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Control Panel Updates Coming Soon!

May 20th, 2010 by ScottS

Here at Flash Factory, we have been partnering with our customers in an effort to continually improve the overall user experience.  To this end, we are proud to announce that this August we will be releasing a revitalized, refreshed and renewed Control Panel.  This update will reduce the loading times of the control panel pages and introduce a new content structure.  In addition we will be updating the text editors and will provide a completely revamped photo editor which will make uploading, sizing and placing photos to your website a snap.

And these updates are just the beginning…

Our excitement here at Flash Factory is building as we develop more efficient and powerful means for our customers to reach out to their intended audiences.  We are had at work ensuring that your Flash Website will remain easy to build, maintain and use.

Keep an eye on our blog for upcoming news!



Flash Factory on NPR (KPFK LA)

September 14th, 2009 by admin

Vijay and Cole appear on Dr. Nita’s Tuesday talk show to take calls and answer questions about removing obstacles to getting a website online.  This half hour program quickly details what Flash Factory is and who our customers are.  Topics covered include: Domain Ownership, Pricing, Flash Factory BETA, General Q&A, The Site Wizard, Websites for Entrepreneurs and more.

Listen Here

Should A Small Business Be on the Web? - SBA

July 9th, 2009 by admin

Getting On The Web

Should a Small Business get on the Web

The answer to that question is relatively simple. Everyone is talking about the Internet. It’s new! It’s fun! It’s exciting! And it’s not just for kids. The Internet, particularly in its graphic interface known as the World Wide Web, is probably the most important communication vehicle developed since the telephone.  And more importantly for the small business, the Web levels the playing field between small business and big business.

Let’s look at the variety of commercial uses for the Internet:

The Web is the newest medium for advertising. It offers significant advantages over traditional advertising media in that it is dynamic, interactive and inexpensive. The Internet is making it possible for small- to medium-sized businesses to compete with the big guys. Of course, as the Web matures, advertising rates for the most popular sites will increase. Advertising is not the only way to make your business known via the Web. Search engines are another powerful and low cost way to increase awareness of your products and services.

The Web is an important customer service tool. Did you throw away the TV guide this week? You can check out your local TV station’s Web page for its weekly schedule or the network specials this week. Have you ever wanted hard facts comparing natural gas to electricity? This type of information and much more is available on the web.
Soon you’ll be able to schedule appliance repair times and make changes to your gas service account by sending an email, at your convenience, either during or after regular business hours. Wouldn’t you rather shop for a new car from the comfort of your home, in the quiet time late at night after the kids are in bed? This is now possible in many areas of the country. The Web allows you to communicate with your customers at their convenience. Don’t you want to offer this level of service to your customers?

Network connectivity makes it possible for you to hook up your local area network (LAN) directly to the Internet. Who wants to do that? Lots of companies! For example, a wide area network (WAN) connection offers multiple simultaneous connections through a dedicated data line at a tremendous savings over individual modems and standard telephone lines. This makes your existing internal email addresses work as Internet email addresses. It also allows you to set up your own Web server with your own domain name, to provide volumes of information to existing and potential new customers, and to take orders on-line.


-courtesy U.S. Small Business Adminsitration, sba.gov

How To Build a Flash Website

June 18th, 2009 by admin

View our online tutorial to see how easy it is to build a Flash Website using FlashFactory.com.

Creating a Flash website on FlashFactory.com allows you to bypass the stress of working with a web designer or web developer. Launch a website in 10 minutes. With your customized Content Management System (CMS), you can be your own web master.

Learning how to build a Flash Website has never been easier!

Basic Photo Editing for the Web

June 8th, 2009 by admin

roadphoto

If you use a digital camera to take pictures for your Web page, there’s a few things you’ll need to do with your images to prepare them for the Web. At the very least the photos will need to be rotated, cropped, and resized. In this article we’ll show you how to perform these common tasks using Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop express.

Before we get into the specifics on how to perform these tasks, we’d like to warn you about a potential problem. Most digital cameras save your pictures in the JPEG format. JPEG is known as a “lossy” format, because the compression scheme causes the image to lose detail and clarity each time the image is edited and saved. Here’s a few things you can do to combat this loss in quality:

1. If possible, perform as many edits as possible in one session so you’re not saving to the JPEG format repeatedly.

2. When resaving a JPEG, use the same compression setting that was used for the inital save. With digital cameras, this is not always possible, since the camera uses settings such as Basic, Normal, and High instead of numerical settings. If the numerical equivalent for the quality settings are available in your camera’s user manual, keep these numeric values handy so you can refer to them when you need to resave the JPEG images. You’ll still have some loss in quality even when you use the same compression settings, however, it will result in less damage than if you were to use different settings with each save.

3. The best solution is to convert your images to a lossless format as soon as you download them from your camera. Leave the images in the lossless format through the editing process and only convert to JPEG as the last step before putting the images on the Web (again, use the same compression settings as the initial save, if at all possible). It’s a good idea to archive your images in a lossless format since you never know if you’ll need to edit the images for another purpose in the future. The most common lossless image formats to use are Bitmap (BMP), TIFF, and PNG. Bitmap is an uncompressed format so the images will be quite large. TIFF and PNG will result in smaller file sizes, although not as small as JPEG format. Obviously, the down side to this solution is the additional storage space required as a result of the larger file sizes.

Rotating an image in Photoshop is a simple menu command:

1. Open the image you want to rotate.
2. Go to Image -> Rotate Canvas -> 90° CW

Rotate

The next step in prepping your images should be to crop and resize them. When you’re putting your images on the Web, it’s important to keep the images as small as possible so they will download faster. By cropping your photos of any unneccessary elements, your viewers can focus on only the important parts of your picture, and you’ll reduce the file size as well.

Crop

Photoshop’s crop tool is below the magic wand tool in the main toolbar. Click on the button to select it or use the shortcut to the tool by hitting the “C” key on your keyboard.

To use it, just click and drag a rectangle surrounding the area you want to crop. When you release the mouse button, you’ll see a dashed line marquee with selection “handles” on the corners and the middle of each side. You can hold your cursor over these handles and drag them to adjust the size of your selection. When the marquee is where you want it, double click inside the marquee or hit “enter” on your keyboard and the image will be cropped.

Resize

To resize the image, go to Image -> Image Size. For the Web, you should set your resolution to to 72 dpi and use pixels for the dimensions.

Quick Tip

Remember to use the Unsharp Mask filter after resizing your images since resizing always results in some blurring. You can reach the Unsharp Mask filter in Photoshop by going to Filter -> Sharpen -> Unsharp Mask.

New Business and the Glacier

June 8th, 2009 by admin

glacier

Since the advent of digital distribution, consumer culture has changed drastically. Quite prevalently, there has been a transition in the marketing industry from an outbound to inbound approach, a draining of patience in the 80’s and 90’s consumer, and an exponential increase in the competition for consumer impressions.

In order to stay afloat, or even better, succeed in today’s ‘Titanic and the Glacier’ business world, a business owner needs to be in touch with consumer demands. Business owners need to attract consumers without spending thousands if not millions on obsolete advertising. Business owners need to deliver information at ludicrous speeds to distant consumers searching for product or service. Business owners need to stay as far ahead of the curve has humanly (or digitally) possible. Business owners NEED… a website. There is no better way than the internet to obtain inbound business traffic and support the consumer’s fading patience, all while staying competitive in the ‘fight for the bow’ world of consumer impressions.

Although our consumer culture is still greatly impacted by conventional advertising, internet surfing has trained the public to more quickly disregard personally irrelevant content. This causes the stream of business success to point towards a new revolution of marketing; inbound marketing. Companies invest in systems that allow consumers to find them, rather than massive and blatant ‘buy our product’ ad campaigns. No longer will consumers be duped into Geico’s million dollar SuperBowl commercial or print campaign. The novelty in talking lizards is gone.

Inbound marketing systems are almost always delivered through the internet in the form of a website; a forum to build consumer interest that ultimately builds customer base. New businesses would be foolish to close off this proven consumer stream by not launching a website.

Another transformation guaranteed to affect your business is the consumer’s dire need to access information immediately. Today, consumers have taken to addictive shopping habits and quick fixes; rubber band and all. When the urge to purchase arrives, immediate relief is necessary, and any time given between the urge and the purchase decreases consumer interest. This can result in the money staying nicely tucked away in their wallets. Good for the wallet industry, bad for your business…. bad for the economy.

In order to feed the consumer’s craving for instant gratification, business owners need to utilize the greatest inventions of the 20th and 21st centuries and launch a website. By providing information about your company, services, products and more, you can successfully scratch your consumer’s itch, loosen the rubber band and turn them into a long-term customer.

To add another drop of blood into the already shark infested waters, every business owner should examine the competition for your customers’ eyeballs; and by eyeballs I mean ‘interest’ in the form of impressions. That’s right, customers need to SEE your company’s offering before they’ll commit to a purchase. And now, with our awesomely digital world soaring through space, the competition for impressions pulled a Spaceballs’ very own Dark Helmet and skipped from light speed straight to ludicrous speed. Are you nuts? Everyone and their neighbor are competing for the same business. The only way to be first to the finish line, where millions of eyeballs are waiting, is the internet.

In order to gain confidence and be the first to the consumer impression an online presence must be established. Whether it’s a tailor business, a frozen yogurt business or a gimmicky pen business, the first to the finish line is always the winner. So why not travel a step faster than ludicrous speed and be the first to stretch your torso to the sky to break that finish line tape. Launching a website is the ludicrous speed power of a business. Sticking to the ways of the past leave you far behind the hare, the tortoise and Dark Helmet.

With 50,000 new businesses each year clawing their way to the bow of the bobbing ship, doing everything in their power to make it to a life raft, aspiring entrepreneurs must take every digital step possible. Launch your business into the 21st century. It starts with a website, today’s metaphorical business life vest.


FlashFactory.com provides the easiest tool on the web, allowing you to launch a professional, fully-animated Flash website in under 30 minutes. The daunting task of building a website has been laid to rest with FlashFactory’s ‘KOG’ Technology, the revolutionary system designed for the ‘non-tech’ user.

Visit FlashFactory.com Flash websites made easy.

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