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Patients in Need of Urgent Care Can Easily Access Relevant Information Online

Designed to provide quick access and pertinent information for residents of southern Louisiana and Mississippi in times of medical need, Millennium Healthcare Management’s new website is now online at http://www.millenniumurgentcare.com/.

It is never a good time to get sick or injured, but medical problems that occur on weekends or even weeknights present an even bigger problem. Emergency rooms are available but costly, and primary care physicians’ offices are closed.

Millennium Heathcare’s facilities provide a convenient, service-oriented approach at each of its nine urgent care locations. MHM has facilitated the successful certification and accreditation of its centers by the Urgent Care Association of America and The Joint Commission, so visitors can rest assured that they are receiving care from qualified physicians in facilities designed to meet patient’s needs.

Millennium Heathcare’s new website features information about the Healthcare Management group, as well as contact information and office hours for each of the associated Urgent Care centers located throughout southern Louisiana and Mississippi. Photo galleries, videos and a list of available patient services help visitors know what to expect before arriving.

Millennium Healthcare Management is a practice management group and holding company headquartered in Metairie, Louisiana. The company is equipped to open, acquire, and manage accredited urgent care and occupational medicine centers that provide extended-hour urgent care for acute illness and injury. Management services range from center startup preparations to full ongoing management. Millennium is led by an experienced management team with a clear vision and strategic plan for the future.

Millennium Heathcare’s new website is designed and hosted by Compucast Web Media.

Why Competition in the Social Media Space is good for users and businesses alike.

This past weekend, Facebook rolled out updates enabling users to more easily control who is able to view their updates. Facebook maintains that these updates were scheduled due to feedback from current users and that they were not in reaction to Google Plus’s streamlined posting system. Well… we’re glad to see the improvements, in any case.

Update Status

Hands down, one of the best features of Google+ is the ease of picking out the group or “circle” with whom you wish to share your latest posts. By selecting the option for “Public,” one or several of a user’s circle of friends and colleagues, or individual users, Google Plussers can easily deliver the most relevant content to their friends / fanbase.

Facebook’s most recent update allows very similar functionality with three sharing options available at the time of posting: Public, Friends or Custom. The “custom” option refers to a group of users you specify at the time of posting. Make your post visible to specific people, or post an update to all of your friends minus the people you specify.

While the ease of specifying between Public, Friends or Custom is a huge leap forward in usability, the Custom selection tool could still use some tweaking. While users can quickly add which users to include or exclude, it would be nice to save customized lists (ahem… like “circles” perhaps) to prevent users from having to specify similar groups over and over.

Facebook has also streamlined the process of tagging friends and location in posts. When creating a new post, users type in the name of their friends and their location by clicking the icons below the text box and entering data in the new fields. The new status update will then read something like, “Here is what I am doing –with John Smith and Jane Doe at Jackson Square.” Facebook’s new privacy features will certainly be a welcome tool when specifying this sort of information.

Businesses Included in Update, Too

Personal profiles aren’t the only portion of Facebook to change. Facebook Pages can also add new specifications to their posts, as well, though their sharing options are more limited. By clicking the “Custom” option in the status field, pages can choose to limit their posts to a specific nation or language group – a feature which will certainly be helpful for international businesses. Businesses which may have been forced to use multiple Pages to meet the needs of diverse groups could conceivably merge all of those Pages into one by making efficient use of their posting settings.

Google Plus Is Good for Users

Whether Facebook users are jumping over to Google Plus or not, everyone is reaping the benefits of healthy competition in the social media space. With business pages set to come out this fall, it will be interesting to see what changes explode in the social business space as well.

Congratulations to former New Orleans Saints running back Buford Jordan for his upcoming induction into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. The Saints’ website announced that Jordan (as well as two other Saints players) will be inducted on Saturday, June 25th, 2011 for his success not only with the Saints but also at McNeese State and while playing in the USFL during the mid-1980’s. Buford Jordan was a fullback for the Saints and blocked for Reuben Mays and Dalton Hillard while also racking up 687 yards and scoring six touchdowns himself.

Buford Jordan – a client of Compucast Web Design – currently instills his same sense of dedication and focus that helped him to be such a successful athlete into young athletes with the Rock Hard Performance Training program.

New Orleans CityBusiness features Compucast Web Media in an article about churches going online.

New Orleans churches and synagogues are going online to attract new members, and websites are becoming increasingly important in maintaining contact with an online society. This week, New Orleans CityBusiness spoke to churches and synagogues about their efforts as well as a number of website design companies who work with these non-profit organizations. Featured prominently in two photos on page 13 of the newspaper (April 8-14, 2011 issue), Compucast CEO Judy Weitz discussed her company’s involvement in working with several area churches, including the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Weitz went on to elaborate that Compucast’s involvement with churches often grew from personal connections rather than direct marketing from the company.

Compucast Web Media is proud to work with several religious and non-profit organizations in New Orleans and the surrounding area.

In the office this week, we had a discussion that went something like this…

“Do you know why Google has an option to block this site from its search results?”
“No, I haven’t seen that before.”
“Does that mean there is something wrong with that site?”

And while I couldn’t say for sure at the time, a little research quickly revealed that Google rolled out a new feature in search, and you might not notice it right away. Let’s do a search on the term “baseball” to demonstrate.

Upon searching, one of my results is the Wikipedia page about baseball, displayed below.

I take a look at the page and realize that I actually wanted to look at the official page of Major League Baseball and not Wikipedia’s explanation of the sport, so I click the “back” button on my browser. Now the same search result shows up like this.

Google has given me the option (in the bottom right corner) to block all Wikipedia results from my search engine. I don’t feel strongly enough about the subject to block everything Wikipedia does, but let’s see what happens.

Now I’ve successfully removed Wikipedia from my search engine results for that browser. I can easily undo my selection now or any time in the future.

As with last year’s Instant Preview updates, not all users and browsers will see the new features. When the update was first released, it applied to the most recent versions of Internet Explorer, Google Chrome (of course), and Mozilla Firefox. Google has announced that they are working their way through all browsers.

In answer to our discussion earlier this week, “No, there is nothing inherently wrong with a website that Google offers to block.” The interesting question going forward is, “How will blocking sites affect rankings?” With the feature still in its infancy, I would imagine that it is not really making any impact yet, but a site that is repeatedly blocked from search results could eventually see some change in their rankings.

Happy searching!

Good news for the retail and tourism industry: 2010 was a big year for international travelers and shoppers in Louisiana. In fact, Louisiana Tax Free’s end of year report shows retail spending and tax refunds in levels comparable to pre-Katrina days.

It is interesting to note that visitors from Brazil, the Philippines, and Mexico rank highest in both number of transactions and in dollars spent in the state. Of the shopping categories that participate in the Tax Free Shopping program, apparel & accessories, electronics, and fine art & jewelry made the most revenue, with apparel & accessories pulling in over $13 million in 2010!

View and download the report in PDF form.
Louisiana Tax Free Shopping Status Report 2009-2010

Learn more about the Louisiana Tax Free Shopping program with the following YouTube video.

Compucast Web Media specializes in providing web sites and services to New Orleans businesses.

Compucast client and professional opera singer Angela Mannino was recently featured on the Midday Fix on WGN in Chicago performing a selection from the opera Gianni Schicchi.

Learn more about Angela at her website www.angelamannino.com, including information about past roles and upcoming performances.

Congratulations, Angela!

New Orleans Late Night got a new look this week, and the site is ready to help you find what’s happening in the city this week. Check the event calendar to see what musicians will be playing, and find some of the best music venues of the city. Find a collection of restaurants that still serve dinner late into the night, and discover our list of classy French Quarter bars.

Make New Orleans Late Night your reference site for what to do and where to go in New Orleans after the sun goes down!

A fantastic video from YouTube user ExcentricPT.

Travel organizations are focusing more on digital marketing in 2011, according to a survey by Frommers. Social media, web content and mobile are all big priorities in budgeting for the upcoming year, but search engine optimization is still the key.

HotelMarketing.com quoted Giles Longhurst from Frommer’s Unlimited as saying about the survey results, “It’s clear that marketers are looking at how content creation and new applications can reach wider audiences, over and above traditional advertising. When we then drilled down and asked organizations what content was most important to them this year, search engine optimization was still by far and away the top priority, followed by high quality destination content and unique content to compliment the SEO strategy.”

Frommers surveyed a variety of travel organizations including airlines, agents, car rental companies, hotels, insurance agencies, cruise lines, and many others. 70% of all those surveyed said that they planned to increase their digital marketing budgets for 2011 compared to 54% who planned for a similar budget increase in 2010. Of those companies planning budget increases, 68% are spending more on social media, 63% on creating new content, and 50% increase in mobile.