Today marks World AIDS Day, a movement that seeks to raise awareness of the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS. Of the 30 million people worldwide that live with the disease, more than 70 percent live in Africa. Nashville-based Blood:Water Mission is a grassroots organization that [...]
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 [...]
The weather may be quite a bit cooler than it was a month or so ago, but it is warm in our North Fourth office. Why? Because CentreSource was named as one of the “Hot 100″ by BusinessTN magazine. You can check out the [...]
Veterans Day is a time for us to reflect on the service and sacrifice of the men and women in our armed forces. That is why we were we were deeply honored to work with Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) to [...]
Our Director of Technology Chip Hayner was named the Software Programmer of the Year by the Nashville Technology Council at an award reception this past Tuesday. The picture is of perhaps one of the coolest trophies we have ever seen: a custom designed Gibson/Epiphone [...]
It will be LEGENDARY!
CentreSource is once again sponsoring the midstate’s leading tech-driven “unconference,” BarCamp Nashville. This free event will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Saturday, October 17 at the Cadillac Ranch on Broadway in downtown Nashville (map). At last [...]
Look how shiny it is!
You already knew that CentreSource is an award-winning Web firm, but we are really excited to announce that the Two Futures Project has been selected as a W3 Awards “Best in Show” winner as [...]
In business, making the right connections is a vital part of growing the company and being successful. That is why CentreSource has been a proud member of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce every year since 2004. Our membership has allowed us to grow [...]
Screenshot from gpsAssassin's attack screen.
It probably comes as little surprise that our team members are very attached to our mobile devices. A quick look around the office turns up at least a dozen iPhones and Blackberries. Yes, we are very up on [...]
On Thursday, the Nashville Symfony Users Group met in the Centresource conference room to discuss the extension of the Symfony routing framework. I lead the talk, but it did not take long for the presentation to become a round table discussion, with everyone contributing their own thoughts and snippets [...]
The Nashville Technology Council today announced the finalists for the 2009 “Feel the Beat” Technology Awards. The awards recognize those individuals and companies whose success has helped grow Nashville and the surrounding areas into a hub for technology. The event will highlight outstanding achievements from the 2008-2009 year.
CentreSource is proud [...]
We’re up for an award tonight… Nashville’s Future 50 award, in fact!
Kanye has already chimed in to share his thoughts.
Hehe.
[...]Chip sent this to our team and I couldn’t keep myself from sharing it with the world. If a client read this, they’d instantly say “I don’t do that…” but in fact, most of them do. Only in the context of a REALLY ridiculous example (like below) does it become [...]
One year ago, I concocted the idea of gpsAssassin – a location aware game played on your mobile device. It was a long journey, but we (myself and Jackson Miller) finally took our little side project and officially launched it into the AppStore.
Now that we’ve completed the project/journey, I’m humbled [...]
In our weekly Wednesday company meeting, we typically talk with each other about what we’ve learned in the last week and the projects we’re working on. This week, however, Nick threw us a bit of a curveball.
We split into two groups to answer a big question: where will the web [...]
On the drive into work today, I was listening to “This Week in Google“, one of the amazing podcasts from the TWiT network, hosted by Leo Laporte. In the most recent episode, one of the guests spoke briefly about how he felt that he could let non-direct Twitter [...]
Over the course of the past few months, our designers and strategists have been hard at work brainstorming and creating a new centresource.com. We’re nearing the completion of this site and can’t wait to share it with you! One thing that we found to be helpful when strategizing the format [...]
At CentreSource, we have a motto that “outcomes always outweigh the output.” Through this, we try to focus on meeting the individual goals of our clients, versus focusing on the process of how they get done. One goal we often hear is that our clients would like an easy way [...]
Last night CentreSource hosted the The Nashville Ruby on Rails / Agile Software Meetup Group for the first time. Presenter Alex Sharp shared a presentation on Test Driven Development (TDD) with Shoulda, a set of helpers that sit on top of the Test::Unit framework. You can see a [...]
Recently, I ran into an issue when building a Symfony plugin for Slideshow renderings. When I added the support for multiple libraries, in this case Google Slideshow2 and JQuery Cycle, they had drastically different configuration options. JQuery Cycle allows you to use a list of effects, such as blindX and [...]
It’s been an interesting year at CentreSource. Our focus this year has been mostly internal — we’ve been honing our internal processes and working closely with our now 20-person team to make our day-to-day as efficient as possible. We’re also learning from each other: we spend every day in peer [...]
I live in the wonderful town of Pleasant View, Tennessee. It’s located about a 30 minute drive northwest of Nashville. Yesterday, as I passed exit 31 on I-24, I saw a sign in bold red letters proclaiming… “FIREWORKS Sold Here!” Nothing too fancy or flashy, just red paint on a [...]
If you’re not familiar with CSS frameworks, you should be. They create a baseline from which designers and themers can create websites, standardizing basic layout options with a common toolset and language. I was passionately opposed to them for the longest time because I feared we would lose the art [...]
In the fall of 2008, the Strategy team at centre{source} set out to create a plan for expanding the firm’s reach and involvement in the local Nashville Interactive Community. Over the course of a few months, a strategy was formed that involved looking inwardly for personal development opportunities and looking [...]
The summer is here, which means that once again it is time for us to join forces to help out Ellie’s Run for Africa (ERFA), a 5k run and family fun day that raises awareness of and funding for Africans who struggle to meet basic [...]
At CentreSource, we include planning and/or strategy in every interactive and web project we begin. The goal of this on-the-forefront project work is to assess the estimated scope, timeline, and budget as discussed during the sales meetings and re-evaluate it through a more refined lens. Very often, this refining perspective [...]
Our May Interactive Mixer was a great time — amazing weather and another fantastic crowd. Nashville interactive events have been heating up as the weather gets warmer, so kudos to those faces who keep popping up at all these events. We love to see Nashville building such a strong, committed [...]
This week we launched the new www.fridrichandclark.com. For those of you not familiar with F&C (affectionately called by our team)…shame on you! For over 40 years they have been front runners in the Nashville real estate market.
For the past several years they have struggled to find an online identity. [...]
This week we launched a brand new site for another great cause. AuTube.tv — a project of the Dan Marino Foundation — focuses on building connectivity and community anyone either on the autism spectrum or in the autism community. They call it an “issues-based social network” — it’s a [...]
In preparation for my presentation (Try some Open Source…. Everybody’s doing it), I’ve compiled some of the best offerings in the land of OSS.
Utilities
Firefox ([www.mozilla.com]) - Browser
Azureus ([azureus.sourceforge.net]) - BitTorrent
FileZilla ([www.FileZilla.com]) - FTP Client
CLAMWIN ([www.clamwin.com]) - Open Source Anti-Virus
TightVNC ([...]
As the founder of centresource, I’ve always been tasked with choosing solutions that yield the best ROI - period. To that point, Open Source technologies have become an integral part of our business and as a result, also our personal lives. We don’t choose/use them simply because they’re free (in [...]
Google, why hast thou forsaken us? A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, GMail had this great feature that was a defining reason in my switch from my previous mail provider (me). That was that if you ever got a message that had any sort of “event” — [...]
Before you begin to picture a door-to-door, truth-twisting, pushy and annoying sales guy, think again. Last week, I was honored to be named the top sales person in the Media and Advertising space. I have to admit that being called a sales person still irks me a bit.
When I first [...]
Centre{source} ers Brent Shaffer and Travis Black led a presentation on Symfony at the Nashville PHP User Group’s April meet-up. The presentation was part of a four part series on PHP Frameworks, including presentations on Code Igniter, CakePHP, and [...]
What a week!
We launched a new site this week for a great cause called The Two Futures Project — an organization is focused on nuclear abolition.
The Two Futures Project was one of those great projects in which everyone on the team — client included — was passionate about [...]
We’re proud to announce the launch of one of our new projects: the new Vaco.com.
Vaco – a Nashville-based recruiting, placement, and consulting firm -- reached out to us in 2008 to help update their web presence and create a site that better serves their internal and external stakeholders. In [...]
We’re proud to announce the launch of one of our new projects: the new Vaco.com.
Vaco – a Nashville-based recruiting, placement, and consulting firm — reached out to us in 2008 to help update their web presence and create a site that better serves their internal and external stakeholders. In [...]
In 2008, I had the pleasure of working closely for over 6 months with the nation’s oldest college summer internship program, the Southwestern Company, on their interactive strategy. And what a great relationship – the Southwestern Company is full of passionate people and sharp minds. And most importantly, the [...]
In 2008, I had the pleasure of working closely for over 6 months with the nation’s oldest college summer internship program, the Southwestern Company, on their interactive strategy. And what a great relationship – the Southwestern Company is full of passionate people and sharp minds. And most importantly, the [...]
Welcome to 2009 and give thanks if you made it through 2008. Now that the 2009 year is here, it is time to think about some New Year’s Resolutions. centre{source} thought about how we might help you with the difficult task of beginning and sticking to your new resolutions, so, [...]
Welcome to 2009 and give thanks if you made it through 2008. Now that the 2009 year is here, it is time to think about some New Year’s Resolutions. centre{source} thought about how we might help you with the difficult task of beginning and sticking to your new resolutions, so, [...]
How do I fix the red ring of death on my Xbox 360?
Can dogs eat pears?
Why doesn’t H&M sell clothes online?
Can you bring your own alcohol on a cruise ship?
I love Yahoo! Answers. If I have a question, someone there has already asked it… And more than likely, someone else [...]
How do I fix the red ring of death on my Xbox 360?
Can dogs eat pears?
Why doesn’t H&M sell clothes online?
Can you bring your own alcohol on a cruise ship?
I love Yahoo! Answers. If I have a question, someone there has already asked it… And more than likely, someone else [...]
I was recently recommended Protoshare by some of the team here at c{s} and tasked with giving it a thorough look-through. I browsed the online docs, signed up for an account, and played around with it - here are the results of my digging:
Initial Thoughts:Protoshare is tailor-made for what [...]
I was recently recommended Protoshare by some of the team here at c{s} and tasked with giving it a thorough look-through. I browsed the online docs, signed up for an account, and played around with it - here are the results of my digging:
Initial Thoughts:
[...]We’re thrilled to announce that centre{source} was recently named as a 2008 Nashville Area Chamber Future 50 company by the Nashville Chamber of Commerce. The Future 50 is an annual recognition program celebrating the fifty fastest-growing, privately owned companies headquartered in Middle Tennessee. The last year has been a major [...]
We’re thrilled to announce that centre{source} was recently named as a 2008 Nashville Area Chamber Future 50 company by the Nashville Chamber of Commerce. The Future 50 is an annual recognition program celebrating the fifty fastest-growing, privately owned companies headquartered in Middle Tennessee. The last year has been a major [...]
Great news! The first version of the Doctrine 1.0 branch has been released as BETA1. The project is on schedule to release Doctrine 1.0 on September 1st 2008.
Today I am happy to announce the release of Doctrine 1.0-BETA1. This marks the true start for the 1st generation Doctrine stable lifecycle. [...]
Here’s a story that serves as proof that Interactive Strategy makes it easy (and valuable) to build closeness with your customers:Last week, we started using Adobe’s Acrobat.com Buzzwords service for document sharing. (Check it out if you haven’t yet – very cool, very useful free online tool that made [...]
You know what I am talking about - all those email lists you have signed up for but you never read them. You even have a separate email account just for that. You had to get those offers for that weekend trip to Las Vegas you will never have enough [...]
I’ve seen this a few too many times now – a business starts talking about interactive strategy. They become convinced that they need to do more with the web to leverage the power of their brand and find new customers. (Yes!) They start to understand that people are starting to [...]
Pay per click, cost per impression, return of investment(ROI), and conversion rates are some typical buzzwords you will hear while devising an online advertising strategy. Add Click-to-Donate to that list. This is not new but a reemerging trend from the late 1990s. Click-to-donate provide users the ability to give back [...]
One of the most difficult things for me is color coordination. Picking the right color combinations for the right task or job at hand is not all just having a good eye. You can mathematically get the right color sets. If you are not a designer this can be daunting [...]
We're proud to say that centre{source} was named as one of the ten most dependable web design firms in the southern US in the April 2008 issue of Entrepreneur magazine!
This is our second year to be selected in this list, which is compiled by Goldline Research.
We always strive for [...]
Content is king, right?
It takes great content to both 1) optimize your website for high organic rankings on search engines, and 2) communicate the concept and benefit of your business to your web traffic.
Great content is keyword-focused, frequent, and direct. It’s also brief – probably even more brief than [...]
Here marks the launch of a possible new feature called "Lil Puzzle of the Week". Will it be kept up with? One can never be sure - that's why the phrasing of "Lil Puzzle of the Week" is tricky enough to mean "this" week, not necessarily "every" week...which may be [...]
I’m not complaining, but sometimes I feel like Google Reader is running my life.
Google Reader is a taskmaster. Sure, she aggregates loads of great information for me, but she can be a little demanding. If I’m away from her for a few hours, I return to find a [...]
Since we've been doing more strategy, it has become more and more necessary to formalize our 'ramp up' process for new strategists. Our strategist typically herald from the marketing side of the world & combine their knowledge with practical elements of technology. This dual-combo makes for a powerful strategist.
However, there [...]
According to the Smoking Gun website, "A Pittsburgh couple is suing Google for invasion of privacy, claiming that the web giant's popular "Street View" mapping feature has made a photo of their home available to online searchers. Aaron and Christine Boring accuse Google of an "intentional and/or grossly reckless invasion" [...]
So, recently here at CentreSource we've been working on a project which is using the brand spanking new xServe from Apple. First, let me say the server is pretty slick, but like any other software it has issues. The reason we went with the xServe was because we needed the [...]
History has proven to me that it is very difficult for clients to understand time & knowledge as an actual currency. If you're in the time & materials industry, you'll appreciate what I'm talking about. My wife, who's a lawyer, was kind enough to send me a song that really [...]
NASHVILLE, TN, United States, 04/01/2008
centre{source}.com is now ZENtre{source}.com. Nashvilles interactive strategies firm has renamed its company name to reflect its core competencies.
Since the beginning, ZENtre{source}.com, formerly centre{source}.com, has become a fountain of knowledge for progressive clients looking deep within their online persona for a user relationship that goes beyond casual [...]
I have been waiting on this for a while. Finally, someone has put together an article detailing how to use Doctrine with the Zend Framework. The article was linked from the Doctrine website, but you can also go directly to the original article here.
[...]This has to be one of the coolest and simplest things in PHP.
http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/php-growl/
// Setup
$growl = new Growl();
$growl->setAddress('127.0.0.1');
$growl->addNotification("Test");
$growl->register();// Send Notification
$growl->notify("Test", "Test Alert", "The body of the test alert!");
This simple class allows you to send OS X growl [...]
I ran across this new book from my friends over at 800ceoread.com: The Back of the Napkin. Being a visual learner*, I was inspired to see examples of great stories contained within. This book is ideal for those involved with strategy and project planning as people are wired with [...]
The folks at pingVision have posted their case study for the Popular Science Magazine website on drupal.org.
[...]Jeff Miccollis and Young Hahn with DevelopmentSeed gave an excellent presentation at DrupalCon 2008 titled: Creating Custom Workflows for Drupal Apps: taking advantage of core hooks and context. The primary focus of this session was explaining the various methods of maintaining "context" throughout a Drupal site.
Addison Berry from Lullabot has posted the slides from his DrupalCon 2008 presentation: Contributing to Drupal: A guide for everyone.
Woot!
John VanDyk, author of Pro Drupal Development, and longtime Drupal developer/guru, has posted the slides and video of the presentation he gave at DrupalCon on triggers and actions. It was great presentation from one of Drupal's founding fathers. Though centered around Drupal 6, many of the basic principals [...]
Some of us at centre{source} have been running the latest version Firefox (version 3) which is currently in it's beta stages. It's VERY cool and VERY fast...
Beta 3 Release 4 just came out today:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.0b...
After installing, we were extremely happy to notice that Flash is once again working [...]
While inhaling paint fumes from our next door tenants, I was intrigued about this article from Lifehacker:
The Coolest Cubicle Contest.
View the entries and enter; the winner will take home a $500 Amazon Gift Card.
Carsten Cumbrowski posted a article, "50 Questions to Evaluate the Quality of Your Website" that is useful for website owners, designers, bloggers and search engine marketers to consider.
[...]At the Reputation Monitoring & Management Through Search track at the SMX West Conference, author Andy Beal led a session on keeping your web credibility intact.
[...]I'm back from Santa Clara, California, ready to put into practice all of the ideas I took away from the Search Marketing Expo.
Its always a challenge to fly anywhere via Chicagos OHara Airport with multiple delays, cancelled flights and lost luggage, but at the end of the day, it [...]
Bob, Jared, and I just got to Boston for Drupalcon 2008! All week, we'll be checking in and giving updates about what we've learned. If you're in town for the convention, send me an email chayner {at} centresource.com and we'll try to hook up for lunch!
For more information on the [...]
Over at the Doctrine PHP ORM website they have just released a tutorial on how to get started using Doctrine in under 5 minutes!!!
[...]Since centre{source} is a interactive strategy firm based in Nashville, Tennessee or affectionately known as "Music City, USA", it's only appropriate that we share this fun exercise with our blog / designer audience.
Every guitar picker in Nashville will eventually need a CD Album Cover. Here's a fun 10-Minute Graphic [...]
In my last post I talked about the possibility of Doctrine being in the core of Drupal 7. After some thought, and a little bit of work, I realized this is not necessary. Doctrine can be used in Drupal now with a custom module I wrote. It comes with [...]
No matter how hard we try, plaid will NEVER work as part of a corporate branding strategy.
"em are the best tools I ever did see for op-mazaytin' a website I ever did see, ahtayuWUT!" sez Kerry to Hannah.
I have never considered voting as marketing. After reading Seth Godin's Lessons on Voting, we do vote with our wallet, our time, our commitment to the messages that compel us to act.
- Voting is free.
- Some people really like to vote. It builds a connection for them.
- [...]
Recently we had an issue with a website which had a flash upload feature using jqUploader. This feature worked flawlessly when we initially built it but when it was moved to a new server, issues started to come up. First, I discovered that trying to upload empty files results in [...]
Here's a very interesting way to interact with customers from HEMA, a Dutch company that sells consumer goods. HEMA operates 56 stores in Belgium and 9 in Germany.
This advertisement is a good way to showcase its wares, while providing a viral way to promote its business. Turn your speakers on [...]
I have been taking a peak around CodeIgniter tonight and I put together a little tutorial on how to integrate Doctrine with your CodeIgniter applications. It was fairly simple and took me about 15 minutes to figure out a nice and clean implementation.
[...]For the last 10 years of doing web development with PHP I have been searching for a proper way to build my domain model and represent it with a relational database and a set of PHP classes. This has not existed until recently I came across a young open source [...]
January 9th, 2008
Renowned tech insiders Joseph Jaffe and C.C. Chapman to Speak to local bloggers, podcasters, social networking specialists, new media marketers, and business leaders
[...]Nashville, TN, January 7, 2008 centre{source} Inc. (www.centresource.com), Nashvilles leading Interactive Strategy services firm, today announced the expansion of its headquarters office in Nashville, Tennessee. A dramatic increase in demand for the companys Interactive Strategy consulting services necessitated a move to a new 4000 square foot facility, [...]
Seth Godin never has a scarcity of interesting thoughts to say about marketing, interacting with customers and the use of the web. Looking back at his articles posted at his blog regarding web design, he is challenging our thought processes on how most us approach design and custom web design [...]
If you’re heading home for the holidays and just can’t stand to be untethered from your laptop while at Grandma’s house, consider this collection of 100 Productivity Tools as your holiday present.
This collection comes from the TruckingAccident.org Blog. Truckers without question, are passionate lovers of gadgets. From GPS units [...]
Stephen Yeargin, Evan Owens, Chip Hayner, Jared A. Scheel
