studionashvegas | design and social media

WordPress is, by far, one of the most versatile pieces of software out in cyberspace today. As a developer and designer, my first choice for any project, no matter the scope or purpose, is to see if it’s a job WordPress can handle.  9 times out of 10, it is.  People ask me how software can be so versatile, and how much work is involved to get it that way.  Honestly, it all boils down to the plugins you use, with a few special modifications here and there that most anyone can do.

This year, I’ve made it my mission to show people that WordPress can be used for, well, dang near anything!

Today was a whirlwind day at PodCampNashville.  There were so many great sessions, I saw a lot of great people, and we had a lot of fun at the after party. It’s too soon afterward to really digest things, so I leave you with my session (video is being re-encoded – will have it up ASAP)

No, no sappy Christmasy rhymes tonight.  I’m getting my gear bag together for PodCampNashville tomorrow at the Cadillac Ranch and thought I’d lay down some tips for any newcomers to the podcamp scene (trust me, I’ve done more than my fair share.  I guess that makes me a “podcamping expert” *shudder*)

1) Leave your expectations at the door.

If you’ve never been to one of these, come in with an open mind.  There will be coders, PR hacks, designers, tech geeks, and other strange anomalies, but we’re all here for one thing: to have fun and to network (ok, so that’s two things).  Get ready to meet lots of like minded people and pass out business cards.

2) Remember the Rules of Podcamp.

First rule of Podcamp – you don’t talk about Podcamp.

Wait, that’s not right.

Here are the real first rules to remember:

1. Everyone’s a rock star.  There are no keynotes and no digital dignitaries.  We’re all learning, and we’re all teaching.
2. Law of two feet – if you don’t like what you’re hearing, or you’re bored out of your mind, leave. Not the conference, mind you, but find another room that talks about what you want to hear about.  No one will be upset.
3. If none of the rooms interest you, may I suggest the “hallway track”? Catch up with old friends, meet some new ones, and just eavesdrop on what people are chatting about.  Chances are something may peak your interest.
4. Bring something to take notes, video, and pictures with.  Yes, I said and.  You’ll be on information, and new person, overload by the time it’s all over, so get ready to have trouble remembering who that one dude was or what’s-his-name with the spiky hair and bandana.

3) Bring Stuff

I’m actually breaking my own rule here.  I didn’t order business cards in time (doh!) so i’m on a skeleton supply, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t be giving the few I have out like candy.  For everyone else, I’m taking down email addresses and getting them my info that way.  Here are some other things you may want to consider bringing:

• Power Strip
• Extension Cord (those two will make you the popular kid in the room)
• Alternate Internet source (if you have it, because sometimes the Internet just goes down)
• Bottle of Water
• Notebook (the paper kind)
• Notebook (the digital kind)
• iPhone or SmartPhone (no iPad jokes, please)

So, come tomorrow ready to learn, have a good times, and drink a little beer too (thanks Yazoo!)

It’s that time again!  Time for Nashvillians and people from all around to flock to the Cadillac Ranch to get the tech knowledge on.  Saturday, starting at 9 AM (be there early to get registered, swagged up, and get your networking on) some of the best presenters in Nashville will be showing you how they do what they do best.

I’m taking the entire day tomorrow to finish preparing my slides on “How to use WordPress for Dang Near Anything” and you can guarantee that anything less than perfect for this is going to be unacceptable for me.  I checked the site signups today and found out that nearly 200 people have signed up for my sessions.  I’ve been to entire conferences that have less than that many people.  This is a true honor for me, and I’m not going to let you down.

So, every year the best and the brightest minds (sort of) in TV get together and put their best foot forward (sometimes) in what (usually) turns out to be the (sincerely adequate) best commercials of the year (maybe).  OK, so that was a lot of interruptions, but I have to be honest – there were only a few memorable commercials this year, and only one really had a strong enough call to action to get me to do something right then and there.  But, as with all (fake) contests, there has to be a winner and there has to be a loser.

However, let’s not forget the number one rule of commercials – if you can’t remember who it’s for, they lose, no matter how good the commercial is.

Let’s start with the winners.

Snickers commercial with Betty White

Let’s be honest – Betty White makes nearly anything funny, and throw in Abe and some funny commentary from both and you’ve got yourself a killer commercial. 

Doritos: Snack Attack Samurai

It’s my personal opinion that Doritos is the clear cut commercial winner this year.  All of their commercials were funny, well written (even the casket one was OK at worst) and featured the product as the star – something some of the other commercials failed to do (or even worse – you remember the commercial, but not the product).

Coke: Hard Times

I saw a few negatives on this one, but you know what: we’ve been through one heck of a last year (decade) and I think a little pick me up every now and then really hits home. “You know what? I’m flat broke, but I’m happy”. Enough said.

Google: Parisian Love

The “Annexation of Puerto Rico” play this year came from our Big Brother itself, Google.  This ad, while not new, got such good reviews on YouTube they decided to play it on the big screen.  Seriously, how cool would it be to just decide to do a Super Bowl commercial, even when you didn’t need to.  At any rate, it was well done, and I’m sure a lot of tears were shed over this one.

First the winners… now… well, the not.

Taco Bell: It Rocks, It Rocks

It most certainly does not rock. In fact, it doesn’t even roll smoothly. Shaq does not do Seuss well, and this whole commercial was just a horrible rhyme trying to sell me tacos. I don’t even remember what all comes in the box (see above on why that means it fails).

Boost Mobile Shuffle

You go too far, Boost Mobile: taking a classic like the 1985 Bears Shuffle and ripping it off to a piece of crap like this.

FYI, here is the original Shuffle:

It was classic back then, and the original still is. But shame on you Ditka for selling out to this. *finger wag*

Every Single GoDaddy Commercial

We get it Godaddy.  Sex sells.  I would stick to domain names and go away from the commercials.

The Mitch Canter Call-To-Action Award:

Dockers

Good job, Dockers, for actually doing something that makes people listen to your call to action immediately – sign up for a free pair of pants (and our newsletter). Well done (and a good commercial too!)

In closing:

These aren’t the only good (or bad) commercials – just the ones that stuck out with me as being incredibly good (or horribly wrong).  What do you think – any other ones that should have made either list?

Got a really interesting email today – thought I would share it with you guys:

Dear Google Apps admin,​

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ​as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

I really don’t remember when a company so large has taken a single outburst against a single browser, but this is a huge step by Google moving closer to a “standard web” – and a day when designers everywhere will rejoice!

Any thoughts on why this is (or isn’t) a good idea?

I have to admit, I was super excited about a week ago when I started reading into all of the hype of what Apple’s new tablet device could do.  I had lots of possibilities in mind: video chatting, sketchbooking websites for clients, and just in general reinventing the way we look at handheld devices.  I was all but set to go out and purchase one the day they went on sale.

And after reading the entire transcript from Engadget’s fantastic review, and hearing the presentation live on TWiT, I have to say…

I’m not impressed.  At all.

There is so much more that this machine could have done, and that people were expecting it to do, that it just doesn’t live up to the hype – even Apple’s side of the hype.  No background applications (re: no pandora while I work on other stuff), no intuitive sketch interface, and no camera (granted a camera would have been strange unless it was done correctly… but even something is better than nothing.

Apple had a golden opportunity to turn the mobile and handheld computing worlds on their ear.  And they failed.

Apple could have reinvented things, went back to the drawing board, and thought about how we use the products in our daily lives.  Instead, we get a giant ipod touch that (while having a few promising features) basically does the same thing it’s little brother does. 

Apple, you had me at the iPhone, but you’ll have to do something REALLY amazing to prove this pad is worth it. As of now, I’m still holding out hope for the Courier, or at least for another pad (windows, linux, android, or chrome) that does half of what I hoped the iPad would do. 

I had the great fortune on Friday to have experienced a true Internet phenomenon – the picture of the new NBC logo I designed for fun got picked up by several high profile websites, and I had my 15 minutes of fame, so to speak (if you want to get technical, I had 17 minutes, because that was for precisely 17 minutes I was on the trending topics of twitter).

So, I wanted to dissect my findings, and just see exactly where everyone came from as best I could.

First, the raw numbers (as of 9am today):

• 8,503 views on TwitPic
• 300 RT (Retweets) to the TwitPic Site
• 1,537 RT to the Mashable article
• 217 RT to FunnyOrDie
• 116 RT to The Hollywood Reporter
• 49 RT to the Digg Article
• 32 RT to the Daily What
• over 200 other various RT’s to other sites.
• 987 Diggs
• 8 Reddit Bumps
• 251 Facebook Shares
• 67 Facebook Posts
• oh, and as an added (uncounted) bonus, my own website got 500 new hits (not too bad considering I never published the site on the twitpic – people tracked it down themselves).

That means that there was a total of 12,267 tracked* impresssions.  And those are only the most popular ones – who’s to say that there aren’t more that I didn’t know about?

But, out of those numbers, I found out some really interesting results.

Digg is good for numbers, but not positive feedback

We all know that Digg has went from a socially accepted way to find popular information to… well… the bridge in which trolls live.  While I did get a lot of diggs from the post, an overwhelming majority of the comments (over 50% if I counted right) were non-related or unnecessarily pessimistic.  Elsewhere on the internet, 99% of the comments were overwhelmingly positive.  I still got traffic, but it’s not good for constructive criticism.

Viral doesn’t necessarily mean video

An image that went viral – sure, it’s not a viral video, but it still put up some impressive numbers.  Don’t think that video has to be the first option you choose – sure, a video will be more likely to be widely spread, but for people who have zero time to watch a video, a quick glance at an image will do just the trick.

People still found my website, even though I didn’t post it.

And I think I actually got a client out of it, perhaps.  But I didn’t post on my blog, or even mention the viral activity, until after it happened.  And I never put my website address on the twitpic comment – I just posted the image and let people do their thing. 

Total self promotion of image: 2 tweets

After i posted the image, I made two tweets about it – one on Thursday night, and one on Friday night. Everyone else did the rest.

So, anyone can have something go organically viral – where others are spreading it around with far little effort on your part.  Make something that’s good content, be passionate about it, and people will recognize the effort and will share it with their friends.

Thanks again, by the way, to everyone who clicked on the Retweet button, the digg button, or sent it to their twitter or facebook friends – it’s cool knowing that I made a little piece of history that day (hey, I beat out Twitter Location Based Trending Topics as a story of the day on Mashable!)

Today has been one heck of a whirlwind day.

I stopped by a sushi restaurant in Franklin today to eat lunch with holly when I realized that my inbox had blown up in the 10 minutes between my first meeting and lunch.  All of them were twitter followers, so I checked into Tweetie to see what was up.

Turns out, some people REALLY liked the #failcock design I made a few nights ago.

I am stoaked.  I’ve never had anything like this happen, and i’m literally here shaking with excitement.  I can’t believe a simple little diversion, a fun little art project, turned into this.

Thanks to everyone who has shared this.  It means a lot to me, and I’m glad that so many people have had so many positive things to say about it.

And make sure to watch the show tonight.  What’s happening to Conan O’Brien is unfair, unjust, and I think that whatever he does (*cough* web only show would be awesome *cough*) will be super successful.  Just, make sure that if you’re supporting him now you support him later – he deserves every bit.

So, one of my resolutions for the new year was to bone up on my usability knowhow.  I contacted Justin Davis, by far one of the best usability experts I personally know, and got back more books than I’ve read in months.  Seriously.  But, in keeping with my goal-setting, I took the challenge to heart, and picked up a book on the list.  Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think” was worth every second of reading.

It’s a great book, the lesser reasons being:

1. it’s a short read – I managed to read it in a week (the shortest recorded time is a plane flight).
2. It’s jam packed with lots of great information
3. It’s witty, humorous, and by far not a bad read.

It basically takes you through the user’s view of a website – a view that a lot of designers forget about.  It shows you that instead of carefully reading every crafted word, they will barely skim around, pick something, and if it’s wrong hit the back button.  But they’ll only do this so many times before getting frustrated.

So, what should you do?  Well, pick up the book – he’s worth the money – and see for yourself!

disclosure: the above link is an Amazon affiliate link.