Project Launch: ShareThis Widget Redesign
March 3, 2009
Cincinnati-based internet start-up ShareThis makes a popular widget that thousands of web publishers embed into their pages allowing visitors to share the content using email, Facebook and dozens of other online services. I worked at ShareThis as a full-time employee helping plan and develop a redesign of their widget, simplifying the user interface and adding new functionality. I worked to design flow diagrams, wireframes and clickable prototypes to refine usability. The new ShareThis widget is currently being rolled out to all users and is already available on select major web sites like Boston.com and AccessHollywood.com.
Read more about the redesign and watch a video demo in the Mashable article:
Project Launch: SanDisk CES Video
January 12, 2009
Last Thursday the big CES Consumer Electronics Show kicked of in Las Vegas. I had an opportunity to work with Alejandrino Partners in San Ramon, California to produce a 2-minute video promoting SanDisk’s new Mobile Ultra 16GB memory cards at the show. The video ran on a big video wall display at their booth during the show which expected over 15,000 visitors.
This project was a lot of fun to work on. Like the work I did for Adobe earlier this month, it was yet another departure from the online world. Again I used Adobe Flash, but this time for very different type of product, bringing together videos and animation to produce something much less like a desktop application or a web animation and more like a television commercial.
(Please excuse the YouTube video quality.)
Project Launch: Adobe AIR Calendar Widget
January 5, 2009
Adobe decided to take a modern spin on traditional, paper, “picture of the day” calendars with the “Places I’d Rather Be” calendar widget. It’s a simple application that you can install on your computer that shows a different beautiful photo from locations around the world for every day of 2009. It also lets you drag in and caption your own photos and make notes on any day. The program runs on OS X, Windows and Linux using Adobe’s AIR runtime and I put it all together using Adobe Flash working with a great group of people from Receiver Studio and G2 in San Francisco and New York. The project was a lot of fun to work on since developing a desktop widget is a departure from the online work I normally do.
Project Launch: Roxio Holiday and Launch Campaigns
December 23, 2008
At the end of this year I had an opportunity to help produce Flash home page features, banner ads and HTML emails for Roxio’s holiday and launch campaigns. I worked with a team led by Digerata in Walnut Creek, California to create several dozen pieces to promote Roxio’s Toast, Creator and Easy VHS to DVD software products.
Video: SCRUM in Under 10 Minutes
December 16, 2008
Back went I was working full time for ShareThis I was introduced to the SCRUM software development methodology and I became really enamored with it. I worked with Fredric Jean on a project for Sun Microsystems last year. His team also uses SCRUM and he shared this entertaining little video by Hamid Shojaee explaining how it works:
Campaign Monitor Redesign is Great
December 1, 2008
Campaign Monitor is one of my favorite tools for managing, testing and sending HTML emails. They have fantastic tools for email list management, handling for unsubscribes and an extensive suite for testing your emails to see how they will look in different email clients and how well the perform against industry standard spam filters.
I’ve been using Campaign Monitor for a few years but last week the rolled out a redesign of the application with a bunch of new features (such as custom branded interfaces and reporting). The new user interface seems to borrow heavily from some of the ideas in Basecamp, making things much more logical and easier to use.
Boing Boing Gadgets Outs a Motorola Viral Marketer
November 25, 2008
Big companies frequently hire ad agencies to do grassroots marketing. Employees pose as members of online communities and promote products with seemingly spontanious testimonials. If done correctly it can be a really powerful tool but it can also backfire if it isn’t genuine and/or well-done. Here’s an entertaining example with Joel Johnson at the popular blog Boing Boing Gadgets calling out a character named M. Goode for pontificating the wonders of Motorola’s new Krave phone:
Motorola, could you please tell your viral marketer to get out of our comments?
Project Launch: Body Ami
October 29, 2008
Today we launched a website for Body Ami (an organic, health product company in Napa, California). It’s a beautiful site designed by the folks at Boldium. Boldium did most of the heavy lifting and I came in toward the end to help polish things up. Body Ami’s site uses the Drupal content management system and some custom modules. Watch for more new products and website features on the Body Ami blog.
Project Launch: Accolo EcoPartnership
October 17, 2008
I recently got to help plan and develop a great project for Accolo’s Ecopartnership program. Accolo is a global recruiting company based in the San Francisco Bay Area that focuses on helping companies in the high-tech, marketing and sustainability industries. The EcoPartnership program offers financial incentives to help Accolo’s clients become “green businesses”. If your company is interested in becoming more environmentally sustainable of if they offer services to help others become sustainable, you should check out the program.
TwittEarth
October 17, 2008
I love creative data visualizations. TwittEarth is a fun way to watch Twitter post from around the world with a 3D globe and cute like characters.
