While we enjoyed a crisp 70 degrees in our air-conditioned office, graphic designer, Emily Babel, endured a week of sweltering temperatures in New Orleans. Babel volunteered for Habitat for Humanity to help re-build houses in neighborhoods devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Temperatures one day reached 117 degrees! Now that's hot. Almost as hot as the Cajun spices that topped her fried soft-shelled crab.

It's hot. The fish are jumping. And Ideopians have had flames shooting out of their heads creating cool work for clients. Click on our online portfolio to see new work for Vivace Restaurants, a new web banner and mini site for the Optilase Group and a sneak preview of this year's invitation for the Ronald McDonald House's Red Tie Gala. View new work.

It's no secret that some websites that perform well on search engines will never win a beauty contest. Just look at Wikipedia. With solid analytics and research, it's possible to have the beauty and the beast. Our approach, put simply, is to thoroughly understand why a site works and not break it. See our Case Study on Website Redesign to find out how we remade and rebranded the home page for a major manufacturer while maintaining the luster of its search engine rankings.

Those peculiar barcodes you may have seen on your Blackberry or Android smart phone have taken over Japan, and might soon become mainstream in the United States. Quick Response (QR) Codes, two-dimensional barcodes, started out in the early 90s as a way for manufacturers to track vehicle parts, but they've now spread to mobile phones, further linking the physical world and cyberspace.

Japanese companies use QR Codes for advertising, notably on billboards so consumers can snap pictures from their cell-phones and head directly to the companies' websites. The codes can be slapped on magazine ads, billboards, signage, or even business cards.

Some smart phones in the United States have already integrated QR Code technology, and as smart phones continue to skyrocket in popularity, that number will increase. The codes are appealing to advertisers because of their ability to seamlessly bridge the gap between cyberspace and the real world. By holding up your phone to an ad, you are instantly transported to the destination.

Do a Google search to create your own QR Codes. Does your smartphone have a QR reader? Scan our code:

Forty percent of adult Americans use mobile phones to access email, according to a 2010 survey by Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.

With more people turning to their phones for email, it's worth a little extra time to make your emails mobile friendly.

Make sure your leads are brief and catchy. People who use cell phones for email are already on the go, so catch their attention fast with leads that scream "open me."

Define link colors clearly, and use text links in favor of images or buttons. Always include a visible plain text version of the email.

Find out how many users are actually using their mobile devices to open the newsletter. Analytics are important because if none of your audience uses mobile email, it's not necessary to fret - yet.

Most new smartphones (iPhones, Androids) display regular emails (Blackberrys don't), but because the screen sizes vary and are considerably smaller than PC monitors, formatting can be a pain. Generally, the rule of thumb is the less complex coding and images, the safer the email. The mobile resolution will be about less than half the size of desktop emails. Never use large images!

Facebook's ad service is one of the most targeted and dynamic advertising mediums around. And, we believe it's highly underutilized. From our experience, we've found that Facebook can trounce Google Adwords in terms of quality traffic and conversions. That's because you can cheaply make numerous ads that target consumers based on the usual age and gender demographics, and further sort by state, city, profession, and lifestyle likes and dislikes.

As you select your criteria, the program dynamically updates how many people you're likely to reach with your ad. Facebook ads are so precise that one man was able to create an ad solely for his wife, and it worked.

Consumers are 10 times more like to buy products via social media, according to one study, so get on Facebook and get cracking on brand promotion!

Companies, tech nuts and job seekers alike use Twitter to sell their products. Unfortunately, some of them are annoying all of us. Don't be that person.

Don't spam your followers: If your message is clear and your product relevant to your followers, you won't need to tweet every five minutes. Followers involved with your brand will likely re-tweet your content and spread the word. Don't forget to reply and thank them!

Virtual trophy case: We're truly happy that you won 15 Rainbow Excellence Awards last night, but consistently tooting your own horn is obnoxious. A little bragging here and there won't hurt, but remember, if your feed is driven by unique and powerful content, your followers will be the ones bragging.

#Too #many #hashtags: Too often we see tweets with multiple hashtags. Keep the message and topic simple and let the content speak for itself.

Our tweets are shorter than Lindsay Lohan's jail sentence, but more exciting than any World Cup soccer match. Here's some of the action you may have missed if you're not following @Ideopia:

Before you throw a wad of money at your next problem, consider this: Most consumers are more motivated by a pure sense of self-fulfillment than greenbacks. Social psychologist Edward Deci first floated this theory in the 1970s. In a series of experiments, Deci asked two groups of subjects to solve a puzzle. One group was compensated for finding a solution; the other had to make do with the satisfaction of cracking the problem. Deci observed that the unpaid groups outperformed the paid ones in speed, originality and overall satisfaction. We see this effect frequently when consumers perceive an altruistic benefit to a product, an advantage that will often bear a higher price. It's another vivid difference between a commodity and a brand.