Winter/Spring 2010 Newsletter Issue 20

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about inorbital www.inorbital.com
We’re Now 10 Years Old!

It’s our birthday! We have celebrated with a little face lift and we are proud of it. The Inorbital.com website recently had a nip and tuck. We have also added a new blog to help you with topics about managing your website. Check it out and let us know what you think.

With 10 years of building dynamic websites under our belt, we can now look back as old folks do when reminiscing about the good old days. Well, here goes a little flash back to 1999…

At the time, all media was plastered with news and gossip about Bill Clinton’s extracurricular activities in the White House – this was the notorious Lewinsky and Clinton scandal. The Senate trial occurred within the first two months of 1999, followed by President Clinton's impeachment. And in February 1999, the Senate acquitted the President on both counts of impeachment after failing to achieve a simple majority.

The other big news of 1999 worth mentioning is, of course, the lead up to Y2K. “Who knew that impending doom was going to be so popular? No other issue in the history of the world has brought together hermits, religious zealots, survivalists, thrill-seekers, techno-wizards and clueless politicians like the Y2K bug. Everyone had opinions, but nobody had the answers. Maybe if we all just listened to Prince's song "1999", we would have found out what we were looking for. "If you didn't come to party, don't bother knockin' on my door/I got a lion in my pocket, and baby he's ready to roar/Yeah, everybody's got a bomb, we could all die any day/But before I'll let that happen, I'll dance my life away." Then again, maybe not.” We certainly couldn’t reminisce about 1999 without bringing up that Prince tune, could we?

Thanks to all of you who have made the last ten years a truly rewarding experience. Looking forward to next 10 years of challenges and rewards!
Our pick of the
best designed websites of 2009
Here are few impressive and award-winning websites that are worth mentioning. Beware: they may be interesting and engaging.
Waterlife is the story of the last great supply of fresh drinking water on earth—The Great Lakes. Taking all the major content and themes from the award-winning documentary and combining them with Flash, Papervision, memorable sound design and an amazing soundtrack, it tells the story of the extreme state of distress that the Great Lakes are in and how it affects the water that 35 million people drink every day.

Although Internet connection speed is on the rise, slower connections sometimes mean the 100 percent figure can be slow to arrive. Once it does, the beloved (or bemoaned) preloader vanishes instantly. As technology continues to sprint forth, the website preloader is loading faster and faster. This digital archive pays homage to what will one day cease to exist. PrettyLoaded is both a digital museum and a tribute to a rapidly evolving medium. It is an infinitely loading Web site in which each preloader reveals another.

To articulate the essence of the Herman Miller brand, this site embraces the concept “for a better world around you.” It incorporates a flexible layout, interactivity, research and tools while also weaving in storytelling with videos and a blog of Herman Miller’s insights.

NYXTrac is a stock heat map, representing the performance of all common stocks listed on the NYSE Euronext. Utilizing Yahoo!’s market data, the heat map renders the individual percent changes in market value for more than 1,800 U.S. and non-U.S. stocks, providing an at-a-glance view of the market. It illustrates the overall performance of the NYSE stock market with a more visual approach than looking at a single index value such as the Dow Jones Index.

Every year, Oregon celebrates the state’s diverse food and drink through the Oregon Bounty promotion. This resource for traveling foodies also announces the Oregon Bounty Cuisinternship Contest (an all-expenses paid trip to be a chef, rancher or brewmaster).

For an audience of beginners and lapsed and occasional anglers of all ages and lifestyles, this site drives participation in the classic American pastimes of fishing and boating while protecting aquatic resources for future generations. It’s an immense volume of information, with extensive mapping data for fish species (where to find them and what it takes to catch them) and bodies of water (fishing and boating resources that include facility information and user relationships).
Our Staff Picks Of Our Favourite Websites
Submitted by Lori Wilson

http://jquery.com/
A JavaScript Library designed to make writing JavaScript fast and concise.

Submitted by Jennifer Lee

http://foodgawker.com/
Foodgawker is a one-stop showcase of the best of food bloggers. The overall design is clean yet vibrant and it presents itself as a gallery of amazing food photography. Each photograph links to the user’s blog that contains the recipe and other information.

http://hypem.com/
The Hype Machine is an MP3 blog aggregator. Thousands of MP3 and Music blogs are listed within this one site, allowing users to directly download or stream the music from the website.

http://www.etsy.com
Etsy is a giant on-line marketplace of hundreds of thousands of users, geared specifically to the handmade, artisan and craft community. The site features a wide range of tools for both the buyer and the seller.

http://www.flickr.com
Flickr is an image and video sharing website, with members from all over the world. Users can not only embed and share personal images, but they are also encouraged to participate in the on-line communities, create “galleries” of other members’ work and to utilize Flickr’s third-party applications for printing and independent publications.

Submitted by Ken Yang

http://www.sixrevisions.com
A web blog with web design and development tips.

Submitted by Charles Chan

http://www.experts-exchange.com
Online resource for ANY tech-related issues, such as hardware, software, dev, test, pm and security.

http://www.engadget.com
A site which offers blog style news and information about the latest tech developments and tech gadgets.

http://www.mashable.com
A blog which focuses on Web 2.0 and social media/networking news – one of the biggest/most followed news sites.

http://www.thestar.com
The Toronto Star website.
Submitted by Giuliano (the new dad) Liker

http://net.tutsplus.com/
Nettuts+ is a site aimed at web developers and designers offering tutorials and articles on technologies, skills and techniques to improve how you design and build websites.

http://psd.tutsplus.com/
Psdtuts+ is a blog/Photoshop site made to house and showcase some of the best Photoshop tutorials around.

http://www.thefwa.com/
FWA stands for Favourite Website Awards, an industry recognised internet award program and inspirational portal, established in May 2000.

http://www.csselite.com/
CSS website development showcase and award website.

http://onepagelove.com/
One Page Love showcases the best single page website designs on the web!

Submitted by Vlad Geller

http://www.ted.com
An ideas site in which different people share their ideas. Al Gore and Bill Clinton were past presenters.

http://www.Fora.tv
A presentation and lectures website similar to Ted, people sharing their ideas and views.

http://academicearth.org/
Watch full courses and lectures.

Submitted by Tony Tullio

http://www.alistapart.com
Features articles related to web design/development/content and its standards and practices (also submitted by Charles Chan).

http://www.sitepoint.com/
Information specifically for professional web developers and designers.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/
Useful and innovative information and trends related to Web design and development.

http://www.mapmyride.com/
Users are able to visualize their health and fitness training progress through the use of maps, workout logs, fitness calculators/tools, and user-led community groups.
In This Issue

We’re Now 10 Years Old!

10th Anniversary Hard Cover

What’s New at Inorbital

Our pick of the best designed websites of 2009

Website Owner's Manual: The Inorbital Blog

Useful Image Editing Tools for Website Administrators

Our Staff Picks Of Our Favourite Websites

About Inorbital

Sites designed and Launched
10th Anniversary Hard Cover
Inorbital 10th Anniversary Hard CoverWe recently printed a very limited edition collection of our featured projects from over the past 10 years. Of course, we love all of our work, so putting together the collection required many months of contemplation in order to narrow the list down to this snapshot of what we have done. This hardcover book is something we have been meaning to get done for some time now but we had some difficulty with the unfamiliar non-web medium. As with most projects, even before it had been printed, we have a few changes in the works for the next iteration.

Check out the page by page here.
What’s New at Inorbital
Inorbital welcomes Fabio Costa to the Inorbital team. He brings several years of experience with developing advanced web applications and websites using a plethora Microsoft technologies.
We are now looking to hire an experienced middle developer to bridge the gap from front-end to back-end. Contact us for more info.
Follow Inorbital on TwitterFollow us on Twitter for the occasional tweet about industry info and what’s going at Inorbital.
Website Owner's Manual:
The Inorbital Blog
Our topics of discussion will revolve around website owners and the common problems and questions that they may encounter within the web world. The Blog consists of good and not so frequently asked questions pertaining to website content management, security, scams and hacking, search engines, social media, e-commerce and stories regarding new and valuable web design tools and resources.

What every new website owner needs to know about search engine optimization
Do-it-yourself SEO basics.

Functions of Well Built Association Web Site
Every association is unique in the way it operates. That's why standard systems often don't work. Over the years of working with a variety of associations and non-profits, I've come to understand each organization has a unique process of managing new members and renewals.

Meta Tag Best Practice
What all website owners need to know about Meta Tags.
What are Meta tags? A "meta tag" is HTML code which is located in the "header" of your webpage.

How to Choose an SSL Certificate
So which provider do you go with? There are many providers and they each have several options with various prices. Use the chart below as a guideline:

Finding Plagiarized Web Content with Copyscape.com
A new type of search tool that searches for copies of your page content on the web. Copyscape.com is a handy tool that will scour the web for any copy that resembles your own...essentialy looking for stolen copy which is much to common when it comes to websites and even easier to detect.
Useful Image Editing Tools for Website Administrators
Here are some tools for those of you who don’t have the budget for Photoshop or even the other less expensive desktop image editing applications.

Free Online image editors – variety of good options listed in this blog. http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/tools/
tools/10-best-free-web-based-image-editors.html


Smush.it is a great web-based image compression and optimization tool. Reducing the graphic file size (which increases website performance) while maintaining quality. http://developer.yahoo.com/
yslow/smushit/
About Inorbital
Inorbital delivers professional, customized, award-winning web site development with goal- driven website design. We also apply the freshest and most current principles to achieve a clean, clear and successful web 2.0 web experience.


dynamic flash animation

ecommerce and shopping carts

event & conference registration

database integration

content management

email marketing campaigns
Since our last issue,
we have helped design and launch the following websites:
ISES
Prostate Cancer Canada
Yellow Balloon Projects
The Hinks-Delcrest Foundation
Sweet Pea
Institute for Catholic Education
Kidney Cancer Care
Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals
OCE Discovery 10
Nexj
Canadian Education Project
National Docent Symposium
CMAS
iWorld design inc.
Staples 2010 Conference
Center for Surgical Intervention & Innovation
Higher Education Strategy Associates
Stiletto Sprint