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Tech Notes, Code Tips, And Musings By Chris Carvey, NYC UI/UX Director

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My friend Johnny, The Big Gun

February 22, 2010 By Chrisdigital Leave a Comment

Chris Carvey's friend - John Carrington Simpson, Branding Guru - Graff1.comI met Johnny back in 1996-97. We worked at Graj + Gustavsen, a retail branding and creative development firm here in NYC. At this particular time the office was full of freelancers, me being one of the last to arrive. This was during a hiring burst to ramp up for several impending presentations to numerous retail brands and a major cable network that was planning to build “themed” retail stores across America.

I loved it. I was a young kid, just a few months removed from graduating from the School of Visual Arts and my Scholastic Illustrator contract had just ended. There I was sitting in the middle of a retail brand incubator with a slight bump in pay. I was feeling good about myself and I was only scratching the surface of that experience — because in walked Johnny.

Johnny was the “big gun,” the guy the owners would call in if they needed to blow a client’s socks off (which was often). He was fun to be around and we became friends. He appeared to be the archetype of the designer I wanted to be ever since my graduation. His client list was to be envied, and his work studied. To me he was part genius comedian, passionate advocate for beauty in design, and like many men that were mentors to me growing up, he did not “suffer for fools” easily. He worked a few stations over from me in the office and routinely, I would peer over at my big British soccer hooligan-looking workmate marveling, as he kept us in stitches with his most recent observation.

There were at least 10-12 of us including designers and production assistants who worked in that general area (not to mention the amazing retail buyers and merchandising consultants G+G had brought in) and we were a cast of characters. We all really liked each other for the most part, and I’d say there was definite team chemistry. It showed in the genuine delight people displayed when they saw you, and the general wackiness in the office. It also showed in the sporadic practical jokes that lightened the mood when a deadline neared.

I remember one incident in particular that was pretty hilarious in hindsight, but I was none too happy about at the time. I had one of those yellow-haired key chain trolls on my desk and I scanned it into the computer and made it into a big desktop wallpaper in order to mark my territory. This was a little unusual, because the freelancers technically could sit at any computer station they wanted. One day while I was at lunch some antics ensued. I returned to find someone had Photoshoped… um, let’s say “distinctive male parts” onto my desktop troll. As I turned beet red, everyone in the group snickered with delight. It was an interesting lesson in humility, to say the least.

I later learned that several co-workers were in on it, and to this day, Johnny will only cop to “I may have art directed some of it, lol!”

Eventually, the clients went away and our crew split up, but our friendship endured. Johnny is like a brother to me. Each time we speak, the words pick up from the previous conversation as if no time has passed. We have supported each other during up and down times, throughout multiple changes and various moves in our lives. Amidst all of that, one thing remains the same.

Johnny is still the “big gun” called in when a company needs to blow a client’s socks off.

John Carrington Simpson’s work speaks for itself, and can be viewed at Graff1.com.

Filed Under: Fun Tagged With: Branding, Branding expert, Designer, friend, funny, Memories, Resources

All the single ladies

February 20, 2010 By Chrisdigital Leave a Comment

Beyonce dancing in Single Ladies video I have a few female co-workers here in NYC that are single and every now and then we have a conversation about the ridiculous ratios of women to men in New York City and how Carrie Bradshaw in her Manolo Blahniks destroyed the city by attracting hundreds of thousands of women here to find their own Mr. Big.

I highlight their pain because it just doesn’t make sense to me that someone hasn’t developed tools to even the odds. Between Facebook, Twitter, Match.com, eHarmony, etc., somebody somewhere should be able to come up with some kind of data architecture, API, and license rules that allows everyone to share in a serious money making opportunity.

What I have in mind is a system that would distribute real-time statistical “singles” data based upon neighborhood or general location, enabling ladies (and men) to find love. A user could tap into this main “registry” app at their leisure and check out the prospects in the current area, view proximity to local attractions, industry districts (jobs data), and even filter for time of day.

This, of course, would be “weighted” in the context of the target gender. For example, say a group of women are walking around the city, and they end up in an office district after hours . We all know that there are  far less men around that area than during the day. However, this tool would theoretically help the women to find the after work spot that everybody goes to, or suggest alternative options. It would be like having a friend “in the know” or “hunting at the zoo” (to borrow a friend’s phrase).

But on a serious note, if you’re wondering what sparked all of this, it started with this singles map. I think the map is fun to talk about partly because I’m married and I don’t have to deal with dating any more, and partly because the map has its detractors. It first appeared in National Geographic February 2007 and ever since, it has been an interesting conversation piece because of the conclusions it draws, plus I love information graphics.

There are resources like Yahoo Neighborhoods, MSN Real Estate, Kiplinger’s Best Cities, and Sperling’s Best Places. Those tools have their place, but I”m talking about something fun and hip with a slick user interface that singles can use on the go. I mean, it’s been three years later already!

I’m certain that I am not the first to think of this, so there must be an online service or geo-tracking mobile app that I don’t know about. It would be hard for me to believe some enterprising mind hasn’t been all over this.

List any Websites or apps in the comments if you know of any.

I’m sure there would be crazy privacy concerns and there’s also a risk that someone would try to skew the system for their own purposes, but it would be interesting to see it in action. I mean even on a generic level the data would be interesting.

Maybe we can re-define the word “hot spot” and come up with a system similar to the FON shared Wifi network and have single people register in their own neighborhood, anonymously if they choose to.

Come on, people work it out! I can’t think of everything. This situation presents a ripe opportunity for some angel fund investor.

Hang in there, ladies. I’m trying to support you by shining a light on this situation and hopefully answers are on the way. Maybe those boys over at Hot Potato can take a run at this one.

And fellas, if you’re reading this… Yes, I wrote this post to have an excuse to use that headline and use a picture of Beyonce… Later.

More Resources:

1. Online Dating Infographic via Mashable. Full of interesting statistics.

2. The New York Times attempts to demystify online dating.

3. Listio reviews a few Dating Applications.

Filed Under: Fun Tagged With: Apps, Idea, Info Graphics, Map, Men to Women ratio, Single ladies, Singles map

The CMS power of WordPress

February 20, 2010 By Chrisdigital 2 Comments

Lately Wordpress interface screengrab demonstrates it's CMS powerI’ve been working a lot in WordPress and it has started to dawn on me how powerful the software is. I can only imagine what’s coming in WordPress 3.0. The power I’m referring to specifically is the ability to use custom fields with posts/pages. This basically allows an editor the ability to associate related information with an entry or record into the database. As a simple example, visualize splitting an entry into 3 variations: Full, summary, tease (or large, medium, small) and have every thing encapsulated in the same database record. Here on ChrisDigital’s Digital Designer Blog, I’m using this in the Bookmark links section to grab the “referrer”, “source” and their URLS from each post. This is very cool…

Foundation for a framework

In addition, anybody has access to the source code so you can blow up the whole posts/pages paradigm (by using your own code methodology) and still have access to all the built-in WordPress goodies. I can easily see an advanced developer using this code base as a framework to make a stripped down event booking system, inventory control catalogue or some other database entry system that needs an easy admin user interface for maintenance personnel. They can even change the admin interface for their purposes, or just find a cool admin theme like this one I came across recently.

Why WordPress?

If you’re not familiar with WordPress, check out WordPress.org for some background information. It’s safe to say I really like WordPress, and it reminds me a lot of a CMS that I really liked (despite a few quirks that it had) and used 3 years ago for a project. The CMS I’m referring to is CMS Made Simple. If you find that humorous you should realize that at CMSMS has been downloaded 750,000 times (as of October 2009) and it does have a loyal user base. However, CMS pales in comparison to WordPress’ recent update, 2.9, which has been downloaded 3,999,515 times (as of this writing) and that fact alone gives you an glimpse into why I switched. Nevertheless, my experience with CMSMS was very positive and I barely had to touch the documentation. It just all made sense, and I jumped in with both feet. I was up to my elbows in code, mucking around with templates in no time. I’m pretty much in the same place with WordPress right now.

Back to the powerful magic

As I was working in WordPress recently, I ran into a situation in which I needed to pull specific data out of the database about each page in a WordPress install and then print that information to the homepage for a theme I was tweaking. The answer was integrating custom fields into each entry and adding some minor edits to a few template files. When I finished, I got up from my desk and went to get a latte. I was done.

To get an idea of what you can do with this feature, Smashing magazine has a great roundup of some custom field hacks that can make your theme stand out. And as I mentioned in the intro here’s a great post about hacking the appearance of WordPress custom fields and how they function in the control panel. There’s no doubt in my mind that depending on the scale of your project WordPress makes a flexible CMS.

Jumping into WordPress theme development

Needless to say, you can find guidance for creating your own WordPress theme online. In addition, there are some powerful WordPress theme development frameworks you can experiment with that pretty much push theme development to the next level. Personally, I like to target my tweaks and be the originator of the code changes instead of adding another layer of coding standards/documentation that I will need to deal with.

Can I get a little help?

Half the battle of understanding any software or framework is finding help and figuring out the nomenclature and structural paradigms of folders and files. In this regard, WordPress is impressive; you just need to do a couple of Google searches and you have an answer to whatever is confusing you, ails your current install, or offers the right fix for the piece of code that you’re tweaking.

You can easily pull up resources in your Web browser such as WordPress’ codex, forums, developer community, plug-in architecture, and themes. It’s like this growing unstoppable force.  Check out these video WordPress tutorials for example. This is a sample of how hard devotees work at WordPress evangelism. Eventually, you will be assimilated. You can even test drive it for free on their hosted platform.

Why go through all this trouble?

Why would you want to invest time into bending Wordress to your will? I’ll give you two reasons:

1. For now it’s open source with a reasonable learning curve that gets you up and running quickly.

2. And as mentioned above, WordPress’ admin control panel is pretty easy to use AND explain to your Web design clients for example. Which means they’re not calling you for very easy edits, and you can focus on big ticket changes. No more having to track and bill for minutiae.

More Resources

Here’s a rundown on 5 approaches you can take to get your Web clients familiar with the WordPress admin interface.

If you are looking for other PHP-based CMS’ to consider check out Silverstripe, MODx, Expression Engine, Drupal, Joomla, and I’ve been hearing a lot about Elgg lately.

Here’s a great question and answer thread from LinkedIn.com (account required) that details some plugin favorites by Linkedin members and issues associated with using plugins.

Filed Under: WordPress Tagged With: Blogging, CMS, Custom fields, Plugins, UI, Using WordPress as CMS, WordPress CMS

HTML5 is no longer like a mythical white Unicorn

February 20, 2010 By Chrisdigital Leave a Comment

HTML5 demystified, no longer a mythical white UnicornAs of today HTML5 is no longer like a mythical white Unicorn, or just a new and cool buzzword uber-geeks throw around on Internet blogs. It’s something more real and tangible, thanks to Matthew David. He does a brilliant job breaking it down in his post “Inside HTML5: The Browser becomes a first class RIA citizen” over at InsideRIA.com.

I have only dug into HTML5 as a curiosity about the font embedding that’s coming in the future, (and I was intrigued by the native support for audio and video) but I have not really thought of the more comprehensive development implications of the coming HTML5 standards until now. This article is really worth a read, especially the information about the proposed new foundational elements, and the CSS3 special effects.

Mr. David breaks down the back story of HTML5, sprinkles in a little history and then gets into the features that are coming with actual code examples. He also gets into browser support and where you might see the quickest feature adoption.

I also found it interesting that if you read between the lines, it’s in the W3C’s and the individual browser manufacturer’s interests to get HTML5 out the door before the standard becomes an afterthought to browser plugin and RIA technology that is moving at a much faster pace.

HTML5 and CSS3, it’s what the cool kids are doing

Here’s a similar post from the Webtint.com entitled How We’ll be Building Websites in 5 years: HTML5 and CSS3 layout that breaks down some of the new building blocks offered by HTML5 and CSS3, It also discusses things like graceful degradation of your code and IE hacks. Wait!, there’s more – not to be out done CSS3Gallery.net lists 70 CSS3 and HTML5 tutorials you can explore. Also check out what the cool kids are doing with HTML5 at HTML5Gallery.com for some inspiration.

The politics and competing interests behind the HTML5 standard

In my post “Embracing HTML5, CSS3 is a power play worth billions” I cover the politics and back story of HTML5. I touch on what’s at stake for developers and end-users in terms of what the future of the interaction with Web data and Internet media.

More Resources:

1. Nick Apperley expresses his thoughts on HTML5 and RIA.

2. AjaxWorld explores Is HTML5 a Game Changer?

3. Over at Silverlighthack.com, Bart Czernicki explains why he feels HTML5 is not ready to replace Silverlight.

Read more on ChrisDigital’s Digital Designer Blog:

1. Exploring web fonts, moving beyond Arial and Verdana

2. Embracing HTML5, CSS3 is a power play worth billions

Filed Under: Code Tagged With: CSS3, HTML5, HTML5 basics, HTML5 impact on RIA, HTML5 Primer, RIA

Blogging kids, something to think about

February 17, 2010 By Chrisdigital 2 Comments

The kid kingI’ve been kicking around the idea of starting a blog with my son. He’s an old soul at the ripe old age of 11 and in the middle of a lot of stuff “tween” boys think about. What really caught my eye about him is that his Aunts call him all the time when they need to get a present for a child in his age group (his mom as well) and he takes his advice giving seriously. So we’ve been kicking around some ideas for a while now of what to do together. Besides, he’s really interested in what his old man does for a living and this is something we could share.

A rookie shines

So, fast forward to this week… I was reading a local newspaper on my commute and they made mention of a girl I think she’s 13-14 by now, named Tavi Gevinson who runs a blog called “Style Rookie” and how she was in New York for fashion week (again) and she was being mobbed like a celebrity when people caught sight of her. When I got to my desk, I did some digging and it turns out she runs an insanely popular blog with a readership of about 50,000 people. In addition, she’s is an internet star in the fashion industry and she’s been blogging since 2008. The girl is even a spoke person for a fashion line inspired by her that sells at Target, etc. etc.

Curiouser and curiouser

So I got curiouser and curiouser, I surfed around a bit as her story was starting to sound a little bit like Ashley Quails (but at a smaller scale ofcourse) who was featured in Fast Company magazine back in 2007.

I was looking for lessons to be learned at this point and I was looking for advice on privacy issues and how to handle strangers having access to my son in any kind of forum and then I bumped into this article that raised a bunch of concerns for me as a parent. It covers the growing trend of kid fashion bloggers and issues like reacting to backlash, people recognizing you on the street, etc.

In my case I have a boy, and I have some methods to screen my son from the crazies and I’m going into this situation with my eyes open. In addition, I don’t expect my son will get mobbed over his taste in video games, movies, books and hoodies.

But you never know, stay tuned. According to ReadWriteWeb.com blogging doesn’t even hold kids’ attention, they’re just too busy handling other social media and being KIDS.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: Blogging, blogging kids, kid blog, kids online, parenting, social media kids

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