Being the Creative Magma intern for the past few weeks has been a blast. Although I am very excited to embark on my journey to Italy, I’ll be a little bummed that I’m leaving the guys here at the Creative Magma pad.
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We generally don’t get too political here at Creative Magma, but in support of an open and free internet we will join what seems to be the rest of the internet in a little peaceful protest.
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The lifetime of a Facebook post? Sounds like an interesting quandary to consider what is the lifetime of a post on Facebook. It’s not like posts are removed, but we can all agree that once something leaves our news feed the post has little, if any, interest to us.
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Is your company or any company that you know of breaking the web design laws? Creative Magma, Inc. can defend you against any charges pending against you. Please send this ticket to anyone you know breaking the law.
This work of art has a wingspan of 10 feet, 1 inch with a height of 15 inches. After 19 hours of blood, sweat, tears, smashed thumbs, and an arthritic elbow we have an indoor, abstract branding piece. Let me know what you guys think?
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This letter is in response to the Armed Aggravated Assault and Robbery that occurred on Thursday night, January 5th on Alston Avenue, half a block from Magnolia Avenue.
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Fort Worth, Texas – January 10, 2012 – I am a homeowner in Fort Worth’s Fairmount Historic Neighborhood and the owner of a Magnolia Avenue business, Creative Magma, Inc. I moved to this area of Fort Worth in 2007 because I fell in love with its unique character, walkable streets and the community feel of all the restaurants and businesses within walking distance from my home and my business, as well as from many of my friends. This has been a welcome relief from the gridlock of the car-focused suburb of Fort Worth where I had lived for over 10 years. I am a strong advocate for local businesses and am consistently involved in supporting Fort Worth South, Inc’s efforts to rapidly improve this once neglected area of Fort Worth.
However, over recent weeks the Near Southside has had some setbacks in regards to crime.
Over the years in which I have lived in Fairmount, I have experienced many petty crimes at my home including a vehicle break in, and stolen lawn equipment. Also, in the past two weeks I have not only had my wheels and tires stolen right off my parked truck, but also a hit and run on the same truck all while parked in front of my home. This string of crimes has hopefully hit its height with the “armed aggravated assault & robbery”, or mugging, of last Thursday night. I have many friends and others in the neighborhood that have experienced home invasion and various thefts from vehicle vandalism to stolen bikes. So, quite frankly, I am fed up with the criminals getting away with these crimes. I hope we can come together and find an effective solution that will actually catch these people and not just have police spending gas money on patrolling our streets in their cruisers.
On Thursday night, January 5th, Beth Lewis (owner of a local business, Mistletoe Therapy Group & Gallery, and mother of a young daughter) and I spent an evening on Magnolia, spending our money in some favorite Magnolia Avenue businesses. Ending the evening, we walked back to Beth’s condominium. Two men jumped us in the well-lit area at the base of her condo’s stairs. One punched Beth and ripped her purse from her tight clasp and the other jumped me from behind. I was able to wrestle him to the ground where he preceded to pistol whip me several times on my left temple. When he pointed the barrel of the gun at my head, I released him and he ran off.
Based on my experience with these types of criminals getting away and never getting caught, I chased after them. Unfortunately, I lost them when they ran in between some dark houses. The next day, Beth and I were able to track her stolen iPhone and handed this information to the police. Because of this, we are hopeful the police may be on to them. Though, it may take more crimes by these same criminals to actually catch them.
For the most part, the Fort Worth Police did an excellent job in handling our case. Though, I do believe we, as citizens of the Near Southside, should help the police actually catch these criminals. I would like to turn this area into an area where the criminals are fearful and not the citizens. I welcome your thoughts and ideas.
Here are a few of my own:
As for what we can do:
I have already been assured that police patrols have been increased. With this increased police presence, police should exercise fair, civil discretion at all times, and police and civilians alike should remain courteous and polite with each other to create cohesion against the criminals.
In my closing thoughts, please do not be fearful, instead take action. Continue to visit our neighborhood bars and restaurants, and continue spending money in these local businesses. We have a culturally diverse neighborhood in which we are all very proud. Let’s continue its improvement.
Sincerely,
Brian Henderson
We recently completed a website redesign project for Elements of Architecture. They’re a local, women-owned, architecture design, planning and management company.
It’s exciting to hear that they have been nominated as a finalist for this year’s Small Business of Year awards from the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce! They are in the 1-10 employee category.
From all of us at Creative Magma, we wish you the best of luck!
Chances are that you or someone you know owns a Microsoft Xbox 360 gaming console. Microsoft recently unveiled their latest update as it was downloaded by the millions of Xbox owners in America. To get specific, there are roughly 58 Million Xbox consoles across the US. The growing, diversified population, that is getting their “TV Fix” are increasingly going to different sources other than just the cable and satellite provider.
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Check out Creative Magma, Inc. 2011 Video Reel on our YouTube channel.
Being one of the world’s largest online retailers, Amazon can definitely provide some insight into e-Commerce strategies and trends from the past year. Look, at this point, if you sell things and you still don’t understand the value of having a powerful e-Commerce website with a good marketing and SEO strategy, well good luck to you! If your current site lacks that conversion factor, give Creative Magma a call! Ok, enough with the pitch, on to the fun statistics from Amazon.
My first day I was greeted with a cold, winter breeze but Creative Magma quickly turned up the heat as I hit the ground running with my ‘winternship’. I’ve already sat in on a meeting, written a company bio, and helped review an internal project, and that was just the morning
I am Briana Wucinski and I am the newest addition to the Magmen team. I am currently working on a degree in Strategic Communication from Texas Christian University with minors in both Graphic Design and Religion.
Next semester, I’ll be studying abroad in Florence, Italy.
When I applied to Creative Magma, I was trying to get a jumpstart on my summer internship before I left the country. However, George had a different idea and suggested I work over my winter break.
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The world of marketing has never been more challenging. And it’s never been more exciting. Change is happening at lightning speed, bringing us an almost constant flow of innovations. Innovation is occurring on all levels, and in all channels, all at the same time. Every day, news headlines tell of advances in digital channels such as social, mobile, search and apps. Every day, new developments in data and analytics sharpen and deepen our understanding of how to create highly effective marketing strategies via traditional channels such as email, direct mail, broadcast media and telecommunications.
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Internet Explorer… the mere name can make web developers cringe. I think IE has come a long way over the past decade. Do I use? Well, not exactly, but then again I don’t fall into the majority of the US population that does.
One of the major issues with IE has been it’s various versions from IE7 to today’s IE 9. Unfortunately not everyone updates their version when the newest one comes out. I think that has something to do with how FireFox for example will scream at you when there is a new version available for download.
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Are you considering a mobile app for your company or team? We recently reviewed a mobile strategy and thought we’d share some insight in developing the right mobile tool that will help your marketing and your business.
We wanted to consider what would make the most sense… Go with a native app or develop a highly capable mobile website portal?
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The insanely popular and easy-to-use web analytics service, Google Analytics, just released “Real Time” data reporting. Traditionally you would have to wait a day to see data collections about visitor usage on your website. This was fine, but it became nagging when you had that immediate market push that has a short life-span and needs to be measured right this second.
Well, today that has changed. Administrators with Google Analytics will be able to see data results from visitor traffic and website usage in real time. This can be huge for measuring immediate reactions and early success instead of having to wait hours or days. However, as with any marketing campaign, you need to get enough data to produce an accurate test sample. Nonetheless, this can dramatically change the way you measure the performance of an online campaign.
Some of the interesting pieces will play a role with social media. That seems like a given, since Facebook and Twitter are lambasted with status updates at break neck speeds. Being able to track the immediate results of posting a link to your website can be tremendous.
You will need to update your Google Analytics to the newest version to find these new real-time reporting options.
Don’t have analytics at all? Interesting in learning how to measure your website’s success? Give us a call today! You can’t effectively measure your interactive marketing campaigns if you one, don’t have a baseline and two, can’t track your website visitors!
Click here to read the full story from the Official Google Analytics Blog
Picture from Google.
WordPress has really made some huge leaps forward in recent versions making it a truly powerful content management system. Not coincidentally, WordPress custom theme design and development has really become a passion of mine… one of the fruits of which is a tried and true collection of customizations and tweaks I always start off with when creating a new custom theme for our clients. In this post I’ll share some of them and explain a little about why I think they’re important. These are of course all intended for the backbone of any WordPress theme, the functions.php file. I often see these kinds of function tweaks referred to as “hacks” which I find unfair… they really aren’t hacks as the WordPress architecture is designed to allow these kinds of customizations!!
These snippets all pertain to streamlining the end user page loading experience. Obviously the faster we get our pages to load the better, so we want to get the important stuff (content) out as soon as possible letting embellishments come in after. To that end, I regularly apply these three concepts:
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People are actually biased against creative ideas, according to new studies! Fresh research indicates people don’t even know what a creative idea looks like and that creativity, hailed as a positive change agent, actually makes people squirm. So the question was asked, “How is it that people say they want creativity but in reality often reject it?” said Jack Goncalo, ILR School assistant professor of organizational behavior. The paper reports on two 2010 experiments at the University of Pennsylvania involving more than 200 people. The study finds that
To uncover bias against creativity, the researchers used a subtle technique to measure unconscious, such as racism. Results revealed that while people explicitly claimed to desire creative ideas, they actually associated creative ideas with negative words such as “vomit,” “poison” and “agony.” Uncertainty drives the search for creative ideas, but uncertainty also makes us less able to identify creativity.
Square is a new app for iPhone and Android smart phones, this is a device that allows you to accept credit cards wherever you are. Here’s how it works: you run a credit card through a tiny plastic “square” that attached to your phone, through the headphones jack. You then enter the amount owed for the product. The whole transaction process is very smooth, and Square’s pricing is a flat 2.75 percent of transactions, (which includes accepting of major credit cards, Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover) you can even use Square to add a tip to a bill and track your analytics! This seems to be a small price to pay for the convenience and ease of the service.
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