A place for our creative musings on web-design, technology, and life.
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We have been providing quality hosting service for our clients for 3 years. ServInt over that time has powered us and we can honestly say we’ve had no unscheduled downtime in that period. We highly recommend ServInt to all our colleagues.
There’s a hilarious video titled “The Breakup” available over at Dailymotion.com that poses the question:
Are you communicating with your customers, or merely advertising to them?
Bring back the love!
I just spotted this advert on Youtube and I thought it would be worthwhile posting to the blog. Car adverts rarely stick out for me, but this one really was quite innovative and classy. Perhaps one day we could all drive to work like this. Introducing the new Nissan Qashqai.
Simple Station is proud to announce the launch of two new sites.
The first site was built for Rebecca Wellman who is a local photographer in Victoria. We’ve worked hard over the past few weeks blending her unique photographic style and artistry with texture, colour, and typography, and we’re thrilled with the result. The site utilizes a flash photo gallery that is tied to a back-end administration system that allows Rebecca to easily upload new photos to her homepage and portfolio.
The second site was built for the Canadian Christian Science Committee on Publication. The Christian Science Committee on Publication in Canada is comprised of Christian Science branch church members who are appointed to give accurate information to the media, legislature, and public regarding Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddy. The design features photography from across Canada, and is presented in such a way that as the browser window gets wider, the more you see of the photo. We love the look and feel of the site, and so does our client. Simple, intuitive, and sleek. Additionally we have integrated a blog into the site which will allow the Committee to post upcoming news and events. RSS feeds and Email subscriptions are also built into the blog so that individuals who wish to stay current with news from the Committee can easily get fresh news updates.
I was on Saltspring Island last weekend for a little camping and stopped at a local organic coffee shop for a cup of tea. While enjoying the company of one of my good friends I spotted a great quote on one of the walls that really caught my attention. With some digital enhancement I've turned it into a desktop background.
The earthen walls of this coffee shop were so cool! This quote hit home with 2 points for me.
First, in business it often seems to me that more of us could be challenged or pushed to prove our maturity over our own egos or wrong perceptions of others. More good in the world could certainly be done if we all demonstrated a little more humility and maturity in our daily tasks.
Second, with the growing concern about global warming I think this quote from Rachel Carson bears significant importance. I recently watched Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” that addresses a number of emerging climate crises. Interestingly, Al Gore states that we have all the technology, all the brainpower, and all the resources that are necessary to reverse the effects of global warming, but what we need most is a change in public thought. Rather than constantly striving to demonstrate our mastery over nature, we really ought to be exercising greater self–discipline and really caring for our environment in whatever way we can. Make time to do your part.
With this in mind, I just received my MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-Op) spring catalog. I was excited to see that they have just joined 1% for the planet, which is an organization of businesses that have agreed to pay 1% of their profits to benefit environmental organizations. Along with compostable shopping bags and many other neat ways to improve the environment, they're on the right track. Congratulations MEC!
While I am writing up my review of what I found interesting at An Event Apart I thought I’d just touch briefly on an interesting tidbit I picked up today. According to Computer World Web anonymity can sink your job search.
In today’s job market, turning up missing on the Web may not be a fatal flaw, and it’s probably better than having a search result in a photo of you in a hula skirt. But over time, the lack of a Web presence — particularly for IT professionals — may well turn from a neutral to a negative, says Tim Bray, director of Web technologies at Sun Microsystems Inc.
So having your own site can in fact be some kind of employment bonus. Giving your employers a discreet peek at your personal life, what type of individual you are, and whether you seem like a reputable individual. According to Computer World 77 of 100 recruiters said they used search engines to check out job candidates. In a CareerBuilder.com survey of 1,150 hiring managers last year, one in four said they use Internet search engines to research potential employees.
There have of course been negative articles written about people who have overexposed their identity on the Internet. Discretion here I think is the key. If you are publishing something personal about yourself to a live site, don’t post things that employers may be able to either misinterpret or perceive as negative.
With all that being said, I think everyone should have an online portfolio of their work because you just don’t know when someone will find it interesting and offer you a job - and showing some degree of web savvy is always a step in the right direction. Additionally I think it’s always worthwhile getting your own domain name (ie. somename.com). This differentiates your email address from every other Hotmail or Gmail loving candidate out there, and with a catchy domain; it may be enough to help make you stand out from the crowd. To me it just looks more professional. When people hand me their personal business cards with an @gmail.com address on it, I just have to laugh quietly to myself. Obviously they don’t value themselves enough to spend $15 a year on a proper email address.
So to summarize:
Following the tradition of spotting simple websites that I love, Virb was announced this weekend.
Virb puts all of the things that make you you — photos, videos, blogs — in one place. So you can find friends (and friends can find you).
Apparently it only takes 30 seconds to get started and signed up for an account too!
After taking a look through the site. I was really struck by the sheer beauty of it. The typography is great and I love the media player. Not only does this new social networking site boast some great features, but it also sports much cleaner code than its competitor myspace.com. One of my pet peeves with myspace is that is has introduced a whole new level of terrible coding practice and bloat to the internet. Virb certainly has the potential of cleaning this up.
Virb's Media Player
Lately I've been thinking about what makes good and bad design. I always strive for and embrace simplicity in my design style. Frustrated by years of navigating poor web sites I have realized that the net should be about finding information, second it should be about good design. The two components can work harmoniously, but it takes a good designer to pull it off.
Recently Joshua Porter wrote a great article on 5 principles to design by. He states:
The litmus test. When people enjoy Art, they say "I like that". When people enjoy Design, they say "That works well". This is not by accident. Good Design is something that works well.
I just watched this great video on Google today of Seth Godin giving a speech at Gel 2006 on marketing mishaps. It's about a lot of the "do not do's" of marketing. Enjoy 
This image is from the New York Times. Do any of these Microsoft marketing gurus seem excited about the launch of Windows Vista? If you take a close look, not a single one is smiling, and they certainly don't look as though they've been "wowed". As Seth Godin (marketing guru extraordinaire) said on his blog this week in response: "Just because a marketer says something is amazing, exciting or just plain wow doesn't mean it is."
I'm very inclined to agree. While Vista will be a evolutionary step from Windows XP, it certainly is not doing anything nearly as innovative as Apple is doing in it's next iteration of Mac OS X codenamed Leopard. Perhaps the "wow" refers to the fact that they've finally managed to make a copy of Apple's Dashboard, or Expose technology and bring it to a new version of Windows. I bet all these guys own a Mac and are loathing giving this presentation.
Looks like the warm weather front that has largely prevailed during my business trip down to Boston has decided to change today, and I awoke to some fresh snow! Having missed the last 2-3 snowfalls in Victoria this year as I've been away, it has been nice to finally throw a snowball. But where oh where is the skiing? The Charles River has also frozen over, and looks rather picturesque. Here's to wishing I had a camera with me.