Life as a Chip

Out of the box Drush offers support for Drupal 7.x site install.
This module provides support for Drupal 6.x site install as well (without any http calls to a running server).
Install
Assuming that you have drush already installed.
drush dl drush_site_install6
Usage
cd /path/to/drupal/drush site-install6...

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WARNING: Do not look at the artwork below for more than a split-second if you're still trying to remain spoiler-free on Christopher Nolan's Inception. Everyone else, have a ball. (I want this as a big wall poster.) It's like M.C. Escher was a movie nerd!

Filed under: New Releases, Fandom

Continue reading Check Out This Rather Awesome 'Inception' Infographic!

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For too many projects, there comes a time when every action taken, every decision and sacrifice made, is spurred on by pressure to finish. Tempers seem to shrink along with the available days, talk about “high standards” gives way to “good enough,” and people realize that deadlines are aptly named. During the last-minute crunch, someone may well wonder, how did it come to this? Could it have been prevented? Every Web project has deadlines. But not every designer or developer deals with them the same way.

[By the way: The network tab (on the top of the page) is updated several times a day. It features selected articles from the best web design blogs!]

What Causes A Deadline To Break?

Because a deadline marks the end of a project, everyone involved in the project must understand the deadline’s role. Most projects follow a schedule or have an estimated date by which they must be completed. The concept is simple then: when the work takes longer than expected, deadlines get missed.

A deadline is the end point of a time estimate, making it a known quantity. But how long will the work actually take to get done?

Of course, projects can be more complicated in their details. Unexpected technical problems and unanticipated changes will affect the amount of work required. Sometimes other tasks take priority. Sometimes the time estimate wasn’t considered carefully enough.

Whatever the cause, too much work needs to be done in the available time. That’s the problem, but not the challenge.

Rate Deadlines By Severity Of Consequences

The hardest deadlines are tied to events that cannot be moved, such as a date promised to the public, an upcoming trade show or a date stipulated in a contract. Retailers know that their holiday sales must end at Christmas, and theater owners can expect movie-goers to be upset if a 1:00 pm showing doesn’t start until 2:00. Likewise, if a website is tied to a time-sensitive event, its relevance is lost once the event has passed. Hard deadlines have clear consequences when missed.

Deadlines exist for a reason. The severity of the trouble caused by missing them increases dramatically after they have passed.

Deadlines tied to less public events are no less real, but a project will soldier on if the deadline slips. Company-imposed target dates, for example, rely less on public demand than on the temperament of managers. Meetings routinely start 10 minutes late because “something came up.”

The softest deadlines lack teeth or are set at some vague point in the future. That’s not always bad: not every missed deadline will cause a life-or-death crisis. But the same methods of solving the crisis apply. There are many strategies for handling a last-minute crisis. Most involve planning, setting priorities and knowing one’s limits.

Strategies For Preventing Deadline Crises

The beginning of a project is a great time to prevent problems later on.

The first solution is both obvious and difficult: do not take on a project that cannot be completed in the given time. Declining paid work requires discipline and confidence, but if the deadline is impossible, then the project may not be worth the money. Money cannot replace time.

Because deadlines with consequences are taken more seriously, keep a written list of definitive reasons why certain tasks must be completed by a given date. Losing money, customers and other assets create real incentives to work.

Schedule deadlines as specific tasks, not the ends of phases. Rather than “Content will be completed by 4 April 2010,” state “Review the content over lunch on 4 April 2010.” This ties the deadline to an event at which results must be shown. Mini-deadlines tied to specific events are more powerful than general statements.

Making up for minor time discrepancies during the course of a project is easier than facing a big shortfall when no time is left.

Plan For Unpleasant Surprises

Incentive may not be the problem, though. Unexpected problems cause many people to break deadlines. Their unpredictability make these problems hard to plan for, and good intentions don’t help you see the future. The key is to recognize that, whatever their nature, problems will likely occur.

If everything seems accounted for in the project plan, then invent a problem. Keep it realistic: “reshoot staff photos” is more likely than “spontaneous server combustion,” but it doesn’t really matter. The point is to create extra time to allow for a deadline crisis. One rule of thumb is to add between half and all of a project’s expected duration. That is, increase the full time that has been budgeted by between 50 to 100% to allow for surprises.

A plan of time estimates for major tasks in a project could look something like this:

Task:	Time allotted:
Content audit	15 hours
Develop content strategy	15 hours
Make WordPress theme changes	20 hours
Import data from old website	15 hours
Test on multiple browsers	5 hours
Total	70 hours

Being conservative, let’s take half of 70, which is 35. Now we invent a problem: say, having to retype all content from print-outs. Is 35 hours for that ridiculous? Perhaps. But obstacles are unexpected by nature, and they always steal time from an otherwise ideal budget.

Scheduling for unknowns is hard, but acknowledging that extra time is required will better align estimates with reality.

A line item needs to be added to the budget. It could be “Time to make changes” or “Allowance for unknowns.” The description isn’t as important as the fact that you have planned for surprises.

Is half of the original budget too much? It may drive cheaper clients away, but overestimating and finishing under the deadline is better than the alternative.

Mitigate A Deadline’s Threat By Adding Other Deadlines

Implement mini-deadlines within a project’s timeline. Mini-deadlines minimize last-minute problems by serving as checkpoints to gauge how far off track the schedule is, if at all, at certain phases.

1. Start
   While the project is fresh in everyone’s mind, a schedule for the other phases should be set.
2. First quarter
   Everyone involved should have a sense of whether they can work together. Work begins, and the pristine project on paper comes up against the sticky details of reality.
3. Halfway point
   The bulk of the work happens here. If you doubled your estimate to account for surprises, you would actually be aiming to launch the project right now.
4. Third quarter
   If everyone pushed to launch by the halfway point, then almost everything should be done by now. But it rarely is.
5. Deadline
   Launch the project.
6. Review
   Win or lose, everyone should ask what should have happened at each phase of the project? What should have been done to meet each mini-deadline along the way?

Notice that mini-deadlines are based on time, not task. Tasks have a way of expanding, of taking up more time than planned, which mini-deadlines should prevent. Think of a mini-deadline as a chance to review the project’s timeline. While this approach may not entirely stave off a deadline crisis, it gives you opportunities to catch and correct problems along the way.

Plan Sacrifices In Advance

Every project has absolute requirements, which are essentially the reasons the project exists at all or the problems it is designed to solve. But many also have supplemental requirements. If a project requires A, B and C, then by all means include D, E and F, but only with the understanding that they might have to wait.

For example, a newsletter is an important marketing tool for an e-commerce website, but less important than an easy-to-use cart and secure log-in page. Likewise, the top priority for a photo gallery should be to present photos. If the deadline is looming and the AJAX is buggy, then perhaps the blog should wait.

Marking certain features as secondary provides relief when things go wrong. These features don’t need to be cut, but their deadlines should be later than those of the core project.

Practice

Measure the rate at which you work by timing how long you take to perform various tasks. You want to figure out how much time you need to comfortably perform each task, not how fast you can get it done.

For example, the schedule might allow for 30 minutes to create a favicon. But in reality, it consumes 8 hours.

Wait a minute. Eight hours for a measly 16×16-pixel graphic? Isn’t that… excessive?

That’s not the point. You’re not learning the rate at which you work so that you can gasp in embarrassment at the result. Workflow efficiency can be improved later. The question is, how much time are you comfortable with right now? In this case, it’s 8 hours.

Deadlines aren’t the problem. Problems arise when the work outweighs the allotted time. Learning how long you take to accomplish certain tasks is the best way to set a realistic schedule.

Conclusion

Not every deadline drama can be prevented, but even the worst can be dealt with professionally. Prepare for surprises, break up large tasks into manageable segments and prioritize. It’s a matter of respect: deadlines mean business. Do you?

How do you prevent deadline emergencies? What’s the worst problem you’ve faced under time pressure? What’s your greatest solution? Share your story in the comments below.

(al)

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© Ben Gremillion for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: deadlines, timing, Workflow

One of the cool new features of HTML5 is WebSockets, which let us talk to the server without using AJAX requests. In this tutorial, we’ll review the process of running a WebSocket server in PHP, and then building a client to send and receive messages to it over the WebSocket protocol.

Dave Pell:

The new national pastime: Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and making determinations and judgments without a full set of facts.

The Beatles were famously known for their mop-top haircuts in the early 1960s, but their styles evolved over time. DeviantArt user mozzarellapoppy has a look at the hair, moustache, and spectacle changes over an eight-year span. Watch as they slowly morph into The Bee Gees.

[via Alison]

This is a tale of two trains heading full steam down different tracks.

The first train was called U.S.A. It had pulled out of the station in the city of Entrepreneurship and had been streaming down the tracks toward the little town called Socialism for some time. All of the politicians had given up on the power of the free market.  When the Republicans were the engineer of train U.S.A., having control of both the White House and the Congress, there was an unprecedented expansion of government and deficit spending -- expanding entitlements more than any of his recent Democratic predecessors,  expanding government regulation with the entrepreneurship stifling Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and beginning the binge of corporate bailouts that continues today.  Who can forget President Bush's now infamous quote, "I have abandoned free market principles to save the free market system".

The Democrats soon took over control of the train and stoked the engine with coal to push it to speeds that nobody had imagined possible as it chugged along toward Socialism.  In fact, that train gained so much speed that many suspected that it may pass right through that little town of Socialism and right on down to the next stop -- the village of Communism.  The Democrats (and in fact most Republicans) believed that it was government that was the economic answer to all problems.  For example, one of the stewards on the train, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, said that unemployment benefits are a great driver of economic growth.  She said that that unemployment benefits "creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name."  I guess the U.S.A. doesn't need small business to pull it out of the recession after all!

The other train was called Iceland, which had begun its journey somewhere between the town of Socialism and the village of Communism.  For years, the train called Iceland was considered a socialist utopia -- a gleaming example of what socialism can accomplish when left unfettered by the trappings of free markets.  It did not move very far down the tracks from Socialism. They did have big businesses, but these companies were firmly in bed with a very expansive socialistic government.

But over time, the people of Iceland began to question if the town of Socialism was such a great place to live in.  It seems that socialism was not helping them deal with a series of economic crises that had rocked their little country.  So they turned their train around and started it heading down the opposite track toward the city of Entrepreneurship.  The President of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, has made public his commitment to conquering their economic crisis through with innovation and entrepreneurship.

Then one day, not so long ago, these two trains, U.S.A. and Iceland, passed each other heading in their opposite directions.  While the people on the Iceland train seemed bewildered as to why U.S.A. was heading full speed to where they had just come from, those on train U.S.A. hardly even noticed that Iceland was heading the other way.

The end of this tale has yet to be determined. 

But let me offer a little glimpse as to what will likely happen with a quote about Iceland from Jonathan Ortmans, president of the Public Forum Institute, at Kauffman's entrepreneurship.org policy website:

The stream of positive signs I noticed began in March this year when Iceland replaced the United States as the INSEAD world champion in innovation. Then in Dubai that same month, Iceland won the Global Entrepreneurship Congress award for best entrepreneurship movement during the 2009 Global Entrepreneurship Week. And more recently, entrepreneurship was incorporated into public discourse as a main driver of economic regeneration when Iceland's President led a summit in his country on innovation, entrepreneurship, and green energy. With Iceland getting so much attention for being on the brink of bankruptcy, I thought such good news about signs of an entrepreneur-led economic resurgence deserves note.

Choo-choo.  The train is leaving the station.  Get on board!

Businesses both big and small are flocking to social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Foursquare. The fact is that a presence on these platforms not only allows companies to engage in conversations with consumers, but also serves as an outlet to drive sales through deals and coupons.

And while major brands like Starbucks, Virgin, and Levi’s have been participating in the social web for some time now, the rate of adoption among small businesses is increasing too. According to a recent University of Maryland study, social media adoption by small businesses has doubled from 12% to 24% in the last year. But as these businesses look to Facebook and Twitter to connect with customers, many are finding that some strategies work and some do not produce results. We’ll be exploring these questions at a panel on Social Media and Businesses at our Social Currency CrunchUp on July 30. We’ve found some local and national businesses using social media effectively, ranging from Levi’s to a creme brulee cart, whose case studies are below.  Some of these businesses will be sharing their experiences at the CrunchUp (You can buy tickets to the CrunchUp here).

The Creme Brulee Man: Food from street carts have become a foodie favorite for San Franciscans. Food carts travel from neighborhood to neighborhood, offering their delicacies to a range of local foodies. But without a set location, how do these carts let consumers know where they will be? Well, through Twitter of course. Curtis Kimball, the man behind the enormously popular Creme Brulee Cart in San Francisco, has quickly amassed over 12,000 followers in a little over a year. He knows that most of his business comes from people who follow him on Twitter because Twitter is the only way you can find the cart’s location for the day, says Kimball, a former construction worker turned creme brulee expert. “It gives people a valid reason to follow me,” he says.

The other use of Twitter for Kimball is to tell people what flavor of creme brulee he is serving in a given day. And Kimball says that Twitter gives him the ability to develop a personal relationship with his followers and others. He says he tries to engage his followers by asking for suggestions of what type of custard to serve or where he should park his cart, and he always tries to keep things humorous.

Kimball says he has no marketing budget and Twitter has been a great way to amass fans. He doesn’t have as much of a presence on Facebook, and he’s not sure the model is as efficient as Twitter. “Twitter can absorb more than Facebook with very little effort,” Kimball adds. Yelp has also been a valuable source of referrals for the entrepreneur. The cart has 224 reviews and is rated with 4 and a half stars.

Joie De Vivre: Joie De Vivre, a company that operates 33 luxury hotels in California is using a variety of social media platforms to drive sales and marketing for its properties. Central to the hotel group’s strategy is disseminating deals and coupons to followers and fans on Facebook and Twitter. Every Tuesday, Joie De Vivre’s Twitter account will Tweet an exclusive deal to its nearly 10,000 followers. Followers have only hours to book the steeply discounted room rate. For example, this past Tuesday, it offered $79 rooms at the group’s Galleria Park Hotel in San Francisco in November and December. The company also operates similar deals for its 5,000-plus Facebook fans on Fridays.

In less than a year, Joie De Vivre has booked over 1,000 room nights through these types of deals—rooms that otherwise would have stayed empty.  The company has also started a partnership with coupons site Mobile Spinach to offer coupons for the group’s restaurants. And the company has partnered with Foursquare to offer deals for check-ins at its various restaurants. In terms of flash sales, Joir De Vivre has done a number of deals with travel sites like Gilt’s Jetsetter as well as RueLaLa, and Nadeau says these deals have done moderately well.

The company’s marketing VP Ann Nadeau tells me that because of the economy the hotel industry’s marketing budgets have shrunk, and social media efforts have proved to be a great way to both drive sales and build loyalty. The company’s social media efforts are not solely deal based. This summer, Joie De Vivre encouraged consumers to enter its Road Trippin’ California contest, which asked people to submit videos on YouTube that share why they love California. Three winners, out of 270 videos that were submitted, were selected to win all-expense California road trips with stays in the company’s hotels.

In terms of using social media for customer service, Nadeau says that each property hotel manager is responsible for monitoring conversations and reviews on Twitter, Facebook, and Yelp.

Stone Korean Kitchen: Co-founded last November by chef Terry Lin, and LinkedIn employees Robby Kwok and Dan Yoo, Stone Korean Kitchen aims to bring modern Korean cuisine to the Financial District in San Francisco. Yoo tells me that as soon as the restaurant launched, he started a presence on social media sites, including Twitter, Yelp, and Facebook. But the challenge of many small businesses with social media is driving traffic to the right social media channel rather than splitting it between various sites. Yoo says that interconnecting content between the various profiles has helped gain Twitter followers and Facebook fans. Currently the restaurant’s Twitter profile has 65 followers and its Facebook page has 107 fans.  Many of these are repeat customers.  For a small restaurant, it doesn’t take that many loyal customers to keep the kitchen busy.

Yoo says that he consistently Tweets links to comments and reviews on the Facebook page. Of course, Yoo also stresses the importance of managing Yelp reviews and responding to customer complaints on social media platforms.

But what really tipped the scales for Yoo was Groupon (disclosure: my husband works for Groupon).  Yoo says that restaurant saw significant traction in both sales and traffic to its Yelp sites and Facebook page when the restaurant signed up for a Groupon deal in April. Stone Korean Kitchen sold 2600 groupons in one day, and saw a packed house for two months for both lunch and dinner. Now Yoo says that they see around 5 to 10 Groupons per day instead of 30 or 40 but the restaurant is still seeing a good number of repeat customers from the Groupon deal, says Yoo.

One effect of the Groupon deal, besides increased sales, was that there were a flux of Yelp reviews. It took the company six months to accumulate 80 reviews on Yelp and after the deal, the restaurant accumulated 90 reviews within three months. Yoo also says that he’s seen a steady increase in Foursquare check-ins following the Groupon deal.

Of course, since Yoo and Kwok are both LinkedIn employees (chef Lin manages the restaurant on a day-to-day basis), they put their heads together to figure out how they could use the professional social network to drive sales. With the ad targeting capabilities on LinkedIn, the restaurant started serving ads that target lawyers and bankers in the San Francisco area, as both industries are centralized in the financial district. They’ve noticed an increase in foot traffic and corporate catering requests as a result.  In the future, Yoo says that the restaurant is working on a promotion with Foursquare. And he is in talks with Twitter on featuring a deal on the social network’s new Earlybird venture.

Dr. Irena Vaksman, Dentist: Social media and dentistry don’t necessarily go hand in hand, but one San Francisco dentist has forged an impressive social media campaign to raise awareness of her recently launched practice. She has a Twitter profile, a Facebook page, a YouTube channel and an website. Dr. Vaksman’s husband, lawyer Robert Vaksman, has been the strategist behind her social media efforts. Robert says that his wife is confronted with the challenge of practicing in a building that houses hundreds of other dentists that have more established practices. He says that it’s a no brainer to be looking at as many social channels as possible for marketing efforts.

While the practice is still young, the Vaksmans say that they are starting to see patients and potential patients begin to communicate with them on the Facebook page, which has 70 fans. Vaksman will publish her Yelp reviews from patients on the site as well as YouTube videos containing educational content about dental procedures. Twitter is still a fairly new forum for the practice says Robert, and he’s still trying to determine the best way to engage with potential customers on the network.

Last October, Dr. Vaksman signed up for a Groupon deal in San Francisco, and received 320 new patients because of the deal, which was for a patient exam and x-ray. The Vaksmans say that the deal propelled the five month old business in the right direction and boosted its patient base significantly. Robert is also looking into partnering with Facebook campaign startup Wildfire to set up a promotional sweepstakes for the practice’s Facebook page.

Levi’s: Now more than ever, retail brands are engaging consumers on social networks to offer deals, allow users to socialize around purchases, and more. Levi’s Jeans was one of the brands that was first to use Facebook as a tool for sales and marketing initiatives and has launched a number of compelling campaigns using Facebook.

As one of Facebook’s initial partners using the social network’s new Like functionality, Levi’s allows Facebook users to like products on Levi’s online store and its Facebook page (which has nearly 500,000 likes) and share their favorite items with their friends. Within the first week, Levi’s got more than 4,000 likes, says Inside Facebook.

The jeans giant also promoted a major campaign in conjunction with SXSW this year, partnering with music publication The Fader to promote a music event at the festival. The company worked with brand marketing platform Involver to incorporate music and video into their page, with the hopes of driving music fans to buy jeans from the Levi’s brand. Most recently, Levi’s has begun to promote retail offerings with geo-targeted event advertisements on Facebook.

In terms of Twitter, Levi’s recently enlisted a “Levi’s Guy,” 23-year-old USC graduate Gareth, to engage consumers on the microblogging platform. He has over 6,000 followers and is responsible for responding to and engaging in conversations about the Levi’s brand on Twitter. The company is currently in the process of trying to find a Levi’s Girl, which will serve as a female foil to Gareth.

Levi’s director of digital marketing, Megan O’Connor, told us that the engagement with both Twitter and Facebook is about creating and informing brand ambassadors that will help drive sales through their own actions and word of mouth.

Starbucks: Most experts will agree that Starbucks has one of the best social media strategies out there.  Now that it is giving away free WiFi, it is even more of a magnet for roving laptop warriors.  And with 10 million Facebook fans, Starbucks is now close to surpassing the Facebook fan base of Lady Gaga. The company has held a number of promotions on its page to drive engagement. For example, Starbucks held a promotion for free pastries on its Facebook page, allowing customers to access a coupon that would give them a free pastry with a purchase of a coffee drink. Advertising on the social network has also helped to drive traffic to Starbucks’ page.

In terms of Twitter, Starbucks has also been incredibly active on the microblogging network, amassing nearly one million followers. Not only does the company’s Twitter stream serve as an engagement tool with customers who are talking about the brand on Twitter, but it is also used as a way to spread news from Starbucks. Starbucks has also participated in Twitter’s promoted Tweets program, which allows advertisers to buy sponsored links on Twitter.

The combination of geolocation and social networks is also a huge avenue for Starbucks and the company was one of the first major brands to broker a deal with popular location-based social network Foursquare. In March, Starbucks started offering Foursquare mayors of retail stores special ‘Barista’ badges that would come with discounts on drinks and food. Starbucks also partnered recently with mobile social network Brightkite to give members special discounts on drinks.

Photo Credit/Flickr/Snickclunck

Filed under: iPad

Here's an interesting tidbit from WIRED. Way back in 1999, the magazine ran a short piece in the Hype List section reflecting on the company's recent financial turnaround. You'll remember that Apple introduced the iMac in 1998, which was a huge success. The piece was written in April of 1999, just 3 months before the clamshell iBook was introduced at Macworld Expo in New York City in July of 1999.

Here's the interesting part. While reflecting on Apple's future, the snippet predicts that "The next iMac attack promises new lollipop laptops, a more serious series of professional machines and a wireless handheld dubbed the iPad." [Emphasis ours.] Betsy Mason (WIRED.com's science editor) posted a TwitPic of the article for all to see.

It's an example of a lucky guess, of course (Apple was "i" crazy back then), but still a lot of fun.

[Via ReadWriteWeb]

TUAWWired named the iPad... in 1999 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 16 Jul 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Checking whether the browser supports a particular HTML element can be tricky, such as the <canvas> element of HTML5. But a particular DOM method can help.

Flaky wireless connections are a fact of life for bloggers on the move. If it isn’t tortoise-slow downloads, it’s a password that never seems to “take”. If it isn’t a connection that keeps dropping, it’s a router that refuses to give you an IP address.

Okay. So the connection’s too unreliable to let you post to your blog, and your mobile contract doesn’t include tethering. Don’t let that keep you from blogging. Here are five ways you can work on your blog, even when you aren’t connected to the hive mind:

1. Outline your next blog post. Maybe you can’t do the research you want, find the URLs of the posts you’d like to link to, or hunt down the perfect Creative Commons image to illustrate your post. But you can sketch out the bare bones, and add the muscles, organs and stylish accessories once you’re back online.
2. Clean up your hard drive. If you’re like me, you have little snippets of blog ideas and drafts all over the place. Bring them together in one folder, or one text file (your workflow will vary), and you’ll be miles ahead of the game next time you’re stumped for a post idea.
3. Raid your subconscious. Break out the mind-mapping software, open up your Moleskine or just scribble on a napkin – but brainstorm ideas for your next five, ten or fifty posts. Don’t try to assess them at first; just get as many down as possible. Then, once the storm peters out, pick out the best and add them to your idea file.
4. Make a to-do list. Chances are there are things you’ve been meaning to do for your blog: add a Delicious feed, check out an e-commerce plug-in, create a promo card to hand out at conferences. Set priorities according to the effort each task will require and the impact you expect each one to have, and you’ve just built yourself a development queue.
5. Doodle. Draw something funny, or funny-ish. Then snap your doodle with your camera phone or digital camera. Once you’re online, upload it as a blog post. Hey – it works for me.

We’ve been innundated with news over the past couple weeks about the iPhone 4’s reception problems. Tomorrow, Apple will be breaking what has by and large been a stoic silence and will speak to press about these issues and its solution.

Our own Ben Parr will be at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters tomorrow to live-blog the whole thing, but just in case you don’t feel like tuning in, here’s a flowchart to help you predict your reactions and prepare a nice, canned, partisan opinion of the whole thing ahead of time.

(And yes, we know the above statement is ludicrous. Please consider this flowchart parody your daily journey to the lighter side of tech news. After all, at the end of the day, they’re just phones, right?)

In case you’ve missed the barrage of headlines, the iPhone 4 was rumored to have some antenna problems the day before it launched in stores. As it turns out, those rumors were true; Consumer Reports said they couldn’t recommend the iPhone 4, saying that would-be owners were better off sticking with the older 3GS. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Steve Jobs and Apple staff were insisting that the iPhone 4 didn’t have a problem and that users were just holding it incorrectly. Class-action lawsuit threats ensued.

Here’s the flowchart, which we — fanboys/girls and haters alike — thought was pretty funny (click for full-size version):

Thanks to our good buddies at Retrevo for sending this lovely flowchart our way. We hoped you got a chuckle out of it.

img credit: jesusbelzunce]

More About: antenna, apple, flowchart, infographic, iphone 4, parody, reception

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The last couple of days have been an Old Spice explosion, as one of the most popular viral campaigns in recent history — in which the Old Spice Guy made personalized videos for fans, randoms and prominent bloggers alike — has taken over the social media realm. But how popular was it really? Visible Measures has some nifty numbers for us.

First, here’s the basics:

• Number of videos made: 180+
• Number of video views: 5.9 million
• Number of comments: 22,500

And that’s since Tuesday.

The campaign, which stars The Most Interesting Man in the World 2.0 Isaiah Mustafa, launched in February centered around the theme “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” The original ad attracted 19 million views to date across all platforms (not just the below YouTube clip).

Next came “The Return of The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” which premiered a few weeks ago and has already garnered 6.9 million views.

As you can see, the campaign has only continued to grow in popularity — likely due to increased press/brand recognition.

According to Visible Measures, “Old Spice Responses” — a.k.a the string of custom-made vids — is one of the fastest-growing online video campaigns of all time. The company compares the endeavor to some of the most popular viral videos to date below, and how they’ve grown over the course of 24 hours (to be fair, “Old Spice Responses” had a time limit attached, so there was more urgency to participate with this particular string of videos than there was to get in on, say, the Susan Boyle craze).

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Using Viewers to Go Viral

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What’s genius about this endeavor is how Old Spice and marketing agency Wieden + Kennedy have used viewers to go viral. Yesterday, I was chatting with Dan Greenberg of Sharethrough — a company that seeds viral videos for brands — about the campaign, and he pointed out that, “Brands don’t make viral videos, users make videos viral.” That’s exactly what Old Spice achieved, rather handily.

Read Write Web has an excellent piece on how exactly this campaign worked, explaining how a team of “tech geeks, marketers and writers” gathered together and tapped everything from Facebook and Twitter to Reddit and 4chan (yes, 4chan — they went there) to make this thing go global. As I pointed out on Tuesday and Stan Schroeder opined this a.m., this campaign worked so well because it spoke directly to you.

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A New Kind of Viral Video?

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“In a way there’s nothing magical that we’ve done here,” Wieden + Kennedy’s Global Interactive Creative Director Iain Tait, told RWW. “We just brought a character to life using the social channels we all [social media geeks] use every day. But we’ve also taken a loved character and created new episodic content in real time.”

And that might be the most interesting part of the whole deal — how overwhelmingly positive it is. Let’s face it, most viral videos are shocking, disturbing and/mocking of their subject (as much as I adore “Double Rainbow,” it is, well, kind of mean). There’s none of that here. Instead of trying to trick folks into sharing content by creating something shocking or over-the-top (which would impel one to pass it along via the “WTF!?” sentiment) or coasting along on an established viral meme and attaching a product to it (as folks have done with Chatroulette and flash mobs), Old Spice first created a character that people — shock, shock, horror, horror — liked, and then created an immersive experience that people wanted to be a part of.

Congrats, Old Spice. You’ve set the precedent. Now ready yourself for the deluge of less successful copycats.

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Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube

More About: MARKETING, money, old spice, pop culture, trending, viral video, youtube

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By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Seriously, all four new FaceTime ads creep me out. I know they're meant to be sentimental, but they're simply too real. I feel like a voyeur eavesdropping on very personal interactions. It's a place I don't belong. It's not my moment to share. Apple posted the commercials to YouTube on July 9th. I only discovered them today.

There's a veiled, backhanded compliment to my creepy feelings. As an exercise in creating intimacy between two people and showing the endearing qualities a video call has over voice, the TV commercials are enormously effective. But to my watching, there's realism, and there's realism.

So I want to congratulate Apple's ad agency for a job too well done. A woman telling her spouse (or partner) she's pregnant is an intimate moment that only they should share (There's admission to the moment's privacy when the wife asks: "Are you alone?"). I would say the same about a sheepish daughter showing braces to her father for the first time; or a grandfather seeing his first grandchild. "How does it feel being a grandfather?" asks the son. "How does it feel being a father?" asks the dad.

Yes, there is power in the marketing message and foreshadowing of a future foretold in 60-to-70 year-old scifi dramas: Video calling. Do the commercials also foreshadow a time when the most intimate interactions take place by FaceTime rather than face to face? Like social media, which promises more personal interaction but delivers it in the most impersonal ways? What? You think Facebook Wall postings, comments or private messages are personal?

I wonder how will video calling change our mores and attitudes about privacy. It's not like the intimate moments portrayed in the Apple commercials take place in public places. Perhaps I would feel less the voyeur if the scene settings weren't so artificially private and the tone of callers' voices so hesitant and emotional. But in the real world, how many people would video call where others could closely listen to and watch family matters? Perhaps I'm naive; look at about how some family members roughly treat one another in public places like fast-food restaurants or shopping malls. They act like there is no one else around them.

Video should be the future of phone calling, and Apple has magnificently -- and in some ways frighteningly -- portrayed the potential. The commercials are so real, they make me feel guilty to watch them. How do you feel about them?

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010



YouTube - Television - Betanews - Web Design and Development - Hosting

The national distraction is over. NBA star LeBron James has chosen the team he’s going to play for: the Miami Heat. Of course, this means that he won’t be returning to his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers and owner Dan Gilbert is not too happy about that. And he made that very clear to everyone tonight in a scathing letter posted to the Cavs main page on NBA.com.

A letter, posted in Comic Sans.

Yes, Gilbert wrote the entire letter in probably the worst font ever to grace the computer screen. Normally a staple among six year old and grandmothers, Glibert for some reason decided to use the font to write what will undoubtedly be the most public message he will ever write. And it’s too bad, because the content of the message itself is quite good — very juicy. Gilbert’s use of quotes, capitalization, and bolded letters makes it very clear just how pissed off he is.

And that’s good because all of Cleveland (incidentally, my hometown) is pissed off tonight as well. Gilbert’s letter should give some comfort, if for nothing else that he guarantees – yes, guarantees — that the Cavs will win a championship before LeBron does. This is a city that hasn’t won any major sports championship in nearly 50 years (and that was when the Cleveland Browns won the NFL Championship in 1964 before there were even Super Bowls).

But again, all anyone can talk about is the damn Comic Sans faux pas. “Comic Sans” is currently a Trending Topic on Twitter thanks to the letter — just above “LeBron James”!

Thomson Reuters’ Anthony De Rosa may have summed in up best in a tweet: ”The last time I saw a letter written in Comic Sans it was a chain email containing LOLcats from my mother.”

Apparently, Gilbert doesn’t keep up too well with some of this here Internet stuff. I await a LeBron response in Wingdings.

Technology and investment group HackFwd describes what it's like to work with them in a flowchart. In a nutshell: start with inspiration, work hard, impress people, work hard, and reap the rewards. And then start all over again.

We are really excited to announce the launch of a new interactive portal for Coastal Carolina University’s Athletic Department to help promote football ticket sales. They shared with us this press release they sent out earlier this week about the site.

You can check out the site at www.CoastalTix.com.

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CoastalTix.com Interactive Fan Site is Live

The easiest and best way to purchase 2010 Coastal Carolina football tickets at www.CoastalTix.com.

The easiest and best way to purchase 2010 Coastal Carolina football tickets - as well as getting all of your relevant game-day information for the upcoming season - is now live at www.CoastalTix.com.

The site, a supplement to the main athletics site: www.GoCCUSports.com, will explain in detail and give pertinent information for fans to purchase season, and later, single-game football tickets. Also, www.CoastalTix.com will give fans all the information they will need to enjoy the full game-day atmosphere.

Also, the site will give details to a new feature for Coastal Carolina football, the Family Fun Zone. The designated area in the north endzone, next to the newly-built Adkins Field House, allows one adult and three youth or two adults and two youth season tickets for just $99.

Other advantages to the new interactive site include the ability to share the site on social networks and reach the ever-growing, technology-savvy customer.

CoastalTix.com is a collaborative effort between Chanticleer athletics and Centresource Interactive Agency in Nashville with Coastal Carolina being the first university to partner with Centresource in this medium.

“Our partnership with Centresource Interactive gives us the opportunity to not only be dynamic with our ticket sales, but also gives us a hub from which all of our online ticketing can branch out,” said Coastal Carolina athletics director Hunter Yurachek. “Seeing and feeling the game-day experience is an important part of why customers make their decisions. With the expansion of the stadium and the new Family Fun Zone season ticket, we felt it was important to find something that reaches younger families and computer-friendly audiences. This use of technology is the best medium to accomplish our goals.”

Shared by chayner
I read this in bed at 6:15am... Next to my wife who was checking Facebook...

Young women are becoming more and more dependent on social media and checking on their social networks, according to a new study released earlier today by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research. In fact, as many as one-third of women aged 18-34 check Facebook when they first wake up, even before they get to the bathroom.

The study sampled the habits of 1,605 adults using social media between May and June of this year in an attempt to break down their social media habits. While some of the results are in line with previous studies we’ve read, others simply shocked us (e.g. 42% of young women think posting photos of themselves “visibly intoxicated” is okay).

Here’s a short rundown of how young women are utilizing Facebook and social media in general:

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Are Young Women Addicted to Facebook?

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While the study covers all of social media, it’s clear that women in the 18-34 range are focused on their Facebook accounts. More than half of young women (57%) say they talk to people online more than face-to-face. A full 39% of them proclaim themselves Facebook addicts, while 34% of young women make Facebook the first thing they do when they wake up, even before brushing their teeth or going to the bathroom.

Here are some other interesting stats regarding young women and Facebook:

• 21% of women age 18-34 check Facebook in the middle of the night
• 63% use Facebook as a networking tool
• 42% think it’s okay to post photos of themselves intoxicated
• 79% are fine with kissing in photos
• 58% use Facebook to keep tabs on “frenemies”
• 50% are fine with being Facebook friends with complete strangers

What conclusions can we draw from this data? It’s not just that young women are using Facebook religiously: it’s that they’re very open with what they post and who they accept as friends. Combined, it can lead to a privacy mess.

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Social Media’s Role in Dating

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We already knew that Facebook has radically changed dating, and Oxygen Media’s stats only back up that assertion. 50% of women believe that it’s just fine to date people they’ve met on Facebook, compared to 65% of men. 6% of women use it to “hook up” (20% of men do the same).

It gets murkier for relationships. 49% of women believe it’s fine to keep tabs on a boyfriend by having access to his accounts (42% of men think the same way). 9% of women have broken up their relationships via Facebook, as compared to a full 24% of men.

Luckily, most women don’t believe that breaking up via Facebook is okay: 91% to be exact. I don’t want to meet the 9% who think it’s just fine.

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Women and Privacy

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The Oxygen Media/Lightspeed Research survey is filled with a lot of other interesting data points, but it all circles back to the privacy issue. 54% of 18-24 year old women do not trust Facebook with their private information, and 89% agree that “you should never put anything on Facebook that you don’t want your parents to see.” That seems contradictory to the 42% that think it’s fine to post pictures of themselves drunk.

Our habits are changing due to social media technology, particularly Facebook. It’s not just a connection tool for many women, but a research tool, a dating network, and a way to keep tabs on both boyfriends and enemies.

What do you think of these stats? Do any of them surprise you? Let us know what you think in the comments.

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Reviews: Facebook

More About: FacebookT, twitter

I read this in bed at 6:15am... Next to my wife who was checking Facebook...

We are thrilled to congratulate Evan Owens from our team as a Nashville 30 Under 30 award winner this year.

Nashville’s Top 30 Under 30 recognizes the city’s most active young philanthropists while benefiting the CFF. Honorees were nominated by co-workers, friends and family for their charitable and professional endeavors. The top 30 honorees were then selected by the Top 30 Under 30 selection committee during the month of June.

“This honoree class has once again shown that Nashville is full of young professionals that care about their city. We hope the community will help the CFF congratulate and honor them by supporting the Top 30 Under 30 celebration in September,” said Top 30 Under 30 co-chair Anne Elizabeth McIntosh.

Nashville’s Top 30 Under 30 will be on Sept. 11, 2010, at Public Square Park downtown. Tickets can be purchased in advance for $50 or $75 for VIP entry. Evan will be selling tickets to help this great cause. If you are interested please email him at evan@centresource.com

Visit www.nashvilletop30.org for more information.

As you may know, Facebook has been doing some pretty stupid things recently that can cause your privacy to be shot on Facebook.  Fortunately, there are tools out there to help you adjust your privacy settings to be more protective of your information.

I came across this tool tonight: http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/

Basically, drag the bookmarklet to your bookmark bar, log into Facebook, and then click the bookmark.  It will run some tests to see where you’re protected, and where you’re potentially exposed.  I was surprised even how much I hadn’t protected, despite trying hard to be extra cautious.

Many people are altogether shutting down their Facebook accounts… I haven’t gone that far, but I do think that using Facebook with the default privacy settings is outright insane.

Happy (and safe) Facebooking!

As you may have seen in the national news, a series of storms over the weekend have caused the worst flooding in Nashville in decades. At least six people in Middle Tennessee have lost their lives, and countless more have lost homes and businesses. More than 2,000 people stayed in storm shelters last night. We are truly blessed to report that all of our team is accounted for and is safe, but our hearts and prayers go out to those who are not as fortunate.

This morning, CentreSource CEO Nicholas Holland (@nicholasholland) has asked our team to get out and support the volunteer efforts that are underway in Nashville. Groups are organizing in various parts of the city to be ready with food, bottled water and other basic needs.

Here are a few of the service opportunities that we are aware of right now:

• Hands on Nashville (partnered with Metro Davidson County)
• Nashville Red Cross
• Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee

Our Germantown neighborhood office remains open with only minor damage, and our staff will be available via e-mail to help with any of our clients’ needs. If you need assistance with your project, please contact your Strategist.

There has been a lot of discussion about the changes that Apple made to the upcoming version of the iPhone OS 4.0 Terms of Service:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

As both developers and consumers, CentreSource is affected by this decision in two ways.

While we’ve traditionally been a PHP shop, we have developers who are versed in JavaScript, ActionScript, Ruby, ASP .NET, Perl, and even a little Python.  When the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) was originally released two years ago, we played around with it, but the learning curve of teaching ourselves Objective C (the language required to use the SDK) ultimately led us to make the decision to explore utilizing a third party development tool called Titanium to create our iPhone apps.  Titanium is an application that allows you to write in a simpler/unified language, and then the tool recompiles the code to the Objective C required by Apple.

According to the new changes, applications like Titanium — or the about-to-be-released Adobe Flash to iPhone converter — are a no-no.  Why?  Commentators and speculators say it comes down to two main reasons:

1. Apple wants complete control.  In order to develop for the iPhone OS, you have to use Apple’s tools… On an Apple computer… With an Apple developer’s license…  Apple controls the entire development environment from the moment you start writing your code (on your Apple computer) to the point you start making money through releasing your app in the App Store.  Apple is able to dictate how, where, and when your app gets created and distributed.  While some see this as a monopolistic abuse of power, I see this as directly benefiting the fact that…

2. Apple has complete control.  By controlling the entire development environment, they are able to provide the tools and resources to allow app developers what they need to create applications that maximize the potential of the iPhone OS.  If they release a brand new set of features to their SDK (as they did last week), they are able to immediately integrate these features into their toolset for the developers to use.  When using tools like Titanium, developers are forced to wait until the 3rd party company changes their tools to be compatible with the new SDK before they can start using them.

Similarly, many argue that by “neutralizing” the tools used for creation, you’re not able to fully utilize the specific features for the end product. Think of any application that was created for a specific platform — Mac or Windows — and then think of applications that were “ported” to the other platform. No one will argue that Office on a Mac or Handbrake on Windows are anywhere close to the application on the platform it was originally written for.

From a development perspective, we’re not tremendously affected — primarily because we’re already fairly cross-versed in development languages. Adding Objective-C to our arsenal — while an inconvenience and time consuming — is by no means a deal breaker for us, especially given the benefits that Apple provides.  For most of us, we’d have to learn another language / SDK of some kind in order to develop iPhone OS apps — why not just go right to learning Objective-C.

From a consumer perspective, I believe this is great news. Imagine the scenario that Louis Gerbarg of /dev/why!?! presents:

Imagine if 10% of the apps on iPhone came from Flash. If that was the case, then ensuring Flash didn’t break release to release would be a big deal, much bigger than any other compatibility issues. Since Apple doesn’t have access to Flash CS5’s runtime library code or compiler frontend, they might be put in a position where they would need to coordinate with Adobe to resolve those issues. Shipping a new release where Apple breaks any specific application, even a top seller, is not an issue if the release is compelling, most apps work, and Apple has the option of working with the vendor to help them fix their app. Shipping a release where they break a large percentage of apps is not generally an option. Letting any of these secondary runtimes develop a significant base of applications in the store risks putting Apple in a position where the company that controls that runtime can cause delays in Apple’s release schedule, or worse, demand specific engineering decisions from Apple, under the threat of withholding the information necessary to keep their runtime working.

Clearly this is not an ideal scenario for Apple or for their consumers. Apple’s imposing restrictions are a protective move for themselves and their consumer — ensuring the high level of user experience that Apple has come to be known for, and not letting 3rd party vendors effect their reputation.

Is this bad news for Adobe? Youbetcha. They are increasingly grasping at straws to stay relevant in a marketplace that is leaning more towards HTML5, and turning “Flash” into a bad word. I agree with some of my colleagues that Flash still has an appropriate place on the web, and heavens knows how many ActionScript developers are bummed about this decision that effectively eliminates them from developing on a platform that accounts for 45% of mobile browsing.

At the end of the day, when the dust of iPhone OS 4.0 finally settles, there will still be a plethora of apps (good and bad) in the iTunes App Store. This decision will be long forgotten by all those involved (well, except maybe Adobe), and the consumers will remain happy and buying phones.

As for CentreSource? Bring on Objective-C!

** Note: my opinions may be a bit biased… This whole post was written on my Apple iPad — which is awesome by the way… But that will be a saved for a separate blog post!

For anyone (like myself) who has been religiously following Google and the amazing things that they have done to improve people’s experience on the web, you would have noticed a pattern in December 2009 of “speed.” The reasons for their speed obsession are clearly justified; a user’s experience on the web is made or broken by the speed at which they are able to browse, including the initial page load, the responsiveness of the interactive components, and the number of clicks to get to retrieve their desired information.

As such, Google has been busy releasing various tools to help with user’s experiences on the web:

Google Chrome

Ok, so this technically came out for Windows in 2008, but was released fully cross-platform in 2009. Chrome (and its subsequent big brother “Chrome OS”) is an open-source browser that borrows components from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox (both open-source projects) and aims to “add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.” As of January 4, 2010, Chrome had officially passed Apple’s Safari browser to become the 3rd most popular browser behind Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Real-Time Search

As Twitter has grown in popularity, it has quickly become the first source for breaking news, mostly due to the ease and speed with which you can post information. In Q4 2009, Google signed a deal with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and FriendFeed (among others) to allow search results from each of their sites to be propagated into the Google search result page. The benefit of this is that one can get to-the-second results of what they’re looking for — all in one place.

Webmaster Tools

While improving the end-users’ tools can greatly improve usability and performance, Google acknowledged that individual site optimization is key to a successful user experience by releasing a variety of webmaster tools to help web developers identify slow parts of their site, and provide tips on how to improve those areas. One group of tools was added to Google Analytics under the new “Site Performance” section, that gives an analysis of your site’s performance relative to the rest of the web, as well as particular suggestions on improving page speed. This is particularly helpful in identifying over-arching tips and tricks that can improve the loading speed of your site as a whole.

The second tool is a Firefox extension called “Page Speed” that takes the analysis provided in the “Site Performance” section, and moves it to the browser, allowing you to view specific recommendations on a page-by-page basis. This is particularly helpful in identifying very specific ways to improve the speed of a particular page that might be loading slower than others on your site.

The third tool is a Chrome extension called “Speed Tracer.” This tool is more geared towards the performance of web applications, focusing less on the initial load time, and more on the strain that using the website itself puts on the user’s browser. Using Speed Tracer, you can pinpoint exactly what scripts, actions, or files are causing your website to appear to slow down.

Public DNS

The nerdiest most technical tool that Google announced was their hosting of a Public DNS server. DNS, or Domain Name System, is an essential part of the web that helps translate domain names (”blog.centresource.com”) into the unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the computers where the website files live. By providing a Public DNS, Google plans to not only optimize the hundreds of DNS requests that the average user makes every day, but also to gather data about user’s browsing patterns “to improve the browsing experience for Internet users globally.”

When your company has had so much success at planning and building world-class Web sites for companies and organizations of all sizes, it is easy to start to think “Hey, what about our site? When are we launching the new one? Can we put a treasure map on there? Can Chris take our pictures?” The answers to the last three are: “today,” “absolutely” and “if you ask him nicely.”

Capping off months of on-again, off-again work (Hey, we’ve been really busy!), we are proud to announce that the new CentreSource.com is finally available to the world. The new site invites you to meet our team, learn a bit about our process, see why our clients are the best and to chat with us about your undying love of cupcakes (or anything else you want to talk about).

Have a look!

CentreSource is once again sponsoring the midstate’s leading tech-driven “unconference,” BarCamp Nashville. This free event will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Saturday, October 17 at the Cadillac Ranch on Broadway in downtown Nashville (map). At last glance, there were more than 60 presenters that had created sessions on topics on everything from Web development to entrepreneurship. We are also very proud that several of our team members will be presenting at this year’s event:

• Nicholas Holland - From Cave Walls to Facebook Walls
• Chip Hayner - Choosing the Right Tool for the Job
• Brent Shaffer & Travis Roberts - Test Your Might: Symfony vs Rails - Framework Combat
• Nicholas Holland (again!) - iPhone Development … or “Welcome to Crazyville, Population YOU”
• Jared Scheel - Whoa! Creating Engaging User Experiences
• Aaron Briggs - Getting a Pants-Free Education: E-Learning and Instructional Design

Visit the BarCamp Nashville Web site to register today!

On the drive into work today, I was listening to “This Week in Google“, one of the amazing podcasts from the TWiT network, hosted by Leo Laporte.  In the most recent episode, one of the guests spoke briefly about how he felt that he could let non-direct Twitter messages and Facebook wall posts to him go without reply, but he felt obliged to respond to emails and direct messages.  This got me thinking about the “Social Obligation” that I feel with various forms of communication.

In each of the mediums mentioned (and I’ll throw in SMS, blog comments, and forums), the person leaving the message is able to post directly to you — the biggest difference is that some of the messages are public and some are private.  Ironically, the items that are private (direct messages in Twitter / Facebook, SMS, email) seem to be the ones that I feel most obliged to respond to, whereas it feels “ok” to leave the public comments hanging without response.  I’m not sure if I think that “someone else can reply for me,” or if being public is less personal, and therefore less necessary to respond.

On the flip side, there is a particular expectation that we set whenever we send a message to someone.  I may not expect Sally to thank me personally for the birthday greeting I posted on her Facebook wall, but if I post a public message to @SouthwestAir or @ComcastCares, I have an expectation to get a response.

What do you think?

• Which social obligations do you feel?
• How do you feel when you post a public or private comment to someone and they don’t respond?
• If your company or business is on Twitter, do you respond to every public or private message?

At CentreSource, we have a motto that “outcomes always outweigh the output.”  Through this, we try to focus on meeting the individual goals of our clients, versus focusing on the process of how they get done.  One goal we often hear is that our clients would like an easy way to update the website themselves.  By using a Content Management System (CMS), we enable our clients to accomplish this — without having to install anything on their computers, or know too much about how websites work.

Over the history of CentreSource, we’ve worked hard to choose the perfect CMS to be able to meet the individual needs of each client and project that comes our way.  There was always a balance that had to be struck — it couldn’t be too cookie-cutter, or else we wouldn’t be able to do everything that the client was asking.  Conversely, it wouldn’t be cost efficient if we had to custom build a CMS for our clients each time.  By focusing on the outcome  (the client’s goal of an easy-to-update website), we decided that the best single CMS option was not a single option at all, but instead a “toolbox” approach that would allow us to use the appropriate tool for each unique job.

WordPress

For basic blog / news sites with a few “static” pages, there is no better option out there than the open source platform, WordPress.  WordPress has a simple, intuitive administrative interface, and is designed and built around the concept of two types of content: posts and pages.  Thanks to their fairly extensive documentation and an incredible user community, there are thousands of WordPress tutorials, examples, and plugins available that can help you to maximize the capabilities of WordPress to it’s fullest.  Although there are some plugins out there (one in particular called Flutter) that allow you to expand WordPress into a more feature-rich CMS (with multiple content types, for example), we have found that doing so is like pushing a boulder uphill.  It can be done, but it’s more work than it’s worth — especially with other, more feature-rich CMSes out there (see below).  All in all, though, WordPress is an excellent basic tool for basic websites.

Sitemason

Next in our toolbox is a local company that CentreSource has used since we first open our doors, and has never let us down since.  Sitemason is a proprietary CMS that has expanded over the years to allow its users to edit pages, news, forms, polls, photos, and calendars.  Once you’re trained on their administrative interface, adding and editing content is a breeze, as heavy-hitter clients like Vanderbilt University, ABHOW (American Baptist Homes of the West),  Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, or TrustCore Financial can attest to.  Their team of developers are constantly refining and adding to their tools, taking guidance and recommendations from the users and developers that use their system.  As a result, Sitemason has proven to be an invaluable tool for our low- to mid-level sites.

Drupal

Over the past few years, Drupal has taken off as the de facto CMS for open source developers.  Advertising itself as not only a CMS platform, but also a CMS framework, Drupal has an extensively flexible core that can be used to build modules to do just about anything you might want.  Drupal’s bread and butter is its ability to create custom content types (a piece of content with defined custom fields), and then a system to view the content in many different ways (lists, grids, tables, blocks, etc).  Additionally, Drupal specializes in social-based tools, making it a perfect platform for bands, politicians, or churches.  For any high-level content-based site that is too demanding for WordPress or SiteMason, Drupal is the perfect tool for the job.

Symfony

While not really a CMS, the Symfony framework allows us to custom build anything that can’t be done with the tools above.  Symfony is a PHP framework that provides an architecture for developers to build complex web applications faster.  Using Symfony allows us to build the exact tool that our client is wanting — something that is necessary in circumstances where the workflow is just as important as the final outcome.  Using Symfony, we’ve been able to build complex order and shipment fulfillment systems and social-based file sharing and recommendation systems — sites that would not have been able to be found “out-of-the-box,” but that were needed based on our client’s goals.

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The largest advantage of having a full toolbox at our disposal is that as we approach planning for each new project, we are able to choose a tool in response to the needs of the client, instead of trying to force the client’s needs into a preselected (and potentially limiting) option.  Each of the tools that we use help to cover the full gamut of price, time, and complexity, allowing us optimally serve the client with the best tool for the job.

The summer is here, which means that once again it is time for us to join forces to help out Ellie’s Run for Africa (ERFA), a 5k run and family fun day that raises awareness of and funding for Africans who struggle to meet basic needs such as health care, food, water, shelter, clothing and education.  Since the first event in 2004, ERFA has raised over $155,000 and helped to put over 420 kids in school.

We have been a proud sponsor of ERFA for the past three years, specifically offering our web design and development services for their website, http://www.elliesrun.org.  This year, we were able to add a brand new system for accepting online registrations, donations, and volunteer sign-ups, including their “ERFA Heroes” system that allows people to sign-up to raise money, and then get people to donate in their name.

This year, ERFA has an ambitious goal of 1,000 event participants and raising $100,000.  It won’t be easy, but by teaming together, anything is possible.  As the ERFA slogan says: “DREAM BIG. TAKE ACTION.”

We’re asking that you Dream Big and Take Action with us.  Please consider donating to Ellie’s Run for Africa — only $25 helps put a child in school for a year!

http://www.elliesrun.org/teams/centre-source