We are pleased to announce the launch of our latest makeover!

Southview Design came to us several years ago (through our friend Kristin Kowler at Genius to Go) in search of a clean, professional site that reflected the caliber of work which they were producing in landscapes. The new site not only improved their image, but made their team proud to share it. That was the site design “version 1″

Just yesterday we launched the all new Southview Design, while the previous site was plenty good they sought a more interactive and engaging user experience – and to continue to their already strong search engine presence. The new site features a striking new look, continually updated project slideshow on the home page, and intuitive navigation scheme. The project gallery allows visitors to explore by image – or quickly filter the list of landscaping projects by Service or by Price.

With this new site Kristin has again provided powerful and effective search engine friendly content, which will continue to build upon the already strong search engine presence Southview Design enjoys. Coupled with the ultra-clean site code and site optimization techniques employed in this go-around we wish them much happiness and success with the new site.

And just in time for Spring!

This year for Thanksgiving, I brought home a Wii, including the never-opened, much buzzed-about Guitar Hero III.

My family, particularly my mom (who is decidedly not a gamer), took to it immediately. Mom’s unexpected enthusiasm and enjoyment of the Wii prompted my Dad to make seven trips to Target in a quest to bring back the holy grail of gaming consoles for the holidays. Lo and behold, Christmas morning, Santa had placed a Wii under the trii, and fun was had by all.

Why — when no other gaming system has come close to tempting her — does my mom like rockin’ out on the fake guitar till her fingers are sore and smashing my dad to pieces with her speed-of-light serves in Wii Sports tennis?

(more…)

Through November 26, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) will be handing out two XO laptops per donation – one to a child in a developing country, and one to a child of your choice. The program is called Give 1, Get 1.

Who can resist when Masi Oka is the spokesman?

Additionally, T-Mobile is rewarding donors with one year of HotSpot access, available in about 8,500 locations in the U.S., such as Starbucks, Borders, airports, and Amtrak stations.

(more…)

Across the world on Thursday, people learned how to “make life easy.” Yes, there is an entire day devoted to ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use. While this year’s theme was healthcare, we are going to focus specifically on the Internet, or as some of us like to call it, the Global InterWeb.

The University of Minnesota Office of Information Technology and Digital Technology Center celebrated the day by organizing a free event in the Walter Library on campus with the help of the UMN Usability Services Laboratory. Yesterday’s event included guided tours of the state-of-the-art usability lab, a presentation discussing practical usability practices and a professional panel discussing an overview of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

So what does all of this mean and why is it important?

(more…)

Your house, like mine, probably consists of entries, rooms, hallways, closets, and miscellaneous items to help us run our daily lives. When you open the bathroom door, you expect a toilet, not a wandering herd of donkeys in gorilla costumes.

I’d say a good 99% of us like our homes to be laid out in such a way as to enhance our everyday living – we expect and/or require them to have some modicum of functionality.

Web sites should be the same way. Even a visitor who’s never been to the site before should immediately get a feel for where they are, where they can go, and what information will be waiting for them when they navigate away from their current spot.

My question is: Why do so many architects have dysfunctional websites?

(more…)

Millions of people have iPods, and the majority of them use iTunes to manage their music. As I have mentioned before, iTunes lacks some truly useful features, many of which users are pining for.

One major feature absent is the ability to copy music from an iPod to iTunes. This, no doubtingly, was left out of the feature set to keep users from sharing their entire music collection with everyone they know, and to keep Apple from being sued into oblivion.

Unfortunately, there are many legitimate uses for being able to copy music back and forth freely. Fear not gentle readers, because third party developers have come to the rescue.

I personally use Senuti, which has an interface almost identical to iTunes, except file syncing works in reverse (from iPod to iTunes). Senuti is Mac only, but there are many other options, and many are cross platform.

Enjoy your newfound freedom, but use it wisely.

Over the years the web and related technologies have evolved fairly rapidly. However, one technology seams hopelessly stuck in 1990: email. Email really hasn’t changed much since it’s inception. Sometimes I wish more features existed than the basic recipient, subject, message paradigm has to offer.

Here is my wish list:

1) Multiple Bodies – it would be nice to be able to send a message to a group, but have some text only be visible to specific people. Right now this requires sending two separate messages, even if only a small difference in text is needed.

2) This Email Has Changed – when you call a phone number that has changed a pleasant voice notifies you of the new number. I would like the equivalent for email. This could be very handy when retiring an old address.

3) Enhanced Security – there are a few tools that enhance the security of your messages, but since they are not built into the protocol few users use them. I would like to be able to send messages that can’t be forwarded, viewed after a certain date, or require a password to open. Email could be used for so much more if it was a secure means of communication.

Email is truly the killer app of the Internet, but in the age of advanced software and hardware it sure is showing its age.

Everyone at ArcStone has a multi-monitor setup. Long ago I convinced ArcStone’s owner of the vast productivity benefits that come with more screen real estate. At first, like many people, he was a skeptic. However, after using multiple monitors himself, the value became apparent.

Some might argue it simply amounts to what you become used to. I disagree. I see a significant drop in my productivity when I work out of the office, and have to rely on my laptop screen alone.

If you have the means, I urge you to try adding another monitor to your setup.
Here are some examples of ArcStonians multi-monitor setups:

Our Top Sales Person

Our Systems Administrator

Yours Truly

It wasn’t long ago that web developers obsessed about page weight (the total file size of a web page’s HTML, images, scripts, CSS, etc..). The “lighter” a page, the faster it would download, and presumably offer the user a more enjoyable browsing experience.

With everyone on lighting-fast Internet connections, optimizing page weight has fallen by the wayside. When I was developing content heavy sites for publishers in 1999 we would typically keep pages at 50k or less. At that size even modems users would find the site usable.

Today I did a quick survey to find that many popular sites are over 300k (3x the size recommended by HCI).
www.cnn.com: 631k
www.abcnews.com: 331k
www.cnet.com: 533k

This, of course, is no problem for users on dual-core machines connected to DSL. But many people now surf the web from mobile devices, with much slower processors and Internet connections. With the popularity of these devices, it’s almost as if we have been hurled back in time to the days of modems.

The solution may be to re-visit these optimization techniques from days of old, or to operative twin sites, one being specific to mobile devices. Whatever the answer may be, I beg you, as a mobile surfer, please put your sites on a diet.

If you are like me and have built a multitude of computers over the years, you surely have a box or two of spare parts lying around. I call mine “Nick’s Box Of Wonders.” When desperate enough I reach into this treasure trove of outdated RAM and ZIP disks to bring a sickly machine back to life, upgrade an old clunker, or even build a Frankenputer.

Some parts however, I find myself passing up each time I dip into the collection. I eventually give up on these unique items, and they get squired away forever or tossed. One such item is a really cool XEON heat sink. I couldn’t imagine just throwing it out, so instead I found three new uses for it:

A Business Card Holder – very classy

An iPod Dock – just add any sync cable

An Inbox – No one else in my office sorts mail like this