and navigate your way through WordCamp. So, before WordCamp (September 29-30, 2012) arrives, be sure to load these apps on your phone and head into the event with a full charge to best maximize your attendance! Take Notes Using Evernote Enabling you to keep track of…