Recently launched by Nolasoft: a new site for Indianola Family Dentistry.
Indianola Family Dentistry offers a wide range of dental services in Indianola, Iowa. They recently built a new office with a modern aesthetic, and they were looking for a website to match. They wanted a fresh, clean look, large imagery to show off their beautiful office, custom icons to highlight their core values, and responsive viewing for mobile and tablet.
Recently launched by Nolasoft: a website for Rethink Recovery: Multidimensional Family Therapy
From the MDFT website:
The best way to help a teenager who is dealing with addiction or mental health issues is to help the entire family. Multidimensional Family Therapy treats the whole family by giving everyone the tools to better communicate. Which leads to better understanding. And real recovery for all.
The Rethink Recovery website features an animated rain effect in the header, subtle animations throughout the site, and is fluidly responsive for desktop, tablet and mobile.
We worked with our friends at Red Dot on the Rethink Recovery site.
Launched by Nolasoft: a new website for American Commercial Equities.
American Commercial Equities is a commercial real estate manager servicing California and Hawaii. Featuring premier locations, ACE wanted a site that highlighted both the look and locations of their property portfolio.
The ACE site features interactive Google maps, showing custom icons for each property in a given area. Property pages show the specific location, photo galleries, and a Google street view of the property for reference.
We worked with our friends at Red Dot on the ACE site.
As a web design and software development company, we deal with a whole aspect of language far removed from the everyday. In the 17 years we’ve been in business, it has been interesting to see how some of these have entered the public consciousness as well, to the point where some are common for everyday use.
But have you ever wondered where some of these symbols you see every day on your computer came from? While reading the Smashing Magazine newsletter today, there was an interesting post about the origin of the Bluetooth symbol and how it relates to the century Danish King. But what I found really interesting was the background of a symbol seen even more often yet considered less: the @ symbol.
For example, did you know that the @ is suggested to have origins in the sixth century when used by monks for writing the Latin word “ad” which means “at” or “towards”? From Origins of Common UI Symbols:
Ah @, the only symbol on the list to earn a spot in the MoMa’s architecture and design collection.
How has this fetishized symbol become so potent over the years? It probably has something to do with the net-ruling rune’s deep and mysterious origins. It has been known by many names: the snail (France and Italy), the little mouse (China), the monkey’s tail (Germany). In 1971, a Bolt, Beranek & Newman programmer Raymond Tomlinson decided to insert the symbol between computer network addresses to separate the user from the terminal. Prior to Tomlinson’s use, the @ also graced the keyboard of the American Underwood in 1885 as an accounting shorthand symbol meaning “at the rate of.” Go back even further and things start to get hazy. Some suggest that @ has its origins in the sixth century, when monks adopted it as a better way of writing the word ad-Latin for “at” or “toward”-that was not so easily confused with A.D., the designation for Anno Domini, or the the years after the death of Christ.
If you have a moment, take a look at the Origins of Common UI Symbols site. It’s a quick and entertaining read, and you can see where the power, pause, USB and more symbols come from.
Launched by Nolasoft: a new site for Balanced Body Chiropractic and Wellness in Ankeny, Iowa!
When Ankeny Chiropractor Dr. Dani Hommer at Balanced Body approached us about doing a website for her chiropractic and wellness business, she was looking for a site that was fresh, clean, professional and user-friendly, targeting 20-40 year olds. She wanted to highlight the techniques she uses (including the Active Release Techniques that set her apart in the field) and bring customer testimonials front and center. She also wanted a quick and easy way for site viewers to find answers to common questions about a chiropractic visit.
The Balanced Body website features a large full-width image rotator. This allows Balanced Body to showcase active lifestyles in a BIG way! The entire site was done in a content management system making it easy to update, and it was all coded as a responsive site, allowing the content to flow easily for mobile phones and tablets as well.
From Dr. Dani Hommer: I don’t think I could have made a better choice when I decided to go with Nolasoft for my custom website design. From the very first inquiry I felt valued as a customer and that kind of attentiveness didn’t end until the website was complete. With zero knowledge of what web design entailed, I came to Jason with very meticulous outline, and he delivered more than I imagined was possible. I have received great feedback from my new website and know website design with Nolasoft was the perfect way to introduce my new brand. Thanks a million!
Check out the Balanced Body Chiropractic and Wellness website today!
Do you need a new website? Learn how we can help you with your web design and development project!
Recently launched by Nolasoft: a new site for the City of Altoona, Iowa!
We have been working with the City of Altoona on their website needs since 2004. When they approached us about redoing and updating their site, they had a few goals in mind:
Altoona is a city with a lot going on with commercial and industrial development – did you know that Altoona is housing one of only three US data centers for Facebook? Beyond that, they are also a community very proud of their lifestyle elements with many parks and trails in the area. We tied some of these recreational elements into the site design.
Recently launched by Nolasoft: a new site for Energyficient.
Energyficient redesigns and engineers lighting systems with an eye towards energy savings. In the words of our friends at Red Dot who did the site design:
Energyficient works with companies to retrofit their lighting systems and replace them with more energy efficient bulbs and fixtures. In the process they reveal much more than simply energy savings; they reveal better workplaces, increased employee morale and a host of other benefits that don’t easily fit on the balance sheet.
To tell their story, we used a “Revealing” theme across the site and took advantage of newer web technologies to allow a site visitor to control their own experience and reveal things — on their own — about Energyficient. The site uses newer techniques like parallax, sticky navigation, and curtain effects. All in service of the brand and the user experience.
We are exceptionally proud of how the Energyficient site turned out – it really pushed the boundaries technically in what we can do with branding on a website. You scroll down the home page and new content is revealed,sized to the browser. As you scroll down the subpages, subtle animations with photos add a bit of pop to the content, lightbulbs turn on, and the footer reveals with a screen door effect. It’s pretty cool, but you need to see if for yourself.
Recently launched by Nolasoft: Say Thanks to a Farmer
Farm Bureau launched their Say Thanks to a Farmer campaign at the 2013 Iowa State Fair where they had visitors give tribute to the farmers in their life by signing a giant greeting card.
Sun up ’til sun down — rain or shine — farmers and ranchers work tirelessly to put food on our tables and clothes on our backs. These unsung heroes have earned our gratitude. That’s why we pay tribute to them with our giant greeting card.
The Say Thanks to a Farmer website built on this card displaying portions of it online while also allowing visitors to Say Thanks via Twitter and Facebook. Plus the site has been optimized for mobile with responsive layout and alternate images optimized for high-resolution retina displays.
Say Thanks site on a mobile phone.
We worked with our friends at Red Dot on the Say Thanks to a Farmer website.
Due to the upcoming shutdown of Postini, all Nolasoft anti-spam customers will be moving to McAfee Email Protection on Tuesday, September 17. Learn what service enhancements you can expect!
Email Protection from McAfee works much like your existing Postini service – all filtering is handled server-side so there is nothing you need to do on your end for the transition. You will still get world-class email virus filtering and great spam filtering and quarantine. This email covers some of the differences in the two systems.
Daily Quarantine Emails
The biggest change you will notice with the new system is that instead of receiving an email of your quarantined messages once per week, you will now receive a daily message each morning with all messages quarantined in the past day. That makes it far easier to keep on top of messages that have been blocked as spam.
Another enhancement with the new system is that you can now add a sender to your Allowed Sender list directly from the daily quarantine message. Plus you can login to your full quarantine right from the daily message as well.
An example of a daily spam report with McAfee.
Login
With the change to McAfee, the URL you go to access your quarantine changes from http://login.postini.com to http://nolasoft.portal.mcafeesaas.com. This URL is a bit of a mouthful, but you will barely notice it because most of the time you will access the site using the daily email reports sent by McAfee.
The first time you login to the McAfee spam quarantine, you will need to set a new password. Just click the “create a password” link on the sign in screen.
To create or recover your spam quarantine password, click the Forgot Password line on the login screen.
Increased Number of Allowed and Blocked Senders
On Postini you were limited to approximately 150 senders in your Allowed Sender list. With McAfee, that number has been doubled to 300.
Graymail
Do you tend to receive quite a few emails from companies sending offers that you signed up for in the past but don’t necessarily want now? Another noticeable change with McAfee vs Postini is that McAfee blocks what is considered “Graymail”.
Graymail is defined as “legitimate bulk mail that was requested by the user in the past, but is no longer wanted by the user.” Although Graymail is generally not considered spam, it can represent a significant nuisance to recipients and it often includes unsubscribe options that do not work.
This filter addresses the following types of Graymail:
In essence, email sent to your account from mailing lists will be quarantined by default, while the daily quarantine message allows you to easily deliver those offers you want (or allow sending companies that you always want to receive).
So What Do You Need to Do?
Nothing! The conversion will happen behind the scenes on Tuesday, September 17. Mail will not be interrupted in any way. You may have a couple of days where you get quarantine messages from both McAfee and Postini. If you have any questions, please let us know!
What If I Don’t Have Postini OR McAfee But I’m Looking for a Better Anti-Spam Solution?
Let us know – we can add anti-spam to your account at a low annual price!
Launched by Nolasoft: a new site for RMH Systems.
RMH Systems, formerly Riekes Material Handling, is an independent material handling and packaging systems integrator. They provide turnkey solutions from design engineering and simulation all the way through installation and project management. Their solutions vary in complexity from simple manual to highly automated systems such as mobile robots, conveyor systems, industrial scales, packaging equipment and supplies.
Nolasoft worked with Red Dot Design on the RMH Systems site.
