I have been working on a site build that required a PNG to sit over the background to provide a nice fade into the footer of the site. A PNG graphic seemed to be ideal for this until I encountered a problem. This problem manifests itself in a colour discrepancy between the background colour set via the CSS and the saved PNG. All other graphics saved from the PSD as a jpeg or gif using the colour seemed to match the CSS colour correctly, it was only the PNG that was causing a problem.
I have had this problem before but have always skirted around tackling it directly and always found a different solution, but this time I wanted to tackle the problem head on. I knew from previous investigation regarding PNGs (trying to get them to achieve transparency in IE6 most probably) that there was something that PNGs did to offset their Gamma so as to achieve the same degree of brightness in the image as was perceived on the creating monitor. This is not a bad thing in itself but does cause problems when matching these colours up to CSS background colours. However, there is a way of stripping out this extraneous information to leave the image with the intended colours. There is an application named TweakPNG that allows you to play with the meta data that gets saved out with a PNG including the offending Gamma offset.
The highlighted row above shows the file gamma offset to 0.55000 which when set to 0 provides the correct colours for my purposes. And gives the desired result.
Following hot on the heels of Burn Zombie Burn, our latest collaboration with Ever Creative and Pinnacle Software, comes the site for Peppa Pig The Game. Providing fun for all the family, Peppa Pig The Game looks set to be the hit on the Nintendo DS for Christmas 2008.The site allows players to get a good overview of the game and introduces Peppa Pig, her brother George and their world where you can jump in muddy puddles, fly kites, flip pancakes and engage in all manner of fun things.The Game premieres on Nintendo DS™ on 28th November 2008 and the Wii™ game will follow early 2009.
Website: www.peppagame.comIf you are looking for a website with the ‘wow’ factor, then get in touch with us here or call 0845 838 7435.
I had been using Gmail (Google’s web based email service) for a while and had been quite impressed by the speed and functionality of the application. The service allows a quick and intuitive access to all email whilst providing a high degree of spam protection. It was not long before I started having all my work emails forwarded to my Gmail account so that I could search them easily from anywhere and keep up to date with any work developments from a simple and fast interface which was also quite accessible from a PDA or mobile phone browser. Soon I wanted to use this interface for all my emails but when I added an account and sent emails from my work email address Gmail added the (on behalf of Sam, Juretic Media) to the email address field, obviously this was not going to look good for work purposes. It then occurred to me that it would be nice if one were able to somehow use Gmail on your domain. It was a good idea and one which happily occurred to Google before I had thought of it. A quick search found the starting point : Google Apps – Software-as-a-service for business email, information sharing and security.
Investigation
As email is a vital part of daily business for our company I was not going to rush this process so I started out my research with a personal domain. First you have to verify domain ownership by uploading a small HTML file to the root directory. You then change the MX Records (those which govern where emails to your domain are routed) for your domain to those of Google’s servers. This is stage one. You have now pointed all emails sent to your domain to Google. This went quickly and easily and within an hour of verification I was able to send and receive emails from the Gmail interface from my domain.
Implementation
For our work based email we needed a bit more careful planning. We have many email accounts, many of which had aliases associated with them. You can upload all of these via .csv but the manual process was only 30 minutes of work. As ever with a well made application the process was simple and intuitive. All members of our domain were informed of the impending change and we flicked the MX switch, moving away from our traditional route to Googlemail for our domain.
The experience
Luckily it seemed that we had not overlooked any issues before making the leap and it was not long before we all were experimenting with the new interface for our emails. Those of us accustomed to a folder structure as per Outlook© had to master Gmail’s labelling system. There are still those traditionalists is the office who have resolutely kept their grip on their traditional interfaces such as Outlook© or Macmail© but I think that they will see sense soon. For me, the realisation that one is no longer tied to a desk and that being part of the cloud is a real driving force. Setting up the email client on my smartphone via IMAP has also been a lesson in mobility. IMAP synchronises all folders simultaneously, meaning that you can respond to an email on your mobile and next time you login to the Google Apps interface you will see your mobile sent email in your sent items – beautiful.
“Cloud computing is a general concept that incorporates software as a service (SaaS), Web 2.0 and other recent, well-known technology trends, in which the common theme is reliance on the internet for satisfying the computing needs of the users. For example, Google Apps provides common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.” from the Wikipedia Cloud Computing
You see, suddenly you are absolved of the necessity to log on to a particular computer, or even to keep with the same OS (operating system) this is the web / workplace of tomorrow – no dependence on local RAM or Hard Drive space but just logging onto a sophisticated web based application.
The conclusion
It is still early days, the freedom that a perfectly web based email provides is a joy. The other facilities appear to be well featured but to tell the truth we are still getting to grips with them. We share all our calendars and documents now online and can see via sites that we will be able to collaborate more and more online and will reap the benefits of this tool in the long term. My hope is that there are many other companies out there doing the same and that the Google Apps arena will expand to include proper project management tools and time management applications to run through the system.
Marc Hogan is a professional motivational speaker who came to Juretic looking for a website to promote himself and his products to his target audience.
But, it wasn’t just as simple as that. With years of experience as professional speaker Marc obviously needed to have an online voice and presence but he also wanted a place to talk about his newest project – becoming a stand-up comedian.
Both website are of course beautifully designed and intuitive to use but also allow Marc to explain what he does and where his journey from motivational speaker into stand-up will take him.
Make sure that you have a look at Marc’s blog and read about how a simple bet can result in you taking to the stage at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival.
Websites: www.marchoganlive.com and myfunnybusiness.com
If you want some self promotion then pick up the phone and dial 0845 838 7435 or drop us an email and talk to us today.
Once again we have been working downstairs with our pals Ever Creative on another website project for O’Neill and have just launched the O’Neill Evolution website.
The website is set to promote the Six Star O’Neill Evolution 2009 Ticket to Ride World Snowboarding Tour in Davos, Switzerland and give fans a place to keep up to date with news and results from the competition.
The tournament is sponsored by Swatch and has a $100,000 prize fund. If you can’t get to the event, then the O’Neill Evolution website is going to get you up close and personal with the participants by giving you the opportunity to see some amazing video footage, photography and gain access to exclusive promotions and news.
The event starts on January 5th 2009 and runs until the 10th as is one of only six TTR Men’s freestyle snowboarding events that boasts the Six Star rating, so make sure that you are in on all of the action.
Website: www.oneilleurope.com/evolution/
Looking for a website that inspires and grabs the attention of your target audience, then send us an email or give us a call on 0845 838 7435.
Continuing our partnership with Ever Creative and Pinnacle Software, we have just launched the ‘Burn Zombie Burn’ website. The website will provide the ‘Burn Zombie Burn’ PlayStation game players the opportunity to get to know the characters better as well as figure out which weapons are best suited to defeating the plethora of zombies.
The game is based around Bruce and his girlfriend Daisy, whose lives have been interrupted by zombies who threaten to take over their once peaceful town. Don’t you hate it when that happens? Yes. Me too.
The website will help to promote the game which is due for release in early 2009 and give you a sneak preview of what you can expect from the game.
Website: www.burnzombieburn.com
If you are looking for a website with the ‘wow’ factor, then get in touch with us here or call 0845 838 7435.
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