akiramedia | Akira Media Designs

Aaron Draplin Designs a Logo Before Your Eyes

I watched this earlier in the week and it changed my life. I got no fewer than 10 very usable bits of info ranging from inspiration sources to keyboard shortcuts to creative process. Glory!

SHARPIES!!!

I love Sharpies. It may be a borderline addiction. I blame it on years of using them to mark scripts back when I was directing. Joe Satriani uses oil based Sharpies to create designs on 50+ guitars. What are you gonna make today?

Creating Something Timeless (Tedx Talks)

Creating an environment that fosters innovation.

The CAPTCHA is dead?

No more crazy, warped letters. All hail Google!

What your zipcode says about you

Esri’s Tapestry(TM) project is one of those borderline scary tools. Type in your zipcode (or any zipcode) and get instant demographic info for that area and all sorts of information such as median income, age, and segmentation classes. Link: Esri Zip Lookup

Dropbox Passwords Stolen?

Dropbox is dismissing today’s news of stolen passwords from their site saying that they weren’t hacked and the stolen credentials are from other sites. While this is probably true, could it really hurt you to change you password? Or maybe even turn on Dropbox’s 2 step authentication and make it even harder for the bad […]

Akira Camera?

Spotted by my friend Scott Davis somewhere in Virginia.

Microsoft Fake Telephone Support Phone Scam

I got a call last night from someone with a fairly heavy accent claiming to be from Microsoft. They were calling to tell me that I had a virus and needed to go on my computer so they could show me where it was infected and how to fix it. Yeah, right. Microsoft is never going […]

Google Authorship is Gone

Google Authorship info is no longer showing up in search results. Glory! I remember the first time I added the appropriate rich snippet code for a client on a blog (at the request of their somewhat questionable SEO company, but that’s a story for another day.) because I thought it was one of the most […]

Microsoft to Drop Support for Older Versions of Internet Explorer

Last week Engadget reported that Microsoft will drop support for old versions of Internet Explorer beginning in January of next year. This means no updates or tech support for anything other than the current version of IE. Business customers that need legacy support for web apps can use IE 11’s Enterprise Mode for backwards compatibility. […]

Copyright 101: You Can’t Use Stuff Without Permission

Image Credit When I worked in television, we occasionally would get a request from a client involving using a popular song on one of their commercials. Our response was always something along the lines of, “You can’t do that without permission or you’ll get a cease and desist letter from or (worse) they’ll just sue […]

WordPress Zero Spam Plugin

I’ve become so frustrated with comments that I don’t ever recommend turning them on unless a client has time to burn deleting them despite whatever countermeasures we can try to install. However, this week I’ve caught wind of a new plugin, so I’ll be giving it a whirl to see if it works. Based on […]

New Client: Coastal Hot Tub

We welcomed a new client to the Akira Media Designs family this week: Coastal Hot Tub. This is only the second site we’ve launched using a premade theme and we had to hack the code a little bit to get it to do what we wanted, but the end result is a clean looking […]

Unamused with our conduct, Facebook cracks down

Facebook made an announcement last week that made me pretty happy. I’ve got a really big pet peeve about Facebook business pages that try tricks and manipulations to boost their reach. It bothers me a lot when I see posts ending with things like: “Like this post to show your support for this fallen soldier.” “Comment […]

Restaurant Websites

Today I’m working on a website for a nice Italian restaurant in San Diego. I love working on menu pages for restaurant websites because it’s a good example of well organized content that is easy to format. I come across a lot of restaurants that use PDF’s or even straight images ( ack!) to display […]

Welcoming a New Member of the Family

We’re welcoming a new member of the Akira Media family to the wonderful online world of the Internet… or as George W. would say, “The Internets”. Dr. H. L. Keith III, DDS is a third generation dentist in the Wilmington area and we’re proud to give you this site that presents information about his practice […]

The Three Components That Make Your Website

While working with clients, I find that there can be some confusion on what is required for a website, so I want to take a little time to spell out what the different components of are and how they work together. Today I’m going to cast some broad strokes and talk about the three main […]

Three Reasons to Buy Your Own Domain Name

It may feel like it’s something you can’t do, but you can & should purchase your own domain name. Here are three quick, compelling reasons why. You will save money Granted, it’ll only be a few dollars per year, but the rich don’t stay rich by just giving their hard-earned cash away, right? Might as […]

ADT Allegedly Caught Buying Endorsements

ADT has reached an agreement with the FTC after they were allegedly caught paying bloggers for endorsements of their products on TV without disclosing the relationship. Aside from it just being plain creepy and obviously wrong, the laws are very clear on this matter. If there is any sort of payment made, it must be disclosed. […]

Attention vs. Connecting

I frequently bemoan the state of online marketing today. We have such a great opportunity as small businesses to really connect with our customers to make them more than just anonymous one time consumers of our wares and make them part of our families. Unfortunately the way most social media streams are managed, we seem […]