We are really excited to announce the launch of a new interactive portal for Coastal Carolina University’s Athletic Department to help promote football ticket sales. They shared with us this press release they sent out earlier this week about the site.

You can check out the site at www.CoastalTix.com.

CoastalTix.com Interactive Fan Site is Live

The easiest and best way to purchase 2010 Coastal Carolina football tickets at www.CoastalTix.com.

The easiest and best way to purchase 2010 Coastal Carolina football tickets - as well as getting all of your relevant game-day information for the upcoming season - is now live at www.CoastalTix.com.

The site, a supplement to the main athletics site: www.GoCCUSports.com, will explain in detail and give pertinent information for fans to purchase season, and later, single-game football tickets. Also, www.CoastalTix.com will give fans all the information they will need to enjoy the full game-day atmosphere.

Also, the site will give details to a new feature for Coastal Carolina football, the Family Fun Zone. The designated area in the north endzone, next to the newly-built Adkins Field House, allows one adult and three youth or two adults and two youth season tickets for just $99.

Other advantages to the new interactive site include the ability to share the site on social networks and reach the ever-growing, technology-savvy customer.

CoastalTix.com is a collaborative effort between Chanticleer athletics and Centresource Interactive Agency in Nashville with Coastal Carolina being the first university to partner with Centresource in this medium.

“Our partnership with Centresource Interactive gives us the opportunity to not only be dynamic with our ticket sales, but also gives us a hub from which all of our online ticketing can branch out,” said Coastal Carolina athletics director Hunter Yurachek. “Seeing and feeling the game-day experience is an important part of why customers make their decisions. With the expansion of the stadium and the new Family Fun Zone season ticket, we felt it was important to find something that reaches younger families and computer-friendly audiences. This use of technology is the best medium to accomplish our goals.”

Here’s a great part…

“I just want to be frank this week… you don’t have to give. 93% of you hear me ask for donations and you get the podcast week after week and you never give… and if you don’t give this time, I’m not going to pretend, nothing bad will happen. The podcast is going to be here next week, someone else will give. That is the rational, truthful fact of the situation”

And it continues with more frank, thought-provoking comments. Ultimately, they need to cover the cost of what everyone is enjoying. It even says that $5 will cover your share of the entire year…

Whether you’re a consumer of content OR a content creator, I strongly recommend you listen:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/sites/all/play_music/play_full.php?play=102

Posted via email from The Word of Holland

I came across this tool tonight: http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/

Basically, drag the bookmarklet to your bookmark bar, log into Facebook, and then click the bookmark.  It will run some tests to see where you’re protected, and where you’re potentially exposed.  I was surprised even how much I hadn’t protected, despite trying hard to be extra cautious.

Many people are altogether shutting down their Facebook accounts… I haven’t gone that far, but I do think that using Facebook with the default privacy settings is outright insane.

Happy (and safe) Facebooking!

• Contxts.com
  Business cards are so 2007. What with the environment in shambles do you really want to be that guy who is handing out chopped up pieces of bleached trees? Contxts.com lets you share your information via SMS!
• Mozy.com
  An online backup service for consumers and small businesses. Back up all of your personal files, photos, music, etc. automatically online. Worry free!
• SnapaBug.com
  Help widget for customer service chat on web sites.
• RealTime Inline Validation article on GetElastic
  Realtime in-line form validation to improve conversions and avoid shopping cart abandonment.
• Pixlr.com
  Free photo editing right in your browser!
• HitMeLater.com
  When you’re too busy to respond to an email right away, just forward it to 24@hitmelater.com and we’ll resend it to you 24 hours later.
• XFruits.com
  Site with tools for combining and/or manipulating RSS feeds in many different ways.
• SupportDetails.com
  A one-stop resource for the kinds of tech details an online customer support representative will need to address a user’s web-related issues… ID10T errors excluded.
• 10MinuteMail.com
  Surfing a site that requires registration? Beat spam with this quick easy email generation service.

Found a Web site that you just can’t live without? Let us know in the comments section!

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

As both developers and consumers, CentreSource is affected by this decision in two ways.

While we’ve traditionally been a PHP shop, we have developers who are versed in JavaScript, ActionScript, Ruby, ASP .NET, Perl, and even a little Python.  When the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) was originally released two years ago, we played around with it, but the learning curve of teaching ourselves Objective C (the language required to use the SDK) ultimately led us to make the decision to explore utilizing a third party development tool called Titanium to create our iPhone apps.  Titanium is an application that allows you to write in a simpler/unified language, and then the tool recompiles the code to the Objective C required by Apple.

According to the new changes, applications like Titanium — or the about-to-be-released Adobe Flash to iPhone converter — are a no-no.  Why?  Commentators and speculators say it comes down to two main reasons:

1. Apple wants complete control.  In order to develop for the iPhone OS, you have to use Apple’s tools… On an Apple computer… With an Apple developer’s license…  Apple controls the entire development environment from the moment you start writing your code (on your Apple computer) to the point you start making money through releasing your app in the App Store.  Apple is able to dictate how, where, and when your app gets created and distributed.  While some see this as a monopolistic abuse of power, I see this as directly benefiting the fact that…

2. Apple has complete control.  By controlling the entire development environment, they are able to provide the tools and resources to allow app developers what they need to create applications that maximize the potential of the iPhone OS.  If they release a brand new set of features to their SDK (as they did last week), they are able to immediately integrate these features into their toolset for the developers to use.  When using tools like Titanium, developers are forced to wait until the 3rd party company changes their tools to be compatible with the new SDK before they can start using them.

Similarly, many argue that by “neutralizing” the tools used for creation, you’re not able to fully utilize the specific features for the end product. Think of any application that was created for a specific platform — Mac or Windows — and then think of applications that were “ported” to the other platform. No one will argue that Office on a Mac or Handbrake on Windows are anywhere close to the application on the platform it was originally written for.

From a development perspective, we’re not tremendously affected — primarily because we’re already fairly cross-versed in development languages. Adding Objective-C to our arsenal — while an inconvenience and time consuming — is by no means a deal breaker for us, especially given the benefits that Apple provides.  For most of us, we’d have to learn another language / SDK of some kind in order to develop iPhone OS apps — why not just go right to learning Objective-C.

From a consumer perspective, I believe this is great news. Imagine the scenario that Louis Gerbarg of /dev/why!?! presents:

Imagine if 10% of the apps on iPhone came from Flash. If that was the case, then ensuring Flash didn’t break release to release would be a big deal, much bigger than any other compatibility issues. Since Apple doesn’t have access to Flash CS5’s runtime library code or compiler frontend, they might be put in a position where they would need to coordinate with Adobe to resolve those issues. Shipping a new release where Apple breaks any specific application, even a top seller, is not an issue if the release is compelling, most apps work, and Apple has the option of working with the vendor to help them fix their app. Shipping a release where they break a large percentage of apps is not generally an option. Letting any of these secondary runtimes develop a significant base of applications in the store risks putting Apple in a position where the company that controls that runtime can cause delays in Apple’s release schedule, or worse, demand specific engineering decisions from Apple, under the threat of withholding the information necessary to keep their runtime working.

Clearly this is not an ideal scenario for Apple or for their consumers. Apple’s imposing restrictions are a protective move for themselves and their consumer — ensuring the high level of user experience that Apple has come to be known for, and not letting 3rd party vendors effect their reputation.

Is this bad news for Adobe? Youbetcha. They are increasingly grasping at straws to stay relevant in a marketplace that is leaning more towards HTML5, and turning “Flash” into a bad word. I agree with some of my colleagues that Flash still has an appropriate place on the web, and heavens knows how many ActionScript developers are bummed about this decision that effectively eliminates them from developing on a platform that accounts for 45% of mobile browsing.

At the end of the day, when the dust of iPhone OS 4.0 finally settles, there will still be a plethora of apps (good and bad) in the iTunes App Store. This decision will be long forgotten by all those involved (well, except maybe Adobe), and the consumers will remain happy and buying phones.

As for CentreSource? Bring on Objective-C!

** Note: my opinions may be a bit biased… This whole post was written on my Apple iPad — which is awesome by the way… But that will be a saved for a separate blog post!

Most people would not be very excited to receive an e-mail that says “Payment Declined.” Did I forget to pay a bill? Is my credit card over the limit? Did my rent check get double posted? What on earth is going on? For me, this was actually welcome news. It means that I had found the only way to get past a critical flaw in a Web application.

In December of 2007, the (Nashville) Davidson County Elections Commission was burglarized. Thieves made off with two laptops that included thousands of people’s personal information, including birth dates, addresses and social security numbers. To make up for this security lapse, the city of Nashville paid for everyone to have a subscription to Debix, an identity theft service that protects users by altering their credit files to require a phone verification before allowing credit inquiries.

I have been a subscriber for well over a year, paying the annual fee and having my cell phone called every time I needed to have another company access my credit file. When renewing the subscription earlier this year, I accidentally selected “charge every month” rather than a single annual payment. Being one of those consumers that would rather not keep my credit card information on file, I wanted to change it back to an annual payment schedule.

The problem is, their Web-based tool does not let you change your billing schedule, only update the credit card on file. “Fine,” I thought, “I will just cancel the account and re-subscribe on the annual plan.” But Debix did not provide an option to do that — if you want to cancel your account, you have to call customer service at the 800 number.

Perhaps I am unreasonable in having the expectation that if a company provides an online portal for their customers, you should be able to do a certain number of things on it: upgrade or change your service, cancel your service and change billing information. Then again, I work for an interactive agency that specializes in building those kinds of platforms, so maybe my opinion is skewed.

Ignoring all of that, I called the listed 800 number (they are only available during regular business hours) and could not get through to a representative, instead being directed to a voice mail. I left a message. This pattern continued for a few days until I finally got a return phone call while I was in a meeting. No direct line, though — I would have to start the process over.

Frustrated by this point, I decided if I ever did get to speak with someone, I would just cancel my service. Again, there still was not a self-service way to do this, and their support e-mails all directed me back to the over-saturated phone lines. That was at the end of March. Then it occurred to me — I can cancel my service without having to wait on hold for eternity. Just change the expiration date on the credit card on file. They prevented me from deleting the card, but they would let me update it as long as it was a valid credit card. I set the expiration for 4/1/2010 (how appropriate), and just waited until the new month rolled around.

Last Thursday I received the news I had been waiting for — my account had been canceled because my payment method was no longer valid. So, what options are you offering your customers in terms of managing their account online? How long do you think they will stay on hold before taking a good look at your competitors?

Note: This is not a slam against Debix’s product, which I think is great. I just hope they get a chance to take a good hard look at their customer portal.

Earlier this week we launched a redesigned site for Civic Bank & Trust, a Nashville-based bank that we have been working with since 2007. The new look and feel is very different than the the prior version, originally designed to match their printed materials. The site features a dynamic slideshow to promote their financial products and services, an area to highlight team members, and an overall better organization of the site’s content so that is easy for a visitor find the information they need.

As with any update, the back end content management system was given an overhaul as well, updating to the latest version of Drupal. The team at Civic Bank remarked how much Drupal has improved since the initial launch, and how they can update more of the site quickly and hassle-free. The design brings the most important information for prospective and current customers forward, making it easier to navigate and providing a better user experience.

Check out the site at http://www.civicbanktn.com/.

The site is entirely built on the Drupal content management system, integrating a number of custom enhancements for organizing trips and allowing the visitor to refine their search based on location and price. The site gives the project leaders — the Mission Discovery staff in charge of the trips — a platform to share their stories and experiences through blog posts and video logs.

Check out the site at missiondiscovery.org.

This past Friday, Yazoo Brewing Company held their grand opening for their new Taproom in Downtown Nashville. To coincide with the opening, we also launched their new Web site. The site gives the visitor an overview of the brewery and invites them to discover the many lines of beer that Yazoo has to offer. The visitor can also buy merchandise as well as find out the latest news from their blog and Twitter accounts.

Check out their site at www.yazoobrew.com.

We recently had the pleasure of working with HookUP Media to help produce the Web site for “March for California’s Future,” an online companion to an event going on right now in the Golden State. Organizers say that the 250 mile march, sponsored by the California Federation of Teachers and its diverse allies from labor, the faith community, and other civic supporters, is designed to draw attention to the underlying causes of the state’s woes as well as gather signatures for a majority budget initiative.

Visitors are invited to take action by signing the online petition, donating to the cause, and even joining the marchers as they travel from city to city across the state. A core team of marchers staff the roaming “Blogmobile,” and a Google Latitude map is updated throughout the day on a mobile phone.

Check out the site at http://www.fight4cafuture.com/.