The WPSHCF’s Executive Director, Lynne Atkinson had a fantastic and very specific vision for the design of the website for this campaign.  The site also had to match the current branding of the campaign.  Linkhouse Media was able to deliver a product that meets those needs plus added a unique look and feel. The website features a collection of Art-bras that can be uploaded by local artists and people from around the world, along with their story that makes the artwork truly unique.  The artwork is displayed along a clothesline that will stretch as far as creativity and imagination will take it. Users can also filter designs by region using an interactive Google map. New artwork, once published is automatically posted to theBraProject on Twitter.

You can feel free to add your own design to the line or simply follow along on twitter with the new bra updates at http://twitter.com/thebraproject

The Bobby Orr Hall of Fame is an interactive hockey museum with a wide variety of photos, memorabilia and artifacts about Bobby Orr, who was born in Parry Sound. Exhibits include Orr’s NHL rings, a number of his trophies and awards, some of the jerseys he played in, a pictorial history of his career and a number of interactive games and activities related to hockey. The Bobby Orr Hall of Fame also hosts exhibits about other exceptional athletes with ties to Parry Sound.

This project was a part of the redesign of the Charles W. Stockey Centre for the Performing Arts website, commissioned by the Town of Parry Sound.  The proposal put forth an option to quote on one or both phases of the project.  The Bobby Orr Hall of Fame site is phase two and is now complete. The design incorporates a custom content management system (CMS) built specifically to suite the needs of the Stockey Centre and BOHF. Some site features include a dynamic XML sitemap, dynamic Inductee Corner, media uploads and management, extensive Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Friendly URLS, a custom artistic design, secure SSL e-store (cheers to Ian Holmes) and Dynamic Facebook and Twitter Integration.

Post a comment to let us know what you think!

With the launch of Surface Innovation’s new product across Canada it was only fitting that they have a website that showcased this amazing product.  Linkhouse Media designed a site that takes the beauty of SlateFlex and combines it with a clean, fresh, natural looking concept.

Visit www.surfaceinnovation.ca.

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010

Below is the full write-up from the Parry Sound North Star.

Local businesses honoured

PARRY SOUND – Four businesses and an individual were honoured Saturday at the Parry Sound and Area Chamber of Commerce’s annual President’s Ball and Business Awards Gala.

About 100 entrepreneurs attended the evening event inside the Charles W. Stockey Centre for the Performing Arts with Barry Keown, from the Outdoor Life Network’s show Mantracker, as the guest speaker.

Keown has ridden with Mantracker, Terry Grant, as his sidekick in a number of episodes and when not tracking down ‘prey’, lives in Huntsville and shoes horses for a living.

The first nod that was handed out was the Tourism Award.

“Our area is highly impacted by the tourism industry, but this past year one tourism business rose above, showing what it means to be leaders amongst their peers,” said Keown of the award recipients, Don and Michelle Berry of the Parry Sound KOA. “Listening and responding to their customers’ feedback, providing stellar programming and superior guest service brought this year’s winner to the pinnacle of achievement within their own brand.”

“Their active involvement and participation in the community, help them stay abreast (to) the needs and trends in the area, which is just one more example of why this business has been selected to receive this award this year,” said Keown.

The Berry’s accepted the award and said it was a great honour.

“We all know that everyone in this room works, very, very hard and especially seasonal businesses that are busy gearing up (for the summer),” said Michelle. “We open on the 29th of April and that’s coming really fast and hard for us. This is a great honour, it’s been a great year for us. Thank you very, very much. We bring a lot of campers from around the world and we’re always (ready) with open arms.”

Jason Rosewell, of Linkhouse Media was given the Entrepreneur of the Year award, which he said also belonged colleague Ian Holmes.

“For those of you who don’t know what I do, we’re a web design company and we have the honour of working with the Stockey Centre and the Bobby Orr Hall of Fame in 2009 and continuing on this year in the redevelopment of both their websites,” said Rosewell. “There are some people in the room that I’ve worked with and those business owners locally, thank you for considering a local option. This is only really half mine; my distinguished college Ian Holmes, this is half yours. He pushes me to go further all the time and he’s a fantastic friend so this goes to Ian as well, thank you.”

The Business of the Year award went to Dave LeBlanc, of LeBlanc’s O.K. Tire & Auto Service, for its superior customer service in Parry Sound.

“I’m extremely flattered and honoured,” said LeBlanc. “Thank you everybody in Parry Sound and the people in Parry Sound. We’ve been here for almost 36 years, we’ve been in the new shop for about three-and-a-half (years). I’d like to thank everyone in Parry Sound, because without them we wouldn’t be where we are.”

The chamber also announced a new award, the Community Leadership Award and its recipient, former chamber president Perry Harris, said he was floored with the recognition.
“Wow, it’s not often I’m blindsided, but I’m certainly blindsided,” Harris said with a chuckle. “It’s funny, for those of you who know me, I believe in community involvement. We have a very small community; we have a very strong community as you saw tonight by the video by the high school. I think you should take that video and go to every Rotary Club, Lions Club, Kinsmen Club, organization and show that video and show them what our youth in Parry Sound can do. We are often; very self-critical…I really think the youth of our community are going to help guide us in the future. As a business owner, it’s not easy what we do, and yet we’re able to find time that takes us away from our families and donate it to the area by becoming involved.”

The President’s Award was presented by chamber president Andrew Ryeland.

“It’s something that I thought through for several months in terms of who the winner of this award should be and it’s a very personal choice, but I think, once I announce it, you will agree with me, that it’s something that embodies the spirit of this particular award,” said Ryeland giving the award to Moose FM CKLP’s Brian Prokopec.

“The (Christmas) telethon is what I most look forward to each year, actually,” said Prokopec. “It’s one of the highlights of the year.  The giving spirit of this community, year after year that I experience in being involved with that, it touches one very deeply indeed. Thank you very, very much.”

I’m really excited to introduce a new comic by co-Linkhost founder Ian: Web Space & Email! Ian decided that we have way too much great workplace-related material and rather than sit and bash our heads against the wall, why not have a little fun. I’ve seen some of the work and I’m really excited about it.  So I give you the very first edition of Web Space & Email.

Click comic for full size.

Complete List of Nominees

The Geolocation (currently only the recent versions of firefox) is especially creepy – I recommend you try it out… and don’t forget to say yes when firefox asks you if it’s okay!

http://html5demos.com/

Maybe you’ve been excited about the current wave of social media madness and just haven’t had the time or energy to learn how to maximize your online presence because you’re too busy providing your award-winning customer service with real humans!

Whatever the case, it’s time to grab the bull by the horns and tell the virtual world that you’re ready for it and make your statement: HERE I AM! The days of writing clever keywords (relevant ones are still okay), page descriptions, and creative meta tags in your website’s coding are gone. Trying to trick Google into thinking you’re a bigger deal than you actually are might help you briefly but will ultimately (and inevitably) result in your site’s removal from their listings altogether. I’ll tell you what is important. Lean in really close and I’ll give you the secret…. TRAFFIC! The best way to tell Google and other search engines that you’re there and you’re kind of hot stuff is to show them that people want to visit and are visiting your website.

By combining the power of social media websites, you, your website and your blog can be on your way to hits galore and generating traffic that will make search engines enjoy crawling your site and more importantly indexing your site. Don’t miss out on all the easy ways you can be taking advantage of the tools that are already in place for you.

We would love to help you and your company make the biggest splash in town. Contact Linkhouse Media to find out how your business can be the local, online leader in your field.

Linkhost Media  is pleased to be offering a full range of SSL Certificates from the three leading SSL brands in the world – GeoTrust, thawte and VeriSign.

GeoTrust is the world’s second largest digital certificate provider and the right choice for small-businesses looking to offer security and peace-of-mind coupled with a brand consumers know and trust. More than 100,000 customers in over 150 countries trust GeoTrust to secure online transactions and conduct business over the Internet. Our range of digital certificate and trust products enable organizations of all sizes to maximize the security of their digital transactions cost-effectively.

thawte is the certification authority chosen by hundreds of thousands and has been innovating and delivering trusted services for more than a decade. They enable businesses and individuals to communicate and transact securely by verifying and authenticating their identities, thus allowing them to gain the trust and confidence of millions of users. thawte is the choice for small businesses throughout Europe and Asia and is a name consumers in those regions know and trust.

VeriSign is the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world. Billions of times each day, VeriSign helps companies and consumers all over the world engage in communications and commerce with confidence. 93% of Fortune 500 companies choose VeriSign to provide SSL services for their websites.

More details on thetypes of SSL certificates and pricing will be available soon.

Until then, please don’t hesitate to email our offices to discuss your SSL needs.