113 fans and counting!

I have been able to play around with some fun things while at Pemaquid. I’ve been spending some time last week sprucing up the Pemaquid Fan Page on Facebook.

We are still playing around with is, learning all that it has to offer. I wish there was a better way to write in a description of the company, but there are other cool features, including discussion boards, the Wall, and video that will help us keep you all updated about what’s happening round the office at 28 Maple Street.

We have 73 fans as of today. We need to break 100 in order to get a vanity page URL (“http://facebook.com/pemaquid”). Like what you read here? Become a fan and help put us over the top!

We know the value of social networking for a business we wanted to keep up with the trends. There is also an ad manager but I haven’t even looked at the capabilities of that yet.

The other thing I have been playing around with is Google docs (http://docs.google.com). I never knew such a thing existed and it might be the best thing ever. Every student should know about this! You can create word processing documents, spreadsheets, even forms.

It’s all wicked easy to use and then you can email it to others, and let whoever you want have access to view it or edit it. You can make surveys and send it to people and Google docs automatically makes a spreadsheet and records the responses for you. In addition to all that, because it’s linked to your google account you can access it wherever you can access the internet.

No need to worry about having your own computer, or your flashdrive, or emailing it to yourself (which I think every college student has done at least once), it’s just there, whenever you need it. For someone like me, who is crazy about having everything organized this is the best thing ever.

A Facebook group has been set up for Digital Creatives who are interested in coworking.

Portland Coworking is a space where local folks can share ideas on how we can make coworking, well work.

A lot of folks have expressed interest in our space at 28 Maple Street, and this will make it easier for everyone to stay in touch with what’s happening in town. So surf on over!

Facebook is also making an effort to improve their site’s accessibility. Earlier this week, Carl Augusto, President of the American Foundation for the Blind, wrote a post for Facebook’s blog on the subject.

Google’s Accessibility Enchanced search engine

Facebook FAQs on accessibility

Enter Facebook. Facebook is loaded with Ajax-y goodness, the kind that’s hard for screen readers and other assistive devices to pick up. So, is Facebook accessible? Strictly speaking, perhaps it is. Here’s the more important question: is Facebook usable?

I posed the question to a colleague who’s been blind since birth and who has a Facebook account. His response:

Honestly, I hate the Facebook site. I hated the old one and try though I might, I don’t find the new layout much improved.

Admittedly, there now seems to exist heading navigation which is nice, but not knowing when pages update and so forth poses a real problem where accessibility is concerned.

I generally use Facebook via the mobile site which is much more accessible, but at the cost of a lot of features.

For example, there’s no way to access group discussion boards via the mobile site, certain notifications don’t show up and applications, well they can just be forgotten.

Still, for basic FB use, the mobile site is definitely the most efficient, most accessible way.

Here are the particulars:

We’ll talk about a few Web sites you may have heard of – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube – as well as a few others, with an eye towards harnessing them to develop a sensible strategy for extending your organization’s brand or mission online.

Why me?

Good question indeed. I’ve built my business not on social media, but on the smart Web site design, usability, accessibility and content management, and that’s what I do best.

On the other hand, I also feel passionately about taking a no-nonsense approach to whatever it is you’re doing online, and that includes social media. I also know as much about social stuff as anyone in Maine.

I first bumped into Twitter in March 2007 while attending the South by Southwest interactive conference in Austin, Texas (which I call the Superbowl of Web Design). I twitter up a storm as @portlandhead and maintain @pemaquid (for the biz) and @Bluezberry_Jam (for my band; I play bass in my “spare time”).

I’m also the first (and to my knowledge, still the only) Maine Web designer to have developed Facebook apps. Pemaquid has done four: Bluezberry Jam, Portland Diner, Jenny’s Cards and Lost on Liftoff.

Editor’s note, 3/28/09: since creating this post, I’ve learned of another Mainer who’s created Facebook apps.

Fun Facts

Here are a couple fun facts about social media, to help you understand why it’s so important to use them effectively:

• 5 of the 10 most popular Web sites are social networks
• 3 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day
• 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

All that and more coming up April 7. See you there!

In the meantime, there’s a comment box below. You can use it. So give me your questions. What would you like to learn?

It’s a nifty little jukebox of sorts. You can play original songs from our upcoming album and add your favorite to a box on your Facebook profile, where your friends can play your fav, click back to the app, listen to our tunes, add it to their profile, where their friends can see it…

Devious, isn’t it?

It’s very similar to an app we launched last year for another local band, Lost on Liftoff. These are great little street-level tools for building buzz around an album launch.

Pemaquid also hosts both BluezberryJam.com and LostOnLiftoff.com, and both bands use the Pemaquid Content Manager to self-publish site updates.

A little while ago I said I’d start posting some reviews of good content management systems. Many of you are familiar w/t/Usual Suspects – WordPress, Drupal and Joomla – so I thought I’d start w/a review of something you may not have heard of: Django.

Django was developed by The World Company as a CMS for the Lawrence Journal-World, the newspaper in Lawrence, Kansas. It was developed for the fast-paced, high-traffic news environment and was designed to make it easy to set up and easy to plug/unplug various modules (“apps” or “models” as they are known in Django-lingo).

Incidentally, it was named after jazz guitarist Django Rheinhardt. As a musician myself, I appreciate that.

Django is Open Source. It has been released under a BSD license.

Nifty. But all of you who are looking for a 5-minute install FTW will be sadly disappointed. Django installs are not for the faint of heart. Unlike the Usual Suspects, which are written in PHP, Django was written in Python. It also requires some server administration skills to configure. Fortunately, there are some hosting providers who specialize in Django.

Though it can be a challenge to set up initially, once configured Django is designed so that you can very rapidly plug in different chunks of some pretty sophisticated interactive goodness depending on your needs.

The idea is that you don’t want to be reinventing the wheel for content management with every site. This is known as the DRY Principle.

With a basic, rock solid Django framework in place, Web designers and developers can focus on the fun stuff – a custom look and feel, CSS and extensions to Django’s core functionality.

Django’s great for big sites that need things like member management(w/varying access privileges), events calendars, e-commerce and job applications. In other words, for sites that need more than the simple blog-based content management WordPress provides.

Here’s the lowdown:

Pro

Solid modular code – you don’t have to reinvent the wheel or rewrite most of the bedrock code you’ll need for most sites. You can concentrate on customization. There are models for e-commerce, Google Calendar – you name it.

Speedy setup - no, it’s won’t be speedy the first time you do it. But once you’ve got the knack, it’ll be a breeze.

Plays nice w/Google – Python, Django’s bedrock language, is one of the three “official” languages supported by Google. You can run Django and Python on the Google App Engine – meaning apps you develop will scale easily while they hum along on Google AE’s servers.

Open Source – No licensing fees to obtain, and the codebase is supported by a large – and growing – developer community

Con

Python – Just when you thought you had learned all the code you needed to rule the Web (*sigh*). Once you learn it, however, Python is a “pro” and not a “con”.

Server Administration Skills required – Can you say “shell access”? There, I knew you could. Get ready to cuddle up w/your favorite Terminal app.

Maine Sites Running Django

Flyfi.com – Portland-based, a social-ly, musical-ly site. Formerly Goombah and run by Emergent Music.

Maine College of Art – an application for applying online.

Southern Maine Community College – a personalized information request form.

Django Links

Django Project – documentation, tutorials… and your gateway to the developer community.

Django for non-programmers – Jeff Croft has a great post on the benefits of Django for front-end designers.

Django – Google Code – If you need help, here’s one good place to look.

Django Facebook Group (requires FB Profile) – here’s another good place to look for help, if you’re on Facebook (and everyone’s on FB now, right?)

Django pluggables – apps you can plug into your Django project.

Have you tried the Django tango? What are your thoughts?

Pemaquid Zone (FB)
Pemaquid Fan Page (FB)
Twitter: http://twitter.com/pemaquid

You can also find me tweeting at:
http://twitter.com/portlandhead

I think we do a pretty spiffy job cranking out sites, but are there other people practicing great Web design in Maine? Ayuh!

Would like to see more!

Let’s get a conversation started about Web design, Web sites and technology in Portland, Maine.

The other day an acquaintance asked how he might use Facebook to help market a new book he’d written.

Tread lightly, my friend.

Using Faceook for “blatant self-promotion” can easily backfire. It’s like going to a casual cookout and talking business (too much might not be appreciated). On the other hand, your FB friends are presumably interested in what you are doing and can help spread the word about your endeavors quickly and well.

So go ahead and use Facebook, just be smart and polite about it. Here are my quick recommendations:

• Create a “page” for your book; invite friends to become “fans”.
• Create a FB group; invite people to join your group.
• Once you’ve done both, and/or created another Web page on the subject, post a FB “link”, w/a comment on it.

Don’t be pushy or over the top – just say “I’m doing something, thought you might like to know…”

Pemaquid has designed a Facebook app called Jenny’s Cards (you must have a Facebook profile to view). You can use it to send a little last minute Christmas cheer to all your friends (all of your friends are on Facebook, right?)

In addition to Holiday cards, you can send your Facebook pals Birthday cards, Thank Yous or just-plain-simple note cards. The card graphics are done by annie|catherine designer stationery, a Pemaquid Client whose site we redesigned earlier this year.

We rolled out this app after Thanksgiving for two reasons: to test how “infectious” this type of viral marketing can be, as well as to help a Client promote their products (there are links to the annie|catherine Web site in the app).

So far folks from Far East Asia to Down East Maine have used the app (Facebook has 50 Million + members worldwide) and annie|catherine is seeing traffic flow from the app to their site.

Done right, Facebook apps are an excellent way for businesses to extend their brand.

Thanks to my Facebook buddies Wendy Clark (Portland Diner logo) and Jennifer Ecker (Web design) for their help in creating Pemaquid’s Facebook apps. Thanks also to Facebook friend Justin Ellis (PPH reporter who wrote the story), who gave us a very “honorable mention”.

Our apps mentioned in the story:

• Portland Diner
• Lost on Liftoff

More are on the way. Stay tuned…

Ladies and Gentlemen… we have Liftoff. Lost on Liftoff. (Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.)

Pemaquid Communications premiered a brand new Facebook app for Lost On Liftoff, one of Portland, Maine’s hottest local bands, @ the techMaine conference a few days ago.

Go here to add the Lost On Liftoff app if you have a Facebook profile.

The idea is pretty simple. Once you add the app, it puts a “badge” on your Facebook profile, along w/a player created in FBML (that’s “Facebook Markup Language”) that allows you to play your favorite Lost On Lifoff song from their latest album, Mixtape Blackouts. You can change the favorite song if you like and invite other friends and fans to add the app to their profiles.

For the band, it’s viral marketing at its best. Pemaquid launched (no pun intended) the app just a few days ago and – through the power of Facebook’s social graph – it already has several dozen people using it.

Lead singer Walt Craven did the amazing album artwork and is working with us to redesign the group’s Web site.

Rock on!

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.

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.

A question I often hear from other designers is why, with IE7 and Firefox offering better support for Web standards, aren’t more people upgrading from IE6? (The latest browser statistics show IE6 use falling from about 42% to 36% during the past 8 months.)

The reason has to do with usability and cost-benefit analysis.

While most Web designers wouldn’t dream of using IE6 as their primary browser these days, especially with add-ons like the Web developer toolbar and Firebug available for Firefox, it works just fine for what most people want to do online. Checking email, reading up on sports scores and stock prices, buying shirts from LL Bean and using social network sites like LinkedIn, Flickr, Facebook and MySpace all can be done just fine w/IE6. There’s no compelling reason to switch.

Kevin Hale of Particle Tree has written an interesting article on the subject.

The upshot for Web designers? Remember to focus on usability when working with Clients to design features for an interactive Web site. Think about how customers, employees and other groups will do on your site before investing a lot of development time in creating a cool Web site feature that won’t get used all that much.

And it looks like IE6 will be with us for some time to come.

Hooray! More friends for me from the old workplace…

I keep hearing about Facebook (maybe that’s partly due to the fact that I’ve just signed up and am now in tune).

Here’s a post from Paul Allen about Facebook- which he claims will become the largest social network in the world.

There’s no reason to doubt it. I’ve watched as Facebook’s Portland network has ballooned to over 15,000 members, w/several hundred added since I joined up about a week ago.

Facebook is already a more popular online destination than eBay and is gaining on – are you ready? – Google. And I’ll bet people stick around longer on FB than they would on the Big G.

And with the new Facebook Platform and the ability for developers to create Facebook apps people can add to their profiles, like…. (shameless self-promotion) the Portland Diner app created by Pemaquid, it’ll only get stickier.

To top it off, Facebook’s people demographic is better and it’s interface is much cleaner than MySpace. If I were Uncle Rupert, I’d be concerned.

Played around w/t/ Facebook Platform over the weekend, and was able to create an app for Portland Diner. Now, members of Facebook’s Portland, ME network (and anyone else, for that matter) can add the Portland Diner app to their profile and check out local restaurant listings right there – which is of course why Facebook created the platform in the first place – to allow developers to create tools that would make the user experience at FB more engaging and – shall we say – “sticky”.

There are a few minor bugs in the CSS – Facebook doesn’t allow linked CSS and rewrites inline sheets placed in the <style> tags – but it seems to work just fine. There are other wrinkles – no javascripts are allowed, and Facebook requires that developers use a subset of HTML called, naturally, FBML. SQL can become FQL and there are some proprietary tags that include an “FB:”.

If you have a Facebook account and live in Portland, Maine, you might find the Portland Diner app useful. Go get it here. We’d love to know what you think; please let us know.