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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 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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Posted 3/26/2008 by JanS, Acct Mgr
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I'm an 'Account Manager' here at 352, but I haven't always had such a boring generic title. I dabbled in print and website design a while ago (seriously I actually got paid to do it) and have continued to amuse myself in my spare time. That being said my NetFlix bot recently recommended an independent film Helvetica. It's been right on the money recently. Back when I was a designer I used Helvetica but sparingly and usually just for copy, as it was from an older 'modern' era (couldn't help myself). 'Neue Haas Grotesk' as it was originally known. Thank god that was changed. What a revolutionary font this has been. I had no idea it was used so much. The list of corporate brands that use it is wild. It is simply everywhere. The film does a great job of highlighting probably the most commonly seen font since it's creation. It's not all in a good light either. There is plenty of bashing. Great watch even if you think you couldn't care less.
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Posted 3/20/2008 by Caroline, VP, Finance
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Others have already blogged on the SDK that was released for the iphone, which understandably got developers (and users!) the world over hot 'n bothered. One of the first fruits of the release that I've seen, though, is the recent announcement that Adobe is now beginning work on porting Flash to the iphone.
I realize that the iphone has plenty of fun toys already, however having the ability to browse flash embedded sites will knock the convenience factor up several notches. Having flash viewing capabilities would be incrediably helpful to the mobile user as well as for any company wanting mobile accessibility without having to completely retool flash laden sites. Not to mention companies like us who are interested in bringing rich applications to as many mediums as possible.
Speaking of flash... which can be used for web games... web games... which may sometimes be developed as applets... speaking of applets ... Enjoy some hopefully-seisure-free google egg catching goodness . Because really, who wants to do the egg toss at field day, when they can catch eggs in clean and nerdy fashion?
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Posted 2/22/2008 by PeterV, VP, Marketing
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352 Media Group, the award-winning Web design, Web application development, CD and DVD production and motion graphics projects development company, has opened an office at 401 Harbour Place Drive, Unit 1426 in Tampa, Florida. The office, officially opened on March 1, is the second of two Florida sales offices for the company, which is headquartered in Gainesville and has 50 employees in seven locations total across the U.S.
Leonard A. Doland, a 20-year veteran of technology sales and sales management, will lead the Tampa office as Regional Sales Manager. Prior to joining 352 Media Group, Doland served as Director of Sales for Magnetic, a web development, application, product and services firm, where he was responsible for significant year-over-year growth that included three consecutive record quarters. Doland has also served as Director of Sales for Bayshore Solutions and Applications Consulting Specialists, Inc., as well as Director of Business Development for Allidex, Inc.
With its unique integrated team approach, 352 Media Group’s wide range of award-winning services include Web design, information architecture, ASP.NET Web application development, Intranet and Extranet development, Web marketing, Flash animation, E-commerce and more.
Since its inception over 10 years ago, 352 Media Group has been developing Web sites, interactive media projects, Web applications, CDs, DVDs and interactive marketing campaigns for small businesses and Fortune 1000 clients around the globe. Clients include American Express, Ben & Jerry’s, Microsoft, Earthlink, Outback Steakhouse, and University of Florida among others. For more information, please visit www.352media.com.
About 352 Media Group
352 Media Group is a full-service interactive development firm headquartered in Gainesville, FL, with offices in Jacksonville, Atlanta, Ann Arbor, Los Angeles, New York and Seattle. 352 Media Group provides its clients with a complete approach to business development, offering Web development, Web applications, CD/DVD Production, motion graphics and more. Since its founding in 1997, 352 Media Group has served more than 1,000 clients across the United States and around the world.
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Posted 1/14/2008 by Declan, Acct Mgr
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I'm currently writing a RFP for a company in Michigan (our SEM campaign is working woo-hoo). This particular company is seeking some accessibly compliance related features and I needed to refresh my memory on Section 508 compliance issues, furthermore if anything had changed since I last touched on it for the proposal.
So my first port of call was http://www.section508.gov/ I checked it out and it seems I'm up to date. However I clicked on a link from section508.gov to another site http://www.estrategy.gov/flashmain.cfm.
Firstly the link took me to a Flash version ???? What happens if I am using a speech browser, you have a non flash version of site link to that (Come on that is Day 1 of
accessibly class for dummies). None of the links on the site have ALT tags. The IRMCO 2008 image "alt text" suggests "Breaking News Event" but it's not click-able -- conflicting info there if you ask me.
Now I clicked on the "Web best practices" link, thinking that I was going to get some new exciting info. However when I clicked it the site opened a RTF file but it never told me that the site would open the page in word. This doesn't make sense to me why didn't they just add the content to an inner page of the site (there was 3 links and 2 lines of text). I don't understand why anyone would do that -- its stupid especially when you're a government website and your footer proclaims..
"GSA is committed to Section 508 compliance and accessibility of websites. We welcome any ideas or comments from our clients that may help us improve upon the accessibility and usability of our website."
Here is an idea - GET IT SORTED! How are we as agencys supposed to build these features if you dont implement them on your own sites.
Now the for Section 508 test, guess what it failed what a surprise.
Come on people you cant just put info in the footer and hope for the best. These rules are in place for a reason, I would expect it from lesser sites but you are a government site.
Consider yourself named and shamed, its the law.
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Posted 11/30/2007 by Raina, Project Mgr
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Other movie buffs such as myself may remember this scene from that phenomenally funny movie from the mid-90's called PCU...
Droz, played by one of my favorite actors, Jeremy Piven "sets off on his normal daily activities including disrupting a political protest by throwing meat at a group of vegan protesters." Then the pre-fresh, a high school senior who came to visit PCU for weekend is accused of being a meat tosser and is running for his life from the group of vegan protestors...he trips over the power cord for a group of students' in the library who are writing their thesis...there lies just some of the trouble. 
Later on in the movie, as Droz is helping these frantic students' who've lost their thesis, by providing them new ones...one dude comes along and tells Droz he's majoring in Sanskrit...and Droz is perplexed that he's majoring in a 5000 year old dead language...well I'm learning sanskrit and it ain't easy...
I was working on my yoga homework last night for my certification and came across a blog site; Experienceyoga.org. And apparently it's home of the Experience Sanskrit Workshop...a workshop that helps yogis learn the Sanskrit name of yoga poses. I think it's a great idea....but not something I would purchase personally.
So there was a page on his site that had all the root words of each yoga pose...and when you hovered over them it gave you the translation...bottom line though, I think that this "tool" would be a good flash project for our extremely talented designers...to make this tool an entire Web-based or DVD Experience Sanskrit Workshop would be a great idea as some instructors in training (such as myself) don't have spare time to book a face-to-face workshop...who knows though...I'm sure there is something similar already out there...
And if you haven't seen PCU then I highly recommend you check it out...Sanskrit or no Sanskrit....that's just one line of the movie really...it's full of laughs...and great music from George Clinton and Parliment Funkadelic!!! A classic flick!
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Posted 7/17/2007 by Geoff, Pres/CEO
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It’s the moment I least look forward to every month - going to the barber shop and getting a random barber. Inevitably, the first words out of his mouth are, "So what do you do?" Here’s where my problem begins.
You see, the correct thing to say is "I run an interactive agency." But barbers never understand what that means nor do most people in the general public. When you say interactive, most people think video games, although some people have less wholesome thoughts. One person thought that an interactive agency meant that I made adult films. So clearly, telling my barber that I run an interactive agency is not the way to go.
The most logical next thing to say would be "I run a web design company." Most people understand that these days. But the problem is as soon as I say that the conversation ends. I’m instantly classified as a total geek, some techno dude that the barber doesn’t understand. It’s like the barber thinks I can’t speak English because my primary language must be binary code.
So I think I have figured out the solution. From this day forward when my barber asks me what I do for a living, I’m going to tell him "I run an advertising agency." Advertising is universally understood, and it’s not considered nerdy or geeky. Some people relate advertising with Hollywood, which can only add to my “cool” factor if I tell my barber I do that.
Of course, those "in the know" understand that running an advertising agency is much less exciting than running an interactive agency. Interactive media is truly where the future is going, and really where the future already is. But nonetheless, my barber doesn’t understand. From now on I’m Geoff Wilson, president of an advertising agency. Either that, or I can just stop getting my hair cut.
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