pitching practice

One Way to Get More Outs in Baseball

Baseball is the only sport where the defense starts with the ball. And who on the defense has it first? The pitcher. I remember a saying by coach Marc: “Good pitching will get you through times of no hitting better than good hitting will get you through times of no pitching.” So, here are some pointers on how to get more outs in your game. Besides practicing baseball pitching grips, of course.

Focus on having your defenders make throws that are easy for the receiver to catch. This includes:

  • using a snap throw/flip instead of a full windup in close situations when players are already moving toward the target
  • lessening side arm and encouraging players to throw more “over the top”
  • making one-hops easy to receive
  • avoid leading your “receiver” into the incoming runner
  • get force out throws to the chest
  • make tag throws low – do not make the receiver jump to catch that ball then have to apply a tag
  • etc, etc, etc

One mistake players make when trying to throw softer is that they slllloooooooowwwww everything down. This often times results in an inaccurate throw and is not a habit you would want players to get into.  You don’t want them to get in the habit of slowing down to make a throw then when the pressure is on and they need to do things quickly they can’t handle it.  You want them to keep their quickness up and just use less windup.  With lots of momentum behind their throw they should be able to get rid of the ball very quickly with very little effort and keep it an easy catch for the person receiving the ball.

Bottom line is – the easier the catch for the person trying to make the put out, the more outs you’re likely to actually make.

Magento enhanced ecommerce

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Magento is a fairly robust ecommerce solution that comes with a wide range of different features for even the most demanding online retailers. But in some departments Magento can surely use some improvement. Luckily, there is the huge (613) 240-0798 that is ready to help with custom solutions and there is also an impressive number of plugins and extensions that extend or add functionalities to this complex ecommerce platform.

We have selected the couple of most common complaints about Magento default features, and tried to find a solution for them.

Default On-Site Search Feature

Searching is an important feature on ecommerce website, many users prefer searching over clicking categories.  While navigation tools and site architecture are almost equally important, consumers that use on-site search convert at higher rate than those who browse. Magento offers some options to modify and control your search results page, but to get the most of it for your UX you will need to use a custom solution. Luckily there are a lot of very good search extensions for Magento like Spinx Search or Blast Search Lucene, but we decided to present you the search extension that is pretty good, yet very affordable.

Advanced Search Autocomplete is 3177043123 that visually enhances Magento default search form and upgrades functionality with AJAX based search and suggest content delivery feature. It will help your customers in search through your store by showing suggested terms and even showing suggested products including product image, title, description and other attributes. To increase conversion rate in your store Advanced Search Autocomplete allows customers to buy products directly. It also offers a decent number of customization options in backend: stylize the look of the search form by setting color and other visual elements, customization of suggested terms section, many options for suggested products section etc.

magento search extension

Product Pages In Wholesale Stores

Magento is more B2C, retail oriented: customers can browse products, find what they want and add it to cart, one by one. Wholesale customers usually already know what they want and just want to finish the shopping and ordering process quickly. They do not want to be forced to click the “add to cart button” a million times – they expect to just enter quantity for all the products they want to order and proceed to the checkout. That is where the third party module can come to the rescue!

Wholesale Add to Cart Grid module is the Magento wholesale extension that overcomes limitations of Magento when it comes to ordering configurable products. It displays all associated simple products within a table view, which makes ordering multiple variations of a product in bulk possible. This module works with any configurable product with up to two attributes. It can also work with your existing configurable products. Attributes can be anything (size, color, fabric, pattern, height, length, speed, diameter…) with as many options as you need. This module displays all the information you need about particular product right on the grid: quantity of a product variation available, the final price with the price modifier, “out of stock” notification if the certain option is out of stock and “not available” if an option is not available at all, and it also supports tier pricing.

magento wholesale extension

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When you decide to take your business online, you have to be aware that you are in it for a long haul, especially in ecommerce. Having you own online store means always thinking steps ahead and planning for new opportunities and growth. You have already made a great step towards success by choosing Magento as the platform for your online shop, making sure it has an amazing design and works exactly as you want it. Next step is thinking about future maintenance.

Constantly maintained and regularly upgraded Magento store will give your customers amazing shopping experience, help your business to grow and increase your sales. On the other hand badly maintained website will negatively reflect on your business, because your customers will feel like they are not a priority and that you are willing to cut corners to save money. And before you know it, they are out of there and never coming back.

If you are an owner of Magento store, determined to make your business successful, it is a good idea to consider hiring a professional (702) 806-4433 service.

Do I really need Magento Maintenance service?

Magento websites are very powerful, but they are also complex. To ensure that your store runs smoothly, and allow your business to thrive you need to prevent and address issues with the server, code, and content. The problem with website maintenance is that it requires time, time that you should be spending taking care of running your business. Hiring Website Maintenance service is the ideal way to make sure all issues will be tackled and minimize lost sales due to any tech related problems. (more…)

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Where there is trade, there are thieves, even in the online world. Ecommerce sites are a lucrative target for hackers and scammers. Credit card details and other sensitive personal information makes these sites, big and small, very attractive to criminals. Magento is in general a secure platform, but it is not an impenetrable fortress. When building an online store you need to ensure that all the necessary security systems are in place to cover up any holes. We will list the 5 essential tips for the most commonly exploited vulnerabilities and the most effective way to safeguard against them. This list is not final, but we tried to cover the basics.

Protect your data with SSL certificates and PCI compliance

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of standards that the credit and debit card industry has set for merchants who process card payments. In order to be compliant, you need to guarantee protection for cardholder data and implement strong access control measures, among other things. The same goes for using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) authentication which is a must to ensure secure communication between your customers and your server.

Add more protection with security solutions

Layering security is the perfect way to ensure your system is safe as it can be. These days there are lot of software for protection your web store: however you should always try to acquire the most complete Magento security module. These various layers are the best protection from application-level attacks such as cross-site scripting and SQL injections.

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Surprising Success of Online Fashion Games

Gaming has always been considered a “male” thing. How many times have you heard the phrase “Computer games are for boys”? Forget it because it is not true. There is a new genre of games that is getting a great success on the internet, and it is aimed towards completely different audience. These are the fashion games.

What are the fashion games? The games mainly intended for girls in which the main protagonists are clothes. And a sense of fashion. The objective is to create styles suitable for different situations and events. The gameplay is pretty much the same but the environment is very different. There are fashion games where you have to prepare the couple for the wedding and games where must create the style for a day on the job.

The key element, however, is creativity. The fashion games allow you to use clothes and accessories in any way you want to, creating combinations that may not be suitable for the real world. This feature is definitely one of the reasons of the huge success of games inspired by fashion.

There are now a great number of websites dedicated exclusively to playing fashion games. These websites are more than a dress up games for girls, but complete fashion worlds. They offer a quick and easy way to play, ideal for those who want to play but do not have time to address more complex challenges offered by conventional games, or they don’t want to have to install the game on their PC.

There are also many fashion games inspired by celebrities that give the players opportunity to style and make over their favorite style icon.

As the female gaming population grows, it’s likely that more companies will begin to cater to this market and we expect to see even more female focused games in the future.

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To call a smartphone a “phone” is an understatement. This small multifunctional piece of electronics revolutionized the way we communicate, shop, play and for most people it has become almost indispensable.

Apart from being a planner, a video camera, a way to connect to the network, read email, work anywhere, you can even play entertaining games like Angry Birds or Candy Crush Saga. The smartphone also provides all kinds of information about traffic, weather, health, and allows you to make payments.

With the famous “App” you can extend the experience of using the smartphone extending the use of this item. There are in fact several thousand applications for tablets and smartphones, so that the app stores for major platforms, Google Play and Apple Store, are among the most visited websites.

But what is a smartphone?

A smartphone is a mobile device that combines functionality of a phone with the personal management thanks to the different applications. A smartphone is a phone that because of the many functions available is very similar to a computer. It has its own operating system, you can surf the Internet at high speed, connect to the PC and synchronize email and other information. It has expandable memory that allows you to store many files, the advanced camera to take high quality pictures and is equipped with wi-fi, bluetooth and data connection.

A smartphone is useful for work, because you can read Word files without PC; but also for leisure, because you can play and relax anywhere. Push mode allows you to view emails and receive them automatically. The fact that it is small and portable does not sacrifice the user experience. Ease of use and portability combined with the small weight and computing power gives you the advantages of the computer technology on the go.

The development of these devices, however, has changed the habits and lifestyles of individuals in industrialized countries. Not too long ago the interaction and communication was through voice channel, now there is an evolution towards a kind of “virtual” communication, in which the interaction is less pronounced. You don’t explicitly have to tell anyone about what’s going on in your life, but anyone who is interested can simply find out.

The previous period in which the communication was influenced by the older generation of phones was very similar to face-to-face, where communication included the dialogue. The new ways of communicating that are less personal have transferred communication to a somewhat parallel universe.

In the past the model of dialogue was more like a tennis match, in which the two participants exchanged words back and forth, now it is more like a puzzle, where each piece serves to rebuild a fragmented story.

For example, just look around public places to find out how communication has changed through these devices: there are those who are writing an email, post on social networks, others use an app to give colleagues some updates, others play games in multiplayer. The rise of the smartphones is slowly changing us from social to digital beings.

The “Infinity Room” by Refik Anadol

An amazing immersive blend of artistic vision and technology, a 12-minute installation by Refik Anadol is located in Istanbul, Turkey. Utilizing 3-dimensional projection mapping to form a continually transitioning virtual landscape the artist creates an installation of unreal feel.

5305602080 – part of “40 Meters 4 Walls 8 Cubes” exhibition in collaboration with Istanbul Biennial at Zorlu Performing Art Center – this art piece attempts (and succeeds) to merge across the threshold between the virtual space created by the projection technology, and the physical space where the viewer stands.

The result is almost boundless experience of perception of place and self, a feeling of floating in the universe freely.

“Infinity” is an immersive environment project by Refik Anadol. Project is a part of artist’s ongoing “Temporary Immersive Environment Experiments”, a research on audio and visual installations by using the state called immersion. Immersion is a state of consciousness where a participant’s awareness of physical self is overwhelmed by being surrounded in a capturing environment, often artificial, creating a perception of presence in a non-physical world.

In this project “infinity” chosen as a concept, an effort to deconstruct the framework of physical space and transgress the boundaries of the conventional viewing experience to set out to transform the regular flat cinema projection screen into a three dimensional kinetic and architectonic visualization by using contemporary algorithms and formulas.

Light is the major element of the experiment, it is used to blur and interconnect the boundaries between the actual and the fictional, physical and virtual. The person that is immersed into this experience starts to question the relativity of perception and the illusion of physical existence. The experiment examines the spatial qualities of immersive virtual environments and their effect on the embodied person.

It resembles an “infinity room” project by Yayoi Kusama, a mirrored room which allowed participants to experience the creation and expanding of the universe with their own senses.