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Howells Architecture + Design, LLC

One of my favorite kitchen color trends is a palette consisting of black, white and shades of gray and watery blues. The blue glass subway tile backsplash here adds just the right punch of color. Mix in a wooden or natural cork floor for added warmth and texture.
Backsplash: 3- by 6-inch glass subway tiles in Frosted Ocean Grey from The Five Elements

David Johnston Architects

Cobalt blue becomes fashionable every 15 years or so and is currently enjoying an upswing in popularity. But I would never advocate using a color for your backsplash just because it’s trending, as the expense and hassle of changing it once the trend passes is much too great. So if you aren’t sure you’d want this color in your kitchen for very long, paint it on a wall instead. It’ll be much easier (not to mention affordable) to swap out down the road.
If you truly love this color — ever-changing color trends aside — and want to use it for a backsplash, I say go for it. It’s close enough to the indigo color of blue jeans, which we are used to seeing accessorized with any and every color, that it functions as a neutral, giving you flexibility with the palette.
Backsplash: Classic field tile in Opal Blue from Heath Ceramics

Ryan Rhodes Designs, Inc.

It’s tough to compete for attention with this fantastic range, vent hood and stone arch but, boy, the backsplash sure does a good job of it. These beautiful Moroccan blue tiles are hand made in Casablanca. You can mix and match the patterns to create a unique backsplash in your own kitchen.
Backsplash: 4-inch square Fez tiles from Moorish Architectural Design

http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/19681312?utm_source=Houzz&utm_campaign=u407&utm_medium=email&utm_content=gallery2

Navy blue is an elegant, dramatic backsplash color choice. It looks superb when paired with medium to dark wood tones as well as shades of orange, its complementary hue on the color wheel. Backsplash: 2- by 8-inch Debris Series field tile in Navy Gloss from Fireclay.

So Why is Your Marketing Failing? | Katonah NY Realtor

Internet marketers everywhere seem to agree that if you don’t have an audience, you don’t have a future. They argue that if you have to pay for traffic to make money, you’re not just being wasteful, you really don’t understand how the social web works, or where marketing is headed in the years going forward.

Well, I’m going to respectfully disagree. If you ask me, if you want your business to have a future, one audience isn’t enough. The truth is, the most resilient businesses are going to need at least two audiences if they hope to make the most of limited resources to succeed. Maybe that is why your marketing is failing.

Let me explain.

Meet your two audiences

You don’t know it yet, but you actually already have two audiences. The problem is, you’re probably alienating at least one of them. Here’s what I’m talking about:

1. Core audience

These are the people who are completely obsessed with the topic in question. The live, eat, and breath the stuff you blog about. In fact, some of these people will know even more about the topic than you do, at least when it comes to certain aspects of it.

2. Mainstream audience

These people have little or no direct interest in your topic, but they might have some tangential interest in it. For the most part, the only thing they want to know is why any of this should matter to them, and if you can’t keep them entertained, they won’t be hanging around for long.

While your business won’t necessarily die without both of these audiences, let’s just say that without some appeal to both of them, your use of resources will be…less than optimal.

Brands that failed to reach both audiences

There’s certainly no shortage of brands or campaigns that failed because they failed to reach both audiences.

Coca Cola

Take the whole New Coke fiasco. Contrary to popular belief, most people actually liked the new flavor better. They succeeded at reaching the mainstream, but they alienated their core audience. This vocal minority destroyed the new brand, and while they may have ironically strengthened the classic brand with the whole experiment, New Coke itself was a disaster.

Digg

The same goes for Digg. Those of you who have been in internet marketing for a while can remember “the Digg effect” and just how powerful it was to have your site make the front page of the social bookmarking site. But Digg lost a huge portion of its audience after a site redesign that was aimed at a more mainstream audience, and eventually lost so much of its traffic that it was sold and replaced.

Boxee

Brands that fail to reach a mainstream audience don’t fare any better. Internet TV startup Boxee was recently sold to Samsung, and is being shut down. Boxee had a strong core following, but it failed to reach the mainstream due to its steep prices, as well as too much focus on tech specs and not enough on the user experience, and an inability to strike up deals with content owners.

When you look at highly successful brands like Apple, PlayStation, or even Star Wars, you’ll find that they have appeal to rabid fanboys and mainstream audiences alike.

Is viral marketing a myth?

There’s a very good reason for this, and it has to do with audience growth. At CrazyEgg, we recently discussed why viral marketing is a myth, and why customer retention is the true barrier to growth. Brands with a growing audience must do two things: they must attract new members and they must keep their old ones.

It’s simple, really.

If you aren’t appealing to a mainstream audience, you aren’t going to get new visits. If you aren’t appealing to your core audience, you’re not going to keep your previous visitors.

Core audience is more important than mainstream

Now, I personally believe that your core audience is more important than the mainstream. Alienate your core audience and you don’t have a brand. Alienate the mainstream and they’ll probably just forget about you, and possibly rediscover you. Since staying in business is always more important than growth, I’ll side with a core following any day.

That said, having both audiences truly is the winning formula, so let’s talk about how to make that work.

HUGE NEWS: Websites soon to end in .mortgage or .home | Katonah NY Realtor

http://www.housingwire.com/blogs/1-rewired/post/28286-huge-news-websites-soon-to-end-in-mortgage-or-home

Imagine coming to this website by simply typing “housing.wire” into your web address bar.

That’s right, no “.com” necessary.

This hugely flexible option for online businesses — as well as other, brand-specific URL endings — is one step closer to reality.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers recently released more than a thousand potential URL suffixes, a vast increase in the 22 currently in use.

According to law firm Ballard Spahr, which broke the news in its Privacy and Data Security and Intellectual Property Alert, website domain names will start looking dramatically different.

These listings are the first wave of ICANN new generic top-level domain names, or gTLDs, as they are more commonly referred to. Some are already online, and the mortgage-type listings will be available in a matter of months.There is no specific timetable.

“What it means to the mortgage banking industry is they also need to consider their internet security, as well as their trademarks and whether or not they need to defensively register,” said Amy Mushahwar, privacy and data security cousel for Ballard Spahr. “Any internal naming architecture, internal email server with .loans for example, could also create a conflict. They need to take a peek and not only see any names worth registering, but whether any of the thousands of new names could impact their existing digital structure.”

In response to a request from HousingWire, Ballard Spahr pulled a list of housing and banking potential substitutes for .com or .org.

Those examples include, but are not limited to:

.BROKER .CREDIT .CREDITUNION .FINANCE .FINANCIAL .HOME .HOMES .INVESTMENTS .LAND .LEASE .LOAN .LOANS .MORTGAGE .REALESTATE .REALTOR .REALTY

There are also many brand strings available, below are a few examples: .BBT .CAPITALONE .CITI .HSBC Ballard Spahr said it plans to complete a more comprehensive list of potential URL endings in the near term. Companies, and no doubt there will be plenty, looking to cash in on this new option should be warned, however, as risks include adding to consumer confusion.

And that’s not all.

“Issues arising from the complexity of Domain Name System (DNS) expansion, if not fully resolved, could pose security risks and potentially destabilize global Internet operations,” the Ballard Spahr alert stated.

Floored’s interactive 3-D experiences may represent future of virtual home tours | Katonah NY Homes

Floored aims to transform the way agents communicate space to prospective buyers by replacing static images and constrictive videos with interactive 3-D experiences much like those offered in video games. Using a special scanner and proprietary software, Floored renders photographs and 3-D measurements into interactive models that let users move around spaces virtually, and even manipulate them.

“You can look behind you, you can see what’s around the corner, you can walk in from the front room,” said Floored CEO David Eisenberg.

The startup is steadily attracting more interest from real estate brokers, who Eisenberg said may leverage Floored models to attract more online visitors to listings. Lending credence to his claim, Floored was voted the best real estate tech startup at the Realogy FWD Innovation Summit earlier this year.

Eisenberg is scheduled to discuss the future of home virtual tours with other industry experts at the Real Estate Connect panel “Next-Gen Virtual Tours.”

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/12/11/flooreds-interactive-3d-experiences-may-represent-future-of-virtual-home-tours/?utm_source=20131211&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyheadlinespm#sthash.mtjzsrln.dpuf

Katonah-Lewisboro School District Is Now Closed For Monday | Katonah NY Homes

http://bedford.dailyvoice.com/news/katonah-lewisboro-school-district-now-closed-monday

KATONAH-LEWISBORO, N.Y. – The Katonah-Lewisboro School District is now closed for Monday after earlier having a two-hour delay as a result of inclement weather.

5 Fab Not-Beige Bedroom Neutrals | Katonah Real Estate

Let me start off by saying that I am in no way looking to bash beige. There are many beautiful shades of the neutral hue that are appropriate and look fantastic in and on homes. But when I am hired to do a paint color consultation, I often avoid suggesting beige. And clients even ask to avoid it, which leads me to believe that many homeowners are tired of the hue, or they see it as a crutch to fall back on when they’d really prefer something different, something with a little more oomph.
For those of you who just aren’t a fan of bold, intense color but want to move beyond white and beige, I’ve pulled together some of my favorite not-beige neutrals that I think look fantastic in bedrooms. These are softer, more soothing hues that work well with a variety of other colors, materials and styles of decor. Yet they still look fresh and current.

Becki Peckham

Jennifer Ott Interior Design

1. Light Purples
Whether you go for a cool lavender or a warmer mauve, the trick to making this color appear sophisticated rather than sugary is to go with a shade that has a good amount of neutralizing gray or brown in it. The paint color here contains both gray and brown, which neutralizes the purple. You get the best of both worlds — a neutral hue with just a hint of color.

Get a similar look with Beguiling Mauve from Sherwin-Williams

Smart Design Studio

Jennifer Ott Interior Design

This lavender has less gray in it than the previous color, but it still has an iciness, which keeps it soft and soothing.

Get a similar look with North Cascades from Benjamin Moore

Sylvestre Construction

Jennifer Ott Interior Design

This pretty wall color has more red and brown in it, which adds warmth. The hint of brown also nudges it toward neutral territory.

Get a similar look with Plum Frost from Behr.

Abode Interiors

http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/20113860

2. Blue-Grays
A soft blue with a hint of gray is a fantastic choice to create a soothing, relaxing vibe in a bedroom. Those who live in areas where cool and overcast days outnumber warm and sunny ones may want to opt for a hue with more blue and less gray.

Ideas to Protect Coasts from Storm Surge | Katonah NY Homes

http://www.jlconline.com/stormwater-management/ideas-to-protect-coasts-from-storm-surge.aspx

In locations prone to storm surge flooding, zoning and code rules adopted at the state and local level require special measures to make homes safer from damage or destruction in a major storm. But hundreds of thousands of houses, commercial buildings, public structures, and industrial facilities already exist in flood-threatened areas, and fixing one building or facility at a time could take centuries—at a cost that boggles the minds of policy-makers.

So the Federal Government is looking to industry and academia for solutions that might work at a neighborhood scale, or even a regional scale. So far, policymakers are still at the brainstorming stage: This week, Shaun Donovan, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, selected 10 project concepts from a candidate pool of 41 proposals submitted by teams of experts. It’s all part of the “Rebuild by Design” competition, launched last June by HUD as an effort of the Hurricane Sandy Task Force.

Reports the Washington Post: “The winning ideas include an array of strategies for making the coastline more resilient in an age of rising seas, including natural breakwaters that could take the punch out of storm surf headed for Staten Island, a ring of water-trapping canals and parks for Hoboken, N.J., and channels in Long Beach, N.Y., that would help drain Long Island’s coastal bays during storms or periods of heavy rain.” (For the full Post item, see: “Federal officials pick 10 ideas for making NY, NJ coastlines more resilient after Sandy,” by Associated Press).

Of course, there’s no guarantee that all of the ideas will ever become reality—or even that any of them will. Some could require billions of dollars in public funding—although other proposals, like the “Big U” concept suggested by Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingals, might not. The Danes argue that major, big-ticket public works are hard to accomplish and may do more harm than good. Instead, they’re proposing a medley of smaller projects that address flood risks at the neighborhood or street level, which could be constructed independently on different schedules.

All Aboard Florida’s Ft. Laud. Station Will Be In Flagler Village | Katonah Real Estate

A word on the station’s layout. >>

All Aboard Florida is planning to announce on November 22nd that their Fort Lauderdale train station will be just north of Broward Boulevard, in Flagler Village. The Las Olas Riverfront site is out. It will likely span the tracks from the empty Florida Power & Light lot on the west side of the railroad tracks between Broward and NW 2nd Avenue to the Broward Central Terminal bus depot on the east side of the tracks, a location that was established as the preferred spot on the railroad’s environmental assessment report. This completes selection of the project’s four station locations in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and Orlando.

Also in the environmental assessment report (it was full of goodies), the station, which will be designed by firms Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Zyscovich, will be centered around a great hall with an elevated waiting room and concourse above the tracks connecting to a 35 foot wide central platform. Sure, it won’t be as monumental as the Miami terminus station, but it won’t exactly be dinky either. · Fort Lauderdale FEC Station [Curbed Miami] · All Aboard Florida coverage [Curbed Miami]

Overheated’ San Francisco market cools off | Katonah NY Real Estate

The number of homes and condos sold in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area fell 3.9 percent in October from a year ago, a level that’s 11.2 percent below the historic average for the month.

The San Francisco Chronicle said despite the decrease in sales, to 7,595 homes and condos, price appreciation has continued in the “overheated” market.

Source: sfgate.com. – See more at: http://www.inman.com/wire/overheated-san-francisco-market-cools-off/#sthash.wedGnhiY.dpuf

Long Island Estate With a Royal Connection Asks $11M | Katonah Real Estate