I am the first to admit that it took me a long time to wrap my head around the value of the Twitter hash tag. What is it? What does it do? Why is it taking up precious characters in an already miniscule forum for expression?

And then I remembered the most fundamental role of social media in the context of connecting with customers: Twitter is about stimulating dialogue and in doing so, brands are better able to understand and respond to customer patterns, comments, and concerns. And, if used correctly, hash tags can facilitate this crucial conversation.

According to Oregon’s tourism web site, there isn’t a single amazing thing about Oregon, there are about ten zillion. While none of us had time to calculate that figure to be sure, we’re all in agreement that Oregon is truly a special place.

We’ve just returned from a week-long marketing summit with Starwood Hotels & Resorts’ top communications leaders in Portland and are so pleased to be among only a handful of vendors invited to participate in a conference of this scope.

We received a warm welcome from everyone we spoke with and are especially thankful that we had the chance to sit with key members of the Starwood global management team.  Above all this was a chance for us to build on the existing trusted partnership between Starwood and WebCanada that we have enjoyed for more than eight years.

Zdra-stvu-eetee to the Moscow Country Club!

Last week we welcomed Pavel Eogorov, Senior Sales & E-Commerce Manager from the Moscow Country Club, to the WebCanada offices. I know I speak for everyone when I say that we are looking forward to a long partnership with Pavel and the MCC. At present, we are redesigning and building out the property's web site on our Live CMS platform so naturally, we were excited to introduce Pavel to the WebCanada team.

But that’s not all we introduced him to…

Our holiday eCards are here! Now you can create and send your very own personalized WebCanada & Front60 holiday greeting cards.

‘Twas the night before Christmas, The WebCanada team in-house
Not a creature was working, not even clicking a mouse...

Type your company name into Google: where does your company show up in the results? Is it the first result? Is it halfway down the third page?

No matter your business plan or industry, a top result on a search engine can lend your company credibility and prestige. Your customers will treat top results as the best matches available, regardless of whether that is actually the case.

SEO is a gargantuan factor to consider when choosing a CMS platform. After all, you want your site to be number one in results and attract customers, potential employees and investors.

We're really excited to be launching the latest version of our online portal for residential building staff and communities: Concierge Plus. While we're beta testing the platform, we'd like to invite you to take a sneak peek at our new marketing site (designed by our design agency, Front60, and built on the Live CMS platform of course)!

What is Concierge Plus?

CP is a website for your property or community, designed to help you manage a property's day-to-day administrative tasks while connecting its tenants, owners, association members, board members and management.

Concierge Plus has tons of amazing features like maintenance tracking systems, announcements and permission-based administration form a timesaving hub for your entire building. It's easy to set up and use, no matter whether you're a novice computer user or a tech-savvy dynamo.

You want your website to look as competent and professional as your company is, your company's carefully crafted brand shining forth on every page. When choosing between an open source and custom CMS, there are definite differences in terms of front-end site design.

As we mentioned in Part 1 of Choosing a CMS, there are numerous user-generated add-ons readily available with open source CMS.

Every kind of CMS is customizable, though all are customizable to a different extent.

Open Source CMS are typically completely customizable, provided you're willing to roll up your sleeves and code it yourself. If you're not up to the challenge of coding from scratch, there are also a number of pre-existing plugins that you can slot in when and where you need them. You'll again be climbing into the back-end and configuring and troubleshooting on your own - and after all the work you put in, the plugins may not actually do what you want them to do!

Today is a momentous day - we held a launch party in honour of Live CMS 5!

After months of hard work, testing and many late nights, Live CMS 5 went live yesterday. We've fired up the back end, notified our clients and watched the product soar. 5,500 user accounts have been migrated in 70 countries and 29 languages. We've been hearing a lot of great feedback and encouragement, and we truly believe this will be the most powerful iteration of our Live CMS product to date.

Many thanks to all of WebCanada (it seems like everyone contributed something) and special shout outs to the Live CMS 5 team: Paul, Nikola, Andy, Ian, Matt, Ilia, Linus, Billy, Rinaldi and Daniel.

Check out the photos after the read more link.

Now Magazine writer Joshua Errett's article about the concentration of WordPress usage in Canadian media may be overly alarmist and a bit silly (as with the example of the printing press running out of ink) however he does bring up a good point about some of the issues tied to WordPress.

The two most important considerations to make when choosing a CMS are the complexity of your website and the extent of your technical knowledge. Do you have a small website with a few pages or an extensive site with many pages showcasing a variety of media and functions?

Quick Response Codes have been a mainstay in the marketing world for a number of years. For those not familiar with QR Codes, they are unique matrix barcodes placed on marketing materials which can be scanned using a smartphone camera enabled by a QR Code reader. Once scanned, the QR reader reveals embedded information by linking to a website on your smartphone. We see QR Codes everywhere: adorning movie posters, on products at the supermarket and even on advertisements on the side of buses. There must be a better, more interactive way to share marketing information.

Welcome to the first post in our series on choosing and evaluating a CMS. Since you're here, we're guessing you're still scouting for information about the differences between open source and proprietary systems.

To help, we've put together what we think are top considerations and differences between the two:

Choosing a content management system (CMS) can be a difficult undertaking when you're diving in for the first time. There are so many options available, it's hard to know what the best solution is. What you do know is that you don't have time to update back-end coding each time you want to alter a page on your website.

You need a better way to manage and organize online content. You need a CMS!

Our friends at Zen-tai Wellness Centre recently stopped by to present a lunch and learn centered around de-stressing in the workplace. As a group, we tend to reach for pop and candy to boost our energy, so Naturopathic Doctors Makoto Trotter and Aileen Lim-Trotter shared with us a number of ways to be more mindful about what we're eating.

As an office of computer scientists, project managers and creatives, we're inspired by the engineer-turned-visionary Arvind Gupta. In the video below, Arvind explains how he creates learning toys out of trash to teach children the principles of science and geometry.

Video after the read more link.

Google's search algorithms are constantly evolving to keep up with changeable nature of the web in an effort to keep spammers at bay. What many people don't realize, though, is that a search engine optimization strategy that worked well in the past may now get your site blacklisted from Google's results.

Many SEO strategies that were once successful ways to maintain a search presence are now considered unethical by Google. If you've seen your search results falter and you haven't taken a look at your site back-end in a while, now might be a good time to root out any old SEO tactics and update them with a current strategy.

Due to our rapid expansion Front60 is hiring an Interactive Project Manager to work out of office in downtown Toronto.

You must have 4+ years of experience in creative and web development/interactive project management. This is a full-time position with benefits.

For more details on the Interactive Project Manager position see our careers section.

As an Interactive Project Manager you'll have the opportunity to advance to more senior roles within our growing company. Please send us your resume, availability and salary expectations to hr-apply@webcanada.com

We look forward to hearing from the best and brightest Interactive Project Managers in Toronto.

I'm excited to be part of a talented panel discussion that will address the challenges and opportunities of building global websites as part of next week's travel and tourism marketing conference in Toronto.

This year the sixth annual "Online Revealed" tourism and online marketing conference has partnered with The Hotel Association of Canada and the Canadian Tourism marketing Summit. Dubbed as Canada's first and only user generated internet marketing conference, they are attracting over 500 of the top tourism and travel industry professionals to share ideas March 8-9 at the Sheraton Centre Toronto.

YouTube and Google have created a fun little web app that lets you create a "search story video" just by choosing a few keywords and some music. The app is based on Google's popular search stories ad campaign that even saw one of their spots make it to last year's Super Bowl. Check out our own search story video and create your own.

We are thrilled to be a part of Starwood's Room With A View hotel webcams project which recently launched its second phase complete with a new user interface, enhanced social capabilities and an extensive list of new functionality.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, over 100 Starwood hotels spanning five continents have installed webcams from their most picturesque views, making the live feeds available on roomwithaview.com and individual hotel webcam Room With A View portal sites.

WebCanada is hiring! Demand for our world-class websites, awesome CMS platform, and cutting edge web applications are through the roof.

We're looking for talented web developers to work in our cool new loft space office in the east end of downtown Toronto. We're not saying it's an easy job, but you'll love coming to work; if you're ready to embrace challenges and have your mind put to the test daily, we'll make sure your hard work is rewarded.

It's a really exciting time for writing PHP in Toronto and you must share the same passion for the craft as we do. For all of your hard work you'll be rewarded with:

• a competitive salary
• a health and dental benefits package
• a monthly metropass
• a catered lunch every Friday
• and did we mention an ergonomic Herman Miller chair

For this year's holiday season we designed and developed an online game for all of our clients around the globe. With an average gameplay of about 6 minutes and fierce competition from over 20 different countries, no wonder there are so many impressive (and seemingly impossible to beat) high scores!

When someone says the word app, what immediately comes to mind? iPhone apps, Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer? What if I included Gmail, Amazon and Facebook in that list, do they still count? Sure they do, they're just web apps, but instead of being created to run on an operating system, they're created to run on a web browser.

We don't think about it, but websites like Flickr, Ebay and even, WebCanada's Live CMS are all web apps, and they carry with them many advantages over the desktop counterparts...

Available anywhere
Desktop Applications store information on your computer's hard drive, where web apps store information on a database independent from your computer or on "the cloud." Each time you request information from a web app it pulls the data dynamically, whether it be displaying an email or updating the homepage of your website in Live CMS; all that information is available to you no matter where you go, not matter what computer you're on.

This past week WebCanada was invited to speak at Everest College. One of our senior developers, Andy Zarzycki and myself prepared several topics ranging from industry trends to differentiating yourself in the job market. The goal was to give students some insight into the day of a life as a developer. On our end, it was a good opportunity for WebCanada to showcase what we do and our passion for it.

Last Thursday we officially celebrated our arrival at 260 King Street East with an Open House party. A big thanks to everyone who was able to come and for those who couldn't make it we've included a few pictures and a link to our online memory game created by Front60.

It happened so fast. In mid-2008, we moved into our new office at 2 Carlton Street right in the middle of Downtown Toronto. A few months later we took over the office next door. Now summer 2010 has arrived and we're moving again...