1. Let’s Get Personal
The days of the faceless figurehead with no personality are over. These days people want to know that they’re getting their products and services from an actual person. With video chat becoming more popular, your audience is soon going to expect an actual face-to-face conversation.

How You Can Change: Start using your personality more on social networks and start making use of all the technologies at your disposal to engage. Blogs, Facebook posts and tweets are great, but video chats and webinars will always be more effective.

2. You Don’t Have To Be Huge
The major publications used to control the media, but not anymore. These days a simple blogger can influence hundreds or even thousands of people. Readers of a blog actually care about what that person thinks. So if you have a loyal following and you start recommending products and services that your die-hard audience is interested in, you can have much more influence than a generic ad in a newspaper or major magazine.

How You Can Change: Pay attention to your blog and social media comments and take the time to engage your audience. When your followers, friends and readers see that you actually care, they’ll begin to pay attention to everything you publish online.

3. Don’t Lag Behind
The old way of doing business was to be cool, calm and calculated. Before a marketing campaign could be launched it had to be tested and approved, the legal department had to get involved and lots of red tape had to be navigated through before the campaign saw the light of day. By this time, your competitors could have already launched their campaign to trump yours. Your audience isn’t going to wait for your next message. They want information and they want it now.

How You Can Change: Update your content often and outsource your content creation and social media postings if you’re able to. The faster you post your content, the more your audience will pay attention and the more information they’ll crave. Post quickly and with calculation and your competitors will begin to wonder what you’re doing to gather such a loyal following.

4. Do You Care?
When writing content, posting on social media or engaging in voice or video chat, you must care. You can’t pretend to care. Unless you’re a great actor, your audience will take notice and your boredom or lack of empathy is going to come through in your writings/voice/mannerisms.

How You Can Change: Ask questions of your audience and take an interest in what they’re going through. When you take the time to actually get to know your prospects and customers, online business will become much more fulfilling and you’ll deliver the personal touch that savvy consumers truly respond to.

5. The Pitch Is Dead
The Internet is full of sales pitches at every turn. People are sick of it and your audience may turn on you if you become aggressive with your intentions. If your product or service is good, your audience will find it eventually. Your job is to educate your audience and entertain with all of your content and all of your social media posts. If you provide value, you’ll attract your audience to you instead of having to pitch them at every corner.

How You Can Change: Try to get influential people to discuss your products and services. This way you are taken out of the equation entirely, at least as far as pitching your product is concerned. If you can get blogs and your followers and friends to hype up your brand, people will start paying attention in droves.

The Internet is constantly changing. Are you stuck in your old online marketing ways? Let us know what you’ve done to change to prepare for the future of online business.

Keep It Simple: When creating content for your websites, blogs, articles, etc. keep them simple and leave the fluff out of the mix completely. Your consumers want the information they came for and nothing more. This means clear descriptions and clear intentions.

Choose Your Keywords Carefully: Your keywords must be relevant to your content and should never go above a density of 3.5%, and even that may be pushing it. Keyword stuffing will not be tolerated with Panda and Panda 2.5. Always consider what your prospects and consumers are searching for and you will have the keywords you need.

Content And Meta Data Must Match: Your titles, headers and descriptions must match what’s on the rest of the page. If you promise users something and you deliver something else, your site is going to drop heavily in the results pages.

Create Sharable Content: Panda 2.5 will undoubtedly give more weight to content that is more readily passed around. Hopefully by now you have Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and any other social networks integrated with your online presence. Your next step is to produce content that people will want to share with their friends and colleagues. Create content that entertains, informs and educates. In fact, every web page, article, blog, video and everything else needs to be created this way if you hope to get into Google’s good graces.

Clean Code: As a general rule, you will want to make sure that your web pages include more text than HTML. The more code you have, the slower your page loads and the more cumbersome your page becomes for search engine spiders and crawlers. Remember, keep things simple.

Video Does Very Well: The recent Panda 2.5 update seems to favor video. You don’t need the team from Pixar or DreamWorks to create an engaging video. A simple informative presentation or a funny sketch will not only add emphasis to the text on your page, but it will also give your web visitors something different than your competition is offering.

If you have been panicking in light of this recent change to Google’s search algorithm, it’s ok to relax. In this case, change is a very good thing. The above tips are geared more towards the reader and viewer and less towards the search engines, which is how it should have been all along. The Internet has become too garbled with sales pitches and Google’s merely trying to clean shop. As long as you give your website visitors what they’re looking for every time and you create content that is relevant and easily passed around, you’ll surely rise through Google’s ranks.

What do you do when a collection of crazy-brilliant economic futurists need a website? Well, you add:

• 70ml of pure user interface
• 175ml of refined WordPress integration
• 45ml of videos, blog posts, and more

Then you pile the mixture into the BRL beaker, spin it at the speed of light, and you get: an uber-smart, geeky-cool site of smart people we are still trying to understand. It will come (we hope).

Check the site out, the latest web design and development creation from the BRL WordPress lab.

Accomplishments
Steve Jobs is accredited as one of the main contributors to the design, development and market of the Apple II personal computer series and the Macintosh, he founded the computer platform development company NeXT (later acquired by Apple), he acted as CEO of Apple and Pixar Animation Studios, he became the largest individual shareholder of Disney at 7% and he also acted as one of Disney’s Board of Directors. The man also has countless patents and he’s won plenty of awards, including The National Medal of Technology.

The Early Life
Steve grew up in California to adopted parents and frequently attended after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company. He soon got a job there and worked with Steve Wozniak as a summer employee. After some odd jobs (one auditing a calligraphy class for a local college, which Jobs says contributed to the Mac having multiple typefaces and proportionately spaced fonts), Jobs got a job at Atari manufacturing video games before he returned to California and once more met up with Steve Wozniak. Nobody could have predicted the two would later go on to form one of the most successful companies the world has ever seen.

His Time at Apple
Looking back on Jobs’ early life, you can tell he was morphing into the visionary he is today. At Atari, Jobs was told that he would get $100 extra for every chip he eliminated in the creation of circuit boards for the game Breakout. Jobs didn’t really know as much about electronics as his old friend Woz did, so Jobs made a deal with Woz to split the bonus. Wozniak was able to reduce the number of chips by 50, a design that was so tight, it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line. It was then that Jobs convinced Wozniak to create a computer with the intent on selling it, which Wozniak apparently had no interest or knowledge in. And a legend was born.

The Two Steves
According to Wozniak, “Steve [Jobs] didn’t know very much about electronics.” And even Jobs admits, “[Wozniak] was the only person I met who knew more about electronics than me.” But regardless of technical knowledge, the two men would soon set history in motion. With Woz’ designs and Jobs’ marketing and business sense, the company we would all soon know as Apple would later produce the Apple I, Apple II, the Macintosh, the iPod, iPad, iPhone and many other electronic wonders that have captivated the entire world.
Hats off to Steve Jobs. Even though he has been criticized for his domineering management style, nobody can argue that the man knows electronics and how to sell them. Says Wozniak about the original Apple products, “Steve didn’t do one circuit, design or piece of code, but it never crossed my mind to sell computers. It was Steve who said, ‘Let’s hold them up in the air and sell a few’.”

The Future
Steve Jobs stepped down from Apple on August 24, 2011 because he said he could no longer perform his duties due to his longtime illness. He was appointed chairman of Apple’s board of directors, however, so you can bet that he will still have a say in the creation of, the marketing of and the success of all of Apple’s current and future products. We wish him well with his recovery and we’re thankful for all he’s done. Without his imagination, innovation and unparalleled drive, computers, technology and life as we know it might have been completely different, and not nearly as convenient. In fact, many are comparing him as the Thomas Edison and Henry Ford of our time.
What do you think about Steve Jobs? And how do you think life as we know it would be different had ‘The Two Steves’ never met back in 1971? Leave your comments below!

The Foreign Policy Association is one of the world’s most lauded policy organizations. Formed in 1918 to support Woodrow Wilson’s effort to achieve a just peace, its “fans” include names like Reagan, Bush, Clinton,  and Kennedy.

The only problem: as far as the website went, FPA “looked their age.”

Checkout the polished, refined website we gave them.

The Foreign Policy Association…yes, we are name dropping.

It’s easy to see why WordPress is so popular. Even Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress and parent company Automattic, said in a recent interview with Memeburn, “I think the reason WordPress has been successful…is because people have found themselves empowered to create beautiful blogs and websites without having to learn a lot of technology.”

And while Mullenweg must be ecstatic over the recent milestone, he wasn’t the first one to break the news. Mullenweg actually named The New Media and Adweek as the news sites that broke the news, saying, “As noted on TNW and Adweek, yesterday we passed over 50,000,000 websites, blogs, portfolios, stores, pet projects, and of course cat websites powered by WordPress.”
The Adweek piece that Mullenweg is referring to did indeed report the 50 million blogs milestone, but it also reported that WordPress powers 14% of websites worldwide. In fact, the Adweek article reports that WordPress users publish on average 500,000 posts per day. That amounts to more than 287 WordPress visitors and 2.5 billion page views per month!
But The Next Web, the other news publication that broke the story, took things a bit further. Consider these statistics that TNW came up with. The article states that WordPress has helped over 350,000 WordPress.com bloggers post over 302,000 posts and over 270,000 comments. Those are staggering numbers!

The site goes on to say that, roughly calculated, that means that 210 posts were made every minute, along with 188 comments. In fact, the TNW states that the WordPress stats page counts a total of nearly 77 million words written, which is almost double that of the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. That’s all in one day, mind you. It’s difficult to wrap your head around a statistic like that, but the crazy part is that the WordPress counter shows no signs of slowing. As more and more individuals, business owners, hobbyists and others discover WordPress, those statistics are only going to get exponentially bigger.

We applaud WordPress and can only hope that more users will jump on board with the CMS that literally anyone can use. And we’ll continue to do our part to spread the word. We continue to use WordPress for all of our client projects, from web design to web development, to app and plug-in development and more.

Great job, WordPress, Matt Mullenweg and the team at Automattic! We can’t wait to see the next update, which is supposed to integrate HTML5. According to Mullenweg himself in that same Memeburn interview when asked about the new update, “I can’t wait.” I think that says it all.
If the next version is anything like 3.2 or before, we can only expect great things.

What Is Instant Preview?
Basically, by hovering your cursor over the magnifying glass in Google’s results pages, you can see a preview of that particular site’s landing page.  In other words, you can see where the link leads to before you click it. But not only is the little magnifier next to all the results, but it also accompanies PPC ads. Now you may understand why website owners may be a little nervous.

Website Owners/Managers
Website owners, especially, have a lot to consider in light of Google’s new addition. Before the new feature, users would click on ads without knowing where the link would lead. Therefore, you would only need to create compelling ads using the right ad placement, and traffic would come. And if they got enough traffic, more sales would result by the very nature of the game.
But Instant Preview seeks to change all that. Now, users can hover over the tiny magnifying glass to see where they’ll be taken to if they do in fact answer that link’s call-to-action. If the user doesn’t like what he sees and he thinks that a competitor has a better looking and more authoritative landing page, then the choice is going to be clear for that user, isn’t it?

Before all of this, some site owners didn’t really need to be concerned with what the post-click experience was like for the user. As long as users clicked on ads and traffic levels rose high enough, a fraction of those individuals would eventually convert into buyers.
But now that ads and search listings have Instant Preview, and now that users can actually see the landing page in question and can actually read a snippet of text from that page, advertisers had better work a little harder if they hope to succeed in this new ‘user-friendlier’ search environment.

Designers
Designers also have their work cut out for them. Now, more than ever, design truly matters to the overall user experience. With users able to view competing sites without clicking any links, your site had better look better than all of your competitors’ websites if you hope to retain your traffic levels and authority within your niche.

What’s It All Mean?
The bottom line is that Google is working hard to clean up its search pages and the Internet in general. But most of all, the search engine conglomerate is making sure its search results always produce the most quality and most informative sites possible. No longer is it just about getting more clicks to your ad or getting your page to the top of the search results. Now, you need to combine quality in looks and quality in content, and you need to put much more focus on the user. That’s how the search results should be, and that’s why we applaud Google in its efforts. We are all for cleaning up the internet, and if Instant Preview makes website owners stop and realize that they need to put in a little more effort in the design and user experience of their site if they want to succeed, thus making the online search experience better for all of us, we’re anxious to see what Google has up its sleeve next.

Monster.com
Monster is one of the largest online recruiting platforms in the world. The site gets thousands of hits per day, as individuals all over the world search for that perfect job. And according to Monster, many of those job seekers are already at work. That’s right, Monster claims these searches are conducted by ‘discreet seekers’, employees who are sneaking behind their bosses’ backs in order to look for alternate employment. To cater to these undercover employees, Monster released the Monster iPad app that integrates Monster accounts with GPS for more targeted job searches, access to application history and stored resume and cover letters.
Monster also figured out that job seekers don’t want to wait a day or two for employers to contact them. They want instant feedback, something they’re used to receiving in today’s digital age, and the iPad helps to deliver that immediate information perfectly.

The Marines
The United States Marine Corps is also using the iPad, mainly as a recruitment tool. The iPad allows recruiters to record the information of potential recruits at job fairs and public events. This information used to be done by hand, but specialized apps and the wifi capabilities of the iPad make the task of recruiting much easier.

Health Care, Students and Professionals
According to a recent survey, more than 30% out of 178 healthcare workers indicated that they were ‘very likely’ to buy a tablet in the coming year. In other iPad news, George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon gave incoming freshman a choice of an iPad or a MacBook, which is also made by Apple, for the 2010 and 2011 academic year.
The healthcare industry finds the iPad especially attractive. Doctors and nurses now have instant access to pharmaceutical information, diagnostics information and more. If a particular drug interacts negatively with another drug that patient is taking, the iPad can help to avoid a bad situation before it arises. And if a patient develops a peculiar rash on their abdomen, the doctor can quickly use the iPad to find out what sort of condition causes such a rash.
But professionals of every type are also bringing the iPad to work with them. The iPad, with specialized apps, makes recording inventory a breeze. Outside sales reps can use the iPad to look up client information, check inventory and record sales. Business directors can examine notes before entering a board meeting. Lawyers can read over their opening statement before delivering it to the jury. The possibilities are endless.

Don’t Be Left Behind
Apple makes a solid product, with the iPhone and iPad just two of their many technological wonders. But the iPad is much more than just a handy computer that fits in the crook of your arm. This ultra-thin tablet is completely customizable for your business, thanks to the ever-versatile iPad app. Mercedes Benz realizes this fact and is yet another one of those large companies we spoke about that has integrated the iPad into their business operations. The luxury car giant puts iPads into the hands of all of its dealership executives. With a specialized app that delivers car inventory, marketing programs for specific models, quicker turnaround time on credit applications and more, the iPad provides wireless mobility, information and flexibility, three things that are essential to any sales person on the showroom floor.

If your business hasn’t yet integrated the iPad, you might already find yourself behind your tech-savvy competitors. Regardless of the industry you’re in: medical, food, health, consultation, there is an app and a way to integrate the iPad into your business operations that’s staring you right in the face. With the ability to handle WordPress, word processors and spreadsheets, plus with all the games and news, movies and more, the iPad is here to stay and it’s ready to do business. Are you?

Among the key features listed with the WordPress version 3.2, we can look forward to:

• Faster load times
• Finalization of API for third-party use
• Distraction-free writing
• And much more

Key Features

It’s Going to Be Faster
According to WordPress.org, the new version of the CMS will be faster and lighter, with lightning-quick load times, faster updates, FTP performance improvements and more. Also, the company states that only files modified in the 3.2 release will be written to the server, rather than all WordPress files.

Out With the Old
The system is also dropping older and slower requirements. For instance, to use WordPress 3.2, you’ll be forced to upgrade to PHP version 5.2 or greater and MySQL version 5.0.15 or greater. The platform is also dropping support for Internet Explorer 6 (Finally!) and is starting an EOL (end-of-life) cycle for IE 7.
Other changes include the finalization of the API for third party use and the investigation of ‘List Table XHR loading”.

A New, Calmer Writing Experience
But one of the most exciting changes coming to WordPress is the idea of distraction-free writing. Most current WordPress users know that there is a full screen writing option, which is designed to be distraction-free, but it doesn’t quite make the mark according to many online comments and blog postings. WriteRoom, the Mac application that provides true distraction-free writing, is more what consumers are looking for. So, WordPress is coming out with its own version of this experience.
WordPress’s new distraction-free writing editor takes out all the extras and just leaves a plain writing space to allow you to create without anything getting in your way. The idea is to provide a Zen-like writing experience where anything that’s added, such as ambient music, only lends to the experience instead of detracting from it. Maybe this distraction-free writing space will provide for some very interesting writing in the coming future.

These are just some of the improvements and changes that we can expect from the WordPress 3.2 release. There is also a new default theme, and plenty of other developments and plug ins to allow for even more versatility, everything we fell in love with WordPress for in the first place. We’re excited for this release and think you should be, too. If version 3.1 is any indication, 3.2 is going to be out of this world.

Dropbox: For file management, this free mobile app can’t be beat. Your photos, documents, videos and everything else can be kept in one spot, easily retrievable from any computer or mobile device. Simply set up the Dropbox folder on your computer and you can access that same file on your iPhone, Blackberry, iPad, and any other mobile device. If you’re not at your desk and you need to read that important document, you’re only a few clicks away. Or, share your dropbox folder with coworkers to corroborate on that big video project. It’s all possible and all in the palm of your hand with Dropbox.

Documents to Go: Let’s say you receive an email from a colleague and there’s a Microsoft Word document attached.  The problem is your laptop is back at the office and you’re forced to read the doc on your iPhone. With Documents to Go, you can now open those Word and Excel files right on your mobile phone, and you can edit them too. What’s that? Yup, you read that right. You can now edit Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel, Power Point, etc.) right from any mobile device.

Evernote: Inducted into Apple’s App Hall of Fame and considered one of The Top Ten Must-Have Apps by the New York Times, Evernote is touted as being an ‘extension of your brain’. This app is truly amazing, for business and all other reasons. Get this: You can create text, photo and audio notes, you can synchronize those notes to your computer. But that’s not even the best part. You can take a photo of a book cover, for instance, and the Evernote app will make that text readable and searchable. Amazing!

TripIt: This is the big daddy of mobile travel organizers. TripIt puts all your travel plans, including your flight information, rental car information, itinerary and everything else right on your mobile phone or tablet, no matter where your travel plans were booked. Need to change flights for a quick connection before heading to your final destination? Don’t fumble in your bag for the information you need, simply pull out your phone and access TripIt.

FlightTrack: This is another must-have for those who have to travel a lot for business. FlightTrack offers zoomable maps, departure info and gate numbers. But you can also be alerted when your flight is delayed or cancelled and FlightTrack will even help you find an alternative flight. Talk about the perfect app for frequent flyers!

LinkedIn: Now you can access your professional network  anywhere and anytime with the free LinkedIn mobile app. Used  by over 100 million professionals worldwide, you can view profiles, leave reviews, send messages, receive updates, and update your own status, all in real time.

Scanner Pro: Considered one of the top mobile applications available, for a nominal fee you can scan multiple page documents and then add, move, delete pages and more. But the best part about Scanner Pro is that you can now integrate the app with Dropbox, Evernote, and Google Docs. Need to scan a receipt, a business card or a sales letter? Now you can scan it with your mobile phone no matter where you are, and you’ll be able to set custom page sizes, make industry standard PDF files, and you can even protect your top-secret documents with a password to let everyone know they’re for your eyes only.

These are just a few of the top mobile apps out there. With desktops and handhelds merging at a faster pace than ever before, the time for your business to embrace the mobile app is now. If your business isn’t utilizing one of these or any of the other mobile applications available, you’re leaving money on the table and most of all you’re leaving room for your competitors to jump on the mobile app bandwagon before you do.