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Posted 7/13/2009 by Geoff, Pres/CEO
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Here are some interesting articles that our interactive media team came across this past week:
“Google Finally Drops the Beta Tag” >> Read Article
“Using Wikis to Document UI Specifications” >> Read Article
“Hands On: Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview” >> Read Article
Enjoy!
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Posted 7/6/2009 by Geoff, Pres/CEO
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Here are some interesting articles that our interactive media team came across this past week:
“FireFox 3.5 is Out” >> Read Article
“Google AJAX Feed API Released” >> Read Article
Enjoy!
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Posted 6/29/2009 by Geoff, Pres/CEO
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Here are some interesting articles that our interactive media team came across this past week:
“Inspiring Examples of Minimalism in Web Design” >> Read Article
“FTC plans to monitor blogs for claims, payments” >> Read Article
“Google Announces Update to Flash Indexing” >> Read Article
Enjoy!
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Posted 6/26/2009 by TomB, Acct Mgr
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I am proud and pleased to announce the launch of CruiseNow.com. Working with John Keen and his staff was such a pleasure and we look forward in working with him again in the future.
In this video, we take a quick look at CrusieNow.com, a site we just launched where users can search and book cruises. The site is unique in the amount of quality video describing everything from the destinations to the cruise ships themselves, as well as weekly webisodes.
CruiseNow.com is the next generation in online cruise travel companies. We pride ourselves on our ability to combine the latest in technology with good old fashioned customer service. It’s important to us that our customers realize that while we utilize the most modern online systems like CruiseText, CruiseReviews and Edutainment Videos we are still a business dedicated to that person to person contact and customer service. We encourage our customers to call our reservation center and work with our Personal Cruise Guides. They really are the best cruise agents in the country!
As you can see in the image above the company was founded by two industry veterans, John Keen and Jeff Nickerson. Both men work every day in the business and are intimately involved in its ongoing success. John Keen is a pioneer in the online cruise industry, having cofounded Cruise Outlet which was one of the very first national cruise companies to start doing business on the internet in the mid 1990’s. He later founded CruiseDeals.com which quickly became one of the fastest growing travel businesses on the internet. He sold that business to the Carlson Company, which is one of the largest privately held companies in the United States. Some of their brands include Friday’s restaurants, Regent hotels and Carlson Wagonlit Travel. Jeff Nickerson is also an industry veteran having worked as a sales manager with Royal Caribbean and also with CruisesOnly in the development of their travel technology. He later joined CruiseDeals.com and was the driving force behind its meteoric growth. They took their knowledge and experience and started a new breed of online cruise companies, CruiseNow.com!
CruiseNow.com is founded on many of the same guiding principles as the past, but this time they improved on them! Those principals are as follows:
Incredible staff - CruiseNow.com only hires the best of the best. Our Personal Cruise Guides and Care Guides are focused on you. We make sure that you are satisfied from pre booking until you return home from your vacation. We treat our staff like family members and expect them to treat our customers the same.
Amazing Cruise Values - Because of our size and reputation, CruiseNow.com has access to the absolute best cruise values in the industry. We make sure our customers get the best deal on their vacation. The bottom line is nobody gets a better deal than we do.
Faith – Both cofounders are men of faith and it’s important to us to make sure we operate our business in an ethical manner that honors God. We also try and follow that golden rule. Do unto others……
Customer Focused – We understand that no business is successful without taking care of their customers. We are knowledgeable about the industry and provide our clients the best advice and best price. In addition we are here for you – before, during and after your cruise.
Innovative – The team here at CruiseNow.com is committed to stay ahead of the technology curve. We are constantly improving our website and internal processes to make your experience more enjoyable and productive. We understand that using technology to educate and inform our customers will only make their experience with us more rewarding.
Have Fun – We sell cruises! What’s not to love about this job? Our goal here at CruiseNow.com is to make sure our employees have fun working here AND customers enjoy working with us. We take what we do very seriously, but always want to make sure everyone (including you) is having a good time! Life’s too short. ;-)
Thanks for taking the time to learn a little more about us here at CruiseNow.com. We always promise to treat you like family!
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Posted 6/22/2009 by Geoff, Pres/CEO
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Here are some interesting articles that our interactive media team came across this past week:
“The Battlefield of Design: Designers vs. Clients” >> Read Article
“Watching Your Web Language” >> Read Article
“Microsoft’s Removal of IE from Windows 7 Will Have no effect” >> Read Article
Enjoy!
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Posted 6/15/2009 by Geoff, Pres/CEO
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Here are some interesting articles that our interactive media team came across this past week:
“Dell makes $3 Million from Twitter-Related Sales” >> Read Article
“16 Design Tools for Prototyping and Wireframing” >> Read Article
‘Hunch’ Web site will make decisions for you” >> Read Article
Enjoy!
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Posted 5/11/2009 by JanS, Acct Mgr
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In today's world we are regularly made painfully aware of the less than pleasant things going on around us locally and globally. Most of us are confronted with realities we'd like to see fixed. However, in most cases there is a sense of ambivalence "Oh well, there really isn't anything I can do about it". It's one thing to give to charity or play a minor role in a grass roots effort, but to get the ball rolling yourself and start a movement from the ground up is a major challenge. Without the resources to make something like this happen, most of us simply sit by and watch as others hopefully do what it takes to affect change. This no longer must be the case.
Enter LobbyingForum, www.lobbyingforum.com. A while back Dan Jexin, owner and president of LobbyingForum approached 352 Media Group to make his vision come to life. He wanted a place where ordinary people could do something about the injustices they felt passionate about. This was to be much more than an outlet for people. Instead, it had to allow for action. Users as encouraged to create petitions which are comprised of a detailed explanation of the issue, along with relevant links, user comments and most importantly a signature list. One of the most powerful ways of showing those who have the real power to affect change is to show them that a lot of people are very passionate about the idea. This allows for users to submit the issues and a list of signatures to whomever they like.
Working with Dan has been an absolute pleasure. He is a model client. His passion for this project was only rivaled by his ability to work organically with our team. Communication is key in getting our customers what they expect and he was able to do so without exception. Dan being in the UK and us being stateside presented some challenges. Tele-conferences and lots and lost of emails kept everyone on the same page and development moving along swiftly in the right direction. The results speak for themselves, but I was very pleased to hear that Dan felt the same way about working with us. "My cooperation with 352 Media has worked very well from the first contact with my account manager to the development of my site with my project manager and I feel confident developing other projects with 352 in the near future. 352 Media is a professional and "big" firm with the right people that still has managed to keep some of the flexibility of a smaller firm." We are already working on updates to the site and planning a major 2.0 version coming later this year.
The site is still young but has already grown to include a variety of issues, from making a cutting edge, cancer fighting tool Cyberknife available in Australia to keeping the Concord Elementary School's doors open. Take a look, start a petition, or just provide your signature on issues you find important. It certainly can't hurt.
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Posted 5/1/2009 by Matt, Acct Mgr
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Hot out of the 352 Media oven comes a new website sure to make virtual taste buds go crazy. Southeastern Mills is a supplier of specialty marinades, coating systems, seasonings and specialty mixes. For several months, the development teams at 352 Media have been working diligently to give this third generation family owned business the online upgrade they so deserve. Southeastern Mills’ main focus is to deliver top quality products to food processors, food service companies, as well as, consumers.
The new site contains a recipe section with an abundance of home style dishes. From Mom’s meatloaf to Easy Cheddar Popcorn, Southeastern Mills offers its users a wide variety of culinary treats.CEC, Chef Clare Bailey leads the Southeastern Mills culinary team. He and his staff focus on making products that deliver great taste.
If biscuits and gravy or a piece of fried fish brings you back to simpler times like they do for me, check out Southeastern Mills new website. It’ll make you feel right at home.
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Posted 4/25/2009 by Geoff, Pres/CEO
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For the last eight months, several members of our team have been hard at work developing a Virtual World for kids in conjunction with the University of Southern California's Head Football Coach, Pete Carroll!
The project, called CampPete.com, is a massive multiplayer online world (MMO). It features a variety of high quality games and other features aimed at kids age 5-12. It is also one the first MMOs in the world to incorporate streaming video and multiplayer "room-based" games, where players can interact while playing a game together with individual scoring.
Here is a look inside the game:
The game has already received great press coverage, including articles on ESPN.com and LATimes.com!
Thanks to our entire team for working hard to make this project a huge success!
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Posted 3/23/2009 by Linc, Designer
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Peter and I had a blast at MIX09 in Las
Vegas, and I'm happy to report that I did not require medical care this
time around.
Day One kicked off with the first
keynote presentation, featuring Bill Buxton (Principal Researcher),
Scott Guthrie (.NET Product Manager, aka “The Gu”) and several
other speakers from the Expression Blend team, Stack Overflow,
Rolling Stones and other organizations. Bill Buxton talked about the
value of design and creativity in product development and UX design,
and the Gu talked about many Microsoft product features, which will
be available in their entirety by the end of the year if they are not
currently in beta. Some of these features were demonstrated by the
other speakers as well, and included some really cool stuff:
Platform Installer (“PI”) is a
new program that allows you to see what programs are available to
download and install, and automatically manages them, along with any
dependencies they might have. For any developers that have needed to
install betas in the past, you know the pain this single program
will alleviate. (http://www.microsoft.com/Web/)
Silverlight 3
(http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/)
GPU acceleration takes the burden
off of the CPU (around 55% of the cost) and makes Silverlight
applications run much faster.
Pixel Shaders allow for custom
graphical effects, and some built-in ones like blur and
drop-shadow.
2.5D allows for perspective
skewing of flat objects.
Bitmap API allows for the
manipulation of pixels in a bitmap image, and also allows the
developer to “snapshot” pieces of the UI into a bitmap. (Often
used for “ghosting” a draggable object, or taking screen shots
of a video.)
Deep-Linking enables the
developer to offer specific URLs for each screen or panel of their
application. This is great for simply sending someone a link to a
certain part of a Silverlight application, or just for allowing
search engines to pick up more of the “pages” of your site.
Text quality will be improved,
and a “clear text” will be an option the developer can control,
for animation purposes.
Multi-touch support, which
currently is only really useful for the HP TouchSmart.
You can run Silverlight as a
desktop application, independent of the web browser. This can be
directed by the developer, or left up to the user.
There was also so talk of client
validation, databinding and server-side CRUD management which
sounds completely insane. Basically they provide a framework which
manages the client data model and when you “push” any changes
to that data model, it handles merging all the changes with the
server/database. Yah.
Expression Web 3
SuperPreview is a new feature
which renders your web page in each browser installed on your
system, and also previous version of IE. You can see them
side-by-side or even overlay one on top of the other, or the web
page over a JPEG preview. It includes tools to select elements, and
examine the pixel offset of elements if they are not lining up
correctly.
(http://www.microsoft.com/expression/try-it/superpreview/)
Expression Blend 3
(http://www.microsoft.com/expression/try-it/blendpreview.aspx)
Sketchflow was the biggest deal;
people were going batty over it. It basically combines sketching,
UX prototyping, flowcharting and documentation in one. I can't even
do it justice here. Go to http://live.visitmix.com/
and view the “Day 1 Keynote” and click the playback bar under
the “e” in “Other Videos”. Everyone should watch this.
Integration with Adobe products
like Photoshop.
XAML and C# Intellisense.
.NET MVC shipping now
After that, I got the opportunity to go
to a session by Group Program Manager Joe Stegman on the new
Silverlight 3 features. It was great talk which offered several
demonstrations and showed some code in action.
http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T14F
That day I also went to talk by Dan
Harrelson of Adaptive Path on wire framing and prototyping, and when
to decide which to use (if either) on your projects. It also
contained tips to speed up the process and find design patterns that
will best fit your needs. http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/C10F
That night we went to the TAO nightclub
(http://www.taolasvegas.com/)
for a private party. Well, “private” for the 2,000 people that
attend MIX. It's a great club that contains many floors and rooms,
and we spent most of the night on the rooftop “beach” section of
the club, eating, drinking and chatting with various Microsofties while trying not to fall in the pool.
The Day Two Keynote included a lot of
IE8 announcements...
Standards-compliant, with a
front-end option for the user to display in “IE7 mode,” and a
special tag for developers to turn this feature off on their site.
Web slices, which basically allow
you to bookmark a specific part of a webpage, and view that “slice”
as a pop-up panel in your browser without having to visit the whole
page again and again.
Accelerators give you fast
right-click access to various services we manually access all the
time via copy-and-paste. You might be able to highlight “352
Media Group” on a web site and right click to search for those
words on Yahoo, or simply rollover the “Google Map” option to
see a map to our office instantly.
Malware blocking up to 70%, which
is twice as high as the next most secure browser.
Color-coded tabbed browsing,
which groups and highlights the tabs of an identical domain all the
same color.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/
… and a talk by Deborah Adler, who
took an medicinal accident her grandmother had experienced, and
turned it into an opportunity to revolutionize the package design of
pharmaceuticals. When she started her project she was a lowly graphic
design student, but eventually Target picked up her ideas and her
concept can now be seen in their stores. This was a great talk, and I
highly recommend that everyone who cares about user experience design
watch it. http://live.visitmix.com/
Later, I went to session by Silverlight
Product Manager Seema Ramchandani on Silverlight 3 graphics, and the
specific usage of pixel shaders and 2.5D projections. This session
provided insight into how the graphics engine works, and offered
some great tips for improving performance on any Silverlight project.
http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T17F
Last was a session by Charles Duncan of
AKQA, a digital advertising firm behind the Fable II and Gears of War
II web campaigns. He showed off some projects and talked about the
benefits of “iterative work flow,” which functions in a cyclical
format of ideation and development, as opposed to a linear
“waterfall” approach, which most software companies (including
352) fall into. http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T31F
Afterwards, Peter and I went to a
Silverlight partner get-together at Lavo (http://www.lavolv.com/),
but it was completely packed. We met up with a few people and
chatted, then went over to Show-Off, which Brian Keller and Dan
Fernandez were running. Around fifteen people had submitted their top
projects, which were voted on by the audience for a prize. Most
notable were a Commodore 64 emulator built in Silverlight, and a
photo gallery you could control with your mind.
On Day Three I went to absolutely
fantastic talk by author/consultant Dan Roam on “persuading with
pictures.” He talked about the way the mind works, and how simple
sketches can be the most effective form of communication. He
referenced how some of the most influential men and the decisions
they have made were impacted by sketches. I highly recommend that
everyone watch this talk. http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/C16F
Next I want to a talk by Ambrose Little
of Infragistics on UX design patterns. His whole talk revolved around
a community project he has worked on called Quince
(http://quince.infragistics.com/).
I highly recommend that everyone in our development teams check this
out, and the session if you have time, or don't understand what
Quince is about. http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T30F
I wrapped up Day Three with a session
by Peter Eckert and Jeff McLean of projekt202 on UX design for Rich
Internet Applications. They demoed some projects they have been
working on, and reiterated much of the points I'd heard about the
value of simplicity, creating UI as a reflection of the real world,
and the absolute necessity of understating the needs of the people
using your product. This was also a great talk.
http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/C11F
Afterwards I met up with Brian Keller
for goodbyes, and he introduced me to a few people including Mike
Harsh (http://blogs.msdn.com/mharsh/),
who's been working on Silverlight since the days of yore, writing
some books and doing some interviews along the way. I felt pretty
cool until he introduced me as “hospital boy”... ah well, I'll
take what I can get.
A special thanks to everyone at 352 who
got me set up at MIX09, especially PVR.
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