Monthly Archives: February 2011

  • February 28, 2011

    Book Review: Cassandra the Definitive Guide

    By New Signature
    Book Reviews \ Branding, Website and Database \ Cloud Computing

    Chances are either you, one of your friends, or possibly a co-worker have created–or worked with a database–over the past decade. Most likely, it was a relational database, such as Microsoft Access, SQL Server, Oracle or mySQL. For many years, relational databases have been the foundation for applications as diverse as home finance and space exploration.

    Now, with the explosion of web-based services relying upon greater and greater concepts of scale, the relational database has hit a wall. Supplanting it are several “no-sql” databases that are significantly different in scope and features, which can be challenging for both database administrators and system architects to implement.

    “Cassandra: The Definitive Guide” by Eben Hewitt covers these newcomers to the database world briefly, but focuses mostly on Cassandra itself, a database built to scale. The key concepts and divergences from traditional relational database management system are all clearly explained, and within a few chapters seasoned database admins should be able to grasp most of the basic features of Cassandra.

    The tone of the book is fairly light but perfect for the new Cassandra administrator. Because the key benefits of Cassandra can only be realized *after* implementation on a platform, playing around is key to gaining skills, and the book targets that environment.

    If you’re reaching the end of your performance rope with SQL, we highly recommend this book. It may not be for most organizations, but for those that are pushing the limits of the web, it’s a must-read.

    Contact New Signature today if you are looking to learn more about how highly scalable distributed database management systems, like Cassandra, can help your business.

  • February 18, 2011

    New Signature Launches サイエンス誌 (Science Magazine Japan)

    By New Signature
    Branding, Website and Database \ Drupal \ Site Launches

    New Signature has launched a redesigned Science Japan website using the the Drupal content management system for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Science Japan is the Japanese language website for AAAS’ publications: Science Magazine, Science Signaling and Science Translational Medicine.

    New Signature worked with American and Japanese stakeholders to define the requirements for the website, including strategic direction on how to engage target audiences in Japan.  We also designed an improved editorial workflow that replaced a system that was largely offline.  This new process enables the Japanese translation team to directly edit content on the website. This change improved quality of the content and simplified the process–reducing the labor required to manage content translation and allowing content to be added more quickly.  Our graphic designs and user experience experts updated the visual design and improved the visitor’s experience.  This improved user experience ensures that the important content on the site is accessible.

    The new website home page now features a cross-publication content rotator, an alerts section for important news and updates, featured spots for all three publications, and an event and announcement list for content specific to the Japanese audience.  Each publication has a landing page for the current issue, as well as a large archive of historical content.  In addition, custom RSS feeds are now available for every publication’s issue and articles, and New Signature implemented a custom Google search module so that all content on the site is searchable in Japanese and results are returned inline.  (more…)

  • February 8, 2011

    Important Changes for Embedding YouTube in WordPress

    By New Signature
    Branding, Website and Database \ WordPress

    If you are a WordPress user and recently encountered trouble embedding YouTube videos you are not alone. YouTube recently changed its embed code format from a version that used the

    1
    <object>

    tag to one that now uses the

    1
    <iframe>

    tag.

    TinyMCE, one of the most popular WYSIWYG editors on the web, filters out

    1
    <iframe>

    tags to prevent users from unwittingly embedded malicious code. WordPress, like many other blog and CMS platforms, uses TinyMCE in the back-end to assist authors in composing their posts.

    There are two solutions to this problem.

    (more…)