News

Around the Office: A Trip to Jingjiang, Google Says “No” to Black Hat SEO, Yoast Shares Knowledge, 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. Eva shared a video of her hometown, Jingjiang, located on the banks of China’s Yangtze River. The video shows some of the town’s epicurean attractions including steamed soup dumplings, fresh crab meat, and pig skin and chicken soup. It also provides a glimpse into daily life in Jingjiang, which we’d all like to experience in person. Daveed was interested to hear that Google plans to penalize sites that are overly search engine optimized.…
Around the Office: jQuery Selectors, Email Blasts, and Retro Web Design

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. Setting up your own selectors is extremely easy with jQuery, as Daveed was reminded this week thanks to a post outlining 12 awesome examples of jQuery selector extensions. Selectors serve the important role of matching a set of elements in a document. And while building custom selectors beyond the ones included in jQuery isn’t an everyday necessity, it certainly comes in handy and can make for more elegant code. Have you ever opened…
Around the Office: Next Nature, pea.rs, and CSS Wizardry

Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the OnlineFriendly.biz team and Kobayashi Online have found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. Daveed is optimistic that technology and nature don’t have to be in opposition. Next Nature is a website that seeks to explore how we can design, build and live in a nature caused by people. The philosophy behind it can be summarised by an innovative take on a classic Arthur C. Clarke quote: “Any Sufficiently Advanced Civilization is Indistinguishable from Nature.” Eva found a very useful site known as pea.rs that…
Timelines Are Coming to Facebook Pages This Month: Are You Ready?

All Facebook Pages, including your company’s, will be updated with the new Facebook Timeline layout by the end of March. An update may be needed to make sure your Page looks and performs correctly. The Facebook Timeline is an extension of the original Facebook layout that offers new features and a new look, but could also change your Facebook Page unexpectedly. For more on Facebook Timeline, visit Facebook’s information page. Individuals have had access to Timeline for months on their personal accounts, but it wasn’t until earlier this month that Facebook introduced Timeline for Pages. Facebook wants organizations to switch to…
Around the Office: Winning Facebook pages, elegant Web design, more

Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the OnlineFriendly.biz team and Kobayashi Online have found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. Roberto knows what it takes to create a winning Facebook Page, and it’s because of this that he recommends seven winning Facebook Page strategies for companies. Some of the best Facebook Pages techniques include having unique design, interesting content, interactive applications, re-posts of useful information, and regular activity.Check out the post for more ideas to make compelling Facebook Pages. Brent was a little nostalgic for the original Facebook layout after theygave all Facebook Pages the option to upgrade to the Timeline redesign, and are forcing the timeline…
Design Focus: Blind Barber

“Design Focus” is a regular Online Friendly feature that examines well-designed sites to show how Web designers have overcome some of the challenges of their profession. Blind Barber Blind Barber is a high-end barber shop with a location in New York and one opening in LA. We think their site does a good job of communicating a business’ culture and values through very tasteful design and atmosphere, as well as a sense of fun. In this Design Focus post, we put their unique website under our Web design lens. Picture Window There’s a reason that barber shops have big picture…
Around the Office: accountable apps, SEO mistakes, fun design, more

Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the OnlineFriendly.biz team and Kobayashi Online have found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. Daveed is interested in a regulationproposed in California requiring mobile application developers to explain what personal information will be recorded and how it will be used. According to reports, applications on Apple, Android, Blackberry, Windows, HP and Amazon stores must present users with an app privacy policy, and reports on data use. This will help defend the privacy rights of users, which are a major concern as we become increasingly tethered to our mobile devices.…
Around the Office: Interactive Charts, Bent Photos, Lost Reviews, more

Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the OnlineFriendly.biz team and Kobayashi Online have found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. Looking to show some compelling data? Daveed recommends using the JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit to not only set people see charts and figures as visualizations, but also to interact with them. Sure, it takes a little extra work than a typical pie chart, but the InfoVis Toolkit makes a huge impact. The White House even used it to break down the 2012 budget. Eva took a long look at Terry Border’s unusual photo gallery, which use bent-object sculptures and…
Around the Office: online piracy, video marketing, great site design, more

Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the OnlineFriendly.biz team and Kobayashi Online have found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. This was a busy week at Online Friendly since Kobayashi Online moved on Monday to its new location at 1200 Eglinton Ave. in Toronto. KO will now be under the same roof as Finesilver Design, giving clients access to all the insights, ideas, social media tools and technologies they need to communicate their brand amid changing consumer behaviour. Talk about a good move! Daveed is hoping for a peaceful solution to the war on…
Design Focus: Fontsmith

Design Focus is a regular Online Friendly feature that examines well-designed sites to show how Web designers have overcome some of the challenges of their profession. UK type design firm Fontsmith caught our attention with their calalog of creative fonts. In this Design Focus, we take a look at their website, and see if they put as much attention to their divs and style sheets as they do counters and serifs. Drawing attention to what’s important As a company that specializes in fonts, Fontsmith does well to draw attention to its fonts by using them in its site. For instance, the menu font is FS Sinclair Web…
Around the Office: Kobayashi Online moves, email marketing lingo, and more

Around the Office is a weekly group blog that shows what the OnlineFriendly.biz team and Kobayashi Online have found interesting, funny, poignant, or otherwise notable over the past week. If you haven’t heard yet, Kobayashi Online is moving to its new Toronto location at1200 Eglinton Ave. East, Suite 801. Everyone has been busy packing and getting organized for the move in addition to making the online world friendly. Roberto invites you to learn his language with the help of 25 email marketing terms. Some terms include: false positive (when a legitimate permission-based email is incorrectly filtered or blocked as spam), open rate (the percentage…
Kobayashi Online has moved!

After many great years at 2243A Danforth Ave, Kobayahsi Online is moving to 1200 Eglinton Ave. East, Suite 801, Toronto as of February 6, 2012. We think the move will help inspire us and our clients to innovate, explore and look ahead. Plus, Kobayashi Online will now be under the same roof as Finesilver Design. As the online world evolves, consumer behaviour is changing rapidly. By combining Kobayashi and Finesilver digital, marketing and design capabilities, our clients will be able to tap into insights, ideas, social media tools and technologies that engage and keep consumers and communities closer to brands. It’s a new world of marketing communications.…