Archive for October, 2007

Usability scores again

Thursday, October 25th, 2007

Walt Mossberg reviews Leopard, the latest version of Apple’s OS X, in today’s Wall Street Journal. he says it’s easier to use than Microsoft’s Vista. His review illustrates once again that in the digital world, designing for usability will lead to success in the long run. As many as 20% of non-corporate computer sales go to Apple now, up from low single digits recently.

Why? Here’s what Mossberg says of OS X:

…It has proved to be as powerful and versatile for mainstream consumers as Windows, yet easier to use(emphasis mine) and more secure…

It works the same way for Web sites. In the long run, if your site is easier to use than a competitor’s – think Facebook (easy) vs. MySpace (cluttered and clunky) – you’ll win in the long run, even if your competitor has the #1 spot on Google.

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A List Apart releases 2007 Web Design Survey

Thursday, October 18th, 2007

A List Apart Web Design Survey

The Folks at A List Apart have released the 2007 Web Design Survey. The report, authored by internationally-acclaimed designer Jeffrey Zeldman and CSS expert Eric Meyer, is the first to take a close look at the Web design profession. More than 32,000 Web designers and developers from around the world participated (yeah, this here gent took part).

Download the Survey findings (PDF – 1.7MB)

Some interesting findings:

  • Everyone’s got a blog (well, 72.7%, anyway) – regardless of age group or salary range
  • More respondents said they were from the Northeastern US than from any other region (This surprised me; maybe all the Silicon Valley geeks were too busy cooking up amazing wonders like this to be bothered with a silly survey?
  • 40% reported being unsatisfied at their job – 40%! To me, that’s sad. Life’s too short!

Kudos to A List Apart – for people who make Web sites – for compiling this information about what can rightly be called a “profession”.

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annie|catherine creates exquisite designer stationery – just in time for the Holidays

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007

annie-catherine designer stationery
Pemaquid Communications recently designed and relaunched a Web site for annie|catherine, a dynamic duo that produces designer stationery and related accesories from their studio in the Dana Warp Mill in Westbrook, Maine.

annie-catherine designer stationery
Their products include cards for most important occasions – birthdays, holidays, thank yous and other note cards – as well as calendars, picture frames, wrapping paper and prints of the amazing and colorful paintings of Catherine Breer (she’s the “catherine”).

Working with Catherine and her partner, Annie Darling – graphic artists every bit as talented as our own design team – made for an interesting project. Our challenge was to translate the very clear vision they had for the look of the site into something that would be pixel perfect across all browsers.

annie-catherine designer stationery

That’s why making sure the xHTML and CSS was valid was so important. That’s also why we used a “sIFR” (Flash image replacement) javascript to render the page titles in the specific font requested by the Client.

A custom version of our Pemaquid Commerce content management system for e-commerce allows annie|catherine to easily update product images, prices and descriptions, review and process orders and update other site content including Store Locations, Reps, News and Events. They can also create custom promotional pages.

Finally, we developed an easy-to-use e-newsletter manager that allows a|c to send email promotions at will using a simple yet elegant template Pemaquid designed for them.

If you’re looking for great looking designer stationery or fun holiday cards in advance of the holiday season (Gosh! Is it that time of year already?), you definitely ought to surf on over and have a look.

annie|catherine is graciously offering readers of this blog a 20% discount if they enter the promotional code “adcb” at checkout (good through October 31).

annie-catherine designer stationery

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Testing Web design concepts for color-blindness

Sunday, October 14th, 2007

Catching up on my required reading, I came across another useful post from Jeffrey Zeldman’s blog (as I often do) on tools to help designers predict how people with color-blindness will see their designs.

Details on each @ Zeldman’s site.

Adding to delicious….

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I scream “Social!”

Wednesday, October 10th, 2007

This just in from Techcrunch: MySpace is apparently saying “me too” to the Facebook Platform. According to Techcrunch, the MySpace Platform will launch in about a week’s time.
My Space logo
Facebook logo
Since the Facebook Platform launched in May, more than 5,000 third party developers have created “Facebook Apps” that Facebook users can add to their profile (Pemaquid has built one called Portland Diner – a restaurant guide for southern Maine). Some apps have well north of a million installed users, and the implications for marketers (er, and other social netoworking sites) are obvious.

Google is also preparing to get in the game.

If your want to position your brand to a young, smart, tech-savvy crowd, figuring out these open platforms – the Next Big Thing – should be on your agenda. Pemaquid is the first developer in Maine to have created apps for these open platforms, so contact us if you’re looking to make them a part of your Web strategy.

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Pemaquid in the news…

Wednesday, October 10th, 2007

The Portland Press Herald interviewed Pemaquid Communications’ Rob Landry (Principal) and Sarah Hines (Creative Services Coordinator) for an article in Monday’s news on social netoworking and related Web sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Pemaquid Communications is the only Maine Web developer to have created a Facebook app. Reader’s of this space know it’s called PortlandDiner.com.

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RSS for the rest of us

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007

Are you one of the many folks out there who wonder what RSS is and why anyone would care? Take a look at this plain-spoken presentation on RSS at Common Craft.

RSS feed icon

Many of the most popular RSS feed readers available are mentioned; one he doesn’t mention is the one I use and which I recommend: NetVibes. You can get NetVibes here.

Having an RSS feed on your blog or news site is a great way to increase the traffic and visibility of your site, by making it easy for both search engines and human readers to keep up with new postings.

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