Blogs

A few months back we created the first ever website for the Metronauts; a community initiative here in Toronto that seeks to encourage conversation about transit in and around the GTA.  This initial website was built in Drupal and featured a few cool tools like a content voting system that automatically gave site users 'karma' for posting comments etc...

After some time online we all decided that first and foremost, our aim with the site was to get people talking - and showcase regular contributers whilst bringing the general public into the fold.  So, we moved the old site into an archive and got a few people together to whip up a Wordpress blog - complete with custom theming, social tools integration and email newsletters - powered by both Feedburner (for auto-mailing of new site content) plus our own ajaxy Design Guru email service (more on that soon).

Check out the Metronauts online at http://www.metronauts.ca !

Some months back I discovered the Asus eee pc - at the time it was the cheapest (and cutest) little computer around; boasting a 900 Mhz celeron processor, solid state memory, a trackpad, a 7" LCD and more for just about $300+. In the past 6 or so months since the eee pc was released here in North America, demand for UMPCs has only gotten stronger and the computer industry has responded.

Whilst on holiday in Mykonos, Greece a couple of weeks back, I was in a rush to move hotels and absent-mindedly tossed my Macbook into a suit-bag (suit-bags; you know those silly things that always end up creasing your suits and requiring you to sit on them in order to make the zipper actually do its thing?). When I got to the second hotel and opened the bag I was excited to stroll into Mykonos town and check my email... Well, until I opened my $2,000+ laptop and found that the screen was smashed and it wouldn't power up!

As soon as I saw the wreckage that was minutes-previously my pride and joy laptop I realised that its quite stupid to take your main/work computer on holiday. Yes, its nice to be able to use your own machine to check email and well, ahem, facebook, but really, the cost when something goes wrong is too much... luckily I have a couple other machines to work off of, but in the meantime my Macbook is idlly awaiting $700 surgery.

Looking back, for that $700 I could instead have purchased two UMPC's!!! Now, I know an eee pc doesn't stack up to a Macbook in terms of sexiness or power but that doesn't mean there aren't other options- Acer recently stepped up to the eee pc challenge with the Aspire One. This laptop has a 1.6Ghz processor and can ship with up to 20GB of solid state memory!! This is great news, especially combined with its professional aesthetic and color options; so you can still rock a pink laptop poolside but actually be able to store your holiday photos on it as you take them, video blog with its in-built webcam and more.

The Acer Aspire One is just one of the nu breed of UMPC's which have hit shops since January and you can expect more to come. Feature-wise, it looks like the 3g craze is moving from smart-phones to laptops with models of the Aspire One scheduled to release in Q3/Q4 08 with built-in 3G and optional carrier data plans in the US.

As soon as my Macbook recovers from surgery its not allowed out of the office - I'll be picking up a 3G UMPC later in the year and just incase anything happens to it whilst on vacation, well, it won't be as tragic :)

For a full review of the Aspire One, check out this post.

Without spending too much time thinking about this one; suffice it to say I was intrigued to receive an email this morning from 37 Signals - the chaps who make Basecamp (which we use to 'manage' client projects).  Getting emails from them isn't unusual but the fact that this one was solely dedicated to advertising a couple of new staff positions they have open.

You see, 37 Signals also provides a commercial job board on their website - which, when I checked after getting the email, also had the listings - albeit, on theirjob board the lingo used in describing the job was more informal... the title of one pos, for example; "A designer who can kick our ass."

What interests me about all this:

• The fact that in addition to the job board listing they needed to send an email out,
• Why their email (which is asumedly being sent to 37 Signals' customers) was more formally phrased than the listing on the job board they host.

Groundwave Design Corp (who, in the past, have worked with Flavorpill - the JC Report's previous publisher) helped us out with a new design for the JC Report mailer and based on that, I today began the process of re-envisioning the aesthetic of jcreport.com and implemented the first batch of those changes.  Moving into Spring/Summer, the goal basically was to lighten the screen with softer grays, thinner lines and more open space.

For the past 4 years, the JC Report has existed as an email newsletter - this past December we started working with Jason Campbell and his team to launch a new Drupal powered website that would allow his readers to engage in his content much more creatively plus be able to access a wealth of archived posts.

You can learn more about the JC Report in our client projects section.

We're looking to expand our network of associates who are highly skilled in using Drupal to develop websites that support communities - preferably you would be located in Toronto for these projects, which start in May and will continue through the year, though we're open to working with website producers/developers around the world.

Also, we're looking for people who are passionate about innovating with Drupal that are familiar with things like building dynamic user profiles with Nodeprofile/Nodefamily/Usernode combinations etc... and certainly not people tinkering with Drupal - you must be committed to working professionally with it.

If you're interested in working with us, please send over an email with some links - including any personal blogs/websites plus on online portfolio or examples of work you've done!

A while back I came across the Email Standards Project through Campaign Monitor - the weapon of choice on our client projects which require email campaigning with html-coded newsletters (such as the JC Report).

They've just made a jokesy video I thought I'd share that overplays relates frustrations we as designers face when trying to make code cross-client compatible with email... Personally, I've been doing this stuff for a decade so I'm used to making things work but it really is time to get email standards up to scratch so that design can get more racey and creative in email newsletters and such.

Et voila:

Email Standards Project - Gmail Grimaces from Mathew Patterson on Vimeo.

Some of you may have noticed that we've been offline for about a week - for months I've planned to overhaul the designguru website with something fresh that would profile all of our network associates who work on the various projects with me that DG undertakes.

Soon, when you click on 'who we are' you'll see a more fleshed out list of these people - it won't just be my smiling mug up there indefinately :)

Clicking around you might notice some things not working and looking wonky, please drop us a line to point out these errors; like any rushed launch, the site isn't fully where we want it to be - but that's often part of the fun of going live slightly pre-maturely anyway right?

More soon,

q./