Aztek

File this under ethics.

“Google Certified! Microsoft Certified! WC3 Valid HTML! Wow! These guys must really know their stuff! Sign the contract!”

“Not so fast. Did you verify they weren’t lying?”

“What do you mean? They have the little logo right there on their website. See? It says “Microsoft Partner.” More...

Dave Skorepa and Josh Brown of Aztek were recently interviewed by Dan Hanson (greatlakesgeek.com) about the latest web design technologies and techniques such as HTML 5, CSS3, jQuery and the Mobile Web. You can watch the YouTube video below.

Location based applications and services have increased in popularity and usage recently. This explosion is in part due to the power of GPS (Global Positioning System) and the convenience of these tools. One of the newest location based applications to hit the streets is Foursquare. Foursquare is a location based social application that can also be viewed as a social networking site. Foursquare is only in the early adoption phase but has been growing very quickly. The latest reports on Foursquare's rapid growth are rather impressive. About two weeks ago, over the course of 10 days, Foursquare grew by nearly 100,000 users. The most recent estimate from the company puts Foursquare at almost 725,000 users (in less than a year of existence). As with the emergence of any new tool or application, there are many questions and misunderstandings surrounding Foursquare. This blog post should help answer some of these questions, shed some light on this new application and also offer insight into how this tool can be used. More...

In the recent March/April 2010 issue of Inside Business, Dan Hanson names Northeast Ohio's "Tech Elite" and Aztek's very own, John Hill was among them. The article names Cleveland's top technology leaders like AJ Hyland, Jim Cookinham, Roy Church, and Ray Leach.

John Hill is Aztek's CEO and founded the company 13 years ago, making Aztek the second oldest web design and development firm in Cleveland. Aztek passed the 500 mark in total clients this year and has no plans to stop anytime soon.

Congratulations to John and to everyone else named on the list.

As designers, we strive to learn all we can about your company in order to create for you the best possible web presence, but we can never know your company as intimately as you do. Clients are quite often able to bring great ideas and suggestions to the table that we may not have thought of. The most successful web designs spring directly from this kind of teamwork.

However, just as it is your job to know all about the widgets you make, or the service you provide, it is our job to know all about the web and what makes great web design. Occasionally a client has a suggestion that at first glance seems like a great idea, but may not be effective for a web site. Following are six of the most common misconceptions about web design and why you should avoid them on your site. More...

Everyone can understand the huge benefits that come with ranking well in the major search engines, especially Google. Google currently uses about 200 ranking factors in their algorithm. These ranking factors and Google's algorithm are changing constantly. It is very important to keep on top of the ranking factors that are most important to Google, such as how fast your page loads. More...

Last week I was invited to the Tri-C Metro campus in downtown Cleveland to tour their new Creative Arts/Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Archive Building, to see if it would be a good fit for future Cleveland Web Standards Association (a group I help organize)  meetings.

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Last month I was invited down to Stark State College of Technology as a member of the Stark State College Information Technology Advisory Committee. Say that three times fast.

Kidding aside, this is a great endeavor that puts the Stark State IT faculty in direct contact with professionals in the field, letting them compare what they're teaching with what's being done in the real world. In short – making sure their graduates are as prepared as possible for the "real world."

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A great article from one of our favorite web design blogs (Smashing Magazine). A must read for the client Web Manager (or whoever is in charge of your company's website). More...

The web is a fluid medium. What I mean by that is, your website changes to fit the size and shape of whatever device it is being displayed on. As technology advances and our screens get smaller (and larger) and our toasters get smarter, it’s no longer safe to assume your visitors are seeing your website exactly as you are.

As designers and developers for the web, we have little to no control over the end product. It’s not like the print world, where we get to choose our paper, spot check the colors and approve the press check. More...