Friday, May 24, 2013

Happy Memorial Day Weekend

The Inspherio Team is always working hard, but sometimes even they take a little break for a national holiday.

We will not be offering live phone or chat support on Monday, May 27th for Memorial Day. You can still email us any questions, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

We wish you a happy weekend & hope you enjoy some quality time with your family and friends.

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Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Why You Should Not Have Music on Your Website


Designing a website for your business is a lot of fun and, while we understand that it can be tempting to personalize your website with your favorite music, there are some serious reasons that you should keep your website silent.

As a general rule of thumb, unless music is a part of your business, you do not need music on your website. As a DJ or videographer, you may benefit from having music on your site so that your potential clients can get a feel for your style & taste, but it is still helpful to take note of the following:
Speed - Streaming a song as your website's background music can require a significant amount of bandwidth. This causes slower loading times, and unhappy visitors. 

Discontinuity - With most music players, the music will start and stop each time another page is clicked on or whenever the page is refreshed.  

Taste - Everyone has different tastes in music.  If your website visitor does not like your style of music, they will automatically get a negative impression of you if music is blasted at them as soon as they go to your website.  We may like to listen to Journey's "Don't Stop Believin" all day & night, but we know not everyone shares our unique enthusiasm.

Dueling Banjos - Many people browse the web while already listening to music through Spotify, iTunes, or Pandora. Even if your visitors like the music on your page, they are unlikely to enjoy 2 songs played on top of each other.

Public Spaces - There's not much more annoying than using a computer in a quiet office, coffee shop,  library, etc and all of a sudden being serenaded by the unexpected loud music from a website you are visiting.  This will result in your site being exited in seconds, especially if the visitor cannot find where to turn the music off. Offices are particularly sensitive. If a bride-to-be, for example, is browsing for a wedding vendor while at work (and maybe shouldn't be), she will not be happy if she is outed by her computer speakers.

Browser Compatibility - Different browsers behave differently, not every browser is capable of playing every type of audio file. Old or out of date browsers may have a tendency to lock up when attempting to play music. 


A Few Alternatives:

Storing Audio on Inspherio- Music can be uploaded to the Audio section of the Inspherio Resource Library.  These Audio Files can be embedded into your website by selecting the button that looks like headphones in the website rich editor.  These will not play automatically.  Your visitors can click the play button and control the audio on the site.

Using a Playlist that does not AutoPlay - If you must have a music playlist on your website, we recommend using SoundCloud.  This allows you to create a playlist & has the option to not Autoplay when the page is opened.  Each playlist can be embedded into your Inspherio website using the "Embed Media" button. 



Photo Credit: JD Hancock


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Thursday, May 16, 2013

Inspherio is Moving to a New Office!

The Historic Citizen's Building from Main Street
It's official, Span Enterprises is moving to downtown Rock Hill.  After working closely with Bryan Barwick of Barwick & Associates, LLC we have made the decision to move to the Citizen's Building in Old Town Rock Hill, SC.  Our growing team will be occupying the entire 2nd floor and the mezzanine level of the Historic Citizen's Bank Building on Main Street.  

After months of searching, Span Enterprises Co-founder & CEO: Agie Sundaram met with Bryan Barwick and made the deal for Span Enterprises to move in within the next few months.  The entire 2nd Floor will serve as our Marketing, Sales, & Customer Support Center for all of our products; while the mezzanine level will be used as "Span Studios" for the recording & production of our products' help videos.

This will be the 2nd move for Span Enterprises.  We outgrew our first office in Shiland Villages in 2010.  By early 2011 we moved to our current location on the 1st floor of Shiland Villages.  After continuously outgrowing our office spaces, we are greatly looking forward to having an entire floor to ourselves.  

Built in 1925, The Citizen Building is a Historic Rock Hill landmark and we are thrilled to bring our software development company to such a unique and well maintained space.  We are planning the overall design of our new office now & will be posting our progress.  

We are proud to be a part of Rock Hill's downtown revitalization.  As a tech company, we are glad to be located in the same building as several other forward thinking organizations such as The Hive - a workforce / small business development program, and the upcoming Clemson University technology incubator.  

Our team is also excited to be so close to so many great restaurants.  Being on the same block as Jimmy Johns, McHale'sMillstone, & Erin's Restaurant is definitely an exciting change.  With such great dining options within steps of our building, our team may end up spending their days & nights in "Old Town" Rock Hill.  
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