Staying Ahead of the Online Game
The Imaginuity Interactive blog
The online marketplace moves at a fierce pace, driven by technology and user demands. The goal of the Imaginuity Interactive blog is to provide insight and analysis, so you can stay ahead of the curve. Stop back regularly for trends, ideas and tips from our diverse employees. Buckle up; it's going to be a great ride.
Mobile development: Utopia is not here yet
By KEN KOO, President Write it once and deploy on many platforms. As an innovative digital agency, we get this request often from clients. This is the ultimate goal of mobile application development. Clients want to hire an agency to develop one mobile application that runs natively and can be deployed to Apple iTunes, Blackberry AppWorld and [...] Continue reading →
Behind the (fashion) scenes, online
BY SHAY WILBURN, Account Coordinator Fashion Week is coming up, and I can't wait. I live for the national campaign ads from luxury designers such as Burberry, Gucci and Calvin Klein featured in the pages of Vogue, WWD and W magazine. Fashionistas like myself appreciate the chic and intricate details put into the model's pose, smoky [...] Continue reading →
The joy (and fun) of giving
At the onset of each new year, people tend to take a look back on the past and set their sights on a brighter future, and 2012 here at Imaginuity won't be any different. As we look forward to all the greatness that 2012 has in store, we’ve decided to kick off the new year by [...] Continue reading →
It’s fashionable to be tech savvy
BY SHAY WILBURN, Account Coordinator With Fashion Week 2012 coming up in February, fashion followers all over the world are getting their fashion fixes online. As always, the Internet is a powerful equalizer. You no longer need the power and influence of Anna Wintour or the celebrity of Rachel Zoe to get front row access to the Badgley [...] Continue reading →
Rebuilding the house that Flash built
BY BO HARRIS, Developer For a good while now, I have been hearing the same things from well-informed web developers and industry friends. “Flash is dead,” they tell me with a smile. I often wonder how they could tell me such things while smiling, since for the past five years I made my living as a Flash [...] Continue reading →
The many languages of mobile
BY BO HARRIS, Developer When it comes to developing mobile applications, there are lots of programming languages and integrated development environments (IDE) to choose from. I’ve tried several of the options available, and here are some thoughts to help you choose the best ones for your business goals. If you only want to target Apple iOS devices, [...] Continue reading →
(How to) choose your words carefully
BY JENNIFER MEDINA, Interactive Writer I’m a word person. Check it out. Right up there next to my name you’ll see that “writer” is part of my title. I haven’t produced the great American novel (though repeated attempts at NaNoWriMo have me well on my way), but I do write day in and day out, always [...] Continue reading →
Using technology for social good
BY CINDY SPENCER, Senior Developer What does social good mean? According to Investopedia, a social good is a good or service that benefits the largest number of people in the largest possible way. Last year I read an article on Former President Bill Clinton’s keynote speech at the Dreamforce Conference on cloud computing. Clinton discussed using technology to [...] Continue reading →
Internet access as a human right
BY CINDY SPENCER, Senior Developer Last year I read an interesting BBC article about Internet access as a fundamental human right. I completely agree. The Internet provides access to readily available information, and it should be accessible to people all around the world. The BBC article stated that almost four in five people around the world believe [...] Continue reading →
Hang on; mobile is just beginning
BY JOHN MACON, Senior Developer Here is something to think about: There will never be as few mobile internet users as there are right now. The flip side of that thought: There will never be as many desktop internet users as there are at this very moment. No matter what your business, this is important for your website. Those [...] Continue reading →
Like Tron, we fight for the users
BY JOHN MACON, Senior Developer Growing up, one of my favorite movies was Tron. I had just gotten involved in computers myself, loved video games fanatically, and had the full imagination of a geek-in-the-making; I must have driven my mom nuts. From that original movie, one of the lines that has stuck with me, (forming my outlook on [...] Continue reading →
We rock our neighborhood
Imaginuity Interactive was founded on a culture of giving back, and good works are part of our year. Last Saturday our employees, family and friends created two giant murals-in-a-day to welcome drivers, bikers and pedestrans into our South Side Cedars neighborhood in Dallas. Not to brag too much, but WE ROCKED IT! After weeks of planning, design [...] Continue reading →
Functional, flexible WordPress
BY STEVEN HAUN, Senior Developer WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) deployed on the internet. It is easy to use, easy to customize and it’s totally free, so its appeal is broad. WordPress was originally intended as blogging software. Bloggers often like to build communities, receive feedback and start conversations, so comments [...] Continue reading →
When the sites (and CSS) align
BY STEVEN HAUN, Senior Developer As the agency of choice for our clients, we pride ourselves on being experts in our respective fields. To have a great website, we need to take all of our individual strengths (graphic design, content, functionality and user experience, to name just a few) and put them together into one spectacular [...] Continue reading →
Face-to-face in a virtual world
BY LAURA YOUNG, Senior Account Manager At Imaginuity Interactive, we believe in walking in our clients’ shoes because, great digital advertising isn’t created from a single perspective. In this era of remote meetings, online video conferencing and conference calls, face-to-face interaction is still a vital part of the mix. Sure, we know what makes a beautiful, award-winning [...] Continue reading →
The art (and science) of service
BY LAURA YOUNG, Senior Account Manager Like all advertising agencies, Imaginuity Interactive retains employees that comprise its account service team. Of course, the goal of this team is to deliver excellent customer service to our clients. But what is excellent customer service? The concept of customer service is not a new one. Presumably, since the dawn of [...] Continue reading →
Developers share your pain
BY NATHAN VAUGHN, Senior Developer You know what really grinds my gears? Constant software updates. Like many people, I have lots of digital devices that are supposed to make my life easier. I own a laptop, a desktop PC, an iPhone and an iPad that I use on a daily basis. Unfortunately, it seems like every time [...] Continue reading →
WTH (What the heck) are SVG?
BY NATHAN VAUGHN, Senior Developer For a new technology, scalable vector graphics (SVG) have actually been around for a while. So what exactly are they, and why should we care? Well, SVG are an XML-based way to build vector graphics. (Oh boy; more computer jargon.) With a text-based file (XML), you can produce graphics that are drawn by [...] Continue reading →
Facebook for business (and pleasure)
BY NAOMY JONES, Senior Business Development Associate I am one of those people that love Facebook. I can’t imagine life without it, but how can my personal Facebook page help my company or my career? Facebook has: More than 800 million active users More than 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, group, events and community pages) More [...] Continue reading →
Measuring the effectiveness of interactive media
BY NAOMY JONES, Senior Business Development Associate Part I: Why Blog? Everybody’s doing it. I’ve been tasked to write two blog posts this week, but how does doing this benefit my company? What comes to mind first are the SEO benefits; content is the food that feeds the search engine robots. Search engines like Google and Yahoo! [...] Continue reading →
If your business isn’t changing, it isn’t going to survive
BY KEN KOO, President The founders of our country were great thinkers. With vision and an understanding of history and human behavior. It is by no accident that they created the separation of church and state as they learned this lesson from their history books. It is also by no accident that we have the separation [...] Continue reading →
Digital = Disruptive innovation
BY KEN KOO, President We live in the midst of a hurricane. A hurricane of digital activity that many call Web 2.0. Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, Salesforce.com, just to name a few. How times have changed from those companies that laid the foundation of the technology world as we know it today. Companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, [...] Continue reading →
Tools of the trade: Text editors and IDEs
BY RANDY HOYT, Senior Developer The people on our technology team here at Imaginuity Interactive are more than just programmers; we are craftsmen. Just like blacksmiths or carpenters, we rely heavily on our favorite tools to get our work done. We don't use hammers or forges in our work; we use text editors and integrated [...] Continue reading →
Let’s face the (Facebook) future
BY CASEY MILLER, Associate Creative Director Your digital life will change this week. Drastically. On Thursday. That's because on or around Thursday, Sept. 29, your Facebook profile page will change. Let's all take a deep breath and try to remain calm. If Facebook changes tend to freak you out, you may want to prep for the [...] Continue reading →
Location, location, location (even online)
BY JENNIFER MEDINA, Interactive Writer Quick! Where's the nearest sushi restaurant? Now, while you may know of a nearby location off the top of your head, research shows you’re also likely to pull out your smartphone and map out that location for us, complete with turn-by-turn directions. According to a recent study by the Pew Internet & [...] Continue reading →
Customizing WordPress, at edUi 2011
BY RANDY HOYT, Senior Developer In a few weeks, I'll be heading to Richmond, VA, to speak at edUi 2011, a two-day conference is presented by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. It provides web professionals who work serving colleges, universities, libraries, museums and other institutions of learning a chance to come together and learn [...] Continue reading →
Are You a Google Ninja?
BY KATRINA HUBBARD, Designer The worldwide web is at your fingertips. That is, if you know the right tricks. Google gives you the opportunity to learn its search engine inside and out, lending you the ability to hone in on the answers you are looking for. How? By providing you with the trivia game at [...] Continue reading →
Got URL?
BY JUSTIN BOWERS, Senior Developer It's 2011. Sure, we don't have our flying cars yet, but easy access to bountiful information has been a pretty standard feature for at least a decade. All one has to do is jump on a friendly internet-enabled device (apparently your fridge now counts) and the information super-highway is at [...] Continue reading →
Pardon me, I speak Geek
BY JUSTIN BOWERS, Senior Developer Us web and application developers are an interesting breed. In our heads spin the code for the potential Next Big Thing. Most times, we just need an outlet (and generally a little bit of steering). It’s not unusual for a developer to launch into the nuts and bolts of an [...] Continue reading →
The dreaded budget: Free your mind
BY ROSEMARY FINLEY, Corporate Accountant What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the word “budget”? I would not be at all surprised if you answered “controlled” or “squeezed” or “straight jacket.” A glimpse at the evening news informs us that just the sound of this word – budget – strikes [...] Continue reading →
The great big idea vs. the real world
BY ROSEMARY FINLEY, Corporate Accountant Having served as a corporate controller for a variety of corporations over the past three decades, I find it quite amazing that I am now enjoying my job the most with one of the most unlikely situations of all – a nationally recognized interactive agency full of creative people. Being a certified [...] Continue reading →
Leads, networking and social media
BY JESSE WILSON, Business Development In the previous blog we looked at three different ways to generate leads for your business: Hoovers, Salesgenie and LinkedIn.com. They’re all pretty much the same, right? Do the same thing? Provide the same basic information? The cost of the two subscription options -- Hoovers and Salesgenie -- are within a [...] Continue reading →
B2B or B2C: It all comes down to finding the customer
BY JESSE WILSON, Business Development Whether your endeavor is focused on business-to-business or business-to-consumer marketing, lead generation tools are a key part of the sales and business development cycle. Lead generation tools are helpful in that they allow you to search for businesses based on the criteria you enter into their system. There are always companies [...] Continue reading →
Is advertising art? Is art advertising?
BY SAM ROH, Art Director The great artists like Manet and Cezanne, have always challenged what is thought to be art. They created masterpieces that countered the conventional assumptions of the time. With ready-made art, Marcel Duchamp transformed the common household items and everyday products from toilets to bicycles into gallery pieces. With the 1960s Pop [...] Continue reading →
Creating, On My Own Time
BY SAM ROH, Art Director AND CASEY MILLER, Associate Creative Director Around here, we value the collaborative energy that comes from focused logic and out-there creativity. The Business Council for the Arts (BCA) gets that connection, also. Its regional employee art exhibition program, On My Own Time, encourages businesses to get involved in the arts and [...] Continue reading →
Finding the sweet spot on Facebook
BY CASEY MILLER, Associate Creative Director We're all addicted individually to Facebook (at least until the coming Facebook vs. Google+ smackdown), but that also brings fierce competition for users' time and attention. With our clients, finding the sweet spot for their unique products and services is the challenge, while also strategically positioning them for an authentic [...] Continue reading →
(Many) exclusive invitation(s) to Spotify
BY CASEY MILLER, Associate Creative Director AND MATT SCHMERTZ, Intern After literally years of negotiations with US recording entities, the popular European music streaming service Spotify has entered the USA amid much fanfare. Although the streaming, cloud-based music service has only been around for a few weeks, some music lovers hail it as one of the [...] Continue reading →
Have Klout? And/or, do you need it?
BY CASEY MILLER, Associate Creative Director AND MATT SCHMERTZ, Intern Klout.com, the new San Francisco based social media analytics company, says it can tell you exactly how popular and influential you are on popular social media platforms. Instead of just the numbers of followers or connections you have, Klout purports to measure the information you share [...] Continue reading →
Behind the Music: Leadership and job opportunities
BY TAMMY HOOKER, Human Resources I’ve been an executive and human resources roadie for 25 years. Been with one-hit-wonder companies, make-the-most-of-a-trend companies, those that are all flash and auto-tune … and those with staying power. One of the things I love about human resources is I get an all-access pass into the executive world. I’ve learned [...] Continue reading →
Go ahead and flash me. I’m in HR.
BY TAMMY HOOKER, Human Resources If you’re looking for a new job, I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret. Human resources folks like candidates that flash. Flash their ability to evolve, that is. Most of us can see invisible dinosaur tracks on resumes. We’re not in the business of recruiting folks who can’t evolve, adapt [...] Continue reading →
Google+: Is it a Facebook killer?
BY GARY HOOKER, Vice President/Partner Now that I’ve survived the grueling process of importing my Facebook (FB) contacts into Google+, my personal opinion on this latest-greatest social media hub may be a little bittersweet. CIRCLES ARE INTRIGUING I like the Google+ ability to put my contacts into its communication Circles, because I can allow specific people to [...] Continue reading →
Google+ arrives at the (crowded) social site party
BY GARY HOOKER, Vice President/Partner I was extremely excited to get an invitation to try out Google+, the new social networking platform from Google (“Real-life sharing, rethought for the web”). However, the effort to export my data out of Facebook and into Google+ took some time. Facebook has decided to make it difficult for you to [...] Continue reading →
What’s all the fuss .about ?
BY TIM LANGFORD, Executive Creative Director/Partner ICANN, the governing body for all internet addresses, recently announced a sweeping change to the Domain Name System by increasing the number of gTLDs, or generic top-level domains. Examples of current gTLDs include ".com", ".net", ".org" and ".gov". From January 2012 to April 2012, ICANN will be accepting applications so [...] Continue reading →
We’ve got an afternoon; let’s make an app!
BY SHARON HEWITT, Imaginuity Intern Imaginuity Interactive recently had the pleasure of hosting participants of the Marcus Graham Project (MGP) summer boot camp through the process of designing an app for the iPad. In its third year, the MGP boot camp provides a diverse group of 16- to 34-year-olds the opportunity to form an agency in [...] Continue reading →
Supporting diversity in the real world
The Marcus Graham Project (MGP) began in 2008 with the question, "What will we do to create a 'lil bit of change' in our country?" With that question came action by Lincoln Stephens and a few of his colleagues. It generated the idea of a sponsored training and a sustainable infrastructure for mentoring young African Americans [...] Continue reading →
Wireframing tools for thinking through UX/UI
With a multitude of UX wireframing tools on the market, it's hard to know where to start. Here are a few of our favorites. > Balsamiq Mockups Balsamiq Mockups is a wonderfully easy to use tool with built-in UI components and icons. It enables anyone to quickly provide low-fi sketch wireframes which are easily exportable to [...] Continue reading →
Digital Dallas Comes to Imaginuity
COME VISIT US TODAY: On Wednesday, June 29, Imaginuity Interactive welcomes Digital Dallas to our offices on South Lamar Street at South Side Dallas. We’ll be hosting the Meetup in the common space just adjacent to our offices from 6:00-8:00 p.m. For those of you who are not familiar with Digital Dallas, the organization was [...] Continue reading →
Leaving on a Jet Plane
We at Imaginuity have travelled about 150,000 miles so far in 2011 for seminars, conclaves, conferences, meetings, events and tradeshows. That amounts to a lot of time spent in the air and on the ground at events. Tips when traveling for business events include: Book travel and lodging far in advance. Shop around for deals. Wear comfortable [...] Continue reading →
Rocking the creativity AND the logic
Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try! ~Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Thinks You Can Think! Believe it or not but before Dr. Seuss became Dr. Seuss, he made a living in advertising. 15 years to be exact, mostly at Standard Oil. [...] Continue reading →
Giving Back
Here at Imaginuity, we have a rich history of giving back. It’s a principle the agency was founded on and one we remain faithful to, delivering pro bono work for Big Thought, 500 Inc., the Children’s Eye Foundation, the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Business Council for the Arts. So naturally, we are fans of Sparked.com, [...] Continue reading →
Staying on top of SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) has become the fine art of regularly refreshing your website so the content is optimized for people searching for information through search engines. Important keywords need to be in your content -- in the right amounts -- so your site(s) show up in the first page of search results. Why is this [...] Continue reading →
Socially Responsible Social Media
Though much has been written about social media, it is still the Wild West of advertising. This is especially true when regulating information disseminated through social media. The regulatory agencies are struggling to police an overwhelming amount of new content online. One example comes from the Food and Drug Administration’s Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising and [...] Continue reading →
Do You Have Klout?
Do you have Klout™? If you do, you’re already ahead of most of us. I created my personal Twitter account about three years ago, just as it was going main stream. It took me a while to understand its potential and even longer to actively participate in the Twitter-verse. Once I dove in (and noticed the [...] Continue reading →
Social Media Advertising: Applications for a Digital Agency
Social Media advertising spend is expected to reach $8.3 Billion by 2015. Let’s take a moment to digest this information from a study done by BIA/Kelsey. $8.3 Billion dollars. That’s almost four times as much as was spent in 2010 (a mere $2.1 Billion)! $7.6 Billion of that will be spent on display ads, the majority [...] Continue reading →
