Friday, Friday, Friday the 13th and, yes, evil things have struck here at EWC: Phil is doing the Friday Props this week since Ed is deep in the world of code. Buckle your seatbelts, kiddos. I'm going to take this opportunity to push my own agenda of awesomeness since there's only a few more hours in the office for me. First off, a quick giggle to the funny peoples who make their mark on the internet with the simple humor that always surrounds aging action heros.They are the ones that truly make this country great. Rounding the bases and headed to second like a chihuahua after a dropped piece of beef jerky, I want to steer your Friday Props to a friend of ours down Barnard way. After our time exploring the Mariana Trench south of Japan, Chris Wilson dedicated himself to the art of baking and sweets in various establishments. The bad news was that only a few people ever got to experience his creations until recently when he started his own little confection business. Here's a nod to you, Mr. Wilson Without breaking stride, third base is coming up quick! Don't slow down now! The weekend is so close! To [....] Read More >>

Another Friday means another round of Props going out for the cool, funky, groovy, neat, things we've run across that we like. Hello, Nerf First up ... new guns from Nerf. As you are probably aware Nerf gun battles are a part of the culture here at Edgeworks Creative.  Foam dart hail storms are now simply of a part of life at the office. One never knows when a storm might break out.  We're giving out Props this week to a whole new group of arms being offered up. The new N-Strike Elite blasters have an incredible 75 foot range! Looks like we might need a bigger office.   Sun Boxes in Vermont Props are going out to  Craig Calorusso for his audio artistry that's happening right here in our back yard! Calorusso is bringing his Sun Boxes to Vermont State Parks in July and August. His soundscape project is made up of twenty speakers spread over a large area. Each Sun Box is powered by solar energy and connected to a PC board that has a musical piece recorded onto it. These pieces of music are then played in loops. Because each piece is of a different length, the overall musical experience changes over time [....] Read More >>

At Edgeworks Creative we design and develop websites. You know this. What you probably don't know is that we create these websites atop a custom made platform - the Edgeworks CMS. The Edgeworks CMS is a powerful website building tool that gives us incredible freedom to treat each and every project as its' own while allowing us to re-use and re-purpose components we've already built. It gives us the ability to create custom websites at affordable prices and it dovetails with our website development process to give our clients pixel-perfect, functional websites in quick order. In this post I aim to show off some of the features of the Edgeworks CMS. A Look Under the Hood To really gain an understanding of what makes the Edgeworks CMS such a powerful platform for the rapid development of our client websites we need to take a look under the hood. When a client logs into their website administration they don't see the same things we do. The point of having a website for your business is not to learn how to create and code websites. Unlike Wordpress, Joomla or other platforms where site owners must learn about plugins, modules and the like, the Edgeworks [....] Read More >>

I spend so much time in front of screens doing my work that sometimes I yearn for different tactile experiences. I'm not eager to be a paper pusher by any means, but I thought for this weeks' Friday Props I'd do a theme to honor those folks who do crazy cool things with paper. Join me in giving accolades for these astounding projects and their creators! Phone Books are so 80's But turning phone books into works of three dimension carved portraits? Timeless and way cool. Props going out to Alex Queral for his Phone Book Carvings.  Queral uses an X-ACTO knife, an acrylic medium and a black wash - nothing more. His work uses phone books which are (of course) destined to be thrown away and makes them worth keeping again. He creates portraits of famous people as well as abstracts. Visit a gallery of his work  for more examples.  You'll find many that you recognize and I promise it will blow your mind.   Is This Even Possible!? I can fold a couple varieties of paper airplanes and with the help of a book I can even do some very basic origami. But Simon Schubert gets Props for his paper building made by folding paper. There is no better [....] Read More >>

Every office has that one employee ... you know ... the one that sucks. Well.. meet Ruby. Ruby was formerly a house slave who spent the last several years in Ed's basement without much to do. When we opened the office in Waterbury, though, it became apparent that we would need somebody to sweep clean the floors every night and we decided it was high time to put Ruby back to work. Ruby enjoys dirt, dust, mud and occasional muck. Her favorite time of year in Vermont is mud season when she gets to show off her appetite the most. Although she appears a happy round camper she is in fact a gritty character. Recently she's been complaining of old age and demanding more nights off. Although we're not quite ready to agree to an early retirement, we have been giving her a more flexible schedule. Who knew that robot vacuums could be so demanding!? Read More >>

One of the cornerstones to success with any online endeavor is to have a steady output of content. The phrase "Content is King" has time and time again shown itself to be true. In order to rank well in search results for your particular subject matter we always counsel businesses and bloggers to write more content. Sometimes, however, the time it takes to write new content can become a weight that is hard to bear. It's hard to see what more can be written about a topic when so many others have already seemingly covered everything and it's not a simple task to come up with something fresh and new if you're already up to your neck in other responsibilities. Luckily, though, there are a few tricks you can employ. I'm going to share one with you now. I call it Content Curating on a Time Diet. Much like the job of a museum curator, content curators are folks who are looking for interesting content online and pulling it together into their own space - adding their own flavor or opinion and sharing it with their readers. Using trendy news related to your industry, it is possible to quickly come up with new [....] Read More >>

Your Business on the Web: Episode 1 - The Basics of SEO Below is the first video in our "Your Business on the Web" series where we discuss the basics of SEO. This video is the first in our series on SEO for your business. Our intent is to demonstrate the value and the strategies involved with SEO to boost search engine Page Rank and visitor traffic to your website. Below is a transcript of the video and, of course, we welcome your feedback!   Ed: Hello and welcome to the first episode of our series, “Your Business on the Web.” In this episode we will be discussing the basics of SEO. SEO is… Phil: Santa Eating Oreos. Ed: No. Seo is… Phil: Swirling Earth Orbits. Ed: No. SEO is… Phil: Actually, Sweaty Engaging Omelets Ed: No! SEO is Search Engine Optimization. Phil: Right. Search Engine Optimization is about increasing the visibility of your website through unpaid, natural, organic search results. Ed: That’s right. In general, the higher a website ranks in the search results and the more frequently it appears in search results, the more traffic those websites can anticipate from search engine users. There are different types of SEO targeting such things as Keyword Search, Image Search, Video Search, Local [....] Read More >>

It's time again for another round of kudos for the cool kids on the block. What time is it? This week we're sending out a shout-out to Richard Birkett  for the wild clocks he builds. These treasures are all one-of-a-kind and made from industrial debris. He takes bits and pieces of broken machines from typewriters to cameras to VCRs and gives them new life as whimsically designed clocks. Keeping stuff out of landfills and giving us groovy time keepers in the process earns him Props. Check out his collection at http://fantasyclocks.com/ and find him on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fantasy-Clocks/239654963641?ref=ts San Francisco ... One Toothpick at a Time You gotta hand it (Props, that is) to anyone with the persistence to develop something requiring not thousands, not tens of thousands but over one hundred thousand parts and to turn those parts into something so much greater. Scott Weaver  is just such a person. He's created a sculpture of the city of San Francisco using toothpicks - over 100,000 of them. It's taken him over 35 years to make and it includes multiple ball runs that allow you to go on "tours" of different parts of the city.  Giant Paper Flowers Intricate, graceful and stunningly beautiful paper flowers fill the Gothic Abbey of Sanit-Riquier in [....] Read More >>

Over the years Google has morphed from a simple, yet powerful search engine into a conglomerate of online tools and resources.  These resources have in recent years become more likely to be served as part of the most relevant search results for a given query. This is especially true when results for a search query pertain to local businesses. For example, take a look at this screenshot of the results on Google for the query "restaurant": What's worth noting here is that the results that show above in pink (added by me) are the results above the fold - those that are visible without scrolling down the page.  Looking more carefully at those results we can see that seven of the top nine results that show up are for Google + Local pages.  Hovering over the listings turns the right-hand side into a sneak peek of the information Google + Local has for the restaurants in the list. So the question for a restaurant owner becomes "how do I ensure I am in the top list in order to get that exposure?"  The answer is fairly straightforward - a well-constructed, informative website, social engagement and ensuring your listings on other local listing services [....] Read More >>

The number one frustration for most small business owners is a lack of visibility of their beautiful well-designed website. “I spent all this money on a website but no one can find it! How do I get it to the top of the Google?” Welcome to Search Engine Optimization and Marketing (SEO/SEM). It’s true. You can have the most awesomest on the web, but it won’t make a bit of difference if no one can find it! The goal of any business is to be ranked #1 on any SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for keywords relating to your business, driving traffic to your wonderful, gorgeous website. The short-term fix to the problem is to spend money on advertising through Google, print media, promotions and such, herding potential clients to your website where they’ll say “Wow! This is EXACTLY what I need!” Or they’ll leave without spending a dime and your bank account shrinks. This strategy will drive traffic to your site, and, if the guest finds your website useful, they might spread the word out to their friends. But what if you don’t have the money to promote your website, first-time visitors don’t return and you see zero return [....] Read More >>