Archive for February 20th, 2009

Nerdy & Needy on KARE 11 Saturday

Set your TIVOs or get up early tomorrow (Saturday Feb 21) to see the Nerdy & the Needy on KARE 11. They’ll be talking about next week’s Overnight Website Challenge. Whee!

Web Makeovers Powered by Nerds, a presentation from New Times – New Tech

Today, our president, Luke Bucklin and User Experience Manager, Mike Johnson along with Molly Kennedy Lageson of Store to Door presented at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits’ New Times – New Tech conference.

The presentation, which you can watch above, is about empowering nonprofits to take control of their website by treating it like an employee. We’ve found that oftentimes organizations treat their website like a copy machine, a piece of technology, but really its your hardest-working underachiever.

During the event our presenters took attendees through the Website Employee Review form (which you can download as a PDF) and talked about how you don’t have to be super tech savvy to get the most from your website.

Finally, here are links to a few of the sites/services mentioned in the presentation:
Facebook
Twitter
Google Analytics
Google Alerts
Crazy Egg
Blogger
WordPress
Typepad

Also, further reading:
Advergirl’s Rethinking Web strategy for nonprofits: The New Best Practices (part 1, part 2, and part 3)

Friday Links: Who likes to party? The Dark Side likes to party

• Business Card Etiquette In Japan – Boing Boing
• Fallon Planning: 6 Ways to Play Twitter – Winning Strategies for Brands On Twitter
• TV Shows That Cover Up Apple Logo on Mac Laptops and Desktop Computers
• 9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design | How-To | Smashing Magazine
• 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know – The Book [97 Things] : Near-Time
• How (Not) to Write like a Designer: 5 Tricks You Didn't Learn in Studio – Core77
• Opinion: Field of Widget Dreams: “There's a phenomenon whereby normally intelligent people at both digital and traditional agencies decide that people will embrace their new widget or app simply because they've built it. It's as if the Internet were a giant cornfield in Iowa and the mere presence of yet another branded widget or app is enough to get thousands of people clicking.”
• BrandFreak: '30 Rock' loves brands so much, it no longer wants their money: “Tina Fey actually says McDonald's didn't pay for the placement. But the Emmy-winning show generally revels in its over-the-top approach to brand integration. Fey has spouted a mini-infomercial for Verizon in the past, turning directly to the camera to ask "Can we have our money now?" after the pitch.”
• Fallon Planning: "Good Enuff" Production Values and the Death of Commercial Craftsmanship“"Good Enuff" isn't just for users, it enables us marketers to shoot more ideas fast(er), cheap(er) instead of rolling all our energies into a single overly produced "perfect" idea that just may fail. So fail fast(er). And fail cheap(er).
• Star Wars: Death Star Disco, Dark Side Inferno: “Who likes to party? The Dark Side likes to party.”
• 6 Tips for a Great Flex UX: Part 2
• 100 Free and Useful Open Courseware Classes for Web Workers – Learn-gasm
• Giulia Santopadre | Graphic Design | Nerd Glasses
• Does snark cast a shadow over online conversation?: The Social Path
• Connecting the Dots: Will Social Media Analytics Create a New Media Paparazzi?
• 6 Tips for a Great Flex UX
• Design: Create a Color Palette from a Single Image
• R/GA: Digital Agency of the Year 2008: “In a year when even digital agencies began to feel the pinch of a declining economy, R/GA plowed ahead, adding Hewlett-Packard, Mars and HBO as clients, and growing revenue by 20 percent to $126 million. As others scaled back, the Interpublic Group shop beefed up its London outpost to account for 10 percent of total revenue and opened in San Francisco in a bid to grab digital talent.For its financial performance and its continued success in proving the power of brand platforms rooted in utility, R/GA is Adweek's Digital Agency of the Year for 2008 — its fourth such honor in the past eight years.”
• The Advertising Age Timeline