Some exciting news from Reflecting Time Productions

It's been a very busy summer for us here at Reflecting Time Productions as we've been spending a lot of time working on various video, web and graphic design projects from all over the state and beyond. We've also started branching out into an emerging field that has some incredible potential.

Soon we'll be unveiling a very exciting addition to our current repertoire of services in the form of affordable live streaming video. This incredible upgrade will allow us to conduct remote setups anywhere in the state or the nation and be able to stream live content via the Internet to a captive audience. This isn't a $40 webcam camera that you can get from Best Buy. Using our professional video and audio gear we are able to provide enriched streaming content that can be delivered to a target audience, a church group, or even to collaborators across the United States or around the world.

The possibilities thereafter are endless.

- In addition to providing live webcasting, we will be able to offer recorded rebroadcasts of your event to be shared by anyone of your choosing.

- We can also provide numerous different file formats for your audience to download onto their systems of your event ranging from your iPod to providing it available to your website for people to download at their convenience.

- Because we're recording it with our video and audio equipment -- we can provide high quality DVDs of your event for you to distribute for your corporation, your business, your wedding, your seminar, your class, your church function.

The possibilities are endless what can be done.

We'll be announcing this new addition in the coming weeks -- so check back for more information!

A busy month and a web tip!

A lot of projects on tap here lately - including one that's going to take us out of the (970) area code for awhile. We're heading to Louisiana on a road trip production down south for the next three weeks. As one can imagine, it has been pretty busy getting things squared away before we leave.

I'm wrapping up a video-edit production for a dear friend of mine who is retiring after 24 years. I'm proud to say that I worked along side David for 10 great years and I'm looking forward to working with him again in the future! I've been going over old photographs and videos the past week and there have been several times of going down memory lane. I loved the people I worked with - I don't necessarily miss all of the stress that came with the job.

So that's been the scoop around here lately. We'll return in mid-late October and if I'm able to upload some photographs along the way - I'll try to get them posted on here.

Web Tip: TURN OFF YOUR SIDEBAR

As web designers - we work within a canvas that is so mobile and flexible. Statistics show that the majority of the surfing public uses either Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox while having their monitor resolution set to 1024x768. That's a nice sized canvas that we start with, however a year ago we had a client who was having problems looking at her website because it wouldn't fit on her screen and it would look completely askew.

We checked her website coding, ran it through several validation checks and could not find out what was the problem. I eventually got the chance to check out her computer and discovered that she was surfing while having the bookmarks/history sidebar open. Once she closed the sidebar, the website returned to normal and everything was resolved.

The issue with the bookmarks/history side panel is something we debate with all the time because while we want visitors to enjoy their browsing experience as they see fit, from a design point of view - an open bookmarks sidebar ruins the experience we're trying to produce. It would be the equivalent of watching a movie at a theater and have a "picture in a picture" on the screen that is showing Jerry Springer re-runs. Why would you want to watch "Jerry Springer" at the same time of "Gone with the Wind??"

When I'm surfing the web - I want to experience a website the way that it was originally designed. Even when we optimize the website to accommodate the bookmarks/history sidebar - the design element is lost and people will immediately be turned off by the design aspect. Instead of planning for a wonderful 1024x768 canvas, we now have to optimize the browsers to "fit" the content - and it doesn't always look nice and pretty.

So today's tip is essentially: turn off the sidebar if you're not using it so that you can enjoy your websites as they were intended.

Blogging class and a new uploaded video section!

We had the wonderful opportunity to give a presentation to the great folks at Art Space this past Monday evening. It was a really great primer introduction into blogging and what it means to your online marketing experience. While the possibilities can be a bit overwhelming, most blogs start new and small. Keeping that small, clean design is much preferred than a more cluttered blog environment.

The rest of the week was spent preparing a Mitigation Demo video for the Indiana Public Defender's system. With the kind assistance of Albert Stork and Darby Casey - we were able to create a sample video of what a mitigation production might look like. I created a new section on the website - dedicated to small video production work that I've been working on. Check out the new section here.

I'm looking forward to a brief break Saturday so that we can run down to nearby Delta, Colorado and perhaps a picnic in some "up and out of the way" place between here and there.

It was a good week and we're looking forward to the upcoming projects. September has become quite a busy month!

Take care!
-Michael