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The Interactive Mixer hosted by CentreSource is back! Escape the cold weather for a little get-together — come by our North Fourth offices, and mix with others in the Nashville community. This will be a bi-monthly event the last Thursday of every other month. Hope to see you here!

Host: CentreSource Interactive Agency (Hey! That’s us!)
What: February 2010 Interactive Mixer
When: 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Where:
CentreSource’s North Fourth Office
1313 4th Ave N
Nashville,TN 37208

To RSVP, visit mixer.centresource.com.

Backup solutions and disaster recovery are a mainstay of technology, and they have been well-analyzed in the past — typically from an IT angle. But choosing a solid backup for a website is just as important, and it’s an oft-overlooked final step in the successful deployment of any web site or application. Backup technology has changed a lot over the years, and it can be a daunting task to figure out which solution works for you. This is not a technical guide — there are countless technical solutions to any given backup need. The intent of this guide is to help you understand the nature of your own website and data, and to narrow down the solution that is ideal for your needs. Without a proper understanding of what data your website has and where it’s stored, any backup solution has the potential to languish or be unrestoreable when the worst happens. Read on:

Devastation. Tragedy. Hopeless. Those were the words used to describe the recent earthquakes that struck the island of Haiti on January 12 near Port-au-Prince. To a nation that that was already struggling with poverty and trying to meet the basic needs of its people, the earthquake magnified the crisis for the world to see. Like many companies in Nashville, CentreSource matched its employees’ donations to give $500 to the UNICEF organization to help with relief efforts.

As an Operations Manager at CS, I spend most of my time trying to figure out how to make our internal processes smoother, so we can spend more time creating amazing applications. All that to say I don’t get to explore the web too often. However, sometimes our developers will tell me about cool new technology or web ‘initiatives’ that I have to check out. Such was the case with the Pepsi Refresh Project.

We recently launched a new site for Nashville Center for Laser and Facial Surgery. The practice is lead by Dr. Brian S. Biesman, a world-renowned authority on cosmetic, reconstructive, and laser surgery. For the site, the goal was not only to tell about Dr. Biesman’s practice, but to serve as a repository for helpful resources on a wide range of industry topics, including his own “Face Facts” resources. It was a lot of content — nearly 150 articles on research, services and treatments — and our goal was to make it user-friendly and easy to navigate. Think Wikipedia.

It’s happened to most all of us. We see some site that has great deals on products or services, and we sign up for an email list. But then, after receiving an email a month/week/day/hour, it gets to be too much noise and we hit that all-too-familiar “unsubscribe” link in the footer of the email.

When a leader in global supply chain solutions contacted us about overhauling their Web site, our top priority was to make sure that we delivered on their expectations. That is why we are proud to announce the launch of the new OHL.com, OHL Excellence and the OHL Media Center.

Ozburn-Hessey Logistics (OHL) specializes in third party logistics (3PL) services, meaning that they partner with other businesses to meet their supply chain demands on a rapidly scalable platform. Our goal for the site was to communicate nearly 60 years of experience in a way that appeals to logistics decision makers. One of the ways that we achieved this is by producing a video that you can view right on their home page. The video features two people representing very different businesses, but one shared need — a partner for their global distribution network.

We just wrapped up work on a site that we did for Ocean Futures Society, a non-profit marine conservation and education organization. The group’s chairman and spokesman is Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the legendary ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau. OFS serves as a “Voice for the Ocean” by communicating in all media the critical bond between people and the sea and the importance of wise environmental policy.

Stop the presses and sound the alarm!! We found out yesterday that our entry into the Interactive Media Awards competition has won the IMA Best in Class Award in the Advocacy category. This is our second best in class distinction this year! The first for the W3 awards and now this!!!

The IMA judges scored our entry in the high nineties in all five of the core criteria: Design, Content, Feature Functionality, Usability and Standards Compliance / Cross-Browser Compatibility. As if the award wasn’t enough, our fellow winners for other categories included: Coca Cola, Bacardi, Red Bull, Sony and Cisco to name a few.

When your company has had so much success at planning and building world-class Web sites for companies and organizations of all sizes, it is easy to start to think “Hey, what about our site? When are we launching the new one? Can we put a treasure map on there? Can Chris take our pictures?” The answers to the last three are: “today,” “absolutely” and “if you ask him nicely.”