Twitter is hugely popular in some circles.  Just about every early adopter I know is using it and there are quite a few others that are jumping on the band wagon.  It’s one of those applications that’s so simple you think, “why couldn’t I have thought of that” at the same time you’re thinking, “it’s so simple, what use is it going to be”.  Then again, who’d have thought that people would have cellular phones and use them for texting rather than talking…

Anyway, this is a pretty interesting read.  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/twitter-creator.html

This article/blog has a lot of great points.    It works for a lot of different creative environments as well.  And I appreciate that there is no reference to “thinking outside the box”.  It seems that that term has become so cliched that it’s the antithesis to what it’s actually referring to (I believe that’s also the definition of irony).

As facebook et al are becoming more and more popular we’d been thinking about developing an app that would allow people to generate reviews of beers, music restaurants, whatever.  Well… someone beat us to the punch (yeah this was the original plan for melonchoice…) oh well, moving on to other things, but take a look at http://livingsocial.com/  It seems to be a pretty cool tool.  I’ll be looking at it a bit more and see how it goes.

It’s amazing how far we’ve come in 12 years.  

http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/technology_news/4276344.html

I remember the first full site that I designed in ‘95.  Earliest one I can find is http://web.archive.org/web/19981111190731/http://www.babylon-honda.com/ from ‘97 (the first one I did for RNCI).  BTW, the wayback machine is always a pretty fun thing to check out.

So here’s what’s been going on.  Working like an idiot but getting good things done.  In the last 2 weeks, we’ve launched, http://www.savannahtech.edu and http://www.ccls.org both sites we’re really happy with, have a look through.

On another note, SWG has a new bass player and we’re working on new music so hopefully we’ll be playing out shortly.

And another other note, the Choral Arts Society is singing this weekend and I’ll be singing with them (provided my clothes have arrived by then, have to call the Tux shop and make sure they’re there…)  It’s a pretty cool program so check it out if you’re free saturday night or sunday afternoon.

And finally, something for the creative in you, Nike’s new ad campaign is pretty sweet. http://www.youtube.com/nikefootball 

Check out this site.  Talk about looking at a market, figuring out what the demographic is and NAILING it.  This is one of the coolest uses of the web as a simple marketing tool I’ve seen recently.  Just a very attractive site that really shows what the brand is without a whole lot of copy trying to TELL you what the brand is.  Very, very well done.  (A side note, it’s also fairly important that they show rather than tell because the copy is pretty rough, i.e. good English translator might help out…  that was the one bummer.)  

This is a cool little write up on the people that I got so amped up about at AdobeMAX in october.  Interesting read at least.

http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/bigspaceship/?sr=hotnews

And while you’re at it, read up on your monkeysphere:
http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html

Well, it’s a busy weekend.  Friday night I’m singing with the Mike Snyder Band.  This is a benefit of some sort (i don’t really know all of the details) it’s a non-drinking friday night gig, so I don’t expect too many people to be staying too late…  The Mike Snyder Band is a cover band that I’ve been singing with off and on since march.  Mostly just something to do for fun.  Classic rock type stuff, they’re all great guys and we definitely have a good time so I’m psyched for it.

Saturday and Sunday I’m singing with the Choral Arts Society of the Upper Perkiomen Valley (that’s CASUPV to you tough guy!)  We’re singing Saturday night at 8 at St. Marks in Pennsburg PA, Sunday at 3 at the Palm Shwenkfelder church in (amazingly enough) Palm, PA.  It’s a great group.  My father is conducting again this year, so I figured I’d join up and sing.  It’s definitely tough going back to singing this style after so many years not doing it, but it’s a great challenge and I’m having a blast doing it.  If you’re interested in going, tickets are available at the door (and Stacie and Micheala will be taking tickets so you can say hi to them as well!)  http://www.casupv.org is the site for more info.

That’s all for now, I’m off to see Stacie’s final presentation for her last class.  She’s finally going to graduate! yippee and such.  

Wow, listening to the radio this morning actually proved useful for work… http://www.designsnack.com Some amazing design work on there. If you’re feeling like you’re bogged down in crapola design, have a look there and feel worse about yourself. If you’re looking for a little inspiration, check out some of the sites on there and it should get you a little excited about designing.

I’m finishing up at Adobe Max 2007 in Chicago and it’s really gotten me excited about design again. So of course I ran back to my hotel room (ok, took the bus) and decided to finally do something with the open dispatch. Basically that included getting pluggedout blog installing it and making up a pretty crappy header. I’ll do more with this when I’ve got time, but I really wanted to just jot down some of the things that I took away from the sessions that I went to. This morning was one of the best sessions all week. It was with Big Spaceship (http://bigspaceship.com/). What a MFer of a design company. They do some simply incredible things (check out http://www.hungrysuitcase.com as an example). This is the type of stuff that reminds me why i love the web. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the every day stuff and lose site of the fact that you can really love working for a living. A couple of things that I learned and/or had re-affirmed at a number of the sessions that I went to:

• Design for design sake can be fun, but it’s not always that useful
• While the adage that the client is always right works, it’s also really important to help the client get to the point where they’re making informed decisions.
• Personally I need to keep learning, every day, as much as possible. The more I learn the more I remember why I do this and the better I am at my job.
• Have fun. Just friggin’ have fun. You can make your deadlines and still enjoy what you’re doing. It’s so easy to get dragged down into day to day, lose your courage or whatever other crappy metaphor I can come up with (wow am I sounding new agey…) I have to remember to just take it as it comes and more than likely it’ll all work out in the end.