April Fools, 'Net Style

April 4, 2008 at 8:30 am by Chris

Eric thinks that RSS has ruined the tradition of April Fools pranks, but this guy shows that the 'net made his prank so much more real... ...speaking of April Fools, this has to be one, right?

Tags: social-media blogging newfangled
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Video Newsletter: How to Do SEO

March 26, 2008 at 3:45 pm by Chris

Just on the off chance that you read this blog but not the Newfangled newsletter, check out Eric's latest video newsletter, How To Do SEO, Part 2, Farming vs. Hunting. It's about 15 minutes long, but well worth the time spent to watch.

Tags: video google newfangled search
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How to Do SEO

February 28, 2008 at 10:30 am by Chris

Eric just posted his latest newsletter, the first in a two-part series on SEO. There is a detailed video that accompanies it. Read it here.

Tags: search strategy video google newfangled
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Glad I Had Some Matches

February 12, 2008 at 11:30 am by Chris

The wind was so heavy on Sunday- this is what happened.

Tags: design art newfangled
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Alert! Serious Blogging in Progress

January 22, 2008 at 9:30 pm by Chris

In case you haven't noticed, our fearless leader, the Prez, the big cheese, our very own Mark O'Brien has jumped in head-first to the world of blogging and he's going nuts! Let Mark's enthusiasm be an example to us all!

Tags: blogging newfangled
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Thrift Store + Sharpie = Cool Office Mugs

January 18, 2008 at 1:30 pm by Chris

Somehow a bunch of our coffee mugs disappeared recently, so I managed to snag four nice ceramic ones at a thrift store nearby for 25 cents a piece. Plain white was just not cutting it, so I grabbed the nearest Sharpie and went nuts. Good times... My favorite one is the mug within a mug within a mug within a mug... I call it the 'infinity mug.' Pictured left: Mitch, Able, and Scott.

Tags: design art newfangled
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Sketchbook or Scrapbook?

January 16, 2008 at 1:30 pm by Chris

There's been a recent dispute in the office of whether 'scrapbooking' or 'sketchbooking' should be used to describe the practice of maintaining a book that contains drawings and/or collages. I contend that 'sketchbooking' is correct, as 'scrapbooking' connotes something entirely different. Your thoughts? Here's a slideshow of some of my sketchbook pages:

Tags: design art newfangled
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The Correspondence of Christopher Butler and Able Parris

January 11, 2008 at 4:00 pm by Chris

Before either I or Able started working here at Newfangled, we sent lots of mail to each other- even when we lived 5 minutes apart! I think it started when Able sent me some lego grass with a stamp on it. This continued for years, and continues today (though not as prolifically). You can browse some of our postcards through the slideshow player below:

Tags: design art newfangled
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What Inspires Newfangled, Part 2

January 9, 2008 at 9:00 am by Chris

This post (and the previous one) don't quite fit in with my 'web strategy and technology' focus, but here's another one anyway. My wife and I recently saw the States of Mind exhibition of artists Dan and Lia Perjovschi at the Nasher Museum of Art and really enjoyed it. Dan and Lia are Romanian artists who lived through a very tumultuous time in communist Romania and continued to make art despite much opposition. My favorite piece in the show was a multi-panel timeline created by Lia Perjovschi that starts with the Big Bang and ends with Google enabling censorship in China (see below). I've been interested in visual timelines for a while, and when I saw this my interest was awoken again. Below is my 'consolidated' version: Dan was also a visiting artist at the MoMA. You can view two short videos of him creating a drawing installation below:

Tags: design art video newfangled
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What Inspires Newfangled

January 8, 2008 at 2:00 pm by Chris

Yesterday, I posted a link to the design work of Carin Goldberg, because I had finally figured out who created many inspiring designs and illustrations that I have seen in the New York Times recently. This got me thinking, what inspires the rest of the Newfangled crew this week? Well, I asked them, and this is what they said: Eric said "Because the Patriots didn't play this week, I lacked inspiration." But, then he sent me these two YouTube videos: Mark mentioned three things: "A souffle, a book passage and a sculpture." Mark didn't elaborate on the sculpture, but knowing Mark, it must be the best sculpture in the world on the O'Brien scale (as apposed to the worst), which is why I show David to the right. The book is Small Giants, which is about how small companies that are in established positions are able to do things for their employees that other companies couldn't or wouldn't, like flexible scheduling. Mike was busy working in his 'shop' when I asked this question, so I took a quick picture (see image to the right) of him building what appears to be a time machine... Actually, he just quickly whipped up a new PHP 5 testing server in about 10 minutes. If that wasn't impressive enough, he also claims that it will double as a robotic vacuum. Mike also sent me a link to this article to let me know what he is scared of. Dave said that the image below was his inspiration: Justin linked me to an article from Smashing Magazine, Hand-Drawing Style In Modern Web Design. The example to the left uses hand-written elements all across the site. It has a hand-written logo, hints, lines and even maps. The hand-drawn map on the start page contains links to single areas of the site. The design also includes hand-drawn elements throughout the site, e.g. to display videos a sketch of the TV set is used, and even tables follow this style. Katie just happened to have brought in some cool old science books with lots of old-school diagrams and illustrations in them. One of her favs below. She also linked me to the YouTube video below that: Scott said, "I saw a good movie, Once, last night that I enjoyed, but I'm always inspired by sound over visual, though." You can watch the trailer for Once below: Both Nolan and Mitch mentioned Wayne Ellingon's (UNC Basketball) last second shot in overtime to beat Clemson on Sunday night, which you can view courtesy of YouTube below. Mitch went on to describe playing basketball with a group of guys on Saturdays that he really enjoys playing with. He said, "some are my age some are in their 50s and they are all out there hustling but all good sports." I presume he's referring to when he routinely schools them... Michael said he was inspired by "Hold the Light," track 7 on Caedmon's Call album "Overdressed" Able was so inspired by a stop-motion animation clip he saw on BlipTV.com, called Banana Bus, that he began work on his own stop-motion animation (coming soon). Able has just started playing around with his new camera, which takes videos too. You can see what he's come up with on his Vimeo page. The image to the left shows him watching the clip for like the millionth time! Uhhh, Able, how's the work comin' along? Jim said, "I'm hopefully going to Ladd Observatory (at Brown University, pictured to the right) tonight, as that's usually my weekly visual inspiration. I'm going to start an observing log -again- too. This will the third time I try to get one going in the last twenty or so years." Jim is an active member of the Skyscrapers, an astronomy group that meets in the Providence area. They just finished a book and distributed it last Friday! Steve sent me a link to this YouTube video: Forrest linked me to a blog called Wear Palettes: George linked me to the video below: And finally, Dan added that his inspiration is the following: "Whoever says I know him but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked." 1 John 2

Tags: design software video newfangled
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Newfangled Competitors?

January 3, 2008 at 8:00 pm by Chris

This week I took a look at some simple online website creation tools that were mentioned by the Web Worker Daily. They included Weebly, SiteKreator, and SynthaSite. I'd like to start off by saying that my title for this post is a bit tongue-in-cheek. I don't actually think that these tools present competition to Newfangled. While they do make putting a website together simple and cheap, they represent a fundamentally different web philosophy than the one we espouse. We believe that good web development is achieved through the cooperation of many talented parties- developers, designers, project managers, marketing strategists, etc. - that create the best solution for a very particular set of requirements, which always includes custom programming and unique design. Another facet of what we do is provide information to our clients that empowers them to utilize the web to strengthen their business. This requires a strong support base as well as a knowledge of technological trends that can be shared through a personal (actual human to human contact) relationship. However, if inexpensive templates and FAQ's are what you are looking for, press on. Weebly has been called the "greatest thing ever" by one blogger who sees its potential being realized in the rapid creation of landing pages for PPC. Another blogger notes how Weebly would be a good solution for niche sites. The bottom line is that while there is definitely potential to harness the simplicity of Weebly's platform for profit, serious businesses that want to utilize their website in a more in-depth manner will see more limitations than possibilities. SiteKreator is also a template-based tool that allows you to choose from 62 templates and 20 visual styles. It has some 'web 2.0' attributes and has a three-tiered storage plan ranging from $95/year to $199/year. Again, this is a very limited platform, but for a web novice exploring site building, whether for business or personal use, it could be a viable start. Synthasite is in beta right now, but has some available slots for user sign-ups. Like the other two, it allows for simple website creation using an Ajax-base online application. It has been noted for its simple and user-friendly design and integration with third-party web services like AdSense.

Tags: web-development user-interface-design software newfangled
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Organizing Lots and Lots of Content

November 1, 2007 at 5:00 pm by Chris

In September, we went live with Directorship.com, a large-scale project we began work on in January. Directorship Magazine is a publication with leading business and management content for board directors, global business leaders, governance experts, and shareholders, and they needed their website to be a powerful enhancement to their publishing business. While this site could be a case study for just about any of our NewfangledCMS applications (it has Password Protected Content, RSS Feeds, Advanced Website Tracking, Email Newsletters, Google Optimization Tools, Calendar of Events, Date-Based Publishing, Surveys, Polls, E-Commerce, Blogs, User Account Management, Personalization, Data Importing and Exporting, and lots of Custom Applications), as well as our Prototyping process (I posted recently on prototyping, and Mitch and I spent 6 months prototyping Directorship.com!), I really want to highlight two aspects of this project's user interface. In the next two short paragraphs, I'll discuss how a tagging system and a unique search interface make this site something special. Tags Tags really are the backbone of this site. Because it has such a large amount of content, the user interface needs to depend upon some kind of common thread that is more flexible and specific than the traditional navigation systems. Using tags, this site is able to connect most of its various types of content while still organizing it by general categories (magazine articles or news articles) and dates. You'll notice that on any article detail page, a 'Related Content' box serves up links to related articles, blogs, webcasts, etc. based upon having tags in common (see image to the left). The more tags in common, the more 'related' content is. The tags also control how advertisements are placed throughout the site. By tagging advertisements, Directorship is able to more appropriately match ads with content, and offer their partners sponsorhip opportunities rather than just basic participation in a pool of circulating ads (though they can do that too). You'll also see a tag cloud being used as a search option in the unique Advanced Search tool we built. Which leads me to my next point... Search As we prototyped this project, we quickly realized that our standard approach to site search was not going to be adequate for a site with such a large amount of content. While the architecture of the site was already at a point that would be very useful to a navigation-oriented user, we needed something more robust for those users who are more inclined to use a search utility to find what they're looking for. We initially set up an 'Advanced Search' page that was linked from a global navigation menu at the top of the site. This way, anyone could use the basic text search on the main navigation bar, or click to the 'Advanced Search' page if more refinement was necessary. However, we also realized that many searches are going to be refined by the user already being on a particular page of the site, so having to leave that page to use the Advanced Search wasn't very helpful. What we needed was an advanced search tool that would be available on every page but not take up valuable screen real estate if it was not being used. After we sketched this out, our Developer, Steve Brock, created an elegant ajax Advanced Search tool (see above left) that allows any user to search using a variety of criteria, and even employs a tag cloud as a search option. Justin Kerr, our Creative Director, organized, simplified and styled it to be as easy on the eyes, and as easy to use, as possible. We've continued to improve Directorship.com even since it went live in September. We've added some new functionality, including rotating 'article center' boxes on the homepage that serve up articles based upon sponsorship and tag relevance and using tags to relate opinion polls to particular articles and news stories. Take a look!

Tags: newfangled web-development tagging user-interface-design design prototyping
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It's All About Video!

August 7, 2007 at 4:00 pm by Chris

This year seems to be all about video. The good thing is, we know it, and our clients know it too. But more importantly, our developers know how to do it well. Below are three examples of video applications for three very different clients. On the left is a screenshot from www.geiconsultants.com, a website we built that went live in June. GEI is a large consulting firm that wanted to use video on their new site to showcase their people and give visitors a better sense for who they are as a company. While video is showcased all over the site, some pages have a special two-video module, which our developer, George Wamichi, built using ajax to allow a user to toggle between two different videos. (Try it out here.) Another cool aspect of what George built is that the video player and video files are both pulled from another database that the client controls and matched up using our tools. This way, the flash player interface and the video files can stay separate and not clog up the site's bandwidth. We also worked with Studio Module on this project, which is why it looks so darn good! Pictured to the right is the homepage for a website we just built for Rottman Creative Group, an agency in the Baltimore area that focuses on work for non-profits and associations. Their portfolio is full of awesome work, which they can upload to their site in almost any format (quicktime, flash compositions, flash video, images, etc.) thanks to our developer, Steve Brock. Being a creative agency, Rottman designed their own site and had the zany idea of slightly rotating many video files that appear on the site, which left Steve scratching his head as to how to program the site to do what they needed. Of course, Steve always comes through- even if it takes him all night! This tool allows Rottman to upload any kind of video at a normal size and aspect ratio, and it appears skewed to fit the playful design without any degradation of quality. Pictured to the left is the video player on the homepage of www.ineoquest.com. IneoQuest creates hardware for IP video, so they naturally wanted to use video on their site to promote their products. What they needed was a simple flash-based video player that served up videos as they produced them, and which allowed the user to select them from a queue. Our developer, Forrest Oliphant, built this player, which became the basis for a NewfangledCMS video component that we offer today! The visual design was created by our own design team, led by Creative Director Justin Kerr. I have a feeling that we're just now scratching the surface of how video is going to impact what we do at Newfangled. Don't believe me? Check out how many of Eric's newsletters have been about video (or use video)! Good thing Eric knows how to predict the future...

Tags: user-interface-design software video newfangled
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Predicting the Future

August 6, 2007 at 12:00 pm by Chris

In his 2001 book, Time Travel in Einstein's Universe, astrophysicist J. Richard Gott includes a chapter on predicting the future based upon the current length of a phenomenon's existence. The idea, based upon the Copernican concept that, as observers, we are looking from a non-special vantage point, proposes that one can determine with a 95% rate of accuracy the future span of existence for any phenomenon. Gott realized this during a 1969 visit to the Berlin Wall, when it occurred to him that he could make a guess as to how much longer the wall would exist based upon knowing that it had already existed for 8 years. He reasoned that since there was nothing special about his visit, he was observing the wall at some random point int time between the beginning and end of its existence. To play it safe, he speculated that there was a 95% chance that he was observing the wall during the middle 95% of its existence (or in other words, that there was a 95% chance that he was not viewing the wall during the first 2.5% or last 2.5% of its existence). Ok, so what's so special about that? Gott reasoned, then, that he could use these percentages relative to the amount of time the wall had already existed to predict how much longer it might exist. Left is a diagram of several phenomena and their potential future lifespans based upon Gott's Copernican prediction method, which he submitted for the January 2000 issue of Time magazine. He uses the 95% chance that (in the year 2000) he was observing these things from a random point during the middle 95% of their existence to estimate how much longer they might exist. According to this method, the internet, based upon its 31 years of existence in 2000 was 95% likely to exist for more than .75 more years but less than 1,209 more years. I have added Newfangled Web Factory with today's 2007 predictions to the list. According to this formula, Newfangled will have a greater potential future lifespan in 2010 because it will have existed for longer then than it has now. Note that the longer something exists, the longer it is likely to exist! As Gott puts it, "Things that have been around for a long time tend to stay around for a long time." Incidentally, he cites the original list of the 7 Wonders of the World, cited in approximately 150 C.E. during the time of Antipater of Sidon, as an example: "Two of the Seven Wonders (the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Colossus of Rhodes) no longer existed at the time the list was made, but five still did: the statue of Zeus at Olympia, the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Pharos of Alexandria, and the pyramids of Egypt. Of the first four wonders that had each been in existence for less than 400 years at the time the list was made, not one is still here today. But the oldest, the pyramids, which were then 2,400 years old, have survived." I'll take this opportunity to point out that Newfangled's 12-year lifespan puts it in 'pyramidian' scale in terms of web development companies!

Tags: books newfangled the-future
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