It’s one of the most dynamic times of the year!  The summer is winding down and the little kids around the neighborhood are headed back to school.  Before we know it, the leaves on the trees will change colors and the Mets will wonder how they missed the playoffs again.

Perhaps one of the most fun things about the fall here at VQC Designs is the Harrisburg Art Association’s Gallery Walk.  For the past 22 years, the Gallery Walk has afforded local artists the ability to showcase their work in several different spaces throughout the city for patrons (or just regular people who are interested in the local art scene) to see.

For the third year in a row, VQC Designs is a featured gallery in the Gallery Walk.  The theme of our space is “Modern Times.”  As a web design company, we pride ourselves on being on the cutting edge of technology (however, unlike QVC we don’t sell knives).  We decided it was time to celebrate those who place themselves on the cutting edge of art.

This year, VQC Designs’ gallery is the 5^th stop on the Gallery Walk and we have accumulated quite the collection.  Featuring four different artists, Fox Ridge Winery, Lancaster Brewing Company and live music, we have a fun space for walkers to check out!

Our artists include: James Rasp, Martin Velez, Gary Steele, and Joseph Dudding.

James Rasp’s photography collection, “House Less Beautiful” is a series of eight photographs which focus on bringing to light the plight of the homeless in Carlisle.  Martin Velez uses oil on canvas to bring to life haunting images of people, places and fantasy.  Gary Steele makes his art function in the third dimension and Joseph Dudding uses cutting technology to make bronze statues come to life.

As walkers wander through our gallery, we will be serving a choice of wine courtesy of Fox Ridge Vineyards.  Our friends at Lancaster Brewing Company have been kind enough to provide us with some choice brews including: Kolsch (in a can!)  and the infamous Lancaster Milk Stout.

Beyond that, there will be live music and a chance to mix and mingle with some of the artists who are displaying their work in our space.  Martin Velez will even be painting throughout the day.

If you are prepared to spend a beautiful day* sipping wine, viewing art, and being serenaded by live music, then 112 Market Street is the venue to check out.

We’re proud of the line up of artists we’ve assembled and ready to celebrate the arts in Harrisburg!  Last year we had about 300 people wander through our office space and we’re ready to put on another great show in a few weeks!

*VQC Designs, while very good at staying on top of the web technology business, is not so good at predicting the weather.  We cannot be held liable for any inclement happenings in the atmosphere.  We’re only 10% more accurate than the weather man, you know.

We are taught from a young age that sharing is a good thing. We’ve all heard the clever rhyme to induce sharing amongst youngsters: “sharing is caring.” In an age of a hyper-connected social web; knowledge sharing is caring. Your presence online is bolstered by your ability to generate content and share that content. Today I present to you a tool to share your knowledge through slide presentations. Presenting “Slide Share” for our Tuesday Tech Tango post.

Slide Share is a place for businesses to share slideshow presentations with the greater web community. Uploading and sharing slides is just the tip of the ice berg. Other features which may tickle your fancy are the ability to embed audio into the slides and upload general text and spreadsheet documents. Ok so you are thinking: “cool I can upload my documents; how does this differ from just emailing them?”

Social capabilities! Users have their own SlideShare profile page where other users can comment on their wall, create and join groups, follow favorite users, use custom widgets and also have their Slide Share accounts connected to LinkedIN and Facebook.

If your business creates documents for public consumption; specifically slide presentations, then Slide Share is definitely something worth your while. Not only will you have a convenient portal to direct folks interested in your presentation; you will be able to expand the audience for your presentations.

One last benefit of Slide Share is the credibility you can generate for your business. As a business, you are viewed as the expert.  The key to growing your perception as the expert is to share that expertise.  Slide Share is the key to sharing and becoming a resource for your community.

Enjoy the slides below from a presentation we did on the basics of Twitter. If you are interested in more knowledge via slide shows; visit VQC’s Facebook Page where our other presentations are posted.

| Get your SlideShare Playlist

Don your best tweed jacket and tobacco pipe and call up your friend Watson for VQC’s upcoming contest, The Twitter-Hunt.  A twitter-exclusive scavenger hunt existing solely within the Twitter-verse of VQC Designs twitter feed.  Finding VQC’s questions and providing the correct answers could score you a sweet, sexy and very mobile Acer – Aspire One Netbook!

We will be showcasing the tiny netbook’s large capabilities on November 12th at the 2009 Harrisburg Chamber Business Expo being held at the PA Farm Show Complex.  Here you will get a chance to hang out with VQC Designs and see first-hand the beauty, size and power of the netbook.  Also, by attending the Expo and visiting our booth, #440, you’ll be giving yourself a better chance to own the netbook for yourself.  All you need to attend is a business card and you will be granted free admission into the Expo.

For the twitter-hunt you can view the complete details page at vqcdesigns.com/netbook.  For now, here is a quick run-down of how things will unfold.  In the next week, questions will be tweeted from our twitter account: twitter.com/vqcdesigns.  Each question will be numbered and have the hash tag #VQC.  The hash-tag is imperative for us to keep track of who is chatting.  Therefore, no hash tag, no netbook.

Once a question is posted, you will retweet the question to become eligible for that specific question.  Once you have “re-tweeted” the question, you may send us your answer through direct-message on Twitter to @vqcdesigns.  Be sure to note the question number in your answer so we’re able to correctly identify which answers correspond with what questions.  Each question you answer correctly provides you with another chance in the drawing to win the netbook. Due to our hectic work schedule and the desire to not make this too easy, we will be tweeting questions at random, so you better check often so as to not miss a question.

So how does attending the Harrisburg Expo pay off?  Well aside from spending time with the guys and gals from VQC designs, you’ll also have a leg-up on the competition of the twitter-hunt.  A few of our questions will be strictly derived from the happenings of the Farm Show complex on November 12th.  It could be anything from how much is the popcorn at the vendor stand to what color shoes is the guy wearing at the booth next to VQC’s.  Therefore, attending and answering questions correctly will undoubtedly increase your chances in comparison to those who decide to stay home.  Good times and chances at free stuff, come on, how could you NOT show up, it’s elementary my dear, Watson.

ClickableNow.com – Clickable Now is the twitterverse’s newest and coolest improvement; twitter backgrounds that have clickable links!  Clickable provides a means to place live, active links in your twitter background.  Now your sweet twitter background will actually be clickable and drive traffic to your blog or website and not just look freakin’ awesome.

Building Twitter backgrounds is quite easy with a basic Photoshop knowledge and idea for a background.  Utilizing this nice Photoshop template you can easily create a background and check its compatibility with Twitter Background.  Once you have your background established and uploaded on twitter, go through ClickableNow.com to drag and drop links into your background and begin the driving of traffic to your website! Enjoy the added traffic and make sure to check out our twitter background @vqcdesigns.

It takes two to tango.  It also takes two to use technology, the user and the piece of technology.  Hence our new weekly blog covering the wonderful world of technology.  We spend all week dancing around the internet and come Tuesday we are ready to perform.  Each week VQC will highlight a piece of the tech world which caught our eye and will hopefully catch yours.

This week we’ll take a dive into augmented reality; would you like the red pill or the blue pill?  Okay, so augmented reality may not be on the level of the Matrix, but once it becomes widely available, augmented reality will redefine the way people use their mobile devices.  The technology allows a live digital image of a physical environment to be integrated with virtual information.  Take a moment to let the gears grind and imagine the possibilities this technology offers to users. Check out these examples to get a better idea of what AR offers.

Info for shoppers

FoodTracer concept+demo from gusepo on Vimeo.

This past summer an Augmented Reality Consortium of 8 AR companies was formed with a focus on developing tools, technology, applications, and content for AR.  This technology has been conceptual for nearly a decade and is now being pushed towards widespread application.  President of the consortium and CEO of Ogmento, Ori Inbar, has gone as far as to refer to this technologies development as a “digital renaissance.”

One of the leading companies of this digital renaissance is Layar based in The Netherlands.  Layar, a mobile “reality browser”, launched in June 2009 has recently become available globally on all Android Devices.   I’ll allow the video below speak for itself.  Just imagine the possibilities yourself.

“uhhh…what the hell is this thing?”

Perhaps the coolest thing on the internet, that’s what.

TimeMachiner is a simple little app that lets you send email to the future. You enter the message, the recipient, and the time and date you want your message to be delivered. TimeMachiner stores your message until the time you’ve chosen then sends it out.

There are a ton of useful ways you can use TimeMachiner. You can send reminders of important dates to yourself, email all of your contacts “Happy Birthday!” in one sitting, or write a time capsule email to yourself five years from now.

Web 2.0 geeks are launching new email applications almost daily, but this is the coolest one I’ve come across.

If you know of any others, leave ‘em in a comment.

Happy Stumbling!

Most of you have probably heard of Pandora, but for those that haven’t I’ll give you the rundown.

Pandora is an internet radio platform that lets you build stations around an artist, genre or specific song. Founder Tim Westergren and his team of musicians listen to music all day long and tag the songs they hear according to a million different categories. Tags like key tonality, prominence of vocalist, primary instrument, etc.

Similar to StumbleUpon, Pandora adds value by aggregating content around your interests. And just like StumbleUpon, it’s a great way to discover new content. For example:

Say want to build a station around “Is This Love” by Bob Marley. Not only will other Bob Marley songs play on your station, but other relatively unknown reggae artists will as well. They have similar characteristics to the song you already like, so there’s a great chance you’ll like their music too.

It’s a great site to help pass the day at work and discover new music.

Happy Stumbling!

Have you ever just wanted to check out what’s on a website, but the only way they let you in is if you fork over an email address? Or, better yet, you need to register for a site through a confirmation email, but don’t want to be on someone’s spam list. If either of these things have happened, Mint Email is right up your alley.

Every time you access Mint Email, a fresh email address appears at the top right. You enter it into the website asking for an email address, and keep the window open.

As soon as the confirmation email comes through, the browser window (or tab) starts blinking, letting you know that your confirmation email has arrived. Four hours later your temporary address expires, and any email list you would have been on now has a non-existent address.

I use Mint Email all the time to try new sites out. Give it a shot, at least it’ll stop spam.

Happy Stumbling!

If you’ve ever bought an airline ticket, you know how it usually works.

A flight costs $200 on Monday and then jumps to $550 by Wednesday, only to drop to $330 on Sunday. It’s as if no matter what you do, there’s always a better time to buy.

Enter farecast.com.

A couple brainiacs at the University of Washington started Farecast as a research project a few years ago. They took massive amounts of airline pricing data, analyzed it, and devised algorithms to predict the best time to buy an airline ticket.

And boy, does it work.

You put in the airport you’re flying out of, where you’re going, and the dates you plan to leave and get back. Farecast then scours the airlines’ websites for the cheapest flights.

They display the lowest prices for your flight, a prediction on whether to buy or wait, and a 90-day history of the lowest fares for your itinerary.

I just booked a round-trip flight to Jamaica two weeks before my trip for $150 less than I was about to spend on another airline’s website.

And if I would have booked a day sooner, it would have been a $200 savings.

And not only did I get a great price, but I watched my fare actually go up right after I bought it, just like they said.

So try it out, see how cheap flights really can be, and get info on the best time to buy.

And keep Stumbling.

Anywhere.fm is a goldmine, one of the best Stumbles of my life.

The premise is pretty simple: you upload your music library to the site and then you can access it from anywhere with their online music player. So far the users have uploaded over 10 million songs.

Oh, and its FREE.

Basically this means that after you upload your library you can listen to your music anywhere with internet access. At the computer at work, on your mobile device, at any wifi hotspot. No need to buy an mp3 player with tons of storage, it’s all there online for free.

As if all that wasn’t enough, the guys who run anywhere.fm bought licenses for 99 of the best songs you’ve never listened to. I actually listen to the free music more than my own library. The songs are that good.

Just like all good Web 2.0 programs there’s a friend and sharing component too. You can find your friends, find new friends, and listen to their libraries and playlists. My username is xander54, and my (incomplete) library is www.anywhere.fm/xander54 once you become a member.

Check out the site, upload some songs, and friend me!

Happy Stumbling.