Everyone makes resolutions for the New Year, right? Quit smoking, eat better, be nicer, be more productive, etc etc. How about resolutions for your web presence and activity? What things should be considering doing, or STOP doing online to maximize 2010? After all, it is the year we make contact, so when the monolith comes calling, you want to be ready! Here’s what I am planning on working on:

• Understanding Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin Technical integration points better and using them! – Yes, all these sites can speak to each other. But should they? And should they always be talking to each other? Probably not always. I need to explore a more friends and family friendly approach to sharing my statuses via Twitter and Facebook. I frequently leave my non-geek friends scratching their heads. Hmm.
• Building out some more web-service based mashups – In 2008 I built a lot of mashups. Some for clients, most for fun. In 2009 at Iona, we’ve built a few site features out for clients leveraging various web services, but by and large it was pretty quiet for me personally on this front. I need to get back into it!
• Reskinning my blog – I’m coming on year 3 of this design. Time for something new.
• Refining my following list on Twitter and building some more lists – I think I over followed when I joined Twitter and I’m working to rectify that. Too many auto replying bots, too many marketing feeds, on and on. Also in the second half of 2009, Twitter launched lists. I have made a couple of them so far, but as they continue to build out this feature I intend to use it.
• Using Social Media Better When at Conferences and Events – Nothing is more annoying in a Twitter feed or your Facebook newsfeed than seeing a constant bombardment of updates from someone at a conference that feels as though every utterance coming from the speaker they are watching needs to be shared to all from the mountaintops. I have done this more than once. Not happening this year. For a great list of other things you should stop Twittering about, check this out.

So what are you focusing on this year? May I make a few suggestions, if you have chosen any? Here we go.

• Build Something – For Real – Stop being a flapping head social media douche and really make something! Some videos, a real website without your stupid grinning mug on it, an app, a mashup, an experience. Sure, maybe this sounds cynical, and maybe it’s a little bit much, but I’m just so tired of seeing the same old tired routine by “strategists”. Nearly all of ‘em just parrot whatever Seth Godin, Gary V, Chris Brogan or Jason Fried say and virtually all of ‘em are actually contributing very little to the conversation or the larger landscape.
• Stop Talking About “Maxmizing Your Personal Brand’s Reach by Microblogging”
  – Or whatever other crap your inner social media kissass self thinks will get you some sucker to part with their money. At this point, major corporations have “social media policies”. Little companies either get it or they probably never will. Where does this leave you? Well, if you were a “web designer” before all of this, you probably still are now. If you were a talentless hanger-on-er before… well, you can probably guess.
• Strongly question or reconsider what your “SEO Expert” is suggesting.
  - Do they Have your web copy looking like it was written by a 3rd grader? They are doing it wrong. With properly written markup and a decent product message, you don’t need to Google bomb your way to the top of the rankings. Certainly, writing repetitive boring copy may have its advantages (it’s easy and doesn’t take much creativity) and can sometimes get you higher rankings, but at what cost… You ultimately devalue your organic search results by not giving the user and deeper content once they visit your site.
• Don’t Build a Microsite without a Media Buying Plan and determing the Metrics Package and how it’s going to be implemented. – You would not believe how often new microsites sites pop up for products and services if you are not involved in this industry. Weekly, there are dozens featured on Marketing and Advertising blogs. So often when you visit the site and poke around the source code, you notice there is not an analytics package in place. Unreal. What a waste of money. Make a pledge to your budget to not launch a site without measuring how it’s working.
• If You Don’t Have a Business Twitter or Facebook Account, You Absolutely Need One – With these sites drawing the type of traffic they do, if your business is not on them, you are really missing out. Even if you are a straight up B2B services company and do very little public marketing, you can find value in being on these sites. If nothing else, you should be there in order to at least protect your brand name in the space and prevent it being hijacked.

Ahh… that time of the year again. Time for everyone’s top ten end of the year lists. I used to write ones for record albums or movies, videos games etc. Here I am taking a slightly different slant. I haven’t ever put one together focused on the industry that I work in, the web/rich internet app design space. This is my attempt at that. These aren’t really in an order or “awesomeness” or anything… I welcome comments and your additions. Please feel free to shoot down my suppositions or add more!

• Google Releases Galore – The list was staggering. I couldn’t possibly get them all here, but some notables were Voice, Chrome, Chrome OS, new Android devices, Wave, and major revisions to the Maps and Earth APIs. A really strong list of stuff, and virtually all of it is highly useful and usable. They are definitely on a roll now. Are they making good on their promise to “not be evil”? It can’t be easy with that many outlets.
• Twitter Goes Main-Mainstream! – When Twitter’s publicized race between CNN and AK to reach a million followers hit the mainstream press, that was a wake up to virtually every media outlet out there. Twitter was for real. Now, you can’t even watch your local affiliate, pick up a small town paper or even talk to your aunt without them telling you to follow them on Twitter. Numerous high profile magazine covers on Fortune and other “old media” stalwarts have signaled a changing of the guard, if you will.
• People Finally Notice Facebook Privacy Settings – Facebook has taken some heat in the past for Beacon and various other advertising techniques they have employed to provide users with targeted content. With later 2009′s changes to the privacy settings page and a note from Zuckerberg to all users about the changes coming soon, it obvious that Facebook’s privacy policy is on a lot of people’s minds. I know I’m not too keen on my wall posts showing up in Google searches or things like that, and I have had a lot of novice FB user friends and relatives ask me how to restrict their content so that only close friends can see things. Now, will this help people finally realize the difference between a private message and a wall post!
• Oracle Buyout of Sun – “The database giant swallows the beleagured server system maker”, lots of headlines like that spun out after news of the buyout. Most, if not all missed the simple fact that Sun controls the MySQL Open Source Database. Even the Oracle press release neglects that fact. Since a large majority of notable Open Source projects use MySQL as their database, this has a large number of people in the community apprehensive and readying thei exit strategies. Will it result in a fork of the DB? Stay tuned for this one.
• Piratebay Rollercoaster – Is it up? Is it down? Are they in jail? Ever since the fateful day when their offices were stormed, the future of the tracker had been in question. They went to trial and all were found guilty, sentenced to jail for a year and a hefty fine was leveed. These convictions are all in appeals now. Then in the summer, Global Gaming Factory X AB announced they were intending to purchase the largest BitTorrent tracker in the world. The deal fell through. In November, they announced they would be shutting down the tracker portion of TPB, stating that it was unnecessary in today’s technological world of torrent distribution. While not technically a “web design topic”, it is important due to the huge amount of content trafficked via Torrents (estimated to account for up to 25% of all bits travelling the tubes.)
• Flash and Silverlight Play Feature Tag – No question about it, I’ve been tough on Silverlight. It’s too be expected, I’m a long time Mac user and a Flash developer. You couldn’t hardly expect me to jump on the bandwagon of a plug-in that directly competes with my favorite one and doesn’t offer proper development tools on the platform I spend all of my time on. This year at PDC, however, the newest version of Silverlight was unveiled, and man, does it look sweet! It finally is reaching a new feature parity of Flash. It still has no Mac dev tools, though. One thing is certain with all of this, it is really pushing Adobe to make Flash better. The 10.1 player update is bringing massive memory and performance updates and the AIR 2.0 update is bringing a ton of great improvements that will allow it to get a lot more powerful as an app development platform. I’m really happy to see the 2 way competition here, it’s good for everyone on the web.
• IE9 Announces Hardware Acceleration For The Browser – I have really mixed feelings on this. No actually, I really don’t like it much after further review. The features it will bring to websites are going to be amazing, no doubt, but with it being a Direct X implementation, there is little question that it is going to lead to a further forking of the web. Will anything programmed to take advantage of these IE9 features work on Firefox? Safari, Chrome? Older version of IE? In all likelihood, no. It’s probably not possible.
• OGG Theora Not Chosen for HTML5′s Media Format – This really put a crimp in HTML5′s ever shining hope. A single, dependable unified system agnostic video codec would be a huge thing for the W3 to get pushed through. Alas, it doesn’t seem to be. At least not right yet. Too many vendors, PC makers, software developers and everyone else are still squabbling for turf. They seem to have hit an impasse at this point, but Mozilla says they have no intention on giving in.
• Firefox Surpasses Any Single IE Version As The Most Popular Browser - Granted, Firefox has taken a beating lately by Webkit in many performance tests, but the venerable open source browser has recently overtaken IE as the world’s most widely used browser. Most impressive. From the linked article: “As of last week, Firefox 3.5 claimed 21.93% of the market, edging past IE7′s 21.2% share. That said, Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 still collectively hold over 55% of the pie.”
• With Smartphone Success, Comes a Mobile Version of Everything! – Smartphone market share keeps growing, and with it, mobile data usage. As this market continues to develop, content developers are caught in a very interesting pickle. Create a mobile version of their site for use in the handheld’s browser or build custom tailored apps that accomplish the user’s goals. Seems as though most major providers that can swing it are hedging their bets and building both. ESPN, New York Times, LinkedIn, Twitter, the list goes on and on. Will this continue? It doesn’t seem like a sustainable model to me, with development costs skyrocketing with each new device or platform coming to the markets. Luckily with a great SOA back end, building the new discreet UI for a device is only a marginal cost, relatively speaking, but there is only so far this can go.

So, there you have it. My list, what do you have on yours? I thought I did a pretty job scouring back through my feedreader and various other sources, so I feel pretty good about the list, but I really am looking for insights from others on this topic, too!

I’ve just come home from DevLearn 09. DevLearn is the eLearning Guild’s annual developer conference held in San Jose. This is the second time I have gone there, with this year being the first time I have spoken at the event. It was fantastic fun, holding lots of revelations and surprises. Now, tired but happy, begins the real work. The work of consolidating the notes, following up on the contacts made (some virtual contacts finally made real… I always love when that happens) and trying to make some steps to implement the great ideas I picked up there and talked over with new and old colleagues. (more…)

Please join myself and my coworkers from The Iona Group at our upcoming Peoria Ad Club event. You can sign up here.

From the link:

The Iona Group engages with a wide variety of clients using the latest communication strategies and technologies. Join us for a discussion of trends in digital advertising, audience engagement, and online strategy. Iona Group will share recent work and research and development; including killer wireless robots, eye bulging video installations, incredibly sticky phone applications, and websites that will make you scratch your head and wonder, “HOW?”.

We’ll be covering our latest work, sharing some stories and drinking a couple cocktails. Come talk shop with us and raise a glass.

This past weekend, I spent a little time getting my own URL shortening services up and running. I launched http://fnla.me and http://fnaweso.me on Saturday, August 15th, 2009. Crazy, huh? With so many services out there already, why would anyone waste their time on such a project? Does the world really need more shorteners? What do these two shorteners provide that wasn’t already available in the myriad other services out there like TinyURL, Bit.Ly and the rest? Good questions.

At last estimate there are something like 90+ publicly known URL shorteners out there. There is most likely a lot more than those in the wild, though. With this many out there, it’s difficult to know which one to use. With the high profile blowout of Tr.im, and the subsequent rebirth as an Open Source toolkit it’s even muddier. How do you know you links will be safe? How can you protect your self against Social Media Link Rot? This will assist me in making sure my shared links are indeed safe!

There are a lot of opinions on URL shorteners out there, ranging from condemnation, to simple quiet acceptance. I was vehemently against them until relatively recently, as I saw them as yet another creaky layer of redirection and pointers in the web ready to break down at any moment due to another server going down or a service running out of $.

For now, the services are pretty spartan, they simply take a URL and shorten it using a base 36 algorithm. Custom URLs are also possible. I do indeed have a number of features planned like stats, import/export and others, but it all takes time. I do hope that the service will prove to be useful to others, but making money on it or getting millions of shortened URLs isn’t my main goal. I’m building this because it seemed like a fun project to take on over a weekend.

One thing I really like about the domains I have chosen for my shorteners is that the URLs allow for some personality to come through. Is the link lame content? Politically devisive? Something you can’t believe? Than you can use http://fnla.me. On the other hand, if the content is something you can get behind and highly recommend, use http://fnaweso.me

Both sites are powered by the open source URLShortProject currently.

So what do you think? Do you have a URL shortener you have created? Care to share it?

I may be one of the most conflicted web designers on the planet. Seriously. I write Flash/Flex code about as often as I work in HTML/CSS. I love ‘em both. I hate ‘em both. Each tool has their own pluses and minuses. I speak often about my love for Flash here, so let’s change gears for a second. Let’s get provocative even… It’s got to be said. What the fuck is the deal with these standards writers, working groups and developers these days?

Why do I ask this… Well, you all have Flash/Silverlight on the ropes, but you are giving them a free pass. How so? With the release of HTML 5′s video tag, canvas, yummy semantic tags and other advanced markup goodies… pretty much any major site, (eg, Facebook, YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo, etc), could just about up and walk away from Flash with the next major revision of Internet Explorer (hopefully 9 will come around). You see, Safari 4, Firefox 3.5 are out and they like to party. They’re out playing video all night long and swinging from the rafters. The biggest draw on the web today, video, is by and large delivered via Flash. Now, I wouldn’t be so brash as to say that Flash’s days are numbered by any stretch by this developing situation. There are a lot of things that Flash can do that simply can’t be replicated, even with JQuery (my fave JS framework), Processing.js or the new Scripty 2. However, these new browsers really take care of a ton of things that Flash is needed for right now like video playback and basic RIA implementations.

I don’t mean to be disrespectful to the standards group, W3C, etc, but with the competing standard, arguably, an anti-standard, Flash, on the ropes, why are you not focusing and assisting the devs in the trenches, the browser and tool developers and the web designers in the cube farms at MS, Adobe, etc? It seems as though there is a fracturing, rather than a coalescing of resources and forces in the standards arena. Don’t believe me? Check this out. And this. And then for a laugh, this. It’s a bit liek the wild west again. I’m getting flashbacks to 1999-2000, when tables and spacer.gifs were clutched in the dying grips of every SimpleText coder and every GifBuilder jockey.

Sound audacious? I know, right. But look at the evidence. Twitter is abuzz with the recent additions to HTML5, with new hot samples being posted in playgrounds daily, what it means for Flash devs and on and on (simply run a search there and see). Beyond that, a number of high profile standards focused designers are on the warpath right now, speaking out and writing with a virulence not seen since the height of the browser wars (yes, I’m that old). For example, Zeldman has had a series of fantastic posts lately laying it out on the line talking about the demise of the XHTML standards group, defending the use of standards in the face of adversity and Eric Meyer has recently started giving a talk on “how Javascript will save us all”, in which he recommends using Javscript (favoring no specific framework, really) to do things that CSS3 and HTML5 do quite well. There are a number of other examples out there just like this. ‚Äì Full disclosure, I use both Meyer’s and Zeldman’s books in my classes.

Talk about cutting off your nose and all of that rot. I love standards just as much as anyone, but when the big boys are changing their tunes about what constitutes good standards implementation (separate content – HTML from presentation – CSS and behavior – JS) in order to remain within the toolset and bowing down to the same boards they fought against a decade ago to get CSS2 adopted, I start to get a bit squeamish. You see, I have to teach this stuff to students. Teaching standards based design was before a lot like teaching a foreign language. A language a bit like Japanese in that it had rules that are reasonable cut and dry and work well with each other because agreement on how they work was decided upon and then used! Now, it’s like a mish-mash of bad drunken Engrish. Too many exceptions, IMHO. It’s like “i before e”, but with end tags and doctypes. *Blech*

Am I abandoning web standards? Nope. Though, I’ll probably be a little more likely to make an exception to the rule in what constitutes a good use case for it vs a plug-in, though. After all, we have until 2022, right? Thoughts? What are you doing to keep your standards based design skills sharp? My advice, just keep swimming.

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Last year Adobe announced a partnership with device manufacturers to bring the Flash platform to devices other than PCs and Mobile. There was some question as to what types off devices would see the widely distributed runtime first, though. It looks as though NAB this year sheds some light on that one.

Engadget, NYTimes, and the BBC both report that a number of television manufacturers have models coming in late 2009, early 2010 that will feature the Flash player for use in widgets, tickers, search and much more.

This is a big move for Adobe in getting to the set top world before Silverlight and is a big boon for Flash platform developers. Working in the embedded systems market opens a largely untapped market, with many Flash developers (here) expressing interest in getting into that large market. Look at this:

More than 420 million TVs, set-top boxes, and media players are expected to ship globally in the next three years and increasingly they are capable of being connected to the net.

That is a big big market to create content and content delivery systems for. I see casual games, small utilities, custom video channels and a ton of other great applications coming around the bend.

Another thing about this that excites me… Often we create video kiosks for tradeshows, museums, etc. consisting of a low-end PC/Mac Mini and a large screen touchscreen. These configs usually just act as a video jukebox of sorts with a small amount of network connectivity required. If it turns out that the sets with the Flash system can have custom content loaded onto them via network, USB or SD cards, this could dramatically simplify the way we develop these solutions. No PC required!

Do you have Flash content ideas that will benefit from this development? How will this affect your day to day Flash platform projects? How can you take this development to market in your niche?

The Iona Group recently launched a multi-screen 1080P installation at The S.N. Shure Inc. headquarters. Shure is the world’s leading manufacturer of microphones. They make great equipment. They have for decades. Their name is synonymous with quality, integrity and audio history. We were contracted by them to create a media experience for their new theater at the headquarters (which happens to be an architectural masterpiece, by the way). Some details on the theater can be found here. Some highlights:

• Meyer Loudspeakers: CQ1 (mains), HP700 Sub-Woofer and UPJ Surround
• a Dolby Lake Loudspeaker Processor
• a custom-built, 200-inch diagonal Stewart projection screen
• a 20,000 lumen Digital Projection Model 40-1080p projector
• a dual input windowing processor allowing multiple images on screen
• a custom demonstration cart and lectern, featuring Shure MX412 microphones and a Crestron control system for the lighting and other audio visual systems
• Shure UHF-R¬Æ wireless systems
• a Yamaha LS9 digital mixing console.

Beyond that, the space has some great aesthetic characteristics… check this out:

• A single, large English Sycamore tree was sourced from the Black Forest in Germany to produce the 11-foot lengths needed for this project. This one tree was used for ALL veneered surfaces inside the theater (approximately 23,000 square feet), which were all laid by hand.
• The ceiling incorporates both absorptive and non-absorptive surfaces and consists of multiple layers of drywall and insulation. A stretch fabric system was used to cover these surfaces and create a uniform, clean appearance. Microphone drop points are integrated into the ceiling.
• To reduce fan noise from the building‚Äôs HVAC system, the exterior walls surrounding the theater consist of multiple layers of drywall, and acoustical and rigid insulation. An under floor air distribution system also was installed under the theater seating.
• Temperature and humidity in the room are maintained independent of the building’s system. In addition, all interior surfaces (floor, walls, and ceiling) incorporate a continuous vapor barrier to ensure that the wood is kept within acceptable humidification ranges at all times, which will prevent it from constricting and contracting.
• The theater seating was manufactured by Poltrona Frau in Tolentino, Italy. Each piece, which was individually constructed by hand, comes equipped with a flip up work surface for taking notes.
• A Steinway B, 7-foot Concert Grand Piano, which will be stored in its own humidity-controlled alcove.
• The back stage area of the theater includes a Green Room with a 40‚Äù LCD display, a restroom, and an elevator.
• A motorized theatrical curtain is available for further control of onstage acoustics for amplified events.

So, that all said… What did we do? Our fantastic creative team came up with an amazing idea. 3 52″ touchscreens lined to create a seamless multi-screen presentation. We developed a multi-user synced experience using the Red5 server and Flash Player. Live spectrum analysis. Triggered by motion detection via Flash Camera activity. Decades of historical photos. Narration by the great Bill Curtis. Video Interviews from dozens of employees. All in all, a great project. Amazing.

The space is gorgeous. The software is cool! The content, historic! Take a look at the install…

Pictured from left to right. Jim Ferolo, Creative Director, Jeremy Lebeau Technical Director, Heather Ford, Designer, Jeff Idleman, Account Consultant.

What a cool project to be part of. The creative team was fantastic. The development process was a ton of fun. The industrial design is tight and the client is top notch. So fun!

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