Social vs. SEO

Posted by Tim Munson on 21 May 2010

I've been hearing a lot of discussion and debate lately in which digital marketing professionals (and their clients) self-select roughly into two camps. more…

Ruby Gets Possessive

Posted by Steve Sloan on 07 May 2010

I debated whether this feature was big enough to bother blogging about, but it is useful if for no other reason that as an example of one of the great features of Ruby: the ability to reopen any class, even a standard class, and add methods.

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Heroku Gotchas

Posted by Steve Sloan on 13 Apr 2010

As anyone who has used it will tell you, Heroku is the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to deploy a Rails application. But as awesome as it is, deploying a Rails app in a cloud environment comes with a few constraints that can be surprising. I ran into a few of these when deploying a new application, and here’s how I got around them:

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The Making of a Japanese Obsession

Posted by Tim Munson on 06 Apr 2010

A woman with stunning, East European features stands at the edge of a dark, rolling sea. The sky is a stark white, the mood portentous. A lone cello provides a sonorous undercurrent of sound. The woman wears a diaphanous white fabric beneath which the outline of her body is discernible. A dark-haired man with chiseled, brooding features approaches, riding bareback on a large white horse. The man and woman acknowledge one another with a steady gaze, though their faces remain expressionless. He extends his hand.... more…

Fewer Knobs, More Smarts

Posted by Kunal Mahajan on 28 Mar 2010

As technologists, we often get the urge to provide every possible knob a user could ever want. We feel we ought to give users more control over stuff. The problem, of course, is that most users are not engineers like us and aren't trained to think like that.

 

A better approach is generally to reduce the number of settings, user-controlled functions, parameters, buttons, links, clicks, etc. I call these knobs. Apple has done a great job doing this. Microsoft is still learning.

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Conceivian's Secret Sauce for the Optimal Business Website

Posted by Saqib Rasool on 25 Mar 2010

Lately, I often find myself in conversation with entrepreneurs and business owners looking to trim marketing budgets. Though cutting costs makes sense in this tough economic environment, compared to traditional local advertising and direct mail marketing, the right mix of online media is definitely the most cost-effective way to go. Following is Conceivian's own (not-so-secret) recipe for minimizing costs and maximizing ROI with the most effective possible web presence. more…

In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you ...

Posted by Tim Munson on 25 Mar 2010

... I love what I do. I'm passionate about creating great experiences with next-generation communications technologies. I'm obsessive about crafting clear and compelling language. I'm in love with intelligent, elegant design. I care deeply about this stuff, because I believe there's a lot more to it than writing copy, designing a pretty UI, or developing cool web apps. I think there's much more at stake here.

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Marketing Strategies for Small to Mid-Sized Businesses

Posted by Saqib Rasool on 25 Mar 2010

The Wall Street Journal recently ran a story on Web 2.0 marketing techniques, which had us thinking about our own experiences designing and running social media campaigns. Though the article’s focus was large corporates, we read the piece from the viewpoint of working with start-ups and small to mid-sized companies....

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