Earlier this year, we announced a new Crown Point Design program called the Kaizen Project. It’s a program that offers non-profit organizations the opportunity to receive a complete online makeover at no cost.

Now, we’re happy to announce that we’ve selected San Diego non-profit Just In Time for Foster Youth as our 2012 Kaizen recipient. This organization provides transitioning foster youth with opportunities for self-sufficiency through emergency support, essential resources, and caring personal guidance. JIT is currently the only volunteer-driven non-profit organization in San Diego that functions as an extended family for youth who have aged out of the foster care system.

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Crown Point Design is committed to giving back to our community. That’s why we’ve created the Kaizen Project, a program to help deserving non-profits deliver their mission through website design, graphics, and Internet marketing, all provided free of cost for one full year. “Kaizen” means improvement or change for the better, and refers to the Japanese philosophy of continuous advancement over time.

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Ever wonder why noone has invented a way to have a pdf or a word doc easily embeded in the body of a web page or blog?If you answered yes then Google has made your compatibility dreams have come true with an old, but relitively unknown service called “Google Docs Viewer”. Google Docs Viewer allows you easily view or EMBED many file types right in your browser (without any add-ons). Compatible file types include PDFs, Microsoft Office files, and many kinds of images. You can directly access the Google Docs Viewer at http://docs.google.com/viewer.
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At Crown Point Design, we highly recommend Google Analytics be installed on your website. Google recently announced that they have updated several areas of their free service including user interface enhancements, real-time reporting, flow visualization, multi-channel funnels, and mobile reporting. These enhancements help organizations to further analyze their online performance and return on investments. CPD can easily install this great service for you and help you break down your website traffic into understandable data to help make important marketing decisions.

This video shoes how the new multi-channel funnels features can work for you. (best suited for e-commerce websites)

In this video, Yelp explains in a nutshell how their service works and how reviews are filtered for a business listing. The overall goal of Yelp’s reviews are to keep out spam and un-trusted comments. Let’s be honest, not all reviews that people post are genuine and reflect the unbiased opinion of a business. This video does a good job of showing how Yelp attempts to make this happen.

After rebuilding Freight88′s website over a year ago, CPD recently received an updated review about their experience working with us.

“It’s been a bit over a year since I had Scott and Crown Point Design rebuild my site, and I’m happier today than I was back then, and I was very happy then.”
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If your website is Flash-based or incorporates many Flash elements, then your online presence is in trouble. Adobe announced last week that it has abandoned all mobile Flash development.

The news release from Adobe explained that they will no longer continue to “adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations,” and instead will focus on alternative application packaging programs and HTML5.

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Over the past year, we have seen a lot of San Diego based businesses increase their web traffic through Yelp. Businesses that can gain positive Yelp reviews from active users will see an increase in their business. The question is, are you a Yelper? If not, you should be. One of the great changes that social media has allowed for is the ability to voice your opinion. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are all great platforms for expressing your voice on any number of subjects. Yelp has a very distinct purpose, which is to share your experience about a business.
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One of the true innovaters of our time, Steve Jobs, has passed away at age 56. The former CEO of Apple has helped pioneer products such as the Macintosh, iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad among other software and hardware innovations. One of my favorite quotes about design comes from Jobs who said:

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Thanks for all you have done for our industry Steve, you will be missed.

In a scene that looks like it is from Never Never Land, this video shows 11,000 lanterns being released into the sky in Poznan, Poland. The lanterns were released on June 21, 2011 in celebration of the start of summer on the longest day of the year. The illuminated sky happened near the Warta River and beat the previous record of lanterns launched into the sky according to officials. An awesome way to celebrate summer if you ask me!