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ONYXCAM

November 8, 2020 by Chris Lawcock

I always wanted an extensible platform for prototyping my machine vision tests and a potential hardware product for tracking and volumetric capture. Here are my first three devices!

The housings of the first three prototypes are printed 3 part PLA with an aluminum heatsink. You can see from the video above a simple flyout of the design.

The cameras run a custom built version of Linux which leverages custom DTB to expose all available USB ports of the SOC. The cameras run a web server which hosts a node.js and serves a react app for camera preview, configuration and control!

Over all pretty happy with the design, now the fun begins prototyping and extending the API.

TODAY’S SEO GAME

October 31, 2020 by Chris Lawcock

Back in the day (don’t all great stories start this way?) when search engines were new it was easy to have a web presence and with a few pages and a healthy dash of metatags and you were off to the races! These days with machine learning and continuously improving data analytics you have to engage in a great deal of effort to rank naturally and metatags and a nice website are not enough! You’re going to need a plan.

SEO IS ABOUT RELEVANCE

So, whatever you do, there are probably others in your market space and industry who’ve been doing it longer. This isn’t a problem, just a reality. You can hope that they haven’t been engaging customers on the web or social media platforms, but who would want to take those odds? Here, let’s take a simple example: Pool Supplies.

So here is an interesting tale of two companies:

AZ Pool Supply Warehouse – A small local single location pool supply company.

Lesile’s Pools – A nationwide pool supply company started in 1963 in California.

First we’ll start with the Google Ad’s to the search:

So there is Leslie’s “buying” their way to the top of the list. Not a bad choice at all for a nationwide company. Not surprising, but the next image is!

These are the “natural” results. Basically, azpoolsupplywarehouse.com is considered by Google to be more relevant! Take a look at both of their sites, to the human eye they’re both “doing” the same thing. In terms of SEO, the sites and the company’s web presence are not equal. Just think about “buying” your top spot. Ok. So when you Google do you go to the very first AD returned? Probably not, at a minimum if it’s local you check the map for the closest locations. Do you check the “natural” results vs the AD before you click? Most likely. So in a perfect business world, you want both top spots!

LAY OF THE LAND

You’ve got a business to run! Do you have time to learn the lay of the SEO land? Well, if you want those ambient sales that come from more than your physical presence or word of mouth, you’ll need to. It’s an investment. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling you snake oil. Make sure your business and its website are registered with Google. You’re going to need to become comfortable with as many social media platforms and business platforms as possible and create a company presence. Try out Namechk. It will be a bit overwhelming, it’s a lot, but it matters! Once you’ve taken these first steps, it’s time to consider blogs, posts, and perhaps an ad campaign on the most appropriate platforms. This is not a fire and forget process these days. You’ll need to tend to your platforms, engage your customers, and share. Sound tiring? It doesn’t have to be with the right team on your side.

We love helping small business thrive and we’d love to help you!

SIMPLE SITE GUIDANCE FOR A SMALL BUSINESS

October 26, 2020 by Chris Lawcock

More than likely you’re not in the business of design and that’s just fine. That being said, you should at least consider a few things regarding your business’ website and make sure whomever you’ve engaged to make or maintain your site is making good choices for your visitors. Here’s a quick checklist of the most perceptible and obvious site consideration.

1. CONSISTENT COLOR SCHEME

There’s a lot to know about color and how it can be used. As a small business owner, for now anyway, just focus on a simple question: How many colors are in my site’s color scheme?

In general, your colors should come from your company’s logo or perhaps your call to action image on your front page. But at most you should be looking at four colors to create understanding and drive interaction.

2. BALANCED AND HARMONIOUS

Open your site, no matter what the layout. Does it have balance? Your eyes should be able to pick a dominant feature (hopefully related to what you do!) and from there you should intuitively know what to do next. Your site should allow your visitor to flow through. (Ex: Nike, Google, Adobe) There should be a sense of harmony, a cadence that keeps your visitor engaged. Like this post? (1 – 2 – 3)

3. NEGATIVE IS POSITIVE

Probably the only time in life you’ll hear that! In this case, we’re talking about negative space or how busy is your site? Using negative space (lack of stuff) allows your visitor to be drawn to what matters (Your business!) and doesn’t make them work (Cognitive loads are bad mmmm kay?)

WRAPPING IT UP

These are just a few items that are easy to consider as a small business owner. Hopefully you look at your site and are able to nod your head in agreement with the above items. If not? We’d love to chat about the basics and a whole lot more! (Heck we didn’t even get into SEO or any of the finer points of site design)