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I've just flipped the switch on an exciting new project for Toronto-based arts organisation Indian Electronica - its a campaign to help channel international momentum in reaction to the BBC's announcement of plans to close their Asian Network station.

You can visit the campaign at http://savetheasiannetwork.com and read more about its justification and technical make-up in our client projects section here.

The event we hosted here in Toronto last week was a great success - thanks to our panelists, the OVA, Kaltura and of course, to all who came out to watch Lawrence Lessig talk via video-conference + engage with our panel! The video footage of the panel discussion is being encoded and I'll post it here later this week.

I've been a fan of Vimeo for a while now - its a video hosting service similar to YouTube but with a keener appreciation of interface design and community base largely focused on cool techniques for creating motion graphics which push the envelop. 

Vimeos users are generally professionals or serious hobbyists when it comes to video - which early-on saw them creating a commercial offering called their 'Plus' service to offer hi-def video hosting/on-demand streaming with configurable embedded players which can be limited by domain and feature custom colors, logos and post-roll options.

The latest innovation in their offering for Plus account-holders is a new approach to viewing video statistics.  'PlusStats' has some nifty stats I haven't seen anywhere else - like displaying where your videos are embedded (URLs + georgraphic locations) and the number of loads vs. plays.

You can check out a demo of PlusStats here: http://www.vimeo.com/stats/demo

Directed by alternate reality-gaming thinker Jane McGonigal and produced/funded by the World Bank Institute, this looks like the most exciting call for social innovation using online tools yet!

Its an online game directed at affecting social change which can earn top players mentorships and a role in a World Bank sponsored summit in Washington DC.

To sign up, visit http://www.urgentevoke.com and create an account - after admin approval you'll be given access to more information about how to play... 

[Cheers to Christy Dena for the heads-up on this one]

Despite my distaste for '2.0' suffixing, the term Fashion 2.0 is being used across the web in reference to new trends within the fashion industry reforming advertising, procurement, production and other aspects of business using the latest web technologies.

Without getting into the nitty gritty of how the fashion industry is specifically evolving using particular online spaces and platforms, I wanted to quickly make note of two projects we've undertaken and launched this year - Atelier Rosemarie Umetsu (http://atelierrosemarieumetsu.com) and JUMA (http://juma.ca).  Both are very different in terms of aesthetic and information architecture, so as to accurately affect the difference in how each firm does business within the industry.

Atelier Rosemarie Umetsu focuses on creating haute couture and limited, non-seasonal, lines for established female performers in the Arts.  Though not every piece they create is made to be presented on a grand stage, the Atelier's namesake owner and designer has a background in classical music - an extension of this is her tendancy to work with people socially or professionally related to the performing arts.

JUMA was founded in 2003 by brother-sister team Jamil and Alia Juma, who have since focused on creating collections seasonally which retail world-wide and target a young, hip but slightly conservative customer.  They make clothes for both men and women which can be worn in a variety of contexts, though not as formally as Atelier Rosemarie Umetsu's.

I have known both firms' owner-operators for a number of years but only been engaged commercially through Design Guru with JUMA since 2006/2007 when we worked together to create and launch their first dynamic site - which allowed functions like blogging and e-commerce and saw them develop an online identity for the label.  The time since has been a very interesting learning period for myself and the JUMA team which involved us regularly discussing the potential for independent designers to use online tools and leapfrog the barriers to market established by advertising dollars of conventionally large international fashion houses.

Only in the last few years has communication technology allowed start-ups like JUMA to build a world-wide audience and develop a relationship with fans/friends of their label that is engaging and produced with high aesthetic value.  The new site we produced and launched for them this month exemplifies this and provides platform for a truer expression of their brand than ever realized (read the case study).

Now, given that Atelier Rosemarie Umetsu is a smaller outfit which does not deal with retailers, their online needs are very different than those of JUMA.  Quite simply, the Atelier relies on word-of-mouth and mainly needed the best calling card ever - their website is essentially a modern, interactive brochure.  The site supports word-of-mouth and doesn't drive it - through mainly providing two types of content; photos and press clippings.  The photos are organized into galleries depicting events at the Atelier, custom-curated shoots held at the Atelier, clothing being worn for press shots and live at performances and so on - they collectively tell the tale of the Atelier's clothing being desirable amongst an artistic vanguard and place it within a cultural/social context.

Despite the differences between the two fashion design firms we have been working with, Drupal has proven to be an excellent platform for developing the right solution for each of their needs.  Its innate scalability means that as their business models develop, their site's can grow to feature new functionality as needed.  Being more than a simple content management system (a la Joomla/Wordpress), Drupal has allowed us to create custom dynamic data types and displays, such as the Atelier's bespoke gallery and JUMA's innovative online shopping interfaces.  As well, with OpenID and Facebook Connect logins integrated, Drupal allows labels like JUMA to use their own website as the social glue that binds audiences they develop through spaces/platforms like Facebook to hopefully drive sales whilst keep their fans/friends engaged.

In addition to technological whizzbang, both sites are very simple to update; Drupal allows us to build very simple interfaces that only present features relevant to the person looking at the site - so JUMA's interns can post to the blog, say, but not have access to e-commerce settings crucial to the firm's commercial success.  We understand that no matter what purpose websites serve to whomever we make them for, they should make life online more enjoyable, fulfilling and easy.

Now that its live, I will be posting regular updates on Fashion 2.0 lessons learned through the JUMA case-study and try to explain how Drupal can play a larger role in the fashion industry.

If you work in fashion and would like to discuss your project with us, please get in touch!

Now that the barrage of final touches to our 2009 projects is pretty much tackled (new client project details will be uploaded in the next few days), I've decided to place some ads on a few designguru web properties (like JoomlaFeed and WhyJoomla?) to [hopefully] usher in new work. 

Typically, I'm cautious with using our own adspace so I thought I might as well have fun with this campaign!  Kicking it off is a lovely animated 300x250 spot inspired by a favourite board-game of mine.:)

Check back for more spots as they go live!

Thursday February 25th, 5:30-10:00pm
@ the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto
215 Spadina Ave, Suite 160

RSVP: http://lessigtalktoronto.eventbrite.com

A Wireside Chat with Lawrence Lessig

6:00pm - 7:30pm
Professor Lessig will deliver a talk on fair use and politics in online video from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, MA/USA - we are projection-screening a live hi-def stream of the talk.

This is a talk about copyright in a digital age, and the role (and importance) of a doctrine like “fair use.” Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, and is essential for commentary, criticism, news reporting, remix, research, teaching and scholarship with video.

As a medium, online video will be most powerful when it is fluid, like a conversation. Like the rest of the internet, online video must be designed to encourage participation, not just passive consumption.

Discussion Panel

7:30pm - 8:15pm
Picking up on Lessig's talk our panel will share takes on participatory media culture and the changing nature of content ownership and usage in the Digital Age.

We will also be joined by videoconference for an address by Kaltura co-founder Dr Shay David.

w/ McLean Greaves / Zoomer Media,
Mark Surman / Mozilla Foundation,
Brett Gaylor / RiP A Remix Manifesto + EyeSteelFilm

Moderated by: Qasim Virjee - Principal, Design Guru

& Social

8:15pm - 10:00pm
Attendees will have a chance to mingle with panelists and each other over refreshments.

PRESENTED BY:
Design Guru & the Open Video Alliance

EVENT SPONSOR:

 

 

designguru.tv is our series of interviews and event footage featuring people we find interesting.

In this second episode Andrea Carson relates her definition of art, describes art scenes in Canada and tells us about her blog, View on Canadian Art (VoCA).

This short film introduces 'open video' as a movement away from corporate structures in the motion picture industry, towards creative and collaborative freedom.

Running just 1 minute long, the film was created by Qasim Virjee at designguru.org in January 2010 to be considered in competition by the Open Video Alliance.  Please leave comments on the competition page here: http://contest.openvideoalliance.org/video/17869/what-is-open-video

* You may share or remix this video in accordance with the Creative Commons BY License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)

FEATURING:
- Matt Black from Coldcut and Ninjatune
- Audio by Abdul Smooth
- Video footage of D-Fuse's 2009 'Particle' performance in São Paulo - shot by toby*spark

LINKS:
- ninjatune.com
- abdulsmooth.com
- dfuse.com
- sparkav.co.uk

The HTC Dream was the first hardware sold with Google's Android platform, a free/open-source operating system for mobile devices.

At the end of last year, when the Canadian telecommunications giant Rogers started selling these phones, I was extremely excited to get my hands on one.  Leading up to that I had gone through 2 versions of top-end Nokia phones running on Symbian (an N80 then N95 8gb) and was keen to get a touch-screen device yet not keen on the iPhone's proprietary software and inability to legally be 'unlocked' (being someone who travels and doesn't like paying large roaming charges to monopolistic carriers like Rogers.) So, when I found an HTC Dream on craigslist around Halloween I dropped the chap a line immediately and have thoroughly enjoyed using Android since.

I must say, though I like the HTC hardware, and Android itself, I've been very unhappy with how Rogers, the carrier I use, has approached their marketing and customer service for these phones - to aide sales for HTC Magic, for example, they disabled the software keyboard on Dream models so that customers would more simply see the two phones as competiting products based on falisy - the Magic doesn't have a hardware keyboard.

In addition to cheeky advertising gimmicks, Rogers has been tardy to announce a software update for their HTC Android phones - this has sparked huge community backlash (check out this forum thread) given that version 1.5, which my phone runs, was released in April 2009 and has since been updated by Google thrice (to 1.6 in September , 2.0 in December and then 2.1 this January!)  Adding insult to injury, the version of 1.5 they have been selling phones with apparently had a flaw which disabled 911 emergency dialling access!!!

Last week I got a couple of text messages from Rogers telling me that I had to disable my GPS location service on the phone to help them troubleshoot a 911 access problem.  When I got another message from them a few days back I ignored it thinking it was the same reminder, until yesterday - when I noticed that I had no data service on my phone?!  Looking back at that txt from Rogers last night I realised that they now needed me to run a software update on my device to enable 911 and that it was 'mandatory' - without making the update within 24hrs of this notice, my data would be cut off?!!?  After booting up an old PC of mine to run the update software today (they don't support Mac), losing all my data from the phone's main memory in the process (luckily Google is the store-house for my contacts and email though I still have to reinstall all my apps), I noticed that my data service is still not working!?

I looked all over Rogers' website today, then rang them and only after being on hold for some time waiting to speak to a human tech support agent did I discover, by way of a pre-recorded on-hold message, that it could take up to 24hrs to restore data *after* installing the OS update! This wasn't in their warning txt and they never sent me an email or phonecall (an automated one would've sufficed), let alone posted this message in an accessible place on their website.  Also noteworthy is that nowhere in this fiasco did they address why this update still kept us using Android 1.5 or when a 'real' (ie. not emergency) update would be rolled out.

And so now I wait, checking to see if those little bars for service get annotated with an 'Edge' or '3g' icon...

Here's what people are tweeting about this:

Personally, I love the concept of rubbing an on-screen item to 'heat it up' and then share it across social networking websites/platforms etc...

More information can be found @ Bonnier's website.

15 years ago, the majority of websites were collections of static pages curated by people who didn't have commercial goals for whatever they published.  'Content' back then was pretty simple - usually copy with imagery comprised of posts - the Web's infrastructure was limited such that the rich media applications we take for granted today (eg. on-demand video streaming) couldn't exist due to phenomena such as bandwidth limitations and even the youthful innocence of html itself.

Through the boom-days of the mid-late 1990s however, 'content' became something salable (either itself holding perceived monetary value or otherwise by driving 'traffic' that could be sold through advertising) and the whole Web took on a more impersonal aesthetic.  The birth of 'portals' and establishment of ubiquitous banner advertising space imbibed the Web with uninspired/unrealistic commercial purpose and through the early 00s it was difficult for people to regain pre-boom enthusiasm for using web-space as room for un-justified self-expression.

Something changed in the middle of this decade however; the Web had grown-up infra-structurally; for most parts of the world, access speeds to the Internet sufficed delivery of rich media and access points were more numerous than ever before - these coupled with people en masse feeling familiar with the Web through using it to acquire common and specialized knowledge [from reading news sites to wikipedia to finding anything query-able through Google] plus do common tasks (such as banking), allowed the Web to take on a new social significance.  Since the beginning of the Web, there had always been potential for social interaction on it, but until this simple concept became popularized by mainstream [news] media outlets, middling academics, the marketing establishment grasping at new media straws, and others as the 'new Web' or 'Web 2.0,' there wasn't much gusto for new platforms and services to be developed which could stitch social interactions on the web together.

As spaces and platforms emerged through the 00s - all flying the flag of Web 2.0, it seems that people had become used to socializing online and this familiarity begged a feeling of corpus to relate conversations to.  Whether that corpus means a central space on the web to express oneself better-than-elsewhere or simply tie together one's multitude of identities/accounts, easy-to-update websites typically featuring a list of reverse-chronologically-ordered posts, known as 'blogs' seem to have become de facto - in being cheap, accessible and visible [re: Google and being part of a host network etc...].

By the end of the 00s the Web was more universal than ever before and had gone through its second major commercial experience; not in providing platform for commercial activity as in the 90s but this time by being rebranded.  'Web 2.0' is somewhat of a misnomer in propagating the myth of online social interaction being a *new* phenomena.  Right now Facebook, say, has over 350,000,000 users from around the planet all sharing media and confabulation with each other often, but because it is a closed space (registration is required to play children!), with an internal culture developing [framed by its functional tool-set and native user interface], its members are hindered in believing that the interaction they experience can exist simply by virtue of them being on the Web.

The nature of the web though is Open - its developed spaces may be vast and exclusive, as with Facebook, but in attempts to reach the largest audience [and convert them somehow into customers?], the companies and individuals acting as developers must address the issue of common space; in so far as interfacing with each other. The truth in this has been witnessed recently with networks trying to become platforms by opening up Application Programming Interfaces [APIs] which allow information interchange across their virtual borders.  Blogs should not require duplicate manual posting in order to maintain one's identity between semi-closed networks but instead act more organically as repositories of one's actions online - with media detailing one's online interests and activities.  The development of these repositories should be somewhat effortless [ideally even doing away with cut'n'paste?] in order for their truth in being reflections of one's identity to be more accurate.

Moving into the teens of this new millennium, 'content' will become more fluid through multi-media socializing and online spaces will become more accessible allowing for dialogues to exist cross-platform.  Posterous is the best example available for demonstrating how a blog can become a more social corpus which is automated to yield the effect of organic development.  After signing up for a [free] Posterous account, you can setup a blog in seconds; choosing a theme for it or even jumping into custom creating your own aesthetic [with a single-file html/css template editable through their web-based administration area].  Then the fun begins - Posterous is uniquely innovative in allowing you to 'autopost' your Posterous content to many other 'Web 2.0' spaces/networks/platforms - among other things, your blog posts can now automagically:

• Tweet links to themselves,
• Post (per-tag etc...) to another website - such as your company's Wordpress or Drupal-powered website,
• Upload photos to your flickr photostream,
• Update your status on Facebook,
• Upload videos to Youtube,
• Podcast audio recordings.

This new decade promises continued adoption of 'smart-phones' worldwide as well as increased bandwidth; allowing more people to easily create/capture multi-media and get it online with little noticeable delay - we've already seen this with the rise of citizen journalism [re: Iran's political turmoil through 2009...].  Of course, no matter how much trend-spotters may say that mobile devices will be using fewer Operating Systems [due to larger adoption or Android my handset manufacturers and Apple's continued sales of the iPhone], the vast majority of mobile devices on data connections to Edge/3g/HSPDA/4g networks all offer email.

Posterous has taken a brilliant stance in upholding email as the primary means for its users to get their content online.  Once you have an account, simply email posterous.com your content and it will automatically appear on your blog in seconds, and be autoposted to the applicable external accounts you hold (with platforms like Twitter or sites like Flickr).  They have a bevy of options for flagging content to just be autoposted to specific accounts, and offer you multiple Posterous blogs to which you can as well flag email posts to be directed very easily.

Of course, you aren't limited to posting via email; as with most conventional CMS/blogging systems you can login via the web to type up posts or use their amazingly simple Bookmarklet - which loads through your browser and can retrieve multimedia content from nearly any [non-flash] website for you to comment on and instantly publish to your Posterous blog.

The implications of using email to feed a Posterous blog and, by-extension, one's other online accounts, are tremendous.  Think beyond urban locations in North American or European countries - think beyond the policing that limits the Web's visibility in places like Iran or China; the world uses email and if a computer or mobile (or any other) device can connect to the Internet, irrespective of the Web, individuals and organizations can now post to their blog(s) easier than ever before, *and* to a multitude of other spaces/networks/platforms that collectively make up the most true and lag-less online corpus they've ever been able to have.

For many people around the world just now adopting the Web, Posterous [and the virtues it upholds + copycat service providers + innovators to follow] may offer the ability to exist online more sociably and effectively than ever before - participating actively in previously closed-door or otherwise inaccessible conversations, with conceptual freedom that is a core facet of the Web, and technical ease.

This is the first episode of designguru.org's new series of first-person interviews and event footage featuring interesting people we know relating how they use technology.

In the interview, Mark Kuznicki (remarkk.com) details some experiences gained through his work establishing and developing the changecamp.ca platform, which aims to address issues of citizenship and the nature of government in the 'age of participation.'

On a snowy morning walk to the office today I came across a Grand & Toy delivery truck parking - immediately I noticed their advertisement on its side and am intrigued by the campaign it referenced; Grand & Toy is now offering online customers 48 hour delivery - in attempts to bundle their delivery commitments better and relatively do a better job of impacting the environment less.

Hats off to the Royal Bank of Canada for finally taking a stab at making their online banking experience better; they've just announced a redesign is upcoming and detailed what the new interface will look like as well as offer functionally through a micro-site.

Its nice to see a bank go through the effort of showcasing how they are trying to offer better service to customers using the web but I was shocked, looking through their redesign announcement-microsite that there's no feedback call!  Read more »

Posted via web from Design Guru notes

Whilst in an airport newsagent this holiday season I ventured away from my usual selection of publications and picked up a copy of .inc magazine.  As I expected, the issue was yawn-worthy - in it was a piece (why oh why did Time Inc shut down Business 2.0?) entitled 'Five years of Start-up Insanity' that described some hurdles a chap by the name of Philip Walker experienced whilst attempting to launch a new Life Insurance company.

The piece itself didn't get me thinking too much - but it did trigger some reflections on projects I launched under the Design Guru banner this past year and whether or not they were themselves capable of being 'start-ups' - in the tech/business community there's a lot of hyped lingo and expectations around what that term entails which, in the rapid world of agile-(web)development is easy to ignore.

I haven't quite written out a list of New Year's Resolutions for 2010 but when I do, I'm certainly going to include 'take another look at the projects Design Guru has started and incubated (http://designguru.org/project-incubator) over the past few years to asses their potential for financial sustainability'.

You see, in-between developing projects for clients its always fun to develop new skills and ways of thinking by very quickly trying to solve a problem on the web without being hindered by a profit motive - but once that solution's first iteration is live we often don't find regular time to go through further iterations or ('development rounds') which could turn these passion projects into vehicles for turning profit...

Perhaps some articles Om Malik just posted will help this thinking process... More to come soon...

The Essential Startup Reader: 10 Lessons In Entrepreneurship:
http://gigaom.com/2010/01/02/startup-company-lessons/

Designbump is sort of like a Digg for Designers/web-creatives and they just published a piece worth checking out - its a list of 45 great websites for all sorts of different communities/organizations/individuals which are all powered by Drupal.

Drupal is an excellent framework for building websites and offers tremendous flexibility for creating beautiful interfaces (its actually our main weapon of choice for client + incubator projects) - check out Designbump's list and see for yourself :)

We've just filled out a profile on 37 Signals' new project called Haystack. 

Carrying forward their love for simple interfaces (these are the guys who changed social project management with their hosted Basecamp web-app), Haystack is an easy to use, light-weight listing service for web professionals that differentiates them by city/country.

It will be interesting to see whether this results in more of you visiting us from Toronto (or elsewhere in Canada)  looking for web firms in the city, or whether this will open us up to potential project partners in unexpected regions of the world (we're used to mainly working with folks in the UK, East Africa and USA).

Wherever you're based, if you've made it here from Haystack welcome!  Drop us a comment below or an email and say hello! :)

Online Advertising is just over 10 years old - that is to say, agencies have been selling space online for attention/action-grabbing purpose for that long (the Interactive Advertising Bureau was founded in 1996 - they're the folks who set standard banner dimensions etc...).

Over the course of this decade not much has changed when it comes to banner ads - perhaps new sizes of ads have become standardized, delivery platforms have become more accesible, ads themselves a now ubiquitous facet ofthe web-browsing experience and visual terrain, but it has only been recently that advertisers began to address how these ads can be unique to the web. 

Don't get me wrong, I know 'Punch the Monkey' spots couldn't be placed in a magazine - soliciting click-throughs with moving objects is certainly an 'interactive' type thing. However, simple ads like that miss the potential for facilitating a true web experience and benefiting from that.  The online ad industry is still young and its obvious most advertisers (if not agencies they hire) are concerned with charging per click rather than per impression - that distinction is their value measure in online space but it relies on success being when someone is sent to a specific destination where a very [print-style] conventional adspace is wholly owned by the advertiser.

People want to keep going until they want to stop on the web, and not stop where someone else tells them to - one simple destination to 'read more' and then end an experience of learning about something isn't very satisfying ands rapidly feeling more un-weblike.

I came across an example recently of one advertiser who has an accurate grasp of this phenomenon when we added a Google campaign on jcreport.com to advertise Google's Chrome browser.  What makes this campaign so reflective of the 'now' state of the web is the campaign's use of web-video; they've created a sort of online short film festival with each entry focused on their product - Google Chrome [browser]. The ad tags we serve on jcreport.com offer a flash video to a person looking at the JC Report - within a banner ad space.  Whilst looking at the space, whether the video is playing or not, you can click through to Google Chrome Shorts' youtube channel to watch more videos - much cooler than clicking directly over to say, http://www.google.com/chrome [where you could potentially learn more about the software and download it.].

I love the Google Chrome Shorts campaign, and thinks it represents an effective use of web-ad space because it :

• Engages people using videos,
• Employs multiple narratives using totally different videos directed/produced by different people etc,
• Takes you to a next step upon click which isn't a dead end, entertainment-wise
• Reinforces Google's youtube website

A lot of lessons can be learned for groups advertising online by this example and checking out the Google Chrome Shorts channel on youtube.

An example video from the campaign is below.

It seems so simple - you charge an advertiser x amount per # of impressions, bung a javascript ad tag they give you into your website et voila, you are making money serving an ad.  However, there are many nuances to measuring the success of how that ad is targetted, and if you have control over variables such as exclusivity or impression spreads through a time period, things can get tricky.

Given how accesible ad serving is today, many people are avoiding Google's Adsense placements and instead looking for their own bespoke implementations of an ad server.  One we work with exclusively @ Design Guru is called OpenX - a great piece of Open Source Software that gives industry leading functionality to any of our clients who need to manage ad campaigns, rather than, say just placing one or two dedicated spots on their site(s).

I got thinking about how confusing the notion of ad serving is today after bouncing some concept notes over to a client and thought it may be useful to repost them here.  This got penned in response to the question: "How come I can't see a particular ad in a spot live on my site even though I've reloaded the same page a few times?"

Well, there is a fine balance between how many ads share a space, the weighting of those ads individually, the periods those ads share the same space and so on.  This all adds up to the fact that a banner advertisement may need many more reloads than you'd assume without working the numbers.

For example:

If there are 10 ads sharing the same space that yeilds 100,000 impressions per month, you can assume that each ad gets shown 10,000 times per month.  However, if they are weighted differently such that some are forced to display more often and thus reach higher than 10,000 say, impression targets (or even less than 10,000 - as is the case with our current Lacoste campaigns), the other ads in the mix will be affected accordingly.

Now, if one of those 10 ads has been set to display with a low weight and effectively captures 2,000 impressions/mo, one would have to reload the same page to see the ad 50 times! [100,000/5,000]

This is where using the stats as accurate guidelines makes sense; the probability of seeing a single ad is isn't as high as you'd expect.

For anyone running their own ad servers who are trying to understand this stuff, I recommend looking through the stats for past campaigns you've run with a calculator - for revising those already running, and better placing future ads, think about how many impressions you want them to achieve per month and whether those should be capped (ie. once reached, the ad auto turns off) or spread through the month by appropriate weighting, or exclusive (as when you want a campaign to gain maximum geo-targetting potential, for example.)

Ad serving can get complex and it helps to have a clear grasp of what goals a campaign should have when it is initiated so we can setup each one appropriately.

Check out some features of OpenX in the video below - if you'd like to place ads on your website, drop us a line - we can help make sense of all this :)

Almost every day I come accross folks who want a website but don't have the cash to hire a professional firm to get them online, or don't have the time or technical confidence in themselves to treat their website as more than a weekend-in-the-garage DIY project.

Often cases for many of these people, a fully-blown content management system implementation is too much for their simple project - I say this because, though CMS' may offer scalability and wonderful modular architectures, they come with learning curves that include getting to know the system in order to start using it.

So, I've decided today to start referring these individuals and organisation to Indexhibit: in their words its:

A web application used to build and maintain an archetypal, invisible website format that combines text, image, movie and sound.

Like Joomla or Drupal or Wordpress, you download Indexhibit and upload/install it on your host/server and enter in information for the database you'll let the software use to store information that makes up your site.

Indexhibit is very very very simple to use - it has an admin side in addition to the main site and basically allows you to create 'sections' which store different articles.  As far as content editing, its got some simple icons for adding links, embedding photos and so on within articles, but accepts html so you can code articles if you want to.

Integrated into the article editing page is the ability to select how that page loads - the 'exhibition format' includes popular displays like 'thickbox' (larger images pop up in a light-box).  

* So if you were a photographer, for example, you could use Indexhibit to quickly create an archive portfolio of your best shots, all categorized and displayed in auto-created thumbnailed galleries with a lightbox effect etc...Pretty cool.

Indexhibit is pretty straight-forward to style and customize and just a few tweaks here and there will give the simplest website characteristic feel.

I'll be playing around with Indexhibit more in the next few weeks and post back about some services I'm thinking Design Guru could offer around it.  In the meantime, check out some sites people have made using this simple software:

http://www.picapica.be / http://www.leesatkowski.com / http://www.danieljhatton.com / http://sixohfour.net

 

We just recently flipped the switch on a new online shop for our friends at JUMA - one of the premier Canadian fashion houses.

JUMA now sells pieces from their current and past collections for men and women through a storefront completely integrated with their Joomla-powered website (which we designed and developed for them back in 2007).

See it in action (and go buy some great clothes) at:

http://www.juma.ca

At the end of last week, our Seedling initiative announced that we'd be focusing on providing support for Joomla through our distributions of it.

What this means is that now anyone can download Seedling's distribution of Joomla for just$49 and optionally choose to add 1 year of email/web ticket support for just $25/month.

Read more about this in the Seedling Blog.

I'm pleased to announce the availability of our newest in-house project from Design Guru.  Its a distribution package of Joomla we're simply calling 'Seedling.'

Our aim with Seedling's distribution of Joomla is to make it much easier to get started using this great content management system.

We've been using Joomla for around 5 years now.  Ultimately, in that time its gotten so difficult for people to pick through the over-4000 3rd party extensions available that the Joomla learning curve has gotten too steep for a lot of people.  In my opinion, that's not cool - Joomla is a great piece of software, and I really want to see more people feel comfortable using it as soon as they start - not after months of pulling their hair out.

The distro is commercial GPL and we're keeping the price really low - its just $249 CAD per copy.  Non-profits + educational institutions get %15 off and all customers receive an automatic %20 discount if they're installing Seedling Joomla for 5 or more sites. 

You can find out a lot more about Seedling over @ http://www.plantseedling.com and through this walk-through video I put together last week.

* A press release of the announcement is attached in PDF form below the clip.

The World Wide Web is about 20 years old this year and since its inception has become increasingly complex on the whole, yet easier to interact with per interface/site - especially if you are a content producer/publisher.  Gone are the days of the 1990s when a website consisted of hand-coded HTML housed in many many seperate pages; more than ever before we are iiberated from needing to know how a system works in order to use it.

However, there do come times when the system needs attention; last week I began thinking about how best to approach a major software upgrade on our Why Joomla blog.  The [old] site was running an archaic and now redundant version of Joomla and, given that its purpose is to discuss best practice when using Joomla software,it needed a major overhaul.  Of course, anxiety buids when first-considering such an overhaul - you see, probably for the past 2 years I hadn't thought at all about the system which allowed me to post to whyjoomla.com and I was now faced with completely replacing it.

The scale of this upgrade was large because recently Joomla has been re-written from the ground-up; its core-team of developers have greatly improved the software's architecture and I was actually excited to take a stab at the upgrade, just so that once done, my workflow as a contributor to the site would be that much easier and more empowered.

As it turns out, my anxieties were somewhat un-warranted; through the process of discovering my best approach to the upgrade I learnt a lot quickly about my options and that it would take a lot less time that I expected. All-in-all, the migration from Joomla 1.0x to the new and improved 1.5 platform took just 2 hours!!  Though, I did speed things up by implementing a new packaged form of Joomla we're releasing soon under the 'Seedling' banner [check back here for more info soon!] - which gave me all the 3rd party tools such as commenting, pre-installed along with our lovely, very simple, new theme.

Increasingly, experiences like this one are suggesting to me that it is becoming easier to understand web systems/software and that on the whole, more end users will be able to get a higher level of functionalty/use from this.  I'll be reflecting on these notions over the next few weeks as we ramp up to releasing Seedling...

I am convinced, more than ever as I move through my youth, that what I consider a memory is really a composite: a complex confluence of oral narratives, synaptic pathways, photographs, scents, embodied experience. It is rare to have what I have come to consider a true, or unaided, memory: an imprint; a dream-like sequence of images flickering on inner screens; voice, sound, movement, sensation tumbling together just behind or beyond the present. I would say I possess a handful of Memories, and thousands upon thousands of semi-remembrances that have become Constructed Memories.

These are the stories we are told about ourselves by family and old friends, the videos we see of ourselves taken my early adopter aunts and uncles, and the photo albums, vinyl or cyber, that chronicle our lives, more or less consistently and to which we have been subjected or had access over many years.

I am interested in exploring this nexus of sensory stimuli in so far as our selves are concerned. The individual construction of identity is undeniably a social process; the combination of the social acting upon us while we, through our own memetic tunnels and tunes, act upon ourselves. The melodies will be different, so too the colour and light of each re-constituted, re-membered, moment.

The design of our lives must be impacted not only by the design, uncontrolled and uncontrollable in many instances as it likely was, of our pasts, but also by how we filter, reconstitute and carry it.

Whether we put them in small leather pouches and carry it around our necks like water for a long trek, place them behind glass paned cabinetry to be dusted off at arm's length when protocol demands, or whether we keep them in the closet like our grandmother's sweaters and our grandfather's hats, influences how we see ourselves, the world around us, and is influenced by this notion of The Past, our Personal History.

Oral narrative, combined with sensory memory, provides the basis for a new photographic exploration of the objects, sensations and stories that make us believe we remember who we are when, in fact, without them, we may have forgotten. Or we may have decided to be something else, somebody else, entirely.

Fellow Canadian, Boingboing co-founder and contributing Wired Magazine author Cory Doctorow has released a new book called Little Brother - like other science-fiction works of his, its been released both from TOR publishing as well as under Creative Commons license online.  Yup; you can download the book for free in formats like PDF - to bung onto your media player and read on the tube.

I've grabbed a copy online and am excited to read it soon, though it will actually be the first ebook I attempt to read on-screen and to be frank, I'm a little daunted by the prospect - may just end up buying a hard copy if I can find one in the shops [but, I *love* the choice to read it for free of course!]

The book was written in 2007 and is about a San Fransico based character who gets caught up in battling the Department of Homeland Security... Here's a clip with more info:

In the constantly evolving web services industry its hard so take a step back and switch focus from keeping abreast of technological advancements [in order to offer clients supercool new gizmos and feed an insatiable gear-whore craving to learn] in order to regain objective perspective on where your firm is going and what options you have to excercise experience and knowledge to create something other than for clients.

Though not obsessivly a fan like many web professionals, for about 8 years I have been keenly watching the evolution of 37signals - a Chicago based firm now known internationally for their suite of web tools including Basecamp [a simple project management software that has become an almost-utility in the industry].

If you ask the majority of their customers, 37signals is simply a company run by passionate individuals [founder Jason Fried has given numerous Steve Jobsian talks at tons of conferences, campuses etc...] who want to make working easier using the web.  However, the company hasn't always been a software company - and their understanding of making applications that work well is rooted in experience streamlining web-design process.

Having just jumped onto archive.org's wayback machine to see whether there's a trace of how 37signals has evolved, I was pleasantly surprised to see extensive archival of their [static] site circa early 00's.  In fact, if I'm reading the URL correctly, even as recent as 3 years ago, the firm's main offering was not software but design and redesign services.  in 2005 their rate sheet saw 3 services priced between $7,500 and $15,000 to not create dynamic sites employing databases and scripting languages, but basic html/xhtml pages empliying clean, simple user interfaces.

If you visit 37signals.com today you'll see their McDonalds-claim of over 1,000,000 people subscribed to their software services [they dont sell software but provide it as a monthly subscription service] and its neat to see this hallmark of their success - both in terms of making more money [assumedly ;) ], and being now in a position to apply the years of experience/knowledge they gained from working almost exclusively [re]designing web interfaces.

A few days back I was trying to book a flight on Porter Airlines - a small airline which flies out of the only downtown airport here in Toronto.  After hearing rave reviews of their excellent in-person service, I was absolutely shocked at how badly their poorly built website reflected such reviews.

After spending nearly an hour trying to submit site registration and payment processing forms across two browsers (Firefox and Safari on a Mac) to no avail, I threw up my hands in dispair and attempted to simply book over the phone or at least let the supposedly good fellows @ Porter know their website is broken and won't communicate this to me in a simple message I can understand; instead forcing me to figure out nuances of its irregular behaviour through not blatantly appearing disfunctional...  Well, they don't operate as late as I was awake trying to solve this issue (11PM-ish) and only have a contact form without a field for attachments - so the screenshots I tried to send them to help them diagnose their web problems couldn't be sent!!!  Read more »

One thing clients always leave to the last minute and *love* striking off the time/budget for projects is the copy that, when used correctly, can really add character to your website and help form/define the personal attachment to it that its users feel.

This copy mainly exists as general system messages and automated emails.  When using Content Management Systems like Joomla or Drupal, all of these messages are usually included with the software in default robot language - they don't read personally yet their purpose is very personal; to warn, inform and relate to the site user out of concern for their relationship.  Such stock messages can usually be easily customised yet clients often feel [wrongly] that since the messages are already there, there's no point in drafting new ones.

I like many things about Vimeo, an online video upload/hosting/etc service, and one of them is the real-time communication they maintain when you upload a video - first off the website tracks the upload progress and gives you a realistic expected time of it being published, whilst allowing you to edit the video's description, add tags etc.  Then, when the clip has been converted to flash video and is online, the site will send you an email notification (picture attached to this post).

Note: I think Vimeo's email notifications are definately under-designed and through using Times and Arial, with too many font sizes, they read a little roboty...But I love that they hit my inbox as soon as my videos are ready to watch with a thumbnail, description and link to the video!

Apple's renovating its flagship Toronto store and instead of closing the location, keeping the smallest possible space open to operate out of and renovating around it.. An interesting approach yet:

same # of staff + same # of customers + tiny space = ouch

Funnily enough, I just came across this neat little site via an ad on Facebook (I guess they *do* work! :) )  Dripbook is basically an online portfolio host.  Once you sign up, you can fill out a profile and then add collections of images to your scrapbook - essentially a gallery system.

They've gone with a simple interface using lots of whitespace but when you land on the frontpage it all feels a little crowded - with 36 thumbnails that have static pagination.  So at first glance, I questioned how well the people behind it may have thought out dripbook, however as soon as you jump to a scrapbook (second photo in this post) you see that the sit eisn't there to introduce people to new photographers, graphic artists etc...

Dripbook is an excellent way for visual artists working with still images to showcase their work, without dealing with the fuss of creating their own website.  In fact (this is interesting) - they even have a feature to export a full flash website created dynamically from your portfolio/scrapbook!  Pretty cool - apparently their site will power the content in the one generated for you... so you just use one interface for maintaining your content!

I highly recommend checking out dripbook for any still-image visual artist looking to get online with something snazzy - why not with prices starting @ just $10/mo?

For more convincing, check out their top 10 reasons to join up...

10 years ago there was no doubt in most web professionals' minds that an essential stage in creating a website was to sketch out the Information Architecture (IA) using a series of wireframe diagrams.  To be honest, I've always disliked making them but back when websites were static and tons of html pages needed to be created for them, it was useful to have a map of how they would all fit together.

Now that web development is so sped up and flexible because of Content Management Systems like Drupal, it seems to me that there are better ways to spend your time than drafting up wireframe diagrams... Recently I stumbled upon a new web service called JumpChart - which is a groovy service in allowing clients to login and create pages & menu items.  In fact, I was quite excited when I found it as clients can login to your JumpChart account and essentially build out the core IA of a site, but really fails in only exporting static XHTML files!!!  

Ultimately the purpose of planning IA is to let the developer and client get on the same page about the main content and navigation of a site and well, if your client is savvy enough to jump onto a site which may look bare-bones and un-themed, its good to just get them into the site and familiar with making pages and menu links from the getgo.

This is just one of the many reasons why we use killer Open Source Software to build sites - their power and simplicity let us start building a site with our clients and they immediately see how its coming together, within an aesthetic framework that flushes out as we theme the site - overall, much more effective than explaining the difference between IA and design mockups and rebuilding them into a site once we're done in OmniGraffle and Photoshop ;)

A few months back we created the first ever website for the Metronauts; a community initiative here in Toronto that seeks to encourage conversation about transit in and around the GTA.  This initial website was built in Drupal and featured a few cool tools like a content voting system that automatically gave site users 'karma' for posting comments etc...

After some time online we all decided that first and foremost, our aim with the site was to get people talking - and showcase regular contributers whilst bringing the general public into the fold.  So, we moved the old site into an archive and got a few people together to whip up a Wordpress blog - complete with custom theming, social tools integration and email newsletters - powered by both Feedburner (for auto-mailing of new site content) plus our own ajaxy Design Guru email service (more on that soon).

Check out the Metronauts online at http://www.metronauts.ca !

Some months back I discovered the Asus eee pc - at the time it was the cheapest (and cutest) little computer around; boasting a 900 Mhz celeron processor, solid state memory, a trackpad, a 7" LCD and more for just about $300+. In the past 6 or so months since the eee pc was released here in North America, demand for UMPCs has only gotten stronger and the computer industry has responded.

Whilst on holiday in Mykonos, Greece a couple of weeks back, I was in a rush to move hotels and absent-mindedly tossed my Macbook into a suit-bag (suit-bags; you know those silly things that always end up creasing your suits and requiring you to sit on them in order to make the zipper actually do its thing?). When I got to the second hotel and opened the bag I was excited to stroll into Mykonos town and check my email... Well, until I opened my $2,000+ laptop and found that the screen was smashed and it wouldn't power up!

As soon as I saw the wreckage that was minutes-previously my pride and joy laptop I realised that its quite stupid to take your main/work computer on holiday. Yes, its nice to be able to use your own machine to check email and well, ahem, facebook, but really, the cost when something goes wrong is too much... luckily I have a couple other machines to work off of, but in the meantime my Macbook is idlly awaiting $700 surgery.

Looking back, for that $700 I could instead have purchased two UMPC's!!! Now, I know an eee pc doesn't stack up to a Macbook in terms of sexiness or power but that doesn't mean there aren't other options- Acer recently stepped up to the eee pc challenge with the Aspire One. This laptop has a 1.6Ghz processor and can ship with up to 20GB of solid state memory!! This is great news, especially combined with its professional aesthetic and color options; so you can still rock a pink laptop poolside but actually be able to store your holiday photos on it as you take them, video blog with its in-built webcam and more.

The Acer Aspire One is just one of the nu breed of UMPC's which have hit shops since January and you can expect more to come. Feature-wise, it looks like the 3g craze is moving from smart-phones to laptops with models of the Aspire One scheduled to release in Q3/Q4 08 with built-in 3G and optional carrier data plans in the US.

As soon as my Macbook recovers from surgery its not allowed out of the office - I'll be picking up a 3G UMPC later in the year and just incase anything happens to it whilst on vacation, well, it won't be as tragic :)

For a full review of the Aspire One, check out this post.

Without spending too much time thinking about this one; suffice it to say I was intrigued to receive an email this morning from 37 Signals - the chaps who make Basecamp (which we use to 'manage' client projects).  Getting emails from them isn't unusual but the fact that this one was solely dedicated to advertising a couple of new staff positions they have open.

You see, 37 Signals also provides a commercial job board on their website - which, when I checked after getting the email, also had the listings - albeit, on theirjob board the lingo used in describing the job was more informal... the title of one pos, for example; "A designer who can kick our ass."

What interests me about all this:

• The fact that in addition to the job board listing they needed to send an email out,
• Why their email (which is asumedly being sent to 37 Signals' customers) was more formally phrased than the listing on the job board they host.

Groundwave Design Corp (who, in the past, have worked with Flavorpill - the JC Report's previous publisher) helped us out with a new design for the JC Report mailer and based on that, I today began the process of re-envisioning the aesthetic of jcreport.com and implemented the first batch of those changes.  Moving into Spring/Summer, the goal basically was to lighten the screen with softer grays, thinner lines and more open space.

For the past 4 years, the JC Report has existed as an email newsletter - this past December we started working with Jason Campbell and his team to launch a new Drupal powered website that would allow his readers to engage in his content much more creatively plus be able to access a wealth of archived posts.

You can learn more about the JC Report in our client projects section.

We're looking to expand our network of associates who are highly skilled in using Drupal to develop websites that support communities - preferably you would be located in Toronto for these projects, which start in May and will continue through the year, though we're open to working with website producers/developers around the world.

Also, we're looking for people who are passionate about innovating with Drupal that are familiar with things like building dynamic user profiles with Nodeprofile/Nodefamily/Usernode combinations etc... and certainly not people tinkering with Drupal - you must be committed to working professionally with it.

If you're interested in working with us, please send over an email with some links - including any personal blogs/websites plus on online portfolio or examples of work you've done!

A while back I came across the Email Standards Project through Campaign Monitor - the weapon of choice on our client projects which require email campaigning with html-coded newsletters (such as the JC Report).

They've just made a jokesy video I thought I'd share that overplays relates frustrations we as designers face when trying to make code cross-client compatible with email... Personally, I've been doing this stuff for a decade so I'm used to making things work but it really is time to get email standards up to scratch so that design can get more racey and creative in email newsletters and such.

Et voila:

 

Email Standards Project - Gmail Grimaces from Mathew Patterson on Vimeo.

Some of you may have noticed that we've been offline for about a week - for months I've planned to overhaul the designguru website with something fresh that would profile all of our network associates who work on the various projects with me that DG undertakes.

Soon, when you click on 'who we are' you'll see a more fleshed out list of these people - it won't just be my smiling mug up there indefinately :)

Clicking around you might notice some things not working and looking wonky, please drop us a line to point out these errors; like any rushed launch, the site isn't fully where we want it to be - but that's often part of the fun of going live slightly pre-maturely anyway right?

More soon,

q./