PSPINC Official Company Blog

What is an Affinity Diagram?

Jul

27

Affinity diagramming is a technique created by Japanese anthropologist Jiro Kawakita in the 1960’s. It’s an idea creation method designed to help you organize ideas by their natural relationships with each other. It can be helpful for organizing and consolidating information about products, processes, or other complex issues or problems.

It’s a technique often used by Product Designers to help decide how to best organize information for an app or website in a way that will be most intuitive for users who might be unfamiliar with certain products or services.

How to use the Affinity Diagram technique:

Gather your product team for a brainstorming session.

Record notes and ideas about a specific product onto note cards or sticky notes.

Have the entire group organize notes/ideas into groups that are in some way related.

Have a discussion with your team to define categories from these relationships, and select header cards for the various categories that clearly identify the common thread.

Affinity Diagramming can be a very useful method to help you come up with your information architecture for a website or application. It allows you to move beyond habitual thinking and preconceived categories, utilizing a more intuitive approach to grouping information. This can result in a product structure that is easier to understand for end users.

The PSPINC design team would be happy to help you organize your website in a way that best serves your target audience.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#affinitydiagram #productdesign #webdesign

PSPINC What's New Newsletter Vol.73 "Tokyo Olympics 2020"

Jul

22

Vol. 73

July 22nd in the U.S. is the 23rd in Japan, so while it is a year late, it is the date of the Tokyo Olympics. This will be the second time the Olympics will be held in Japan during the summer. The first two in the winter were in Sapporo and Nagano. It is the fourth time that Tokyo has declared a state of emergency due to the coronavirus. So all of the Olympic events in Tokyo will be held without spectators. The sale of alcoholic beverages ends at 8:00 p.m., and restaurants are also operating on shortened hours. At this point, many countries, including the U.S., are not allowed to enter Japan.

At this time, Olympic officials can freely enter Japan. Also, Olympic officials are traveling around Japan as tourists. Even though they are not supposed to be allowed to travel in Japan. As you can see, many people in Japan have doubts about hosting the Olympics, and the Olympics itself has a bad reputation. For this reason, many sponsors continue to keep their sponsorship out of the public eye in Japan.

I think this is a big miscalculation for companies that thought of the Olympics as an advertising medium. The influence of TV and newspapers is declining now that we can hear the voices of many people on the Internet. I believe that the influence of the Internet is huge. We all need to think about how we can utilize the Internet when we think about business marketing and public relations.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.
info@pspinc.com
https://pspinc.com
1404 140th Place NE, Bellevue, WA 98007 USA
800-232-3989
425-957-0808

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#Advertising #Japan #Olympics #TokyoOlympics

Technical Terms to Know When Hiring a Web Developer

Jul

20

Building a business website can be a daunting task to some. If you are building it yourself, finding the right web builder tool is a job unto itself. You then need to factor in the time it takes to learn how to use the tool and actually build the website.

It’s at this point in the process many decide that they would just rather hire a professional to get the job done. There is so much to learn when it comes to building a website, our Web Developers have spent years learning all of the techniques necessary to build beautiful modern websites.

While the Web Developers will handle the heavy lifting, there are a number of terms and processes that you should be familiar with to help you make educated decisions and assessments of the work being done for you.

Today we are going to talk about a few technical terms you should know when you are having your website re-designed.

Responsive Design: It is the approach to web design where the website built scaled gracefully and dynamically on any device or screen resolution. If your Web Developer builds a website that is really tiny on a mobile device where you need to pinch, zoom, or horizontally scroll to see everything, the site is not responsive. Consider that a huge red flag.

Mobile-first: In the web design world this is the process of designing a website specifically for mobile devices and then make adjustments as screen space/resolution increases. In 2020, approximately 61% of websites were viewed on mobile devices. With that being said, it is easy to see why mobile consideration is certainly important.

CMS: This stands for “content management system”, which is the system behind the scenes that allows you to update your website without having to write a bunch of code. There are tons of different CMS tools out there. WordPress is the most popular and widely known one, which has its own pros and cons. We also have our own secure in-house system called WebdeXpress that comes free to all of our Dreamersi web hosting customers.

301 Redirect: When you hear this term, this refers to a HTTP code that tells search engines that a web page is ‘moved permanently’ to a different URL. This is important when you remove pages or change the URL to an existing page. When this isn’t done, search engines will have links to a lot of broken pages once you start making changes changes which is bad for your SEO. So make sure your Web Developer is adding in those 301 redirects when setting up a new website or web page for you.

Cache: Web cache is a way to optimize a website for the web. A cache is a way of telling a web browser to remember images and other files from your website so it will load faster on future visits. Users can always clear their cache manually if they want, but you should make sure that your website caches common resources that never change to ensure your website loads fast when they return.

Call-to-Action: A “call-to-action” (CTA) is an element on a web page that is meant to encourage an action from the visitor. Every page on your website should have a purpose, especially if you are looking to generate leads, convert a sale, etc. If you have web pages that are more than just informational have a focus and a CTA to get the most out of your website.

Crawl: Crawling in the world of web development refers to search engines systematically reviewing and indexing websites. It is imperative that your websites can be crawled by search engines and you include relevant keywords and phrases you expect your visitors to use when searching to find your website.

SSL Certificate: When you look at your web browser if you see a little lock icon or the website URL begins with “https”, that means you have an SSL certificate. Which is a data file hosted in a website’s server that makes SSl/TLS encryption possible. In short, it makes your site more secure and more appealing to search engines, which help with your website rank. So make sure you have one!

Page Speed: This refers to how long it takes for your web page to fully load when a user enters your URL or clicks a link to your website. Making sure your website is well optimized to load quickly will help your websites see your content faster. The longer your page takes to load, the more opportunities you are giving your visitor to leave. Which in turn will hurt your search engine optimization. Make sure your Developer is optimizing your website by compressing images, using light resources, and making as much of it text-based as possible.

—

Knowledge is power, and knowing the above terms will help to make sure your getting the most out of your Web Developer when it comes time to build your website. If you are still looking for a Web Developer, please let us know. We are constantly taking the above into consideration with every custom website we build for our customers.

You can contact us online, by email at contact@pspinc.com, or by phone at 1-800-232-3989.

Also, check out what we have done for customers just like you!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#301Redirect #CMS #CTA #Cache #Crawl #MobileFirst #PSPINC #PageSpeed #ResponsiveDesign #SSL #TechTerm

PSPINC What's New Newsletter Vol. 72 "How do you deal with bad reviews?"

Jul

15

Vol. 72

The Internet has surpassed media such as television and newspapers in terms of being seen by many people. It has become commonplace to use social media and other mediums to promote a company. When you use social media in this way, you have to understand that it is not a one-way platform like TV or traditional print material.

What I mean by that is with social media, not only the sender but also the receiver can write comments and evaluations. Naturally, some of the comments and feedback are positive (favorable), but there is also negative (unfavorable). Naturally, you would want to erase the bad comments. However, there is no value in a social media platform that can erase all bad reviews. Social media is a place to create opportunities for those who send out information to improve if there is room for improvement.

Often, the first response to a bad review or a problem is to defend oneself: "That's not true,” or "We don't have a problem.” This is the same as deleting bad reviews, which can cause what is often called "flaming." When a flare-up occurs, the story expands to something completely different from the facts, this should never happen.

If you receive a bad review, the right thing to do is to apologize to the other person. Even if you did what you thought was correct, if you made the other person feel bad, the proper way of handling it is to apologize. After that, it is necessary to conduct an actual investigation to clarify what went wrong. Even if it turns out to be a misunderstanding on the part of the other party, don't just say, "That's it.”

I believe that bad publicity is not always a bad thing. If you are in business, it is very difficult to be liked by all people. Try to understand where the other person is coming from, and think about how to respond in a way that is understandable to them and you, so that a response will not cause a flame war.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.
info@pspinc.com
https://pspinc.com
1404 140th Place NE, Bellevue, WA 98007 USA
800-232-3989
425-957-0808

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#Business #CustomerFeedback #CustomerReviews #CustomerSupport #Marketing #OnlineReviews #PSPINC #Reviews #SmallBusiness #SocialMedia

Announcement: Dreamersi System Update

Jul

13

Dear valued customer,

Thank you for choosing Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

We are always looking to improve the services we offer you.
As such, we will be conducting Dreamersi system update to add 2-factor authentication feature.

You might experience a few seconds delay on Di.

The schedule is as follows:

* USA Pacific Daylight Time
- July 13th (Wed) 10:30am - 11am

* Japan Time
- July 14th (Thu) 2:30am - 3am

PSPINC provides services with uptimes of 99.9%

If you have any questions, please contact us at 1-800-232-3989 or email us at support@pspinc.com.

We would like to answer your questions by phone call.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#2FA #2FactorAuthentication #Dreamersi #PSPINC #Security

3 Easy Steps To Protect Your Computer

Jul

13

On Wednesday, July 14th, 2021, Microsoft released an emergency update to patch a vulnerability, called “PrintNightmare”, that was exploiting the Windows Print Spooler service. Technical jargon aside, this exploit essentially would allow hackers to install programs, view and delete data. It affected Windows 10 and even Windows 7 operating systems.

Computers can be complicated, but you don’t have to be a security expert to protect your data from those looking to conduct malicious activities. Here are a few easy steps you can take to help protect your computer.

#1 Keep your software up-to-date

Probably the most obvious thing based on the above report. While it can be frustrating to constantly be prompted for software updates, there is a reason this is done. Often these are security updates necessary to protect your devices from harmful exploits. So if you see an update is available for your operating system, take the time to install it.

#2 Password protect your computer and programs

If your hardware or software provides you with the option to password-protect your usage of it, you should do it. When you give your accounts unique and complex passwords you add more barriers in front of people who may wish to do you harm.

We’ve talked a lot about password security in previous blogs. A great place to start is “How to Create a strong password in 2021” - parts one and two. Your passwords should also be unique for each device or program you use. If you make everything the same and a hacker gains access to one of your accounts, you have given them access to everything.

While it is important to have unique passwords for each account, remembering them all can be difficult. We have developed a password manager program called Pass Wizard that can help securely store your passwords, check it out if you are interested.

#3 Use common sense

Many times hackers and hijackers can gain control of your devices and accounts because people make it easy for them to do so. If you receive a suspicious email asking you to click a link or provide personal or financial information - DON’T DO IT!

In addition, downloading software or files from untrusted sources and running them on your computer is highly discouraged. If something seems fishy, it probably is.

—

These are just a few tips to help protect your computer. There are many more technical things that can be done - from configuring a VPN, to configuring custom firewall settings, as well as installing reputable antivirus software to monitor your machines. If these things are of interest to you and you need some help, please contact us for a free quote. Our team of Support Technicians has the experience to set you up for success. We can also be reached by phone at 1-800-232-3989 or by email at contact@pspinc.com.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#PassWizard #TechSupport #computer #password #virus

Announcement of Payment System Update

Jul

12

Dear valued customer,

Thank you for choosing Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

We are always looking to improve the services we offer you.
As such, we will be conducting a payment portal security update.

You may not be able to access my.pspinc.com during the below period.

The schedule is as follows:

* USA Pacific Daylight Time
- July 14 (Wed) 9:00am-9:30am

* Japan Time
- Jun 15 (Thu) 1:00am−1:30am

PSPINC provides services with uptimes of 99.9%

If you have any questions, please contact us at 1-800-232-3989 or email us at support@pspinc.com .
We would like to answer your questions by phone call.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

PSPINC What's New Newsletter Vol.71 "The grass is always greener next to you...it's not."

Jul

8

Vol. 71

If you look at the pages of any company website, you will find only good things about them. This is because they believe that marketing is to always make yourself look big, the way a blowfish swells up to make itself look bigger when it meets an enemy. They try to attract customers by constantly saying that they can do this and that. However, I think that they have been doing this too much lately and have lost sight of the scale of their business, the scope of what they can do, and the characteristics of their company.

No matter how much you try to look good and big, there are limits to what you can do. So, instead of trying to make yourself look big, I think it is important to market the business that you are best at. What is it that you do best right now? Does your website do a good job of describing it?

It's hard to develop a broad and shallow scope of business because the market is too big. No matter the size of your company, it doesn't take much money or time to focus your marketing efforts on one specific point. The first thing to do is to think about what your company's strengths are. The smaller the scope, the better. The Internet market is huge, so no matter how small your frame of reference is, it will be enough for the market size.

Once you have decided on this, create a website to make it known to as many people as possible. Also, be sure to follow up with social networking sites and blogs related to this point of focus. If you are successful, then you can expand your target audience little by little. If you spread a big net from the beginning, you will not catch anything and it will be difficult to continue.

Create a focused website at a reasonable price, give us a call. Marketing is the place to start, ignoring the noise around you and showing what you're good at.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.
info@pspinc.com
https://pspinc.com
1404 140th Place NE, Bellevue, WA 98007 USA
800-232-3989
425-957-0808

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#Business #Marketing #PSPINC #SmallBusiness #Website

Announcement: Dreamersi System Update

Jul

6

Dear valued customer,

Thank you for choosing Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

We are always looking to improve the services we offer you.
As such, we will be conducting Dreamersi system update.

We will be updating our phpmyadmin version from 4.9.4 to 5.1.1*

*Please note that phpmyadmin 5.1.1 does not work with php5.6.
If your website is made with php5.6 and need phpmyadmin, please contact support@pspinc.com and we will be happy to assist.

There will be no downtime for this update.

The schedule is as follows:

* USA Pacific Daylight Time
- July 8th (Thur) 9:30am - 10am

* Japan Time
- July 9th (Fri) 1:30am - 2am

PSPINC provides services with uptimes of 99.9%

If you have any questions, please contact us at 1-800-232-3989 or email us at support@pspinc.com.

We would like to answer your questions by phone call.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#Dreamersi #Hosting #PHPMyAdmin #PSPINC #Update #Web

Benefits of Business Blogging

Jul

6

A blog is defined by Wikipedia as a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries.

So we know what a blog is, but now the question is - why should you as a business owner blog? There is more than one reason that your business should have a blog. So let's talk about the benefits of business blogging (I love alliteration)!

Make a personal connection with your customers

We are all looking for that edge that sets us apart from our competitors. One thing that we absolutely value at PSPINC is the personal customer support we offer. If you talk with one of our support technicians you will learn their name and be able to contact them easily again in the future.

Blogging is another way to establish that connection. It allows the author to speak in an informal manner to their customers and create a relationship of sorts. If a customer follows your blog, they may be more likely to call and request the blogger by name. Think of it as a way of laying the foundation for future lead generation and sales.

Good for search engine optimization

We’ve talked a lot about search engine optimization in the past because it is so important to get your website seen. Blogging has the potential to be a big part of that for a number of reasons.

Provides fresh content on your website which tells search engines that your site is actively being updated. This encourages search engines to crawl your website more frequently.

Blogging allows you to use keywords that your customers are likely to search to find your website. The more those keywords are organically found on your website through blog content, the more likely it is that a search engine will serve your site to your customers.

Allows you to reach a specific audience with each post. At PSPINC we offer numerous different types of services, from web design to web and mobile application development to technical support. Often each service caters to different types of customers. The keywords one type of customer uses in search engines to find you may be different from another. Blogging allows you to fill the gaps and cast the widest net possible.

An avenue for showcasing your company culture and news

When a customer is deciding whether or not to do business with you, or a potential job candidate is trying to determine if your company is the right fit, the company blog lets them know what you are all about. It’s an invaluable tool to share company culture, latest news, as well as brag a bit about your many accomplishments!

Those are just a few of the many benefits of business blogging. There are many blogging platforms out there that make it really easy to get started. We even have our own platform called Bloguru. Bloguru is totally ad-free, can be embedded on your website, and presents your content to Bloguru’s loyal and established user base to get extra eyes on your content. In fact, the blog you are reading right now was published to Bloguru. Did we mention it is totally free to sign up?

If you have any questions on blogging or need help getting started, please contact us by phone at 1-800-232-3989, by email at contact@pspinc.com, or by our online contact form.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #bloguru #businessblog #customers #pspinc #seo #smallbusiness #techsupport #webdesign #webdevelopment

PSPINC Official Company Blog

freespace

What is an Affinity Diagram?

PSPINC What's New Newsletter Vol.73 "Tokyo Olympics 2020"

Technical Terms to Know When Hiring a Web Developer

PSPINC What's New Newsletter Vol. 72 "How do you deal with bad reviews?"

Announcement: Dreamersi System Update