june newsletter

• Design Firms Folding

• New Site Launched...

• FrameMaker 6.0 Introduction

featured article

With the recent economic slowdown, a series of dramatic reversals have taken place that are impacting many corporations in the area of both web design and engineering projects.

Starting as early as January, we heard of a few major design firms founded over the last few years filing for bankruptcy. The recent implosion of RazorFish stocks have devalued from a Fiscal 2000 high of $125 per share to it's current $2 per share. Some firms have even started discounting their pricing by as much as 70% in an effort to remain cash positive. This trend is accelerating.

Not necessarily a "buyer's market"; here's why. If the firms can't turn around their inherent staffing (some are as much as 60% administrative) and cost structures, the firms will close. The impact to their clients; sites that are in various stages of development within these firms now crash to a halt. Even worse from a disaster recovery perspective is the loss of the core 'master files'; the origination source files traditionally built in programs such as PhotoShop (.psd), FireWorks (.png) and other graphics-intensive applications that are the foundation for both branding and GUI development.

What is causing more concern is the breadth of this impact; simple content management and site maintenance has become an ever-increasing chore for companies, as marketing departments scramble to fill the void left from erstwhile competitors. Internal labor resources are also now at a premium, as executives look for cost containment strategies.

Please call us if you're looking for assistance in the content management or site development completion. We can objectively evaluate your options, including sharing names of those firms that still appear to be relatively solid in their respective market niches.

newest sites

Check out www.PowerAndSytems.com ; the second site we've developed for them. Extensive use of multimedia on their site allows for a preliminary exposure to advanced management training exercises.

FrameMaker 6.0 basics

Description:
This three-day course teaches participants the skills necessary to create stand alone, or component documents to be used in books, or as single files. This course is based on the Adobe Systems curriculum.

Prerequisites:
None

Participants Will Learn:

• Opening, saving, viewing, printing, and deleting documents
• Entering, editing, and finding text
• Using Spell Checker and Thesaurus
• Creating documents using templates
• Working with page-anchored and text-anchored objects, including graphics, frames, and tables
• Managing character, paragraph, tab, pagination, and numbering properties
  ...and much more!

register: