[BATON ROUGE, LA Tuesday, November 16, 2010] Today the Baton Rouge Business Report announced that Mike Thrower, President of I.T. by Design, was a 2010 recipient of its Forty Under 40 Award, which recognizes his personal and professional accomplishments.

How do you surf the web? Do you just double click that blue lowercase "e" icon? Or do you click the fox? Neither? Some other icon?

No matter which of those you click, you're using a web browser. Whether you're ordering books, watching videos, reading the news, or signing up for classes, your browser is an indispensable part of your life. That you're reading this now is the proof of my assertion. Let me tell you why it's now even more important.

[BATON ROUGE, LA June 5, 2010] Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, the insurer of last resort in Louisiana, needed a way to track attorney expense checks in their main system.

[BATON ROUGE, LA May 19, 2010] The Baton Rouge Ancient Athletes Society (BRAAS), a local sports organization for men 30+ years old, has decided to add annual membership reenrollment functionality to its website.

Recently, a business associate was getting rid of an old PC and wrote me about how to make absolutely sure the information off of that PC could never be found by anyone. After giving it some thought and a little research, I realized I had never before (looked for or) seen a straight-forward answer to this question so I thought I would share what I found. The remainder of this blog is my reply to her.

[BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA May 6, 2010] Clarity Litigation Support (Clarity Lit), a New Orleans-based company that provides litigation support services, has hired I.T. by Design to create a fully functioning website for the company.

You may have noticed this past Wednesday morning that when you went to Facebook that the chat feature was not available. But did you know why? Well, a recent software release to the constantly evolving site contained a glitch. Logged in users, for a brief time, were able to access chat transcripts from their friends private chats with other people. To be clear, people could see chats that they were not involved in, as long as one of their friends participated in the chat.

[BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA May 1, 2010] Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corporation (Louisiana Citizens) has recently employed a new login system that will streamline the organization's multiple, fragmented systems.

[BATON ROUGE, LA April 20, 2010] LeBlanc's Food Stores (LeBlanc's) needed a better way to communication across its various locations and get a comprehensive look at the organization as a whole.

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[BATON ROUGE, LA April 13, 2010] Dudley DeBosier has an out-of-the-box case management system (CMS) to keep track of its cases, but the law firm was interested in using the data in ways outside of the software’s functionality.

[BATON ROUGE, LA April 13, 2010] PCS Nitrogen, a nitrogen-producing entity of Potash Corp, recently implemented inQ, a packaged succession planning software application written by I.T. by Design.

[BATON ROUGE, LA April 13, 2010] Diamond Cutters, a professional lawn care and landscape company in Baton Rouge, has decided to employ I.T. by Design to develop and design a custom website.

[BATON ROUGE, LA April 13, 2010] The site was designed and developed by I.T. by Design as part of the company's pro bono work.

[BATON ROUGE, LA April 13, 2010] Property Insurance Association of Louisiana (PIAL) is moving locations.

[BATON ROUGE, LA April 12, 2010] The Baton Rouge Ancient Athletes Society (BRAAS), a local sports organization for men 30+ years old, has decided to add annual membership reenrollment functionality to its website.

[BATON ROUGE, LA April 05, 2010] I.T. by Design was one of the first supporters of Geaux fiBR, the community response to Google Fiber. We are now sponsoring a video contest in conjunction with the Baton Rouge Area Chamber and the Geaux fiBR effort.

Ever since humanity first arrived on the scene one of the ways we've communicated with each other was through visual symbols. Written language itself evolved from the pictorial symbols created by the Sumerians to conduct business! (Now that's too long of a story to write now, but you can read about it here if you like.) Even as books arrived on the scene, the creators would add value to their labor's internal messages by illuminating the pages with drawings of the written content to reach as many people as possible. Adding pictures to the books sold more books. Adding icons to an application or website increases reader (and customer) involvement.

[BATON ROUGE, LA March 17, 2010] Country Day School of Baton Rouge needed a secure, reliable, and easy to use email solution which would also use the school's website as the email address domain.

It is a well-known truth in technical circles - most successful "hacks" have as much to do with fooling users into opening a door as they do forcing their way in through that door. There is another case of that type of problem going around, this time involving Facebook.

[BATON ROUGE, LA March 17, 2010] Country Day School of Baton Rouge needed a secure, reliable, and easy to use email solution which would also use the school's website as the email address domain.

[BATON ROUGE, LA March 16, 2010] The From the Flames website officially launched today at the www.fromtheflames.net web address. I.T. by Design, a local technology company, has donated the custom designed website as well as a content management system for the site. The site is intended to be the centralized hub for information on the effort.

[BATON ROUGE, LA March 10, 2010] Interfax Daily, a faxed publication focusing on "the lighter side of life," has contracted I.T. by Design to manage and maintain its network systems specifically its phone system.

[BATON ROUGE, LA March 09, 2010] Chris Mock of the Baton Rouge-based Mock Plumbing, hired I.T. by Design to search engine optimize the company's website.

[BATON ROUGE, LA March 06, 2010] I.T. by Design is now hosting email and a website for Oneal Car Care Center. The automobile service shop will now enjoy the benefits of hosted services with I.T. by Design.

[BATON ROUGE, LA February 10, 2010] Webb-Rite Safety, a local fall-protection manufacturer, trainer, and installer, recently fell victim to some network security vulnerabilities.

[BATON ROUGE, LA February 09, 2010] The National Center for Biomedical Research and Training (NCBRT) has recently implemented a new learning management system for its online learning division. This system however had no way of communicating with NCBRT’s master data management system.

As I have said in my earlier blog postings, I am fascinated by technology and how it affects marketing and how businesses interact with consumers. One of the biggest influences of today is social networking sites, namely Facebook. There is an amazing trend in the Facebook community right now that could shift the way some companies view the site’s uses.

[BATON ROUGE, LA January 28, 2010] Support for the From the Flames effort, a local movement to restore the losses of local bands and a dance studio as a result of the January 1st fire in the Acadian-Perkins Plaza, is continuing to grow. I.T. by Design has donated its time and services to create a custom website and implement a content management system to act as a centralized hub for the effort.

Recently, you may have read about the Google hack that happened in China. If not, the thing you need to know now is that the malicious code used in that hack is now freely available on the internet. That means unethical users can use this code in new and creative ways, potentially against you. The code targets Internet Explorer 6 running on Windows XP.

Continuing along the lines of our Resource Center, another “hot” I.T. topic that is widely unknown or misunderstood among laymen business users is “cloud computing.” The origin of that jargon is simple—in diagramming solutions in our industry, the Internet is represented as a cloud. So the simple definition of cloud computing is using software and even network components (servers) over a connection to the Internet instead of the server and its software being physically located in your server closet.

[BATON ROUGE, LA December 15, 2009] — CT Consulting, an organization comprised of two local and established lawyers of the Dudley DeBosier firm, has a goal of streamlining the processes by which their firm operates. To handle some technical aspects of this initiative, the two contracted with I.T. by Design.

[BATON ROUGE, LA December 15, 2009] — Country Day School of Baton Rouge had experienced some major security breaches of its website after they discovered it had been hacked. The school decided to hire I.T. by Design to not only secure the site, but to also redesign and host it.

[BATON ROUGE, LA December, 15 2009] — Schwing Management, a property management company in Baton Rouge, has signed a maintenance agreement with I.T. by Design. Schwing has an Access Database used to track properties and billing.

If you have visited other parts of our site such as the Potential Employees page or the Message from the President page, you may have noticed how highly we value our employees. In our line of work, the developers and network engineers are our largest asset which makes finding the right people vital. In my experience of sifting through candidates to find the right fit for both a specific technical position and our organization in general, I have developed these five criteria that may come in handy to other I.T. managers looking for hiring advice:

[BATON ROUGE, LA October 27, 2009] — Pennington Biomedical Research Center (PBRC) is updating the Army H.E.A.L.T.H. website which is part of an existing research study for the Department of Defense. I.T. by Design was selected through a bidding process to complete the modifications required. Redesign of the site started Wednesday, September 30, 2009.

Prior to SQL Server 2005, you only had a few labor-intensive options if you wanted to order to pass a collection of values to a stored procedure from your .NET application.

If your data was an array of objects containing only single values, such as an array of strings, you could pass a delimited string to the stored procedure. Inside your procedure you would have to then parse the string and fill a temporary table with each piece of data.

This is an extension of my original “Too Legit” blog where I discussed the importance of your website in legitimizing your company. However, legitimizing your online presence extends further than just your website.

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Next Saturday, September 26th, the University of Houston will be hosting the Houston TechFest. The events provides a whole day of training session for programmers for a wide range of technologies including .net, iPhone, Java, Ruby, and more. And the best part is that it's all FREE!

I would like to imagine that in this day and age being too legitimate can’t possibly be a bad thing. Today, consumers are becoming more cautious of with whom they choose to do business. It is important that your company validate itself as a reputable organization from the get go.

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As part of Microsoft's online training seminar, Virtual Tech Days, they have a vast amount of training videos available online. One in particular that caught my attention was Top 5 Web Application Security bugs in custom code. Click the link below to see it.

It is becoming fairly typical for a developer’s workstation to have dual monitors. For me, my main code editor is usually on my primary monitor, and other resources such as e-mail, database tools, or reference web pages are moved to my second monitor.

If the Mono project can gain enough support, it could be releasing a new framework and compiler that will allow .net developers to write iPhone applications in C# using Apple's native code library and SDK.

One of I.T. by Design’s core competencies is the creation of custom software, designed to give our client organizations a competitive advantage in their marketplace. And some of our competitors in the custom software industry have gone so far as to say any and all applications should be custom. I disagree strongly with this opinion. Here are five types of solutions that you should always buy “off the shelf” rather than re-inventing yourself or with a consultant.

I.T. by Design has launched its new and improved website which now features a Resource Center.

In addition to many style changes, I.T. by Design has done a major overhaul on its website to better cater to the specific needs of its visitors. The website has separate divisions of the site now dedicated to different user groups. I.T. professionals can now easily navigate to information that is most important to them. This information includes items such as our technical competencies and technical blogs. Business professionals can also easily find information relevant to them such as assessing their needs to see if they actually need I.T. consulting and our business blogs that offer insights into how technology can be used for business and marketing purposes. Those looking for employment can also easily find information on our company, employee benefits, job openings, and how to submit their resume.

Because you can't teach an old dog new tricks, it's about time we grab the shotgun, take Internet Explorer 6 out back and send it to a better place (the Recycle Bin).

Stacey Hopkins, Project Manager at I.T. by Design, will be speaking at a local Professional Association for SQL Server event on August 1, 2009 at LSU.

Although I.T. by Design has been in business for almost six years, I have personally been doing professional I.T. work for over 15 years. Wow how time flies....

As a marketing professional who works for a technology company, I am intrigued by the way technology influences trends in marketing. These days, social networking sites have proven themselves to be stable and effective for reaching users, and small businesses and corporations alike are taking advantage of these tools.

Google is aiming for Microsoft yet again with a new, free communication and collaboration and tool on the web called Google Wave.  Google Wave seeks to provide the same functionality as SharePoint but in a more easily extended and interactive interface.

With search engines quickly replacing the good ole phone book, it is important for businesses to make their websites search engine optimized or more commonly referred to as SEO. The purpose of optimizing your website is to get listed higher in the search results than competing websites. Here are a few quick tips that can help with this effort:

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This morning just after waking up I followed my usual routine and turned the TV onto ESPN-HD to see what Sports Center thinks of the Yankees-Red Sox feud. I then immediately grabbed my phone to check email, text messages, Facebook, and Twitter. I am definitely a digitally connected person. I run an I.T. outsourcing firm, so every day I am around similar high-tech, connected people.

Today Microsoft unveiled its newest version of its search engine, called Bing (www.bing.com). This engine is a highly visible, easy to access example of some web technologies that many in the area are not taking advantage of.

As much as Apple, Google, or a variety of “Face-Spaces” hate to admit it, when Microsoft speaks about the future the I.T. world listens. Despite having more fierce competition in the last five years than they’ve ever had, Microsoft’s dominant market share is still undeniable. In college I asked my networking instructor why TCP/IP was the standard protocol even though it was so flawed in terms of security. He responded “because that’s what Microsoft chose.” In many ways, especially in the business world, they still have that kind of power.

I.T. by Design hosted a party in celebration of their 5th year anniversary.

I.T. by Design has added support for mobile devices, especially those without Flash capability such as the mobile versions of Internet Explorer and the Apple iPhone and iPodTouch, to its website.

Just what the Internet needs, I know — another blogger. This is my first blog, and I have put some thought into what I will place in this little corner of the Internet. In this space I plan to talk about technology and business, and how the two are related. We employ plenty of smart people who will be able to dissect the technical aspects of our work — I will leave that to their blogs. So on to it then.

I.T. by Design was recently awarded the Tier One vendor status as part of the Consulting and Support Services Agreement (CSSA) by the State of Louisiana. This is the first step toward gaining the designation of Louisiana State-Approved Vendor.

I.T. by Design joins the Baton Rouge Area Chamber (BRAC) to support economic development in Baton Rouge. BRAC has worked to promote economic growth in the Baton Rouge area since 2004. I.T. by Design is the most recent contributor to this worthy cause.

We are excited to have one of our software developers, Chad Kruszynsky, achieve this certification. This puts an official stamp on his expertise in the design and implementation of RFID solutions.