lovely portfolio from section seven
Archive for the ‘business’ Category
section seven
Thursday, December 7th, 2006WDDG Fights the Good Fight
Thursday, November 30th, 2006WDDG, a design and development group, get it. Their sites are all about great user experiences, the kind of which I promote and build. For several months, their site has been locked down as the prepped a new look and feel to match thier award wining web standards site of a few years ago. The long wait is over! A new version is out and it aims to please by focusing attention of the users through a series of compelling video spots in the vain of WWII themed news reports. All in all, this site is deep, rich, easy, and provoking…. the four essential artifacts of a great user experience.
Beta Excuse
Friday, November 17th, 2006Once again, Daring Fireball takes the piss out of software that is always in beta. Beta is TEST people. Don’t share or sell unless its out of Beta… common sense.
Heavensent: Assembla
Sunday, October 29th, 2006Any developer worth their salt uses three basic tools:
- Concurrent Versioning
- Issue \ Bug Tracking
- Project Mgmt Tools
For many, the top choices are Subversion (svn), Trac, and Basecamp, respectively. I consider these tools to be the holy trinity of professional software development, as they stay out of the way and let you do what you need to do. The best of breed tools these might be, but the only one that does it right is Basecamp. Why? Cause they make it pleasently easy to setup and use. Its all hosted for you, so the pain of installation and configuration is taken away.
For ease of use, including the install and config process, the other tools fall woefully short. I’ve had issues with installing svn and trac, to say the least. From misconfigured swig files to faulty apache configurations, I was becoming bald by pulling out my hair. Trac is especially hidious to install and configure (mostly configure), whereas svn slightly less unnerving, yet both tools are so complelling in the open source community that they’ve quickly become a defacto standard for software developers.
With the obvious large audience in hand, it saddens me that the developers of these tools don’t really do much in the way to ease the the install\config process. For example, Trac has just released their 0.10 release with minimal documentation on upgrading or fresh installation.
Frustrated as I was, I was thrilled to find Assembla, a group of developers that collect these rouge best of breed tools and allow you to use them in a hosted platform, ala Basecamp. Config? Nope. Cost? Nada. Just sign up, send invites to your teammates, and you’ve got yourself svn and trac ramped up and ready to go.
So what’s the catch? From what I’ve gathered thus far, I cannot find a fault. The service is build around a Ruby on Rails mgmt web app, with features that tie directly into your totally configurable install of trac\svn. Want typo? Its there too! Will this stick around is the the big question? New companies and projects come and go faster than you can say web2.0. Security, above all else, is the primary concern. Again, they seem to have it locked down. Trac is setup with .htpasswd apache files, so you’ve got auth for trac. They could do more to support sensitve areas by serving up under https. For now, I’m going to get started on trac’ing my bugs, which is all I wanted to do in the first place.
Overall, assembla is a godsend.
Getting Real: The HTML Book
Wednesday, October 25th, 200637signals has released an HTML version FOR FREE of their renown guide to modern development, “Getting Real”. While more a manifesto than an actual guide, it does serve those in the industry who desire to learn from others successes and mistakes.
Now, its free, so you’ve no excuse to get real
Splash Page Haters
Wednesday, October 4th, 2006SEOmoz does a great writeup on how to convince a client that a splash page does more harm than good.
Odd Advertising – Part 2302
Saturday, September 23rd, 2006Why God why are Explosions in the Sky playing Your Hand in Mine over a Cadillac DTS advert? In the history of mismatches between art and commerce, this has to be one of the worst violations. Explosions in the Sky are perhaps one of the most intense musical experiences one can have, as the video shows. Epic, expansive, and achingly beautiful, which is what art is suppose to be. I suppose its hard to make art and hope for a paycheck, but it comes down to choosing your partners well. EITS in no way match the Cadillac brand and their consumer point of view. While both parties make good products, their partnership together does nothing to heighten each other’s product.
Casper on the Sigur Ros message board sums up the gross misstep perfectly:
I personally find nothing objective about this at all. I mean, when I’m rollin’ down the street in my 06′ Escalade with 20 inch chrome spinners and I’m topping off at 11 miles per gallon, the first thing I’m searching for is my copy of ‘The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place’ to pump through the hood harder than my $70,000 caddy is pumping holes through the o-zone layer. I don’t think General Motors could have chosen a better band to appeal to their target consumer, really. well done, advertising geeks!
Go get their albums now!
Trappist Blogging
Wednesday, September 20th, 2006The mention of Doug Bowman brings up a bizarre anti-trend:
Its become fashionable not to blog. Where are all the heavy hitters, the people that know how to write for the web? I’m thinking of Harpold, Allen, of Zeldmen. These people were not only charming and smart, but concise enough to keep the web content digestable (not shovelware). People’s lives get it the way, sure, but I sense a move away from this platform of communication from individuals and companies. Proof positive:
Now vivabit, with all their work in RJS has signed off. Doug, vivabit, who’s next?
Cranium: pop5
Saturday, September 9th, 2006Awarded: Starbucks Hear Music
Wednesday, September 6th, 2006We’re pleased as punch to hear that amfphp.org has selected Starbucks Hear Music as their “site of the month”.
The site was built around the amfphp engine and was a breeze to build. amfphp, if you’re a flash developer, is a godsend for creating fully flexiable and entirely dynamic flash. Did I mention how easy they make it: debugging, testing, and deployment are all setup for you. Simply write your calls and hook it into flash.
Along with amfphp, the site boasts a bevy of useful features such as stateful deeplinking and history, so you can piss off with “flash 99% bad”.
Thanks to amfphp.org and the great crew at sbux. It was a wonderful project to work on.
