We still need to get some parts of the ceiling finished. The video studio has yet to be completed, although we are pretty close. The glass boardroom never got put up because of time allotments, but we plan on doing that this summer when (if) things slow down. Take a look at the pictures below, and compare to the progress from just a few weeks ago.

Our New Frosted Windows

View of Chris and Mike's Desks

Office Area (Very Important!)

Green Screen / Studio Area

I’ll update everyone with the final stage in the next coming weeks when we get the last little touches done, the TV installed, and the aquarium setup.

The floor is just about finished, but we still need to do a lot of things. Trim needs to be put down, as well as the walls need to be painted. The electrician is in and working hard at getting us all the power we are going to need. Because the walls are already drywalled, he is have to go down the sides with molding. We don’t really mind, and think this might actually be a cool look.

View of the future board room

View of the front entrance

Future green screen video area

View of the entire office from the back studio area

More to come, so keep checking back in.

Well we have found a new space, but not too far away. Literally just down the hall. Our new space is a blank slate, and as you can see from the pictures below, needs a lot of work. So, we are going to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

We plan to to be all moved in by February 28, after which we invite everyone to stop in, say hello, and take a tour.

Office from Green Screen Area

Desk Area Looking down the Hall

View from Board Room

View of Future Lounge Area

CanSpec Inspection Service launched the third major revision of the company's website

CanSpec now sets the bar for what local small businesses can do to grow a company, reach their customers, and extend their brand. CanSpec uses social networks like Facebook to interact with their customers, and even run contests like giving away an Xbox Kinect (yah, a Kinect).

Watch the video to see what great new features are in this newly designed website:

H.E.I.S.T. is an acronym for Highly Effective Interview Skills Training

This new approach has been in use in some European countries for some time and is now finding it’s way over to North America. H.E.I.S.T. is one of the first companies in North America to offer this training.

10MinuteMajor is Sudbury's weekly sports talk show, developed by Your Media Productions

Tomorrow will mark a day that all sports fan’s in Sudbury will never forget. Tomorrow is the launch of 10MinuteMajor.com, a new sports talk show for right here in Sudbury.

The team behind the new sports show is Your Media Productions, a marketing and video production company here in Sudbury.

The first obvious change is the new look and feel of the website. We have gone with a much cleaner look, and tried to keep the information available in a very tidy manner. The site is also wider than the previous version by 200 pixels. The design has enhancements that take advantages of new technologies that can be found in newer browsers like Google Chrome, FireFox, or Internet Explorer 9.

The new website is now using WordPress as a content management system. We felt that moving from Joomla over to WordPress would give us more flexibility for the full member directory and the taxonomy for the news sections.

The member directory was rewritten right from scratch. This now allows us to add in features that we were otherwise limited to in the past. Rich media can now be added to any member’s listing, including video, pictures, even slideshows.

Search has been another new focus of the new site. We are moving away from a hierarchical and clicking navigation, and more towards a search powered site. The search is also powered by Google, so the results will be fast and accurate as you have come to expect from Google.

This website has been built so that it is compatible with all major browsers, and mobile devices. All flash has been removed from the site, and replaced by JavaScript so that devices like the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch can still experience the slideshows and videos. When visting the site using a mobile device like a iPhone, Blackberry, or Nokia phone, a dedicated mobile version is delivered that is easier to read on your mobile phone, rather then the user viewing the full website and zooming in.

As before, the Industry News section is one of the most important parts of the SAMSSA website. We have added even more news sources, and it has become truly your one stop place for world wide mining news.

The SAMSSA site over the years has developed into a wonderful information resource, with a vast community of supporters. We believe this site continues the evolution forward, and we look forward to continuing ongoing development on the website to bring even more value to it’s supporters and members.

As of today, we will no longer be developing or testing for Internet Explorer 6. If you still wish for IE6 support, you can have your application or website developed and tested for IE6 for an additional development cost. We will however be adding a message to all our websites so that users of IE6 will not simply receive a broken site. They will receive a message explaining to them that they are using an older browser, and ask them to please upgrade.

You are using an outdated browser

For a better experience using this site, please upgrade to a modern web browser.

Many companies have made the decision to leave behind IE6 support, including monsters like Google and Facebook. If we wish our users experience to grow online, we must force IT departments to update the browsers on people’s machines.

Since IE6 was only available by default on Windows XP, the odds of someone having IE6 as their default browser are slim and lowering everyday. Here is the scenario that must exist for someone to still have IE6 on their PC.

1. They must be using Windows. If they are using Linux or a Mac it will not be a problem.
2. They must be on Windows XP. If they are using Windows VISTA or Windows 7 their browser will be new by default and they will have no way of intalling IE6
3. If they are using Windows XP, they would have had to not updated their computer software in a long time. For years Microsoft has had the IE7 and IE8 version available through Windows update, so anyone running it within the last 4 years would have received the update.

In a perfect world everyone would upgrade to a browser like Google Chrome or FireFox that was always changing. These constant browser updates are good as they keep web technologies moving forward. It’s not a perfect world, so we can live with people using an updated version of Internet Explorer. I do encourage everyone to try to use third-party browsers, as they have proved themselves to be the fasters and most compliant browsers on the market.

We now also share office space with Your Media Productions, so we do high-definition video and green-screen shots right in the office.

Our new address is:

40 Elm Street, Unit 101C
Sudbury, ON P3C 1S8

Symboticware is a mining automation and environmental monitoring company. Their open systems platform, called the SymBot™, has been deployed all over the country, as far north as Baffin Island, and is used all over Sudbury’s mining community.

Their new website is quite feature rich. Their homepage presents you with a beautiful rotating image banner, that does not require flash, and thus will work on both the iPhone and iPad. The website has fully news and blogging capabilities, all powered by WordPress, and allows for commenting and moderation on a multi-user level.

The website search is powered by none other than Google Custom Search, and is indexing their website on an hourly basis. For visual effects, check out their projects page, which has a unique accordion style section, that allows you to easily switch between different projects.