There’s just something about high quality photos fading in and out that always seem to take the feel of a site up a notch or two. Good examples are AMO‘s very own Arizona Medical Group Management Association (AZMGMA) and Metro Atlantic Relocation Council (MARC). Both of these sites use a custom XML-driven Flash slide show, developed internally a couple of years ago. The ease of updates from using XML, and the aforementioned Flash flashy-ness make it a perfect solution for breathing life into an otherwise static page.

Click the photo to see the slideshow in action, using recent photos from Montana and Yellowstone, or read on to learn more …

(more…)

ArcStonian Ryan Brown celebrated a productive Monday of programming by letting his coworkers decorate his desk!

With the sea of iPhone apps that are being downloaded I recently discovered one that I had to write about. Its free, and a must have for musicheads.

Its called Shazam

Surely there have been countless times you have been in a store, a bar, listening to the radio or watching a movie and wished you could identify the artist or name of a song playing. Shazam will listen for 3-12 seconds (you can set the duration) and identify it for you – song title, album, artist, label, genre and even show you an album cover. You can then preview/purchase the song from iTunes, or send to a friend.

Its a truly amazing and very handy little app to have. Find it through the App Store on your iPhone or from iTunes here

Ready for the new iPhone 3G to be released tomorrow? Maybe your happy with your current iphone, or you will be delaying your purchase to avoid the long lines and shoulder rubbing that will inevitably occur at every apple store. For those with the willpower to wait, you can indeed add a spark of new life to your current iPhone with some new apps.

The new iPhone Applications are now available and they can be acquired from the comfort of your lazyboy.

* The new iPhone 2.0 software is supposed to be out later today

The hardest part of staying in shape is often staying motivated. Your significant other might drop a comment here or there, or maybe a winter trip to Mexico might do it, but I discovered that my computer (and a couple of accessories) actually does a far better job.

I read about it a while ago, but just recently made the purchase. The Nike+iPod Sport Kit.

For around $30 your runs can be monitored (pace, distance, calories burned) and you can turn on a voice to chime in each mile, provide motivational comments or simply announce your pace and milage with the push of a button. This of course is overlayed upon the killer mix you have created or downloaded as your ipod playlist.

After the run, simply plug in your ipod and it uploads your run data to a very slick nike web application – a beautifully designed web site application. Here you get graphs of your run and a plethora of other very cool options like:

Download ipod playlists of others’ workout mixes (Sport Imixes)
Find running routes that others in your area have mapped, and add your own
Create running groups or teams (and compete!)
Create a training schedule
Create goals and competitions (for yourself or you and others)
Get interactive coaching/workouts

And much more. I am only 2 weeks into it but I have never been so motivated to stay on track with my workout, and to continue to improve my pace with every run. Tonight, Lance Armstrong even chimed in at the end of my run to congratulate me on setting my personal best pace per mile.

In all, I see it as the perfect blend of human and computer interaction. The design of the hardware, the user experience, graphical interface and feature set, the personal and community aspects are all exceptional.

Best of all my wife can’t give me a hard time for sitting down at the computer after getting the kids to bed. Just uploading my workout hon’!

Our very own Jess Louwagie and former employee Tim Bramer both made an appearance on Robert Hodgin’s blog – the conference’s closing speaker.

See for yourself here – and be sure to check out some of Robert’s amazing Processing experiments while you’re there. (Thanks for the inspiration Robert – Amazing presentation!)

I was catching up on one of my favorite bloggers, David Pogue of the New York Times. On his blog, Pogue’s Posts, you’ll see a lot of reviews of gadgets and commentary on tech news. Yesterday, for the first time ever, I watched a video he had up on the site that reviewed free cell phone voice-activated services. The video is funny and useful, and observing his geeky enthusiasm serves to remind you that he’s just a regular guy — like you or me.

It reminded me how often I am surprised to see the real live personality behind a blogger, a radio personality, or anything else where you usually don’t get to see the human on the other end. It’s usually a pleasant surprise.

Web media like blogs, and especially video, give us that human connection we all crave. I think this can be a place where a lot of websites fail miserably. In an attempt to appear professional and creditable, they take the human element out. But sites that do have that human element — say, a how-to video, or a blog with an active comment section — tend to make more of a real and lasting connection with users.

Is your site guilty of being sterile and cold? Here are some signs:

• You have no photos with people in them.
• Your site colors are all cool in tone.
• Your site is static with no interactivity.
• Your content focuses on your business and organization rather than your visitors’ wants and needs.
• You have no audio or video media.

If you suspect your site may be too cold, try any of the following:

• Add a video message, demo, or interview.
• Start weekly or monthly podcasts and make them easy to download from your homepage.
• Find professional and appropriate graphics that prominently feature people.
• Add an interactive element, such as user ratings or testimonials.
• Integrate a blog into part of your marketing strategy and keep the posts personable and down-to-earth.
• Incorporate some warmer colors into your site design.

Making your site “human” is easier than ever to do now. Have at it!

A new trend sweeping COMP-SCI classes and server rooms everywhere is coloring your hair to match one’s desktop wallpaper. Web development companies are suddenly becoming a much more colorful place as the trend progresses.

Some believe the proliferation of colorful wallpaper art from sites like InterfaceLIFT has contributed significantly to the trend. However, in the case of nerds with plain black or brown wallpaper, the trend results in less exciting outcomes.

Video can’t do everything, but for specific things, it outshines any other medium on the web (text, pictures, audio, interactivity). Here are my top five:

1. Tutorials. There’s nothing better than an online how-to video. One of my favorite places to go for video tutorials is the DIY site Curbly.
2. Virtual Tours. We have a bunch of these over at Wonderfile that help a new user take a peek at what the product can do even before signing up. Within a minute, a visitor can usually tell how useful and easy to use a product is.
3. Interviews. Video the only way to capture the personalities of the interviewee and interviewer. Transcripts can’t capture pregnant silences or boisterous outbursts. Podcasts can’t capture gestures and facial expressions. Video wins for interviews, hands-down.
4. Product demonstrations. Think Guthy-Renker infomercials you see on early AM television. Apple does a great job of showing off products and what they can do in a short amount of time.
5. Viral Marketing. Nothing spreads faster than viral videos, particularly those that are funny. Check out the Will-It-Blend series and just try to NOT send it on to someone else.

By the turn of the twenty first century, it became essential that businesses have a website. Websites had faded from an optional marketing extra to an essential business tool, a company’s address in the virtual landscape.

Websites had faded from an optional marketing extra to an essential business tool

Now that websites are commonplace, a new, more specialized evolution of the website is becoming a business prerequisite: Blogs.

Once only pursued by prolific writers and angst-ridden teenagers, blogs have become a valuable marketing device, making them many companies front line weapon in the battle for customers.

Keep reading for my guide on how to turn your companies collective knowledge into a blog, and a blog into profits.

(more…)