Idea R - The Blog on Digital Strategies and Web Marketing

[Free App] EasySteel: the vacuum heat treatments calculator

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 00:00:00 Z

EasySteel is a free application, for mobile and desktop devices, useful for creating steel recipes using vacuum heat treatments.

Beyond the fact that it is a very niche application, it is still an opportunity to discover the world of PWAs (Progressive Web App).
A PWA is a hybrid and innovative technology for develop mobile applications, compatible with all smartphones, tablets and even PCs.
The great thing is that all this is achieved at a much lower cost than traditional development tools.

[Free eBook] Industry: the secret for selling with LinkedIn

Igor De Ruitz — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 Z

LinkedIn is the social network that no B2B company can renounce.

What I want to illustrate in this free e-book is a revolutionary way to find customers thanks to LinkedIn.
The method and the automatisms implemented have allowed our customers to obtain an unprecedented competitive advantage in the engineering sector.

I'll show you very effective growth hacking techniques to go hunting for customers almost totally automatically and I will explain how to create a sales funnel which will bring you requests for quotations on a continuous basis.

[Free eBook] 50+ tips for getting first on Google

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 00:00:00 Z

In this free eBook I have collected 10 years of experience in website design and search engine optimization.

Learn how to avoid frequent coding and copywriting mistakes that can compromise your positioning on search engines.
Improve your website security for maximum Google compliance.
Get tons of new visitors by improving their user experience.

Metalworking industry: multiply customers using the website

Igor De Ruitz — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 00:00:00 Z

I have been developing and optimizing websites for the metalworking industry for 10 years and I have often seen how this resource is underestimated and used incorrectly.
A well-designed website can bring many customers to a B2B company in the manufacturing sector, many more customers than all the fairs and agents put together.
And above all spending much less or nothing.

In this article I’ll make you aware of the huge opportunities out there waiting for you and subsequently I’ll show you how to create a well-conceived platform for acquiring online customers.
If you follow all the directions you may be able to triple quote requests, while reducing your advertising budget by 90%.

A simple but effective SEO strategy: the middleman

Igor De Ruitz — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 00:00:00 Z

The SEO (search engine optimization) trick called "the middleman" solves a very common problem in corporate websites with excellent results.
I myself applied it many times and I always got it great results in a short time.

I recommend you to implement the middleman SEO strategy as soon as possible, it will allow you to make the most of your company blog and you will find indexed in a short time pages that you never thought you would ever see in the top positions of search engines.

I will show you two ways to apply this SEO strategy, one manual and one fully automatic.

Case study: advertising B2B maintenance

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:00:00 Z

A customer asked us to create an advertising billboard to promote maintenance services on vacuum furnaces.
The problem of maintenance services, in all commodity fields, is that customers tend to bet, they prefer to risk breaking the product and adjust it only if necessary, rather than performing regular preventive maintenance.

It is not easy to break this way of thinking, think of all the e-commerce sites that in the past have tried to sell you an extension to the warranty of the product you were buying: have you ever bought? I never.

Now let's see the creative phases, if you have the patience to read to the end, I will reveal a little secret and a serious mistake not to commit.

Can engineering industry sponsor art without going off topic?

Igor De Ruitz — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 00:00:00 Z

During Biennale Arte in Venice, one of our clients decides to sponsors the MODUS collateral event. The problem is that the metalworking industry tipically sponsors congresses or events related to industrial and technological research.
Having to design an advertising page on the exhibition cathalog, do we risk going off topic?

Let's explore this interesting exhibition and let's analyze how we have dealt with the topic from a communication point of view.

Milano Design Week 2017, Design Districts

Igor De Ruitz — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 00:00:00 Z

Let's walk around Ventura Lambrate and Tortona to discover the best creative minds and design trends. Get inspired by images captured in Fuorisalone at Milano Design Week 2017.

How to design a FAKE B2C brand for a real B2B service

Sara Tonini — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 00:00:00 Z

Is it possible to use guerrilla marketing for B2B (business-to-business)?
In a niche as that of industrial machines, the unconventional marketing finds its application?

I'll show you in this interesting case study how we applied, probably for the first time, guerrilla marketing to the engineering industry. To do so we reasoned out of the box and we have designed a B2C product... a fake one!

Influencer Marketing: all you need to know

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 00:00:00 Z

Influencer marketing is a great opportunity, especially for small and medium companies.
I will explain to you exactly what it is and, more importantly, I will show you how to identify influencers and integrate them in your digital marketing strategy.

At the end I will also reveal a trick to take advantage of influencers for free.

How to skip the CDN during ASP.NET development

Igor De Ruitz — Sat, 19 Dec 2015 00:00:00 Z

CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) are great to speed up website performances, but they are a mess when you are testing your website on your development machine.
Another problem may arise if you want to change your CDN to another one. Do yoy have to replace all URLs in all your pages?
In this article I'll show you a clever and definitive solution to avoid hardcoding the CDN URLs in your HTML markup.

Irritated by your blog performance? Boost it using the cloud!

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 00:00:00 Z

Often you will find on the web articles that emphasize the benefits of having a fast blog, both for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and to provide a satisfying experience to visitors. The conclusion to which these articles come is that you have to look for a good quality hosting provider. This conclusion is frequently wrong!

In this article I will show you various solutions to switch your blog to a more modern configuration, experiencing performance that you did not think it can get. And do you want to know an interesting news? These solutions may cost less than what you spend today.

Milano Design Week 2015, Design Districts

Igor De Ruitz — Sun, 19 Apr 2015 00:00:00 Z

Let's walk around Ventura Lambrate Projects, Brera Design District and Tortona Design Week to discover the best creative minds and design trends. Armed with camera and curiosity we'll explore the three areas crucial to the Fuorisalone at Milano Design Week 2015.

Taco Bell, breakfast in a George Orwell's world

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 09 Apr 2015 00:00:00 Z

Very beautiful advertising campaign for Taco Bell, effective video, but mostly we really like the graphics of the posters.

Google wants HTTPS everywhere. Yes it's another SEO factor!

Igor De Ruitz — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 00:00:00 Z

Do you remember the article I wrote a couple of months ago? I advised you that Google would push down all the websites not optimized for smartphones.
We don't have to wait a lot, in this article you'll see the threatening email that I received directly from Google.

Today I want to tell you about a new rakning factor that will grow in importance for Google... after that do not tell me that I have not warned you!

Not mobile friendly? Your ranking is going to precipitate!

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 04 Dec 2014 00:00:00 Z

Recently both Google and Bing have made an important announcement that will affect websites that are not optimized for mobile devices.
Even if your website is able to adapt to all screen sizes, this article could still affect you very closely.

Discover what are the important news and perform a quick test to see if you're ready for the new search engines results.

Why doesn't Facebook show your new great post to your page fans?

Igor De Ruitz — Fri, 14 Nov 2014 00:00:00 Z

You have done it perfectly!
You have written a great post, you published it on Facebook with a perfect headline and an attracting call to action.
Your page has 5000 fans, but the post is displayed only to 20 of them and you get barely one like.

What's wrong?!

Here's the explanation. Not a useless list of engaging best practices, but the real explanation.
Let's see what's happening inside Facebook mind and take the countermeasures...

How to make your website look great on social media

Igor De Ruitz — Sun, 05 Oct 2014 00:00:00 Z

Posting links on social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc..) its a daily practice, usually blog articles, new products or a description of your professional services.
The problem is that often these links look graphically disappointing, so they catch very few visitors.

I promise you that after reading this article the appearance of your links will no longer be left to chance, you will have full control over the images and descriptive texts.

How to fix your ASP.NET site to be responsive on Windows Phone

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 00:00:00 Z

There is a well-known bug on Internet Explorer 10 for WIndows Phone 8 that avoids responsive web sites to display correctly. The cause is that Internet Explorer 10 doesn't differentiate device width from viewport width, and thus doesn't properly apply the media queries in your favorite responsive CSS framework.
You can find many fixes on the client side, but if you're using ASP.NET, you have the chance to fix it server side with only few lines of code.

Mental marketing secret #3: the unconscious buddy

Igor De Ruitz — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 00:00:00 Z

Shhh do not tell the other magicians! Here is the third Mental Marketing secret revealed.
Having an accomplice when you perform a magic trick is very convenient, but think how much better it would be if the accomplice is not aware of that.
Can you imagine the benefits of such a technique applied to advertising?

Coca Cola, plants make us happy

Igor De Ruitz — Fri, 20 Jun 2014 00:00:00 Z

Ogilvy creates a campaign to promote the new eco-friendly Coca Cola bottles.
We like the minimal graphics based on optical effects ... some are not so original, but the message comes through loud and clear.

Lazy loading and the SEO problem, solved!

Igor De Ruitz — Mon, 19 May 2014 00:00:00 Z

Lazy loading applied to a web page is an excellent technique when all contents aren't immediately visible and you want to speed up page rendering.
A perfect candidate for this method are image galleries with many items, only the first image is visible when the page loads, other images will be visible only if the user decides to browse them.
This technique sounds great, but has a big SEO problem: search engine crawlers does not execute scripts, they only analyze HTML markup, so all the code that renders images dynamically is totally ignored along with images and captions.

Here're four solutions and, as often happens, the best is the last one.

Turn your display into a 3D one... using optical illusions

Igor De Ruitz — Fri, 09 May 2014 00:00:00 Z

Get hypnotized by these incredible animations.
See how just using two vertical lines and a focusing effect, your display will turn into a 3D one... unbelievable.

Mental marketing secret #2: the lie detector

Igor De Ruitz — Tue, 13 May 2014 00:00:00 Z

Are you ready for the secret number two?
This time we will talk about hypnosis and see how some techniques can be used to effectively reach all of your potential customers.

Mental marketing secret #1: the fake compromise

Igor De Ruitz — Tue, 06 May 2014 00:00:00 Z

After years of honorable profession in the field of computer science and magic, people often ask me "Do you ever use magic tricks in marketing?"
This article is the first in a series that will teach you how to successfully apply to your marketing campaigns, some tricks that come from magic and mentalism.

Are you sure that you have never been a victim of one of these techniques?

Milano Design Week 2014, Design Districts

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 00:00:00 Z

Ventura Lambrate is celebrating its fifth anniversary by bringing in the district emerging designers and the students of the most important academies of the world. For six days the shops, garages and sheds expose the best ideas of 2014. If you want to discover the true creativity, the one of the low cost prototypes, but also the inventiveness that has nothing to envy to the big names, this is the place you need to visit in the Milano Design Week.

Tortona Around Design has consolidated as the nerve center of the Fuorisalone. The big names patrol the neighborhood and have now almost evicted the young creatives. Nevertheless, the sources of inspiration are many and ateliers are competing to see who will be able to anticipate needs, changes, evolutions in the market and society.

Let's take a walk in Milan to see the images of Fuorisalone 2014 that struck me most.

IBM, the smallest video of the world

Igor De Ruitz — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 00:00:00 Z

IBM produces the smallest video of the world... not the shortest, but the one where the actors are the smallest possible! Here's an animation using atoms... incredible!

7 steps to find your most profitable keywords

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 00:00:00 Z

In this article we will see, starting from scratch, what are the steps to get to your keywords, that is those to be used in your website, in your blog or in advertising campaigns on the Internet.
I'll show you how to find not just the ones that best describe your products, but especially those that will give you the greatest return on investment.
Finally, I will reveal a little secret, I will teach you to find some keywords that are often overlooked by the competitors, but that instead generate substantial earnings.

Case study: TAV Engineering, experience design for B2B

Sara Tonini — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 00:00:00 Z

Let's continue the case study started with the design of the brand, addressing the issue of advertising.
TAV Engineering is a company fully dedicated to after sales services on vacuum furnaces and heat treatment equipment.
This study is interesting because we'll see how it's possible to address in a creative and unconventional way, a B2B market (machinery for the metalworking industry), which traditionally has always been presented seriously and aseptically... until today.

Case study: TAV Engineering, branding for B2B services

Igor De Ruitz — Wed, 16 Oct 2013 00:00:00 Z

Since 1999 TAV Engineering is fully dedicated to provide technical assistance and spare parts for vacuum furnaces of any type and any brand.
The high qualified staff designs ad-hoc solutions and plans the best strategy for vacuum furnace upgrades.

Dealing the company with after-sales services, we have created a brand that keeps distance from the cold and aseptic image of the metal industry, focusing instead on the human aspect: who's looking for technical support does not want automatic telephone responders, but she is looking for a human contact, to receive help, advice or just confirmations. This is why the letter "e" of TAVE is made with a character that, with its pronounced roundness and symmetry, recalls the shape of a smile.

How ASP.NET can efficiently control the client cache

Igor De Ruitz — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:00:00 Z

In this article we will see how to precisely control the cache of the client (the browser of your PC, for example) in order to avoid the transmission of data from the server when the client already owns them. The ASP.NET server already has systems for data caching, for example to avoid repeating the same database query; would not it be nice not to avoid sending these data to avoid bandwidth consumption?

The technique is called conditional GET and uses the 304 HTTP status code and is particularly useful when data are dynamically generated on the server side and change during the time.

Wonderbra, advertising without clothes and without... models

Igor De Ruitz — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 Z

In an era in which to advertise a product naked models are often used, even when they are far from being relevant, I propose you the counter-example par excellence.
Wonderbra, producer of the famous Push-Up, perhaps it would be among the few to have reason to use naked models in its posters. Let's see how the company is able to communicate funny and perfectly, often without any model.

Milano Design Week 2013, Design Districts

Igor De Ruitz — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:00 Z

When it comes to Milano Design Week, the Fuorisalone has now become the main stage.
Outside the institutional paths of the Salone del Mobile, it's on the Milan streets that you can experiment the innovative design. Surely it is less glossy, but looking in small boutiques, in converted garages and in the most unlikely spaces, you can find the real creativity.

Let's walk along the streets of Milan to explore the districts dedicated to design and let's collect in a photo gallery the most interesting objects.

How to dramatically increase social media LIKEs to your web site

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:00 Z

In this article we're going to talk about content lockers, I'll give you the know-how to create one yourself and at the end you'll have the chance to download the JavaScript/jQuery sources and implement it rapidly.

Content lockers were born as an annoying tool for web marketing affiliations: in a nutshell, if you have a blog followed by a large audience, a franchisor might pay you to partially block contents until the reader performs an action, for example compiling a survey or subscribing to a business newsletter. It 'a hateful practice, but generates discete income for many bloggers.

What I propose you is a soft social media content locker, to use with caution and wisdom.

Case study: IED Open Day, building a font by hand... literally

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:00:00 Z

IED (Istituto Europeo del Design) is an international network of training centers in the fields of Design, Fashion, Visual Communication and Management.
IED periodically organizes Open Days offering free educational activities that are commonly performed during the academic year, so that guests have the opportunity to attend the lessons that interest them.

For the communication campaign of the Open Day event, we wanted to manifest the diversity of the training offer, identifying the four areas of Design, Fashion, Visual Communication and Management.
Right from the start it was clear that we had to play with materials, we could not limit ourselves to a nice illustration: fashion is made of cloth, photo of paper, design of objects, etc.

The World's Worst Website

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:00:00 Z

Which are the errors to avoid in web design?
It would be possible to write thousands of books (and many have been written), but in this article you'll see the world's worst website and have fun.

Impossible colors
Hypnotic backgrounds
Frames
Broken links
Many silly animated GIFs
Annoying unstoppable music
And many more...

Case study: branding and marketing for a magician

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:00:00 Z

Like many magicians, Andrea Veronese has never had a real corporate identity, nor a web marketing strategy for the acquisition of contacts. 100% of the salaries come from word of mouth and an excellent professional reputation built over many years of activity in the field of magical entertainment.

We will proceed by designing a real brand, creating an effective identity on the web and activating a web marketing campaign. We will see in the final conclusions of this article, how this strategy have obtained results absolutely out of the ordinary.

Anamorphic illusions: all you're going to see is authentically false

Igor De Ruitz — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:00:00 Z

It's truly amazing this video based on anamorphic illusions by Brusspup.
The principle is like the advertisements you see on the football fields or along the tracks of motor racings: in practice it simulates an unlikely three-dimensionality thanks to distorted photographies.

ASP.NET 301 permanent redirects: the best solution

Igor De Ruitz — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 00:00:00 Z

Have you changed your domain and don't want to loose your SEO page rankings?
Do you have renamed a page and don't want to return errors to users that have saved a bookmark?
You have to perform a 301 permanent redirect to the new page/site.

There are plenty of methods to perform this, if you Google the question you'll be submerged by the answers.
Curiously the easiest method doesn't come out first.

An App to see Amsterdam through Anne Frank's eyes

Igor De Ruitz — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 00:00:00 Z

The Amsterdam's Anne Frank Museum published a really interesting mobile application: it allows city visitors to see the town at the time of the Second World War.
Using the smartphone's camera and the GPS technology, you can look at Anne Frank's places thanks to augmented reality or even take a picture that combines contemporary elements with historical data.

Take a look at the video to see the magic...

jQuery: how to throw and handle custom events

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 00:00:00 Z

We've already seen in a previous article how to manage JavaScript events.
jQuery simplifies but most of all uniforms the JavaScript events engine with 2 simple methods: bind() for events subscription and trigger() to fire them.

Events are not only a prerogative of standard DOM (Document Object Model) objects, your custom objects can throw events too, event if they aren't DOM objects.

3 methods to detect mobile devices in ASP.NET

Igor De Ruitz — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 00:00:00 Z

Redirecting mobile visitors to the mobile version of your site, is a common task.
How to detect them in ASP.NET?
I will explain you 3 simple methods.

Tracking Facebook likes with Google Analytics, the real solution!

Igor De Ruitz — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 00:00:00 Z

Social interaction of your customers are very important to analyze their impact on your conversions.
Reading the official Google Analytics developers guide, the solution seems easy but unfortunately the code doesn't work if you are correctly loading the Facebook SDK asynchronously, that's because may be the the SDK is still loading when you subscribe to the event.

Infographic: the Social Media history

Igor De Ruitz — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 00:00:00 Z

Starting from 1971 until today, this pretty infographic created by copyblogger retraces the social network history.
Take a look very fast, because tomorrow it could be outdated.

Google Tag Manager: stop sinking into scripts

Igor De Ruitz — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 00:00:00 Z

Here it is! The nightmare of managing all your Google scripts/tags is over.
Do you have to spread over thousands of pages your AdWords conversion tags, Analytics goal tags, campaign tracking scripts, etc.?
You know what I'm talking about: injecting code, conditional JavaScript, custom tags in many different pages is really error prone, but here comes the solution from Google: Google Tag Manager.

How to include CSS files programmatically in ASP.NET

Igor De Ruitz — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 00:00:00 Z

ASP.NET gives you the opportunity to add script blocks and JavaScript files at runtime using methods like ClientScriptManager.RegisterClientScriptInclude().

How to perform a similar action to include style sheets?

There's no native method, but it's quite simple to perform.

Internal campaigns with Google Analytics and .NET AdRotator

Igor De Ruitz — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 00:00:00 Z

An internal campaign banner is one that points to the same site it is contained in, for example you may advertise for one of your products while the user is looking at another one.
For banners hosted in external sites the best way to collect statistics is to use UTM (Urchen Tracking Module) query parameters: Google Analytics can automatically collect and group this type of data.
On the other side, the UTM approach is not good for internal campaigns, because when mixed with external ones, it compromises the analysis: try to imagine what happens if a user clicks on an external banner, then in an internal one and finally she makes a conversion. Which is the cause and which is the effect?

[FREE download] Keywords Mixer: long tail keywords made easy

Igor De Ruitz — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 00:00:00 Z

The first step when creating a web marketing strategy is to identify all the search keywords your potential visitors may use to reach you.
The next step is to identify the phrases that may be built using the previous keywords, narrowing down all the combinations.

Google AdWords gives you the chance to write down broad match phrases, letting it to create synonyms, related searches and other relevant variations.

I don't like this approach because it doesn't give me total control on the SERP (Search Engine Result Page); rather I prefer to base my SEM (Search Engine Marketing) project on phrase matches and exact matches. This is absolutely the more accurate approach, but it can be an annoying task since there’re hundreds of combinations and variations to consider... let me correct the last sentence, it WAS an annoying task, because now with our completely free Keywords Mixer and its simple integration with your preferred search engine, you can generate all your precise search long tail keywords in just one click.

TechEd Europe 2012: Windows 8 report from Amsterdam

Igor De Ruitz — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 00:00:00 Z

Many news from the Microsoft world at TechEd Europe 2012, concerning the products to come: Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8.
There were interesting sessions about the vision of the future by Microsoft, regarding server products and in particular about clouding by Windows Azure.
My main interests were on another subject, that is Windows 8, the new Metro user interface and the business opportunities on the client side. I arrived in Amsterdam with many doubts, many misunderstandings about these new technologies; now, 4 days later, I have a more clear vision.

Case study: the Magic Books Collection

Igor De Ruitz — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 00:00:00 Z

The effect I'm going to present you is the junction point of two artistic passions that I have cultivated for years, maintaining them intentionally separated, until I have thought that they were both arrived to the maturity necessary in order to benefit equally one of the other: I’m referring to the magic passion and to the theatre one.

I think important to have waited for the right moment before trying to find the point of contact between the two worlds, although for both fundamentally is a matter of exhibitions with the artist on a stage and the spectators seated in the stalls, unfortunately it is unknown why the education of the two guys follows two completely different paths.

Daniela Colzani Fashion Show: elegance and eroticism

Sara Tonini — Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:00 Z

They were in the hundreds to watch the Daniela Colzani fashion show, a young Brazilian specialized in Fashion Design in Milan and winner of the 2010 European competition "The Link", organized by the Sea exhibition Fashion in Cannes.

Special testimonial at Old Fashion Cafè in Milan could only be the compatriot Queen of Rio Carnival, Ana Paula Evangelista.

Daniela Colzani draws, cuts and sewes couture corsets carrying on a process of exaltation of the female figure. Thus she achieves the aesthetic ideals that define a world that seems far away, but that sometimes resurfaces to make us understand that certain parameters remain constant. Although in recent years anorexic models walked the runway, the "squeezed" and "stretched" are always in the everyday.

Durex, preservatives for creatives

Igor De Ruitz — Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:00 Z

Durex launches a worldwide contest between creatives, to design packages that go beyond the usual sunsets or romantic couples holding hands. In Milan during Design Week, Durex exhibits along the hot districts of the event, five huge boxes designed by IED (European Institute of Design) students. The works demonstrate exceptional capabilities of illustration, but nonetheless a creative imagination: we liked so much the Plexiglas covered box with a sign "to use in case of hot situation."

Milano Design Week 2012, Design Districts

Igor De Ruitz — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 00:00:00 Z

Being in Milan these days means feeling the fresh air that envelops creativeness.
Despite the institutional event is the Salone del Mobile in Milan Rho Fair, it is the city streets that we live innovation: entire neighborhoods transformed into workshops and showcases on international design.

The Fuorisalone has become so well known that the big manufacturers aspire to attend more in the city area (see Porta Genova or Brera) rather than at the fair. There is still room for the young creative independents that rent disused garages or old warehouses to exhibit their works, for example in the Lambrate area.

Project Glass, augmented reality by Google

Igor De Ruitz — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:00:00 Z

Take a look around with Google Project Glasses, the device that in the next future will give us an augmented reality experience, enriching the daily routine with messaging, geolocalization and social networking.

Is it possible to control creative minds?

Igor De Ruitz — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:00:00 Z

Derren Brown, one of the most famous contemporary mentalists, shows us how to subliminally influence an advertising agency.

Photoshop CS6 beta is here!

Igor De Ruitz — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:00 Z

The new Photoshop CS6 beta has been published, interesting are the features for lens distortion correction, the improved content-aware tools and the new crop, that at least is intuitive as the Photoshop Lightroom one.

NexusFont: managing fonts... for free

Igor De Ruitz — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:00 Z

Everyone someday find herself in the position of finding the best font that fits for a particular text, logo or editorial project.
After a long research I found an application: it's well done, it's exactly what I was looking for... and it's free.

Case study: branding Idea R

Igor De Ruitz — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:00:00 Z

A case study from the concept...

Mission
Target
Values
Difference from competitors
Benefits

...to the Idea R brand.

IBM, Apple and Microsoft: a semiotics analysis

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 Z

The purpose of a brand is to tell a story, creating recognizable codes: the style identifies the brand, while the code is used to establish the communication. The target is to not go wrong with the dress (the code) for a specific party (the style). The maximum that a brand can get is when the designer accomplices to build the party on the dress.

Let's take a look on how three IT bigs made war upon each other, using communication codes and semiotics.

A infographic sample with ASP.NET

Igor De Ruitz — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00:00 Z

Let's try to create a simple infographic starting from an XML file containing data about the carbon dioxide emissions in Europe.

To position the data on a map, we have to add the latitude and longitude fields for each european country (we have not to be precise).

To use the data we have to load them into an XML data source, using the System.Xml.XmlDataSource object, but the problem is that the object wants the record fields specified as node attributes.

Custom Facebook tabs

Igor De Ruitz — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:00:00 Z

Facebook allows to create advertising pages, company pages or simply pages dedicated on any sort of argument. To the default tabs that are automatically created by Facebook (Wall, Info, Photos, ecc.) it is possible to add also custom and interactive tabs.

Dropdown menus with CSS

Igor De Ruitz — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 Z

The dropdown menus can be easily created with CSS.
Either horizontal or vertical menus are built using unordered list, that is ul. The dropdown feature is created combining the hover pseudoclass along with the visibility property of nested lists.
The following example shows a horizontal menu where the items expand downward.

How to clear the SqlDataSource cache

Igor De Ruitz — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 00:00:00 Z

The SqlDataSource.EnableCaching property allows to save the results of a specific database query.
When the caching is activated, if you reset EnableCaching to false, the query result is not retrieved from the cache anymore but it's re-executed every time.
But surprisingly, if you reset EnableCaching to true again, the data is retrieved from the old cache.

Reflections on the water with Photoshop

Igor De Ruitz — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:00:00 Z

Here's a tutorial on how to obtain an image reflected on the water using Photoshop.

Centering text with CSS

Igor De Ruitz — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:00:00 Z

Here's the correct way to center a text vertically using only CSS.

JavaScript events? What a mess!

Igor De Ruitz — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:00:00 Z

The JavaScript events paradigm has three implementations, but all incompatible each other.
Let's try to put some order and to understand which one to use and when.

Style sheets caching problems

Igor De Ruitz — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 00:00:00 Z

Microsoft IIS caches all the style sheets that are placed inside the App_Themes folder, remembering the ones that are used by the web site pages (by all pages, not only the current one); the effect is easily visible looking at the HTML code sent to the client, noting that are included CSS links that were not specified for the page.
This behavior requires a strong attention on styles inheritance, but also can make Internet Explorer versions prior to the 9 to overflow the maximum number of style tags allowed: in these versions the maximum number of style tags is 32 and all the following ones are ignored.

Painting with the light

Igor De Ruitz — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 Z

The technique I'm going to talk about, could be in some cases replaced by a dedicated post-production, but frequently it's easier to use it during the shooting to get some interesting special effects.

Venice - The libertine carnival

Igor De Ruitz — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 00:00:00 Z

Not everybody knows that the most ancient carnival of the world is instead Italian, and it’s the up-till-now famous Carnevale di Venezia: the oldest Venetian document that references it, it’s dated 2nd May 1268 (more than 2 centuries before the discovery of the Americas). At that time, Venice was definitely the most amusing place of Europe, the carnival in fact lasted even 3 months; Venice was also in a certain sense, the most democratic place, the mask allowed everyone, also the low classes, to mix with the noble rank, protected by their disguises.