Archive for December, 2008

A parable on the craftiness of nerds

One of the best things about The Nerdery is having this much brain power gathered together under one roof. Oftentimes the nerds use their powers for good, helping each other figure out tough coding problems or racing to see who can find a solution first.

I’ve actually seen this happen, a group of people rallying around a monitor displaying code for some project. It usually involves a lot of pointing at code and shouts of “I betcha that works.”

But some nerds, yes it pains me to say it, some nerds use their powers for evil. See, sometimes a blogger might innocently Twitter about how she can’t seem to stop singing “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” in her head and while it might look like some of the other nerds are rushing to her aid, they are not. In fact, they are just trying to get worse songs stuck in an already vulnerable head. Here, I will list for you a few of the songs that were suggested to take the place of Yoshimi:

1. Chimpanzee Riding a Segway
2. Wiener Dog Riding a Skateboard
3. Cooking by the Book from LazyTown
4. Tubthumping

So you might be thinking, don’t click on any of their links silly blogger. Ha! That’s what I thought too. I thought I was crafty and smart. But then while toiling away someone who shall remain nameless snuck up behind the blogger his iPhone blaring “Chimpanzee Riding a Segway.”

Foiled again!

Now here’s where the lesson comes in: the nerds here at The Nerdery are smart and crafty and above all creative. They will find a way around any roadblock. Because you are smart readers I will let you extrapolate all on your own on why when you’re taking on a tough Web project you might want to get these Nerds on your side.

Besides, I’m trying to decide what’s a better earworm “Yellow Submarine” or “Shiny Happy People.”

6 tools you can use to analyze your Web site’s performance

Everyone wants a Web site that’s running at optimum speed, but for a lot of people they have no idea what the heck that is. That’s why the Nerds have created this list of six Web performance analysis tools. Happy optimizing!

YSlow: A Firefox extension that makes use of Firebug, a popular Web development tool, to analyze and inform you why a particular page is slow based on guidelines for high performance sites and provides you with:

• Performance report card
• Summary of HTTP/HTML
• List of page components
• Tools including JSLint

mon.itor.us: A free online service that provides tools to enable monitoring and reporting of site response times and outages as well as resource use and tracking of site visitors. You’re able to set up automated alerts and compare the effects of change you make to site efficiency.

HTTPerf: An open source-tool for measuring HTTP server performance on Linux. It’s an effective benchmarking tool and allows you to create workload simulations to judge whether your site is capable of coping with high-level traffic while maintaining stability. Httperf can also be used to calculate maximum server capacity, testing its limitations by incrementally increasing the quantity of requests made.

Pylot: An open-source performance and scalability testing tool that uses HTTP load testing to judge benchmarking, analyzing, system tuning, and make capacity plans. To use Pylot, it is necessary to install Python on the server but it is possible to use XML to produce simulations.

Web Page Analyzer: An easy-to-use online facility to test site speed and help improve performance. Simply enter the URL and it will calculate page size, compilation, and download time. It returns data based on various Internet connections and generates recommendations and advice on how to improve load times. An ideal resource for beginners.

Site-Perf.com: Emulates natural browser behavior, downloading a page complete with CSS, JS, and other files in order to estimate realistic loading times. It provides real-time data capture and aids in identifying issues such as bottlenecks, page errors, etc. without the need to register or install anything.

A job description that might give you goosebumps

The last time you slid behind the curtain at The Nerdery I was telling you all about The Wonder Twins and how a proposal comes to life. Today I am going to tell you about someone whose job description might make your pulse race and give you goosebumps. That person is Michelle, our production coordinator.

Goosebumps yet? Yeah, I didn’t think so. But get this, when I sat down with Michelle to talk about her role here at The Nerdery she said her job was basically to make sure that the projects we take on stay on budget and on time.

Yes, you read that right. When you boil down all that Michelle does, it comes to making sure that your projects are on budget and on time (it bears repeating, don’t you think?).

But before you get too excited, I have to break the news to you that Michelle doesn’t actually have any interaction with our clients. Nope, that’s the job of our SDMs (software development managers), who you’ll get to learn about later. Basically, Michelle helps the busy SDMs manage each project’s overall health.

Michelle has been instrumental in helping to develop roughly twelve different processes here at The Nerdery to make sure our projects get done as quickly and efficiently as possible. Now she gets to help implement these processes which include dealing with scope changes in a project and sending out timely status reports to clients.

“I’m the extra set of eyes to help manage things,” Michelle said. “I help the SDMs not lose site of the big picture. I get an overview of every project that we’re working on and since I don’t have to worry about the little details that go into each project I can monitor how many hours we’re working and help the SDMs get their ducks in a row.”

While this is only a small part of Michelle’s role here at Sierra Bravo, it’s probably the part that’s most important and interesting to you. The most important to us? Michelle gathers the shout outs and procures the beer for our weekly Bottlecap Talks.

Wednesday Links: It’s kind of like Friday but not really

• Adrian Ho from Zeus Jones, has a great piece in Ad Age advising people to beware the social media siren call.
• Speaking of Zeus Jones, they’re giving away a killer font called Hand of God. Font lovers rejoice!
• If you only read one link on this list, read Seth Godin’s piece on viral marketing.
• Web Advertisers Gain the Upper Hand on Formats
• Track Santa (almost as much fun as tracking an anticipated package coming via UPS)
• Ad Ages annual swag watch is a lot of fun to read. Make sure you click through all six days.
• Mashable’s got the Top 10 free tools you can use to monitor your brand.
• The best and worst new logos of 2008.
• Harvard Business (which is, oddly enough, zooming up my favorite blogs chart) has 3 steps toward becoming a better leader.
• The Ad Downturn: Why Isn’t Digital Immune?
• A booknerd at my very core, I can never resist any kind of book list. Here’s 20 amazing and essential non-fiction books to enrich your library. The only one I’ve read is Elements of Style (yes, I read it so you can skip the bad grammar/punctuation jokes). I was disappointed that one of my favorite non-fiction books Our Band Could Be Your Life was not on the list.
• The XKCD 2008 Christmas Special

NY Times 2008 Buzzwords FTW!

Word nerd? Design nerd? Font nerd? Whatever your nerdly predilection you are sure to enjoy The New York Times’ beautifully-illustrated piece on The Buzzwords of 2008.

The list is mostly political buzzwords though a few Web-centric ones made the cut (see Fail above). I was really hoping to see FTW on the list, but it was shut out. For old-timers like me FTW had a vastly different meaning than For the Win. I had to do some googling to figure out what the heck was going on. And I learned, thanks to netforbeginners, that I wasn’t the only one a bit confused by the new TLA (three letter acronym).

I also learned, from my boss, that FTW is a Hollywood Squares reference (e.g. “I’ll take Whoppi for the win.”) and has nothing to do with hockey like I thought.

So, I am taking FTW as my favorite buzzword(s) for 2008. What was yours?

Harvard’s Good Business offers advice for struggling non-profits

Harvard’s Good Business blog has a piece today about Non-profits facing hard decisions. Last week we talked about how Minnesota non-profits are struggling, so it should come as no surprise that non-profits around the country are dealing with the same problems — increased demand, decreased donations. Nan Stone, the author of the blog post offers up some advice to non-profit leaders.

Hard times force hard choices – for nonprofit leaders and for those who support them. The best advice I’ve heard about how to make those choices is fundamentally the same on both sides of the philanthropic equation: Be clear about what matters most, and focus your resources there. For nonprofits, this means protecting your core programs and staff – the ones that have the greatest impact on the people and causes you serve – and cutting back, or discontinuing altogether, other less, essential activities. . .

Here’s my advice for MN non-profits. Sign up for the Sierra Bravo’s Overnight Website Challenge. Not only do you get a chance to get a free Web site built by the best Web nerds in the area, you also get a chance to talk about your cause.

What are you waiting for? sign up today, the deadline (January 9th) is coming soon.

Reindeer Rodeo — Thrown back like a beer at a ballgame

Yesterday I showed you some fun ad agency holiday cards, but I saved the best for today. This is reindeer rodeo from Bernstein-Rein. It’s a lot of fun, even though I can’t seem to get past Randolph. Darn you Randolph! Give it a try. I bet Randolph gets the best of you too.

Microwave Jingle Bells and other Ad Agency Holiday Greetings

I know some people are kicking it into high gear trying to stay busy and productive right up until the holiday break. There are others, however, who are marking time and watching the clock. For all of you butt-kickers and clock-watchers, here’s some holiday ho-ho-ho to help get you through the working day.

From AKQA a set of Microwave Ovens that beep Jingle Bells. The mind-boggles at how much trial and error went into getting the timing right on this one.

Here at The Nerdery we’re big fans of Yahoo’s Emoticarolers. This is one that my cubemate made.

Here’s a video from Firehouse, A Pickle Christmas Carol.

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

Frozen Pole from Nuance is a little cringe-inducing, inviting you to upload a picture, and then stick your animated tongue to something metal. Youch

What were some of your favorite Ad Agency Holiday Greetings this year? If you’re having trouble deciding check out Banner Blog’s collection of 120 Ad Agency Holiday Cards [via].

Friday Links: 10 Top 10 Lists

Tonight The Nerdery is gathering together to celebrate the holidays. It promises to be a lot of fun, and I’ll be sure to bring my camera. While you wait impatiently to hear how the holiday party turned out, you can amuse yourself with a smattering of top 10 lists (’tis the season for list-making on the Internet).

1. 10 Advertising Words to Avoid in 2009
2. 10 Awesome Gifts for Sci-Fi Fans (the flux capacitor is pretty rad). [via]
3. 10 New Year’s Resolutions for Interactive Marketers
4. 10 TV Stars Worth Following on Twitter
5. 10 Games for Geniuses
6. 10 Best Digital Lifestyle Products of 2008
7. 10 Most Awkward Moments of 2008
8. 10 Most Original Cover Bands [via]
9. 10 Harmless Geek Pranks
10. 10 Ad Songs of the Year

Ads that drove people to the Web

Today Ad Age has a slide show featuring the 10 print ads that were most effective in driving readers to the Web. The ads are for everything from Acura to Career Builder and don’t seem to have much in common as far as the creative goes. It makes you wonder what it is that drives those magazine readers to the Web. The captions that accompany the slides make some guesses (i.e. a lot of survey respondents found green pleasing the eye), but nothing concrete.

It leads one to believe that it’s still just a crapshoot and that the audience for some ads are just more apt to head to the Web after reading something in print. MRI Starch supports this assumption by saying they’ve found that readers of car magazines are more likely to visit company Web sites than readers of any other type of magazine.

p.s. if you have trouble finding out how to launch the slide show like I did, just click the picture of the car.