Monday, March 27, 2006

What's New in the Zunch Dev Cru

The Zunch development team has been working hard these last few months in building new applications not only for client support but also for public access.  The greatest accomplishment is the blogging tool, Sympozeum, which you are experiencing right now.  It may not seem different from any other blog you've seen that's out there...but on the admin side...it is quite a piece of work.

The Sympozeum Website itself is an accomplishment for the next big application that Zunch will be releasing by the end of the year, zMS.CF2.  This is our content management system second version.  The Sympozeum site will be built using a beta version.  We are all very excited.

Look for more great applications from the Zunch Development Cru.

Coming soon to a Website near you!

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Monday, February 06, 2006

Zunch CEO Nominated Again for SEMPO

SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (www.sempo.org) has announced that John Sanchez, chairman and CEO of Dallas-based Zunch Communications, Inc., has been nominated as a candidate for the 2006 elections of its Board of Directors.  Sanchez is currently the vice president of the organization whose membership includes search engine marketing professionals from the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia.

The Full Article

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Thursday, February 02, 2006

WYSIWYG of The Stars

I want to take some time out of my day and talk about a component we use consistently in various products that isn't talked about much. What am I talking about? WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor or “Word-Link Editor” reused throughout our product line as means to manipulate content. Unfortunately I can not take credit for such a robust and powerful component… Our WYSIWYG is actually a third-party plug-in from FredCK, an open-source programming company, geared towards making web-based applications easier to use.

Click here for more information on FCKEditor.

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Thursday, February 02, 2006

AJAX, the Way of The Future

AJAX, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is the newest means for creating dynamic and interactive web applications, and is currently the most effective way to interact with the end user without causing confusion and/or frustration while using RIA (Rich Internet Application). Even if you are unfamiliar with the terms AJAX or RIA, you most likely use both of these on a regularly basis. Such examples include Google Maps or Google Suggest. Both applications demonstrate the technologies to their fullest.

However AJAX isn’t a single technology, rather it is composed of several cohesive components working for a single goal. This incorporates:

  • XHTML and CSS
  • Dynamic Display and interaction using the DOM (Document Object Model)
  • Asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest (Script Function)
  • Data interchange using XML and XSLT
  • JavaScript to bind everything together

This makes AJAX programming different from traditional web applications. Instead of loading a webpage at the start of a session, the browser first loads AJAX which prompts one engine to load (the AJAX JavaScript-based file) instead of several that include files or functions. This means the end user doesn’t receive the data until they request it. See example flow below.


Source: Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications

Stay tuned for more news about our upcoming products using AJAX and other cutting-edge technologies used here at Zunch.

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Thursday, December 15, 2005

Terrence Ou is a Busy Man, Brings on More Zunch Employees

Our own Terrence Ou, APAC Director of Business Development for Zunch, has been a busy guy since he left for China a month ago. He's brought on several new employees (welcome Luke and Andy!) and signed on Zunch's first Chinese clients all in a matter of a few weeks.

To read Terrence's latest update, head over to the Zunchina blog. Keep up the good work Terrence!

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Thursday, December 08, 2005

Warmin' up

We're back from Chicago! Well, most of us anyway. Jeff will be back anytime now, his flight left a bit earlier. After a long night to recoup some lost sleep and an interesting taxi ride home through the somewhat icy Dallas streets (I know, icy and Dallas don't go together - tell me about it!) we're back to work at our Dallas headquarters. While the city thaws, we're just getting warmed up after a great Search Engine Strategies conference!

We got to talk to some very interesting people while there, and I realized that is still alot of confusion out there about SEO. For those of you I talked to at the booth (I was the long-haired hippy freak, as they love to call me around the office, hah), I hope you found some of our presentations interesting and had a chance to gain a little bit of insight into how our practices & products combine to really help acheive some great results on the web. Thanks for helping make this a great show for Zünch! Also, thanks to the Zünch team who made all this happen: John, Jesse, Rachel, Jeff, & Dan all worked dillegently to pull off a great show without any hiccups.

If you weren't in Chicago this week, it's okay. You'll have a chance to meet some of the team in February at Search Engine Strategies in New York City. By then we'll have some even cooler things to show off, including a really rockin' site-search ZMS module and an AJAX based administrative interface for the new version of ZMS. We're closing 2005 with some awesome progress, and we're starting the year off right with some very exciting new things in the world of website development & interactive marketing.

Hear that sizzle? That's a big 'ole slab of Zünch. Yup, we're on fire :-)

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Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Zunch Named #1 for Organic Search (Again)

Topseos.com has announced their December rankings for organic search engine optimization firms with Zunch in the #1 spot- again!

In a news release sent out yesterday topseos.com said, “We continually strive to pick the cream of the crop organizations in our top 30 list in the organic optimization category,” says Bill Peden of topseos.com. He adds, “Our December winners for this year are the strongest companies we have identified in the market today.”

Way to go SEO team!

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Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Zunch Communications, Inc. Launches New Competitive Intelligence Services Today

Leading Interactive Agency Ups the Ante with New Suite of Services for Monitoring Competitors Online Marketing Activities

Dallas, TX (PRWEB) December 6, 2005 – Does your business know what your competitors are up to? Ever want to know what search engine keywords your competitors are buying, what they’re spending or which affiliates are driving their business? Competitive intelligence is an activity of increasing importance in today’s business world. Zunch Communications, Inc. (http://www.zunch.com/) is pleased to announce today the launch of Zunch Recon, competitive intelligence services for analysis of a competitor’s online marketing strategies, spending and activities.

Zunch Recon competitive intelligence services (http://www.zunch.com/competitive_intelligence.cfm) now available from Zunch Communications, Inc. gives a business, large or small, the chance to increase the impact of its online performance by utilizing the data of its competitors. Competitive reporting on search marketing, online advertising, affiliate marketing and more give any business the competitive edge they need to stay at the top of their industry.

“Competitive analysis is an essential part of any online marketing activity,” said Zunch Chairman & CEO John Sanchez. “It’s not enough in most cases to conduct a pay-per-click advertising campaign or optimize your website with search engine keywords without doing the research on your competitor’s strategy as well.”

As part of a suite of competitive intelligence services, Zunch offers reports on Benchmarking Reconnaissance, Organic and Paid Search, Competitive Keyword Rankings and Affiliate/Linking activities. With one or all of the reports, marketers can evaluate their own strategies and budgets for search engine optimization and marketing campaigns or learn what keywords, affiliates or search engines are driving traffic to a competitor’s website.

“Most people don’t have the time or the resources to conduct this research on their own, said Sanchez. “This information, the kind only available through Zunch Recon, is crucial to any business operating on the Web.”

More information on Zunch’s new Competitive Reconnaissance services can be found at http://www.zunch.com/competitive_intelligence.cfm

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Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Zunch Communications, Inc. Launches Next-Generation Content Management System

Leading Interactive Agency Debuts System with Newly Developed Corporate Website for Leading Texas-Based Company
Dallas, TX (PRWEB) December 6, 2005 – Zunch Communications, Inc. (http://www.zunch.com) announced today the launch of their next-generation content management system built by the Zunch team and written in the Microsoft .NET Framework. The updated system was first used on the recently launched corporate website for a leading North American business-to-business services provider.

“The new system remains simple and user-friendly with its WYSIWYG editor, but features code updates to significantly increase performance,” said Zunch Chairman & CEO John Sanchez. “It allows someone with little or no knowledge of programming to edit a website as they choose and have a fast-loading, high-performance website at the same time.”

The new content management system allows for administrative updating of content and “click and drag” of all navigational elements. It also permits the addition or deletion of pages on-the-fly and is controlled by a rich text WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor. New aspects of the system also include improved performance and speed, with complex pages often loading in less than one-tenth of a second. A fast data-catching layer allows page details to be stored in memory for more efficient look-up.

“We put a lot of thought into what changes we needed to make to our content management system and into what we hoped to achieve with the updates,” said Sanchez.

Continue reading this release...

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Monday, December 05, 2005

SES Update: Lookout Chi-town!

John, Todd, and I arrived at Midway yesterday morning. The hotel we're at is real nice, and the weather is cooold! Not very much to report thus far - right now we're strategizing for tomorrow's opening of the conference hall. A bit later, we'll be attending some of the speaking sessions going on today. Meanwhile, I'll be watching the progress of the booth assembly. The temperature should get down to 9 degrees tonight! We miss Texas :-) Attached is a great picture of downtown Chicago that I took from my hotel room last night just after sunset. It's cold here, but a very nice place.

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Friday, November 18, 2005

It's Been a Productive Week Here at Zunch

Our business development team continues to expand our client roster. We've added several new clients for search engine optimization (SEO) this week including Core Learning and Wedding Favors Etc. Check out the latest news here.

Check back next week- we have some big launches coming up...

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Monday, November 14, 2005

Zunch Gets Ready for Ad:Tech Shanghai 2005

Zunch Communications, Inc. (http://www.zunch.com) APAC Business Director Terrence Ou will be appearing at this week’s Ad:Tech Shanghai (http://www.ad-techshanghai.com). Ou will be serving on a panel discussing search engine optimization (SEO) before presenting a clinic on international search solutions.
Ou will serve on the Ad:Tech Shanghai panel discussing search engine optimization in the Asian market where he will share his own experiences with search solutions for international corporations. On day two, November 16, of the conference Ou will be presenting a search engine optimization clinic on the show floor entitled, “Search Engine Marketing by SEO, and Interactive PR with Brand Reputation Management." From 2:30 to 3 p.m. Ou will be guiding any interested parties through the various aspects of a proper search engine marketing campaign with a step-by-step tutorial. Terrence Ou is a search engine optimization specialist and APAC Business Director for Dallas-based Zunch Communications, Inc. He was crucial in the development of Zunch’s Chinese-language website (http://www.zunch.cn) as well as the Chinese content management system recently developed by the Zunch team.
Read More...

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Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Return of the F.O.T.B.O.C.E.

(Imperial March playing in the background)

After much needed executive restructuring, Zunch is at it again: selling, developing and playing games. One of our newest employee's, Charlie, will be heading up our Chicago office in the next few days. Our sales department is selling like crazy! Some of our new clients include: Popcornpolis, General Electric and North American Outdoor Adventure. Development and creative has never been busier. And as for the games, well the foosball table is seeing plenty of action as well as the bowling alley where we will continue Zunch Bowlarama Part II this week.

In case you are unfamiliar with F.O.T.B.O.C.E, F.O.T.B.O.C.E = Flesh On The Bones Of Creative Energy.

We should be seeing some new faces throughout management soon and, hopefully, some familiar ones. Stay tuned in for more pictures and articles from one of the fastest growing interactive agencies.

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