PDX Web Innovators

The founders of Toonlet.com will tell their story of having an idea, starting a site, and all the stuff that's quickly happened since.

It's been my great pleasure to work with the team at White Bird Dance over the last several years on their website. Not only have they been a great client and warm friends, but I have been exposed to the wonderful world of modern dance and am certainly better off, and more cultured, because of it!

When we first started out I was still knee deep in Microsoft based technologies and we developed the initial site using DotNetNuke. This platform served us well for three seasons, during each of which we updated the design to match the given season's unique style and added new features to keep the site fresh such as blogs and discussion forums. But there were also problems and limitations with that site. DotNetNuke did not excel in outputting a search engine friendly website, making updates was difficult and clumsy, there were almost no high quality community contributed modules (and they were not free), and developing custom functionliaty was expensive and complicated.

Drupal to the rescue!

So when we set out to udpate the site for the 2008-09 season, I felt it was time for a change and White Bird agreed. This new site rests on the Drupal platform, making for a more elegant, flexible, and feature rich site. Some of the improvements:

• Search engine optimized pages and URLs
• Lightweight, standards compliant markup
• Structured content so that performances can have fields such as videos, images galleries, companies, etc.
• A flexible calendar allowing us to publish event information in multiple formats, incuding RSS and iCal
• Image galleries and embedded videos
• Threaded discussions about individual performances
• A scalable platform to handle the increased traffic that we're sure is to come
• The ability to leverage the thousands of community contributed Drupal modules. We are already benefiting from webform, date, mediafield, cck, views, and several others.
• Built in search engine

In my clearly biased opinion, Drupal, and this new website, are a major improvement which will serve White Bird for years to come and help them a further their mission:
bringing the the best Portland-based, regional, national, and international dance companies to Portland, Oregon and to fostering the growth of dance in the region

Thank to the talented Annette Sabo for her design work and the hard work that Chad Greenwood and Christopher Roesing from White Bird put in to make it happen.

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Check out our latest shopify e-commerce site for i-popperz.com. These guys have some seriously cool earbuds and accessories.

We had a lot of fun working with this client, they have great products and a clear sense of where they are going. They already had some quite well-done graphics for their packaging, so we built the site around that.

Anyway, we like them and we think you will too, so go check ‘em out.

Visit the conference website for more details -
http://events.gigaom.com/mobilize/08/?a=upc

REGISTER BY AUGUST 29 FOR $100 OFF
Super Saver Tickets close this Friday, August 29th.

Our past events have sold out early, so register now to join the conversation: http://mobilize-upc.eventbrite.com/

MOBILIZE will explore the advancements driving growth of the mobile web and what they mean for entrepreneurs and their investors. Despite big plans and visions, the promise of the mobile web and a truly untethered Internet hasn’t been realized yet. Now, developments in design, user experience, handset technology, location and wireless network technology are changing everything. The mobile web is about to take off like a rocket.

Join 500 of the most influential, innovative luminaries in the mobile web industry to get a glimpse of the future.

KEYNOTES

* Rich Miner - Google's Android, Co-founder
* Padmasree Warrior - Cisco, CTO

SPEAKERS INCLUDE

* Ian Freed - Amazon.com, VP of Amazon Kindle
* John Roese - Nortel Networks, CTO (NEW!)
* Fred Kitson - Motorola, VP of Applications Research (NEW!)
* Russ McGuire - Sprint, VP of Corporate Strategy
* John Forsyth - Symbian Software, VP of Strategy (NEW!)
* Lee Ott - Yahoo!, Global Director of Mobile Search (NEW!)
* Marc Davis - Yahoo!, Chief Scientist of Yahoo! Connected Life
* Matt Murphy - Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Partner on iFund
* Gary Kovas - Adobe, VP and GM, Mobile and Devices (NEW!)
* John Koller - Sony Computer Entertainment America, Director of Hardware Marketing (NEW!)
* Dan Mason - ESPN Mobile Web Global, Sr. Product Manager
* Clint McClellan - Sr. Dir of Market Dev, Health & Life Sciences, Qualcomm (NEW!)
* Rachel Hinman - Adaptive Path, Mobile Design Strategist
* Jason Devitt - Skydeck, CEO
* Ted Morgan - SKYHOOK Wireless, CEO
* Ken Kershner - Dash Navigation, SVP of Engineering (NEW!)
* Scott Richardson - Clearwire, Chief Strategy Officer
* Scott Raney - Redpoint Ventures, Partner
* John SanGiovanni - Zumobi, Co-Founder and VP, Product Design
* Richard Wong - Accel Partners, Partner
* Jeff Belk - ICT 168, Principal
* Rick Segal - JLA Ventures, Partner
* Jake Seid - Lightspeed Venture Partners, Managing Director
* Raven Zachary - The 451 Group, Research Director, Open Source
* Greg Sterling - Sterling Market Intelligence/Local Mobile Search, Analyst
* Ryan Block - Engadget, Editor-at-large
* Michael Copeland - Fortune, Senior Writer (NEW!)
* Ken Fisher - ArsTechnica, Founder and Editor-in-chief (NEW!)
* See all the speakers on the conference schedule - http://events.gigaom.com/mobilize/08/Schedule/?a=upc

THE HOT TOPICS TO BE DISCUSSED

* Next Generation Networks, Handsets and Chipsets
* Rethinking Products in the Age of Hyper Connectivity
* The Economics of Mobile Development Platforms
* LTE or WiMAX: Who Does the Future Belong To?
* Mobile Browsers
* Location-based Services
* Emerging Mobile Business and Revenue Patterns
* Mobile Investment Trends

STARTUP LAUNCHPAD

(Update 8.25.08) GigaOM just announced the mobile startups selected to demo onstage at the MOBILIZE LaunchPad. The sheer number of applicants shows the robustness of the mobile application market. Come see the next generation of the mobile web.

The lucky 13 are Fonemesh, Tunewiki, Heysan, Pinch Media, Fonolo, Skyfire, Zecter, LuckyCal, MotionDSP, Cumulux, Placethings, Fusion Garage Project, and Tapulous. All the details are here - http://gigaom.com/2008/08/25/mobilize-launchpad-contestants-announced.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

* Entrepreneurs
* Venture Capital Professionals
* Executives
* Product Managers
* Lead Technologists
* Telecom Management
* Journalists

PLUG YOURSELF INTO THE RIGHT PEOPLE

* Revitalize your ideas with cutting edge topics at Mobilize
* Be inspired by mobile success stories
* Network with the key influencers who will help your business
* Build on your business connections and partnerships
* Gain insight from the top investors at venture capital firms
* Meet those innovators who are pushing mobile innovation forward
* Hear relevant, incisive and spirited keynotes from the best in the industry

Starting yesterday my daily routine with DuVinci has changed drastically. During (an extremely busy) July I phased out the work for BestPlaces that I have been doing in some capacity since 2001. It’s time for me to focus on something new.

I want to help others create on the Web. There are designers with great skills who want to learn to program. And there are bright business owners who can’t execute on their ideas. I believe anyone can learn to program. I’m looking forward to proving that.

Right now you can see my first steps at Webmonkey. I’ve written for the site since 2000, but now I’m joining as a contributor on the Monkeybites blog and writing about a tutorial per week.

The move from BestPlaces is tough. I believe in the aim of the site and the people behind it. In fact, I’ll be helping them out a bit here and there.

I’m excited about my next steps and look forward to hearing your ideas. Many thanks to those who’ve already given me such wonderful advice. I hope to receive more of it soon.

Sticky note pic by striatic

Many design methods strive to help designers better understand their users’ needs, such as ethnographic research and participatory design.

Matt Cottam put these approaches to the ultimate test: while working on a project for the healthcare industry--Matt trained to be a certified paramedic. This gave him a whole new perspective into the needs of doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals. Matt will share his experiences and how they allowed him to identify truly innovative design opportunities.

Both co-founder and Creative Director at Tellart.com, Matt works closely with clients using information architecture and design to research challenges, discover opportunities, build strategies and innovate tactics for design intervention.

Matt received Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Industrial Design degrees from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Since 1999 he has been a member of the Part-Time Faculty at RISD, and is also a member of the Adjunct Faculty at the Design Institute in Umeå, Sweden, where he teaches "Experience Prototyping."

Matt is an Emergency Medical Technician - Cardiac, a National Ski Patroller, and is federally employed as a Medic for the National Disaster Medical System. He has chaired conference sessions, lectured, published, and led workshops internationally on topics including information design, physical computing, collaboration strategies for engineers and designers, design for extreme environments, and design for emergency and disaster medicine.

Matt will be leading a full day workshop on "Sketching Physical Devices" the following day at the Paramount hotel.

Part 2 of 2

Matt’s list of must-have apps: I work with both Mac and PC for different things. While I definitely prefer the Mac, I haven’t been able to do away with the PCs in my life completely yet. Note: Jessica already summed up all of the collaborative tools that we use, Highrise, Basecamp, Google Docs, etc. So I’ve left those out of my list. They rock, we both use them, let’s just leave it at that.

Mac Software and Web-Apps:

Firefox extensions

My must-have list: firebug (of course), web developer’s toolbar, fireftp, pdf download

Textmate

I’m not going to repeat everything that is on Jessica’s list, but this one is worth it. There just aren’t enough ways to say how much we think it rocks.

Adium

I use Adium instead of iChat. This is hands-down my favorite IM client. It just does everything I want.

Key Fixer

These little tools change the behavior of the home and end keys to what you might be more used to if you also use a PC or have switched from a PC. Since I write code on both platforms, keeping my keyboard working the same way on both is vital.

PC Software:

SQLyog

If you are doing much development with MySQL databases you probably already know about this, if you don’t you should really check it out. A lot of tasks are made easy while still giving you all of the power and flexibility of a command-line. By far my favorite GUI for this sort of work.

Multiple IE

If you are doing web-work, especially anything with UI Design/CSS, you need this. We keep an XP Pro machine on hand just to run this (and, um Netflix streaming movies, shush).

Pidgen

It’s like Adium for PCs. It bundles all of your IM accounts together in one application with minimal fuss. I’ve tried a bunch of them, and used Trillian for a long time, but Pidgen works better for me.

Foxit Reader

If you are old enough you may remember a time when .pdf was not a four-letter word. If you use a Mac, you have probably experienced how lovely it is to see them pop open in Preview almost instantly. Foxit’s reader has made the .pdf a viable document format for me on PC again. It’s fast and lightweight.

A round-up of things we’ve marked in Ma.gnolia today.

No such a thing as free lunch? There will be when Silicon Florist hosts Portland Lunch 2.0 ? Silicon Florist

Come have lunch at CubeSpace with Silicon Florist!

Tags: portland, web 2.0, lunch 2.0, silicon florist, web design, community, events, business networking, networking, oregon, social, web

Balsamiq Mockups Home | Balsamiq

Mock ups made easy? Check out this new product from Balsamiq.

Tags: business, design, web design, tools

10 Tips for Being a Greener Web Designer [Work Smarter]

In the immortal words of Kermit, it’s not easy being green - ??but there are ways you can do your bit for the environment.

Tags: eco, designer, business, business advice

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Last year we did a round-up of the apps that make it easy to run a design company on the fly, and it’s high time we updated that list. Some things have changed, some have stayed the same, but one thing’s for sure: we’d be lost without these!

Part 1 of 2 (Matt will post his in the next few days).

Jessica’s list of must-have apps: I work exclusively on a Mac (well, two, actually) so these are all Mac-friendly.

Transmit

I was pretty meh on the subject of FTP clients until I tried Transmit. Now I don’t know what I did without it.

Fluid

See above re: FTP clients and switch for site specific browsers. I finally installed Fluid on a whim and…wow, was I ever wrong. It’s given me a whole new appreciation for my Dock.

TextMate

Can’t rave enough about my love of TextMate. Makes coding a breeze.

Google Docs

We keep the majority of our paperwork (contracts, contract templates, etc.) on Google Docs. We can share amongst ourselves and access files from anywhere - handy when you’re constantly shuttling between office and home office. Also: it’s not Word!

Google Apps

We finally switched our couldbe studios email over to Google Apps, and it’s been great.

Basecamp

For all our project management needs.

Highrise

Keeps track of our contacts.

Ma.gnolia

Social linkage.

Firefox

And, of course, what’s Firefox without extensions? I use Firebug, Foxmarks, 1Password and ColorZilla.

Campaign Monitor

Not only does Campaign Monitor make it easy to send and track email newsletters, it makes setting up managed accounts for clients a breeze.

Reinvigorate

I personally loathe Google Analytics, but none of the other free or low-cost offerings seemed much better. Enter Reinvigorate. They’re in private beta right now, but we were lucky enough to get in. And I do mean lucky: Reinvigorate is a fabulous service, and I can’t imagine switching.

DropSend

When we’ve got to email huge files to clients or printers, DropSend is invaluable.

Blinksale

Simple and easy to use. We looked at FreshBooks, but given our requirements Blinksale is a better fit.

We love it when our clients ask for custom illustrations! Check out the site for Bloom Essentials. The Bloom Girl was so much fun to create.

I have had the great pleasure of working with the team at One Economy Corporation since last December on their exciting new venture, PIC.tv, the Public Internet Channel, a network with a public purpose. always on. What exactly does this mean? A snippet follows below, but you can visit the site to learn more.

The Public Internet Channel (PIC.tv) is a next-generation, public-purpose online network. It inspires, informs, and entertains, helping people live better lives.

The Public Internet Channel combines compelling programming with a launching point into relevant information that provides the opportunity for people to take action.

Everything on the Public Internet Channel is relevant, current, accessible and, whenever possible, local — and always with a clearly-defined public purpose. The Public Internet Channel shows real people in real situations tackling everyday topics, from health to money to living a sustainable lifestyle.

It also provides users with an interactive “Make It Easy” toolbox that gives people instant access to local information and the tools they need to take action based on what they learned. By providing this tool directly to all Americans, we hope to narrow the “information gap” that divides communities and provide a common space that crosses racial, gender, age, religious, geographic and political barriers.

The site features original and licensed video content, which is streamed from the Brightcove platform. The site itself is based on the excellent open source Drupal content management system and web application framework, with significant customizations, mostly at the theme level. Special thanks to Greg Spies of The Interactive Department for his work in helping to develop the Flash rotators in use througout the site.

I have been honored to be involved with this project and it is a rare opportunity indeed to get a chance to combine one's professional skills with broader goals. That, combined with the smart and passionate people I have had the opportunity to work with, has made this one of my most rewarding projects. As Dan Fellini, the project's producer put it,
Savor it, believe in it, and let it energize you forward. There’s work to be done, for sure. There always will be. But it’s important work and we’re up for the challenge.

The site is still in beta and currently requires registration, but I encourage you to spend a moment looking around and provide your feedback.

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Working at Strands has presented the unique opportunity to work in an all Mac shop, which is fun seeing all the MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs around the office when I’m there. But, as many people quickly discover, these things get HOT, like burn your lap and destroy your child producing ability hot (not to mention the possible damage to the hardware itself). The question was posed at work with the ultra modern social media tool of “send email to whole company” about how to keep things cool. Based on the responses, seemed like information worth sharing.

Three apps were mentioned as ways to help boost the fans and monitor temperatures:

• smcFanControl
• iStat from iSlayer.com
• Fan Control by Lobotomo software

I installed smcFanControl and even after a day noticed pretty significant temperature reduction.

But, I was also reminded of a discussion on Stack Overflow a couple weeks back where Joel recommended an alternative approach to the heat problem, undervolting the CPU, with CoolBook.

So, there’s some options, and make sure you do some research first, wouldn’t want you doing any damage or voiding any warranties or anything.

TiddlyRose will be an informal meet-up of TiddlyWiki enthusiasts. It is timed to coincide with the OSCon 2008 conference, which is being attended by Jeremy Ruston, the original creator of TiddlyWiki, along with some of his colleagues from Osmosoft.

The event is open to the public, and all fans of TiddlyWiki are welcome to attend! Meet in the Jax Bar on the roof terrace.

http://jaxbar.com/

Look for Phil: he'll be wearing a black polo shirt, with Osmosoft written on the front, and the BT logo on the back.

And if you're wondering where we got the name TiddlyRose...you can find out how on the Portland Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland%2C_Oregon

Official Google Blog: Google learns to crawl Flash
Now that we've launched our Flash indexing algorithm, web designers
can expect improved visibility of their published Flash content, and
you can expect to see better search results and snippets.

Wow, this is big! There goes one of my main arguments against primarily Flash driven sites. I expect as the ability to properly index alternative types of media, that is items other than text and images such as Flash, video, and SilverLight, it will slowly and fundamentally change the way websites are developed, or even thought of for that matter. Why bother a traditional, hierarchical website when you can just invite chaos and allow your users to explore through a semantic search? Think Gmail vs. Hotmail.