It’s Official. Nate’s Back From Africa, and We’re Sort of Worldwide this Fall. 08-05-08
It’s great to see that Nate Laffan is back from Africa safe and sound and in his little cave in Tuscany. He’ll be jumping right back in with two feet with us, and that makes us happy. Below is living proof that he’s alive. He needs a shave, but we’ll give him a break.
Also, now that Alek Andreev is on board as well (and headed off to Sofia for a bit), and Nate Clarke is ready to ship back to New Orleans, we’re sort of a little worldwide operation. Especially if you include our friends at Brown Box in Sydney in the mix. (We did include them in this map, as we’ve got some plans, and their push pin rounds out the map nicely.)
posted by Mike McKenna on Tue, Aug 05, 2008
web directories 08-04-08
One of the services that shotgunflat will be rolling out in the next few months is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. An important component to SEO is directory listings. We recently added ourselves to the ItsWebRelated directory, and have already gotten positive results.
posted by Ruston Eastman on Mon, Aug 04, 2008
Laffan Resurfaces 08-04-08
It’s always nice when you hear from a friend after an extended stay in a place like Africa:
posted by Mike McKenna on Mon, Aug 04, 2008
Cuil New Search Engine? 07-30-08
With a suprisingly large amount of fanfare, a new search engine was launched this week, with aims to knock down internet giant Google. Pronounced “cool,” Cuil is driven by a team of former Google developers, and the new search engine claims to have indexed over 120 billion web pages, which it says dwarfs the number that Google, Yahoo!, and other search engines claim.
So, how cool is the new search engine? Early returns say not so much. While there have been a few defenders of the latest David to Google’s Goliath, the overall response was mostly tepid, with one article flat out saying that Cuil “sucks”.
Here at the ‘flat, we have mixed reactions. We all really like the user interface (UI), which is what you see when on the site. Cuil gives you a snapshot look at the web pages that the search brings up, and it is a much more attractive alternative to Google. Then again, nearly every search engine looks much better than Google, and Cuil’s UI is somewhat similar to how Ask started displaying their results over a year ago. While I realize that Google’s UI is plain and simple on purpose, I think that they could afford to spruce it up a little. Looking at pages and pages of plain text can certainly get boring.
But one doesn’t use a search engine because it’s pretty, one uses it to get good results. And despite claims from Cuil that it indexes far more pages than any other search engine, nearly every review I’ve read about it in the past couple of days says that this is not the case. Doing my own searches with Cuil, I got mixed results. Searching for our own company, shotgunflat, I saw cached pages of our previous design--even though it is over two months old, and Cuil is only two days old.
Cuil is brand-new, so perhaps judging it based on 36 hours of use is being a bit critical. Google didn’t become the search giant it is overnight, so we shouldn’t expect that of Cuil. In fact, for Cuil to get so much press so early perhaps is a good thing. Here’s to hoping they work out the kinks and become a viable alternative in the future.
posted by Ruston Eastman on Wed, Jul 30, 2008
Cautionary Tales: The blinking folder and question mark is bad, right? 07-02-08
After attempting to turn my computer on last Wednesday I found a blinking folder with a question mark. One result from a search into what I could do to rectify the problem produced what I can only assume is a tongue in cheek question. The answer is of course yes. The blinking folder and question mark is bad. Very bad. I tried everything I knew to try and get back in business, but the blinking question mark folder proved too powerful. I had to bring it to the nearest Apple store and have a new hard drive installed. Thankfully I was still under warranty – by 3 days.
You’ve heard the what, now for the why. Why does a Mac, less than a year old, suddenly die a quick, yet presumably painful death? Lightning. The night before I hadn’t shut down or unplugged the power cord and a lightning storm had come in and zapped the whole darn thing – through a surge protector. So the moral of the story is simple – unplug your computer. Having to reinstall all my software, remember everyone’s email address, and reminisce about all the great photos I’d taken and lost after neglecting to back them up is a painful experience, and one easily avoided.
posted by Drew McKenna on Wed, Jul 02, 2008
Flash now indexable 07-01-08
At long last, bringing joy to web design clients everywhere, Adobe has announced a partnership with Google and Yahoo! that will make Flash websites indexable by search engines.
Flash has always been a wonderful tool, bringing animation and a visual third dimension to websites. While this allowed for some fun and futuristic “bling-bling,” the problem with Flash was that it has always been invisible to search engines. Because it is animation, Flash works as a movie, which means that the text must be embedded into the Flash files, disallowing Google and other search engines from seeing it. It comes as good news that Adobe has worked together with the major search engines to make Flash files indexable.
The Google and Yahoo spiders/bots/crawlers will now have the ability to read the text inside the Flash files. Previously, this access was impossible, so the search engines had no idea what the Flash animation was saying. While the ability to index Flash will still be limited, this is a welcome step forward, albeit after ten years. Nevertheless, we still hope that websites don’t get too Flash-y, as sometimes too flashy isn’t flashy at all.
posted by Ruston Eastman on Tue, Jul 01, 2008
Book: Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandries 06-30-08
I first learned about Neil deGrasse Tyson when I saw him on Book TV a while back, and finally got a chance to pick up his book yesterday afternoon. 54 pages later, I can already tell that it’s a beaut. I’ve already picked up on a few fascinating tidbits, like the fact that the moon is slowly slipping out of orbit to the tune of 2-3 inches per year, and that Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador is 1.33 miles further from the center of the earth than Mount Everest.
posted by Mike McKenna on Mon, Jun 30, 2008
Today’s Three Cents 06-20-08
One - Teebot
Our pals at thoughtbot have some good stuff for sale. “As you may or may not be aware – the web industry has a somewhat informal dress code for work, after work, training, conferences, professional events – you name it. This is our effort to contribute to that experience.”
Two - Retro Euro 2008 Shirts
Letters-Numbers.com’s Euro 2008 shirts are sweet. Go to the Letters-Numbers site, and click on Euro 2008 at top right. I want to collect them all.
Mostly Lisa
Lisa Bettany is talented. Very much so.
posted by Mike McKenna on Fri, Jun 20, 2008
Today’s Three Cents 06-19-08
One - Sketching in Code: The Magic of Prototyping by David Verba
Published at A List Apart, still one of my favorite sites of all time. We’d just completed a prototype for a client, and this article was published the next day. I felt validated. Even though I knew already that prototyping was the right thing to do…
Two - Firefox 3
Firefox 3 is “two to three times faster than Firefox 2,” according to Mozilla. Among the new features are one-click bookmarking, improved security, full zoom, and the “awesome bar.” The video “tour” is moderately amusing.
Three - Octave Engine Casual
If you have work to do, don’t download Octave Engine Casual. OE-CAKE! is a tool that lets you draw/create objects and then watch them obey the laws of physics.
posted by Mike McKenna on Thu, Jun 19, 2008
Today’s Three Cents 06-18-08
One - Getty Images’ Moodstream
Moodstream is a mashup of sorts that combines the vast collections of Getty’s images, videos, and music to serve up a flash-based app which has a high probability of getting your creativity going. Much like what the old CBC3 site did for me. Only with Moodstream, you can control a series of presets to serve up appropriate files. Veer, it’s your serve.
Two - Gap Brands, Inc.’s Quadruple-Whammy
The Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Piperlime have finally combined online into one pretty coherent, cohesive shopping experience which lets users bounce around between the four shops and check out one time. I was thinking, when I first saw this, “yeah, they should do that. We could do that, too. Great idea.” It was likely a huge undertaking, and it appears at first glance to be well worth it.
Three - Finally, MySpace Cleans Up.
It was a long time coming, but the new MySpace navigation and other visual tweaks are a step in the right direction. Frankly, the closer they get to Facebook, the better:
posted by Mike McKenna on Wed, Jun 18, 2008
How to blow your traffic up 06-12-08
OK, I should have titled this post “How to have someone else blow your traffic up,” But then you wouldn’t have read. Or maybe you would have. At any rate, we got a call from a client last night who mentioned that they might be mentioned at Daily Candy today. They were. The results were really amazing. Visits and sales went through the roof, and the site (on a hosted service, not ours) staggered a bit from the traffic.
This goes to show the value in hitting an interested, targeted audience with quality content. Despite a few creaks and our complex design slowing things down a bit, the day overall was a total success.
In the graphic below, note the jump in page hits on Daily Candy day.
posted by Mike McKenna on Thu, Jun 12, 2008
Summer Isolation 06-09-08
Summertime is a somewhat isolated time for us. Nate L is in Italy en route to Africa. Nate C. is in Berlin for a bit, and our old Victorian-style floor plan and the heat of summer means we’re all working with air conditioners on and doors closed.
We’ve just received the go-ahead on a very exciting, ambitious project which will keep us busy through the entire summer, so perhaps a little doors-closed-heads-down work will be good for us.
posted by Mike McKenna on Mon, Jun 09, 2008
In Defense of a Culturally Irrelevant Mobile Phone 05-19-08
On account of agreeing to a new two-year contract with Verizon Wireless and a reluctance to shell out the $399-plus for yet another gadget, I decided to take the free (after mail-in rebate) phone and suffer silently while my friend Murph taps away on his touch-screen QWERTY keyboard, checks his voicemail in the order he sees fit, and effortlessly googles answers to the odd questions that always seem to pop up (what is the capital of Slovakia, what was Tony Gwynn’s highest single-season batting average, etc.).
My new Motorola Razr arrived, and Murph had a good laugh at my expense, but I’m starting to actually appreciate my decision. The phone isn’t half-bad, and here’s why:
» I can’t check my email with it, which means that other drivers are much safer than they were two weeks ago.
»There is nothing remotely interesting about the phone’s UI. In fact, it begs not to be used. (This means that I am not the least bit interested with tinkering around with it, customizing it, etc.
» Because I only use it to -gasp- make phone calls and send the occasional text message, it sits in my pocket and doesn’t waste its battery. I may actually have some life in the thing when I really need to make a call. My last phone, the Helio Ocean, was good for about one phone call before the charge was totally drained. As a result, I just stopped bothering.
The Razr may not be the head-turner it once was, but it is doing one thing for me that I didn’t expect--simplifying things. I can always check my email when I get back to the office.
posted by Mike McKenna on Mon, May 19, 2008
CBC Radio 3 05-15-08
Thinking back at the way CBC Radio 3 used to crank out issue after issue of flash-based ezine, it’s amazing that they kept it up for so long. I miss the simultaneous image and sound beauty that was a staple of the site. The good news is that the archives are still hanging around, which for the time being is a good thing.
posted by Mike McKenna on Thu, May 15, 2008
Finally 05-14-08
We’ve been trying to get a new site out for some time now. Nate (Laffan) and I began bouncing ideas off each other before Christmas ‘07. Fortunately, client work kept us too busy to really focus on the new design.
After a few months of playing around, we came to a design we were happy with. The entire point of this project was to really feature the work we’ve been doing--to put our portfolio at the forefront of the site. Furthermore, we wanted a site that gave our visitors a sense of exactly how clean and crisp our sites tend to be. I think we’ve accomplished those goals with this new design. Enjoy!
posted by Mike McKenna on Wed, May 14, 2008