Chris J. Politzki’s Blog

Design Related, Photography, Uncategorized Abstract, Art, Artistic, fractals, Imagery

Google Pac-Man Feature shown on May 21st, 2010

Everybody Catch the Google Pac-Man Feature Today?

If you didn’t, it’s up for another 48 hours to commemorate the anniversary of the game 30 years ago in Japan. Make sure you don’t just breeze past the initial Google Search screen, which usually updates with a doodle version of the original logo from time to time depending on the holiday, time of year and so forth. Instead, click on the insert coin and play a game of Pac-Man courtesy of Google!

Make sure to share with all you friends and family before this feature is taken down!

Chris J. Politzki

Studio 119 Degrees Web Design & Development Studio

Design Related, Search, Uncategorized arcade game, Future of Search, Google, Pac-Man, Pacman, Search

Just a quick one here… thought I’d post a link to a recently updated page of ours for the logos we have developed for clients. There’s also a few icons there as well. Check it out!

Studio 119 Degrees Logo Designs

Visual Samples:

Chris J. Politzki
Studio 119 Degrees Web Design & Development Studio

Design Related branding, design, logo, web design

Call me crazy, but I’ve become really fond of fractal imagery. I have used these images as my desktop picture on my computer for quite some time now and feel that they can really inspire me. When I’m thinking of a new design, there’s something refreshing, new and exciting about fractal images that re-energizes me for coming up with that next design. I’ve applied this to logos and web sites alike and there really is something to it!

What are Fractals?

They can be defined as, ‘a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole’, according to Wikipedia’s definition of fractals. They come in many different flavors, such as ‘Mandelbrot’, ‘Newton’, ‘Julia’, ‘Halley’, ‘Secant’, or ‘Dragon’ and I’ll not bore you with the various reasons why. All I do know is that they are wondrous images that also occur in nature, especially in snowflakes.

Fractals as Desktop Images

I’ll post up 3 fractal images here to get the ball rolling, so-to-speak. If there’s enough interest, I’ll post up more. Feel free to download them and use them for your computer desktop image, become inspired by them as I do, or share them with friends. Most of all, leave a comment if you’d like to see more of these.

Fractal image number one

Fractal image number two

Fractal image number three

Chris J. Politzki
Studio 119 Degrees Web Design & Development Studio

Design Related fractals, free desktop images, inspiration

SEO company and Web Design & Development studio collaborate

Our design & development studio recently completed a widget development project for a local SEO company here in Denver, Colorado. Together, we developed a strategy for creating the all-important backlinks to a Texas attorney’s web site. The group over at seOverflow here in Denver is quite a talented group of SEO gurus that assisted the Studio 119 Design & Development team with the preliminaries for creating widgets for the Jim Adler & Associates team in Houston, Texas.

What do these ‘Death Statistic Widgets’ do?

Good question! They simply track 5 different types of deaths across the United States. There’s a widget for Car Accidents, one for 18 Wheeler Accidents, one for Drunk Driving Deaths, one for Mesothelioma Deaths, and also one for Motorcycle Deaths. All five come in 3 different sizes; 300 x 250 pixels, 240 x 400 pixels, and 160 x 300 pixels. All perfectly suited to implement into your blog or web site. Each one respectively tracks the total death numbers to date for each specific type of death. Each day a new number is displayed and oftentimes these numbers are updated hourly using a javascript which deducts the current day, compares it to the national daily average of deaths and returns a total number to date for the specified year.

You can download these widgets at either of these two landing pages:

1. The Accident Awareness site.
2. The Jim Adler Death Statistics site.

Why create Widgets for SEO?

Yet another good question… and the answer is easy. ‘To Gain Valuable Backlinks to Your Site‘, simply put. In the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) community, we all know that if you are able to gain links back to your site you can gain some valuable exposure within the Search Engines. Strategically placing targeted keywords within your anchor text (the words that appear within the actual link on the page, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the term) also help the spiders that are crawling your site help determine what your site is about and how they should categorize it. Changing up the anchor text is also a common task. Backlinks also function as a sort of voting system in that they indicate that someone has taken the time to add a link back to your site and find your site’s content valuable.

The Death Statistic widgets have appearing on each one of them 2 and sometimes 3 backlinks. Two anchor text links and one image alt tag set on the image link. So as you can see, we’ve placed these within the actual widgets in hopes that people will implement them into their blogs and web pages to give us our precious backlinks to our site. A very unique strategy in my opinion and one that also worked well with our previously developed Dex Yellow Pages widgets.

It’s all done in the name of  ’Gaining Valuable Backlinks to Your Site‘.

Happy Widgeting everybody!

Chris J. Politzki
Studio 119 Degrees Web Design & Development Studio

Design Related, Developer Related, SEO Related crawl, development, Gadget, Indexing, Search, Search Engine, SEO, spider, web design, Widget

Ace Frehley Anomaly Album Cover

Hello again! I posted about Ace’s arrival to the world wide web back in April of this year in a post entitled, ‘Ace Frehley finally has an Official Web Site!!!‘. And now the time has come to mention that his newly recorded album is slated for release in just under two weeks! That’s right earthlings… the Aceman has been hard at work preparing us for his latest endeavor. September 15th, 2009 is the date the new recording hits the streets!

Ace Frehley Press Kit for Anomaly

The new album / CD is entitled ‘Anomaly’. Ace has put out an electronic press kit… check it out here:

Or check out the commercial:

Different Packaging for the Album

Pretty cool stuff for collectors as there is 3 different packaging options. One for Walmart, one for Best Buy, & one that’s just standard, but they are all pretty nice. Take a look for yourself! Nice job by the graphic design team, I must say.

Walmart Packaging of Anomaly from Ace Frehley

The Walmart packaging of Ace’s CD contains an Ace autographed tattoo!

Best Buy Packaging for Anomaly from Ace

The above Best Buy layout is printed on silver stock, like the Double Platinum Album from Kiss!

Standard Packaging for Anomaly from Ace Frehley

Anomaly from Ace Frehley is also available on iTunes!

That’s right… you won’t get any of the fancy packaging pictured above, but at least you’ll have the latest from one of the most influential guitarists of our time. Ace Frehlely Anomaly on iTunes.

Track Listing

1. Foxy & Free
2. Outer Space
3. Pain In The Neck
4. Fox On The Run
5. Genghis Khan
6. Too Many Faces
7. Change The World
8. Space Bear
9. A Little Below The Angels
10. Sister
11. It’s A Great Life
12. Fractured Quantum
13. The Return of Space Bear (Dedicated to Tom Snyder and an iTunes exclusive)

Go out there and support our spaceman who has so kindly graced us with his presence on September 15th with his first album in over 20 years!

And be sure to check out his web site as well: the official Ace Frehley web site.

Chris J. Politzki
Studio 119 Degrees

Design Related, Music Related Ace Frehley, graphic design, guitar, Kiss, music

Yahoo Answers – What is it?

Yahoo!Answers is a community for knowledge sharing Q&A (Questions and Answers). It is a form of social networking/media and involves people asking questions to the community and then people responding to these questions. To participate, one only has to have a Yahoo account and can immediately begin contributing to the site. There are other similar sites out there that do the same thing. Sites like Answers.com, Allexperts.com, and Answerbag.com but Yahoo Answers seems to get the most ‘bang for the buck’ in terms of marketing your web sites in the Search Engines. Answers within Yahoo!Answers are quickly crawled by the spiders and show up high in the search result pages.

Using Yahoo Answers for Search Engine Optimization

So those of you who are new to SEO may not be aware of  ’off-page SEO‘. This, in it’s simplest terms, is a means by which you go out try to gain links pointing to your site. Links to your site act as a ‘vote‘ or ‘thumbs up‘ for your site and is well looked upon by the search engines, especially Google. Yahoo!Answers allows you to add your website in the Source box at the end of the answer you give. Although it does contain a no-follow tag, meaning the search engines won’t index the links. Another drawback is that you are not able to use anchor text to utilize the power of keywords in anchor text, but the ability to gain exposure for your site within the search engine result pages outweighs this. You are, in fact, building incremental traffic to your site and this is always a good thing to do. A great way to track this would be through watching your referral traffic either through server logs or Google Analytics and seeing when somebody is coming to your site via Yahoo!Answers.

I would suggest when signing up for answering questions to answer question which are pertinent to your web site or area of expertise. Try to choose a category within the site that you can easily return to everyday or once a week to check for new questions to answer. There is a points system in play on the site and when you answer a question, your earn 2 points. If your answer becomes the best answer, then you receive 10 points. While it may not be possible to become a so-called ‘Top Contributor‘, aiming to get a best answer will be rewarded by moving your answer up to the top of the page when somebody is also looking for the answer to the question you replied to and this is key in building traffic to your site.

I’d like to demonstrate the power of using Yahoo!Answers for SEO.

Take, for example, a recent question I answered. The question was, “How do I make a widget for my website?“.

Now go to Google and do a search for ‘How do I make a widget for my website?’ and see how high the result is for the Yahoo!Answers page is… it’s number two! Oftentimes, it’s number one in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). These pages are indexed by both Google and Yahoo and are a great tactic to build an audience to your web site or blog.

A word of advice, try mixing things up and sometimes drop a link to your site and sometimes don’t. Don’t appear like you are spamming the site and try to give a more natural appearance to the community. And most of all, enjoy yourself within the community as it will pay off in the long run.

Chris J. Politzki
Studio 119 Degrees

Design Related, SEO Related marketing, Search, SEO, Yahoo!Answers

Vintage Ace Frehley circa 1977

Ace Frehley, spaceman from the rock and roll supergroup Kiss, finally has an official web site! Ace has inspired many guitarists throughout the years and is now entering the cyber world via his newly launched web site and other various areas of the internet.

Ways to Follow Ace Frehley on the Web

I recently saw that he is now on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and even Twitter! He’s definitely out there making himself visible to the world. All of the various ways to follow Ace on the web are listed on his ‘Into the Void‘ page on his site.

His first video blog from April 2009 I’ll post here:

His band is in the studio now finishing up their upcoming release called ‘Anomaly’. Sign up for exclusive updates from Ace and his webmaster. Here’s an exclusive video of Ace solo tracking for the track ‘Pain in the Neck’ in his studio:

He’s also posted some really nice rare photos from his spectacular career. The official Ace Frehley web site photos section, called ‘12 pics’ has a few photos here, but I would suggest also visiting him on Facebook and MySpace to see some other nice images of Ace in action.

Recent Ace Frehley Sightings

Ace opening up the New York Yankee Stadium Hard Rock Cafe - April 2009

Ace at the New York Hard Rock - Halloween 2007

Ace Frehley with his new band - New Years Eve 2008

So there you have it. Ace is back and he told you so!

Update!!!

A recent interview with Ace at Amoeba Record Store in Hollywood, California. Check it out:

Chris J. Politzki
Studio 119 Degrees

Design Related, Music Related Ace Frehley, guitar, Kiss, music, web design

Ok, so I thought I’d post something that covers two areas that are close to me… Music & Web Design. Having recently posted something on the David Gilmour site, I didn’t really find this too far off-base really. Plus, I got the notice on my MySpace page, went over to the new Clapton site and was pretty impressed. I even became a fan of his page on Facebook, so I guess you could say I’m a bit pumped about this?

The other item I forgot to mention, is that when I looked at tour dates, I noticed Eric was playing the Royal Albert Hall in London tonight (actually is now on stage as I’m writing this) & I wanted to jump on this opportunity to promote his site and his tour. The Royal Albert Hall is, for those of you that don’t know, quite the venue. It makes an appearance in the Beatles song, “A Day in the Life“. The line is, “Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall“. The hall is circular in shape and is well-known for it’s great acoustics. Many famous concerts have taken place here, so it would suffice to say that it has a bit of history behind it. It was built in 1871 and is still standing tall as one of the most sought after places for a musician to play. If you’ve played here, then you’ve pretty much made it as a musician.

Getting back to the Eric Clapton Web Site though, I’d have to say it’s one well-thought-out and laid-out site. I immediately went to the video section to find this great 1991 version of “White Room”, which is show above. Okay, so it isn’t Cream performing it, but Eric’s playing is still impressive. One of the most expressive guitar players I’ve ever heard… and that’s coming from a devout Jimmy Page fan!

I think the photo section will grow as the tour progresses and it certainly will be something else to see and hear Eric together with Stevie Winwood again on this tour. The video section also could be a little more robust, but the interviews make up for it. I always enjoyed listening to Clapton talk and this was no different. Pay special close attention to his take in the Concert for Bangladesh he did with George Harrison. Having just read his autobiography, these comments from him really hit home. I do kind of wish the music section, or discography rather, would include some small sound clips from the songs and then also have a feature to buy the song/songs from either iTunes or Amazon, but maybe that was a legal decision. The mini-player of Eric’s music at the top of all the pages is nice though… would be even nicer if while the song played and one navigated to a new page, the song would persist to play, but it does not.

A link to Eric’s enduring fight to help people with addictions is also on the site up top in the header. The facility is called, “The Crossroads Centre” and is truly an amazing thing Eric has given back to this world. All in all, a good site. It might need a little growing into and more content created or added to it, which I believe will take place soon. A site any Clapton fan would be please to visit.

So there you have it, my tribute to Eric Clapton’s start of a 10-night stay at the Royal Albert Hall starting tonight!

Visit the site and enjoy it!

Chris J. Politzki
Studio 119 Degrees

Design Related, Music Related eric clapton, guitar, music, web design

February 24th saw the release of the new and improved DexKnows.com 2.0 web site. With it, also came the updated Free Tools page. As with the 1.0 site, I helped develop not only this page, but also the newly-branded Banner Ads, Search Boxes, Widgets & Gadgets, and Text Links. I will, for purposes of this post, only go over the Search Boxes and Widgets.

What’s New With The Dexknows.com Site, Search Boxes & Widgets?

All of us who work at Dex are really excited about the new 2.0 site launch. I’m especially excited about the new Search Boxes, Widgets & Gadgets. So what’s new about these from the previous versions? Good question! Keeping in mind that the Search Boxes are mainly used by Dex Affiliates, I wanted to streamline the code that needed to be copied and pasted to implement them into pre-existing sites. In order to accomplish this, I used div tags instead of the previous methods of using tables in the HTML. These div tags were then controlled by specific CSS to perform better across all browsers. There’s even a custom CSS rule to accomodate the Safari browser, which I think everyone should download. It’s available for both the Mac & PC and is quickly becoming one of the up-and-coming browsers people use today.

Code Implementation for the DexKnows.com Search Boxes

So how does one go about using these so-called Search Boxes? It’s as easy as copying and pasting two bits of code into your HTML. 

• Step 1 – Paste this code below between the <head></head> tags in your HTML.

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://images.dexknows.com/logo/searchbox-files/widget.js”></script>

• Step 2 – Paste this code below between the <body></body> tags in your HTML.

<form class=”search” name=”search” id=”search” action=”http://www.dexknows.com/rd/” onsubmit=”return checkform();”> <input type=”hidden” class=”dku” name=”dku” value=”http://www.dexknows.com/search/?mkt=dk20&mkw=L2Us300×250″ /> <div id=”dex_widget300×250″> <div id=”top300×250″><IMG SRC=”http://images.dexknows.com/logo/searchbox-files/300×250_top.gif” alt=”Dex is one of the leading Yellow Pages publishers. Dex publishes the AT&T Real Yellow Pages in Illinois and NW Indiana, the EMBARQ™ Yellow Pages, and the Dex® Yellow Pages (as the official publisher of Qwest®).” width=”300″ height=”70″ border=0 usemap=”#DexLogoLink”></div> <div id=”bottom300×250″> <div class=”styleWhat300×250″><LABEL for=”what”>What</LABEL><br> <input name=’what’ type=’text’ class=”formbox300×250″ id=’what’ tabindex=’1′ value=’category, business name, keyword or phone number.’ maxlength=”50″ onClick=”clearWhatData();” onKeyPress=”this.style.color = ‘#000000′;” /> </div> <div class=”styleWhere300×250″><LABEL for=”where”>Where</LABEL><br> <input name=’where’ type=’text’ class=”formbox300×250″ id=’where’ tabindex=’2′ value=’city, state, address, ZIP code or landmark.’ maxlength=”50″ onClick=”clearWhereData();” onKeyPress=”this.style.color = ‘#000000′;” /> </div> <div id=”search300×250″> <input name=”image” type=’image’ tabindex=’3′ src=’http://images.dexknows.com/logo/searchbox-files/300×250_button.gif’ title=”Begin Your Search” /></div> <div align=”center”><a href=”http://www.dexknows.com/rd/?dku=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dexknows.com%2F%3Fmkt%3Ddk20%26mkw%3DL2Us300×250″ title=”Visit DexKnows.com” target=”_blank” class=”styleYP300×250″>DEX YELLOW PAGES</a></div> </div> </div> </form> <map name=”DexLogoLink” id=”Map”> <area shape=”rect” coords=”-196,1,300,70″ href=”http://www.dexknows.com/rd/?dku=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dexknows.com%2F%3Fmkt%3Ddk20%26mkw%3DL2Us300×250″ target=”_blank” alt=”Dex is one of the leading Yellow Pages publishers. Dex publishes the AT&T Real Yellow Pages in Illinois and NW Indiana, the EMBARQ™ Yellow Pages, and the Dex® Yellow Pages (as the official publisher of Qwest®).” title=”Visit DexKnows.com” /> </map>

And that’s all there is to it to get a Search Box working on you web site. Now anyone can perform a business search on the DexKnows.com site directly from your site! Here’s how the above code looks once implemented:

The code has been stream-lined to dynamically load the necessary CSS for each separate Search Box from the javascript call within the header. And since this code and all the images are hosted on a DexKnows.com server, this means no taxing of the users server and translates to better load time and functionality. There are 8 different IAB-approved sizes for the Search Boxes, so you should easily be able to find one that fits your web page.

The New and Improved Dex Gadgets & Widgets

Not only did the Search Boxes get and overhaul, but so did the Gadgets & Widgets. There are currently 4 choices to choose from. A Dex iGoogle Gadget for your iGoogle Home Page, a Dex Google Gadget to install in your Google Desktop, a Dex Yahoo! Widget for Yahoo! Widgets, and finally a Dex Mac Widget for the Mac Dashboard. The latter three contain a version checking script which will allow easy validation for users of the Gadget or Widget to check if they are up to date on the most current version. A 5th Widget will be added in the future, but for now will be posted here for you in advance so that you can test it out. This would be the WidgetBox Widget and is shown below:

 
Thanks and enjoy the new DexKnows.com site and all of it’s new features!

Chris J. Politzki
Studio 119 Degrees

Design Related, Developer Related, SEO Related DexKnows.com, free tools, Gadget, Search, Widget