Blendercise!

Heather  /  May 22, 2009, 1:25 pm

One of the great things about working at Blenderbox is being surrounded by people that are constantly trying to better themselves in one way or another.  Blenderboxers are a curious bunch, always looking to do more, learn more, and create more, and in no instance is this more apparent than during the semi-annual celebration of knowledge known fondly as the Blendercise.

Blendercises are our own particular brand of continuing education; an opportunity for designers to teach us some of the finer points of Photoshop, for developers and information architects to teach us the best SEO techniques, or for project managers to provide tips on organization that might help us in our constant struggle to keep our time sheets up to date.  They’re a way for each department to learn more about the day-to-day work of others and to take away valuable information that makes us stronger individually and as a team.

Anyone can suggest a topic for a Blendercise, and with the constant stream of innovations in web technology, we’re never at a loss for new material.  Previous Blendercises have covered a diverse range of subjects, from SEO and Google Analytics to Photoshop and Web Form Design, and many more are yet to come.

Currently scheduled Blendercises include sessions on InDesign and Sitecore, but with an increased interest in projects requiring open-source development and a variety of opportunities for professional development outside of the Blenderbox office, 2009 may be our biggest year yet for tech-centric Blendercises.

Posted by Heather / Also posted in Blendercises, Design, Development, Information Architecture / 1 comment >

Launched: the New + Improved Backbone NYC

Heather  /  October 30, 2008, 10:27 am

Earlier this week, on behalf of longtime client Backbone NYC, Blenderbox launched the newly-redesigned backbonenyc.com.

Back in 2005, Blenderbox created a compelling Flash-based website to showcase Backbone’s high-quality retouching and pre-press capabilities.  In the intervening years, Backbone’s already robust portfolio grew by leaps and bounds, eventually outgrowing their portfolio section.

With the 2008 redesign, Blenderbox used updated Flash technology to bring Backbone’s portfolio front-and-center, revamping the organization and navigation scheme to allow easier access to their work.

Posted by Heather / Also posted in Design, Internet / Tagged , , , | No comments >

Introducing Compost

Iain  /  October 20, 2008, 4:39 pm

This past weekend was the Rails Rumble and a team of intrepid blenderbox developers hunkered down in our Brooklyn headquarters and, in a mere 48 hours, produced a slick new web app: Compost.

Compost is the simple way to post, share, and present your design comps.

More than just a slideshow, Compost allows you to control your presentation and your message. Now your clients see what you want them to see, when you want them to see it.

Sharing comps is easy:

  1. Post. Give your gallery a name and upload your comps. Upload as many images as you need – all at once.
  2. Share. Invite people to view your new gallery. Emails are sent to your clients with a unique URL for their gallery.
  3. Present. Control your viewer’s experience in real-time – remotely! With complete control of your presentation, you decide when, and for how long, each image appears on-screen. The viewer – your client – sits back and watches the show.

Try it yourself.

Posted by Iain / Also posted in Design, Development, Humor, Internet / No comments >

Flash to get better indexing in search engines

Caleb  /  July 1, 2008, 8:26 am

Adobe has finally publicly acknowledged their very important problem with SEO and Flash and has made an effort to make Flash content easier for search engines (specifically Yahoo! and Google) to index by collaborating with both Google and Yahoo!.

From the press release:

Adobe is providing optimized Adobe® Flash® Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines.

Read more in the press release

While I do see this as an great thing, I would still recommend developers use SWFAddress to ensure deep linking to your content. I can see how both search engines would be able to pick up the content properly, but it would surprise me if the indexing is able to tell a user where that content lives within the site. It will be interesting to see how the content is indexed.

Posted by Caleb / Also posted in SEO / No comments >

Colin Moock interviews Jim Corbett

Caleb  /  May 22, 2008, 11:13 am

A really nice interview with one of the flash player engineers. They talk about ecmascript 4, the future of the web browser, silverlight, actionscript 3, web politics, etc. It’s really worth a watch (or listen in my case).

watch it on the FITC site

via colin’s blog

Posted by Caleb / Also posted in Video / No comments >

Processing.js

Caleb  /  May 9, 2008, 10:16 am

John Resig just ported over the Processing project to Javascript. Some really cool demos are coming out of it.

live molten pie chart
springs

It’s some pretty amazing stuff.

via kottke.org > via waxy

Posted by Caleb / No comments >

Coding for the mobile web

Matt  /  March 13, 2008, 8:11 am

An Opera developer writes up a comprehensive overview of the state of the mobile web design industry. Let me summarize, since it’s a long article:

  • The iPhone is one slice of a much larger mobile market
  • Mobile browsers are divided into two categories: full-featured (Opera Mobile and Safari) and constrained (WinWAP, Pocket IE, Blazer)
  • Javascript support on mobile devices is uneven, always provide a fallback
  • Design for 240 x 320; assume you’ll have a limited color palette to use and limited control over typography
  • Plan for two distinct user experiences: Don’t ever assume that your web-based user experience will be the same on a mobile device
  • Build one site that degrades well on mobile devices instead of building a second website just for mobile users
  • Make use of the “handheld” media type for CSS
Posted by Matt / Also posted in Development / No comments >

Interaction designers discuss the iPhone SDK

Matt  /  March 10, 2008, 11:27 am

They seem pretty impressed:

Apples sniffed out an industry that was divided into two disfunctional factions. The carriers, who are making the exact same strategic mistakes they made as long distance providers 20 years ago, and hardware manufacturers – also repeating old mistakes. The carriers are still caught up in creating barriers for consumers to maximize profit. Hand set makers are driving with technology first, the user second.

The iPhone is fundamentally changing the functional, developmental, and the business landscape of the mobile phone industry.

Posted by Matt / No comments >

Multitasking slows you down

Matt  /  January 28, 2008, 5:58 pm

You may have seen this linked in several other places already: “The Autumn of the Multitaskers”:

This is the great irony of multitasking—that its overall goal, getting more done in less time, turns out to be chimerical. In reality, multitasking slows our thinking. It forces us to chop competing tasks into pieces, set them in different piles, then hunt for the pile we’re interested in, pick up its pieces, review the rules for putting the pieces back together, and then attempt to do so, often quite awkwardly. (Fact, and one more reason the bubble will pop: A brain attempting to perform two tasks simultaneously will, because of all the back-and-forth stress, exhibit a substantial lag in information processing.)

This idea isn’t new, but it’s always good to have incorrect conventional thinking challenged. Think of all the different ways software interrupts and asks you to multitask: IM conversations, Outlook & Gmail email notifications, not to mention temptations to interrupt yourself such as RSS readers or, uh… posting to the company blog.

37signals wrote a good post awhile back about the productivity benefits of disconnecting.

Posted by Matt / No comments >

new keyboard

Caleb  /  January 8, 2008, 3:30 pm

From the makers of the optimus maximus keyboard, comes the optimus tactus

I don’t really know if I would be able to type comfortably without the click, but I would get a kick out of being able to change everything on my keyboard. This whole touch screen thing is really just getting out of hand.

at least the price of the maximus is down to under $500

Posted by Caleb / No comments >

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