May 2012
4 Ways to Keep Your Brand Site Relevant
Co-authored by Ken Erke and Matt Marcus The dot-com as a quarterly updated, rigidly templated content dumping ground is a relic. Consumers expect more from a brand website than the “digital brochures” of the past. In the age of social, the dot-com must be a vital component of the new media landscape–socially integrated, device agnostic, and […]
Creative Destruction is Harder Than it Looks
In “The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future” Alexis Madrigal criticizes today’s technology start-ups for a lack of innovation. He accuses modern start-ups of tinkering within a narrow mobile/social “paradigm” and thereby failing to break through with the genuine radical innovations of their predecessors (Facebook, Twitter). This criticism […]
The 5 Pillars of Remote Collaboration
When working remotely, context becomes your worst enemy. Teams working together incrementally build-up a wealth of context about what and why and how things are the certain way. These are vital details that are not easily conveyed to those across a continent or ocean (or both). Here are some tips to get over some of […]
Women in Technology
Meet Computer Engineer Barbie. Originally a gag gift, she sits on my desk and reminds me that I am a female in technology. I laugh and roll my eyes at her for her sparkly leggings, bluetooth headset, and pink laptop. I embrace her for her attempt to encourage girls to pursue technology-related fields. And I […]
Take Your Kid to Work Day 2012 at R/GA
On Friday, March 4th, 2012, I participated in my first Take Your Kid(s) to Work Day at R/GA. On this day, I had the pleasure to take part in Web Workshop, an introduction class that teaches kids 9-14 years old the basics of web development. The web is the heart of R/GA, and we couldn’t […]
Prototype it first!
To create innovative brand experiences we typically have to think outside existing paradigms. Understanding a user’s reaction to the paradigm shift is critical but not always easy. Luckily we have tools to anticipate a user’s reaction. Prototyping the idea first can save time and lead to a better end product. Prototypes It’s common to see […]
Using Pusher to Enable the Real Time Web
At the R/GA London Make Day , the London office split into small teams to try and create, well, anything. Whilst some people were more existential, my team aimed to gamify the “Tea Round”, an important part of the London office routine. A key concept of the game was that all users would be kept in sync ‘real-time’. As with any hack day event, development […]
Excessive Enhancement
As a web developer and advocate of open standards, I give much thought to the potential dangers of blindly employing emerging web technologies. I am regularly wowed by exciting new snazzy tricks and techniques , but I care deeply about the web and have seen some bad practices from the past re-emerging. This March, I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to speak about […]
HTML5 and Gaming: Devup Barcelona
Last week, I was lucky enough to give a talk at Devup , the HTML5 developer conference in Barcelona. Devup attracts a variety of developers and this year had a focus on using HTML5 (and friends) to develop rich experiences and in particular, games in the browser. Being primarily a Web guy, I’m not experienced at game design or game development and so it was […]
