February 4, 2011: We are pleased to announce the debut of the totally redesigned SpineCenter.com, home of Dr. Chiu and the California Spine Institute and Medical Center. SpineCenter.com was our first Website design project. We had limited skills and limited technology at our disposal. Still, we thought it was one most beautiful and most technologically advanced Websites of the day. But then the Web was so new then that everybody was awed and really didn’t notice how garish and fundamentally simple our Websites were. The new SpineCenter.com is about 80 percent Flash. It’s loaded with dynamic and entertaining special effects, has hours of digital videos describing and depicting the Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery procedure, photo galleries, presentations–you name it. And it’s all arranged so that everybody–visiting medical professionals, potential patients or students–can find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. This new site is the culmination of all we’ve learned after over 20 years of design.
High quality streaming video, including surgery in action.
BThe new site is a completely scripted AS3 and XML modular Flash design, complementing CSI’s ultra-modern Minimally Invasive Spinal Surgery (MISS) and physical rehabilitation center, located in Thousand Oaks, California. Dr. Chiu is the primary developer of the Micro-Discectomy and Laser Thermodiskoplasty MISS procedures for eliminating pain from herniated spinal discs.
The new site is resplendent with content on spine surgery, MISS and Medical Laser technology–complete with videos, presentations, research and other information designed for medical professionals and the general public. It branches at the home page to accommodate professionals looking for technology solutions and providers and non-professionals looking for alternatives to conventional “open back” surgery.
“We have been tacking on new information almost weekly for many years,” says Dr. Chiu. “It has become a huge maze of mismatched designs [reflecting the styles of the several different designers employed to update it] and outdated material mixed in with the new, pertinent data.” It’s time to bring it all together in a format where users can find what they need without hunting and pecking.” Dr. Chiu added that he is excited about the work so far and eager to get it up and running.
The site is now in service. Feel free to go take a look: You can find it here: www.spinecenter.com
The HP Laserjet M1536dnf MFP - The fastest $300-monochrome multifunction laser printer on Earth.
All printer manufacturers claim their printers are fast. Usually, their page per minute rate (PPM) and what the printer actually does in the real world are miles apart. But HP’s new LaserJet Pro M1356dnf actually lives up to HP’s claims of 25 pages per minute. I’ve never seen a $300 – printer turnout pages so fast. It’s not that great of a copier and scanner, though. Check out my review over at Computer Shopper.
Dell's new 1355cnw - a great little color laser-class AIO at a remarkable price.
I paid over $20,000 for my first color laser printer, and it was not nearly as fast, nor was print quality as good, as Dell’s new 1355cnw. Not to mention that it didn’t fax, scan, and copy. This great little printer doesn’t really use laser technology; instead, it uses an LED lamp array. It’s just amazing how much technology 420 bucks will get you nowadays. Check out my review over at Computer Shopper to learn more about this inexpensive little color AIO.
Dell 1250c LED (Laser Class) Printer ($229.99)
There was a time when color laser printers cost upwards of $20k. They were huge devices, expensive to use–well just not that practical for most businesses. Check out this color laser I reviewed for Computer Shopper. Great quality at a low price.
Beautiful Outsides and Output
In over 20 years of reviewing hardware, I seldom come across products that are so well constructed, stylishly designed and do what they’re intended to do so well. The Canon MG6120 is a beautiful machine, and prints some of the nicest looking photos I’ve ever seen. You can see my entire review at computershopper.com.
Epson Artisan 835 All-in-One
Here’s a great Swiss Army Knife inkjet. This one does everything you can think of. Check out my review on Computer Shopper.
Communications Technology Watch is happy to announce that William Harrel has begun reviewing printers for the popular online magazine and buyers’ guide Computer Shopper. Harrel has a long history of writing about information technology, going back to the industry’s glory days, when monthly paper magazines–Computer Magazine, PC World, Windows Magazine, MacWorld, MacUser, and, yes, Computer Shopper–were popular and powerful. A favorable review in one of these publications could make an unknown product famous, and turn small, upstart companies into powerhouse corporations. Those days are over, and once two-inch-thick magazines are now a quarter or less of there size, those that survived, that is. The ones that did make it adapted to the medium of our era, the Internet. Computer Shopper made the transition successfully and is now a trusted Internet destination and source for well-researched and unbiased new product information and reviews–as it has always been.
William Harrel – www.williamharrel.com
Yes, creating Websites is fun and rewarding work. And nothing is more fun and rewarding than creating Flash Websites, or other Flash applications, such as online movies or training courses. Nowadays, learning to use Flash is a must for student Website and Web application designers.
The Flash CS4 course at Ed2Go was so well-received that I am feverishly working to crank out a CS5 course. The name of the course is “Introduction to Adobe Flash CS5“. It is a beginner’s course on creating basic Flash movies and Websites with the latest version of Flash, Creative Suite 5.
ed2go is the largest online course provider, offering hundreds of courses through most major universities, colleges and other learning facilities.
Course Details
This twelve-week course will introduce students to the basics of using Flash, and will cover the following:
- Getting to know the Flash interface
- Workspaces
- Animation and Tweens
- Flash’s drawing tools
- Flash’s text tools
- The Flash Timeline and frames
- Intro to ActionScript 3.0
- Intro to 3D and Motion Editor
- Using images, sound and video clips in Flash
- And much more
The course is well underway and should be available is a few months.
Bill Harrel – www.williamharrel.com
California Spine Institute
The folks at WilliamHarrel.com have been diligently upgrading the California Spine Institute’s (CSI) Website over the past few weeks, bringing it into the Twenty-First Century. As the original designers of World renowned Neurosurgeon, Dr. John C. Chiu’s first Website (SpineCenter.com) nearly 15 years ago, Bill and his staff have been asked to come back and give the old site a makeover. The new site is a completely scripted AS3 and XML modular Flash design, complementing CSI’s ultra-modern Minimally Invasive Spinal Surgery (MISS) and physical rehabilitation center, located in Thousand Oaks, California. Dr. Chiu is the primary developer of the Micro-Discectomy and Laser Thermodiskoplasty MISS procedures for eliminating pain from herniated spinal discs.
The new site is resplendent with content on spine surgery, MISS and Medical Laser technology–complete with videos, presentations, research and other information designed for medical professionals and the general public. It branches at the home page to accommodate professionals looking for technology solutions and providers and non-professionals looking for alternatives to conventional “open back” surgery.
“We have been tacking on new information almost weekly for many years,” says Dr. Chiu. “It has become a huge maze of mismatched designs [reflecting the styles of the several different designers employed to update it] and outdated material mixed in with the new, pertinent data.” It’s time to bring it all together in a format where users can find what they need without hunting and pecking.” Dr. Chiu added that he is excited about the work so far and eager to get it up and running.
While in development, the site is located at csi.williamharrel.com. It has been opened to the public during the final stages, with the warning that not everything works yet. But anybody is welcome to come and watch the project as it nears completion. “Use the menus,” Bill Harrel says. “The page links don’t all work yet, and not all of the material they link to has been deployed.”
