John Romano, Sr. Web Developer
Bio
John is an Internet generalist who keeps an unwavering eye on design and strategy. After ten years of creating Web sites and interactive media, John has realized that great interactive communications starts with great strategy and comes to life through the integration of insightful user experience, stunning visual design, and well-executed development.Articles
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Flashforward 2008: David Carson, Transworld!
My professional life collided with my childhood yesterday when David Carson, the graphic designer known for Ray Gun Magazine and the movie "Helvetica" showed us this Transworld Skateboarding cover that he designed in 1985.
Notice the name of the issue is the "Full Bleed Issue." At the time (age 13) I thought it was some cool reference to skateboarding acidents. It turns out that it became possible for Transworld to make the images stretch to all edges of each page (a full bleed) for the first time. So David named the issue after a graphic design printing technique. And now, after not seeing the magazine for 23 years, I finally get the inside joke. Awesome. My life has come full circle. -
Failure is the Only Option, and Other Truisms from Flashforward 2008
Many presenters at Flashforward this year urged fearless experimentation and the courage to risk failure. Being bold, trying new things, and trusting your own instinct seemed a common theme. David Carson said that if you are not failing then you aren't pushing yourself hard enough. And Miha Pogacnik said that "the creative process leaves a trail of blood."
Transforming work into play and finding joy in your work seemed another common theme. Craig Swann suggested that we think about work as play and urged us to believe that R&D = R&R. Danny Stillion of IDEO suggest that we "fail often to succeed sooner. And we were reminded of Tal Ben-Shahar's idea that Happiness = Pleasure + Purpose.
Stacey Mulcahy gave some advice on how to unleash the creative potential of developers and the dangers of bad process. "Bad project process limits developers to implementation. Good project process enables developers to innovate and contribute. Meaningful innovation requires a good environment. Meaningful innovation is a competitive edge." I couldn't agree more. All too often coders get relegated to implementation.
The last idea that bubbled up several times was the cold, hard fact that the only way to be great at Flash is to bust your ass doing it. Call it work or call it play - doesn't matter. The only way to become great at what you do is to spend time doing it. You can stand on the shoulders of giants, but becoming a giant yourself requires passion, relentless experimentation and inspiration. -
Flashforward 2008: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
The Good
Metaliq , the new promoters and organizers of Flashforward 2008 had the courage to shake things up. They gave the conference a strong theme. They chose a great city. They added inspirational speakers from outside the community, and found great speakers from within the community. The event was smooth, well planned, and seamless.
I really enjoyed the raffles, the speaker slam, and the Thursday night after party. I loved Miha Pogacnik's keynote and was surprised how much of Jamy Iam Smith 's presentation carried over to Flash design. Craig Swan , Robert Hogin , Jared Ficklin, and Erik Natzke were inspirational.
The Bad
Not all their risks and changes were for the better. Changing from a four track program to a one track program eliminated all choice. Next time I would appreciate at least two tracks.
The Ugly
The great speakers like Craig Swan and Paul Ortchanian were not permitted enough time to thoroughly talk about their subjects and show examples. The speakers seemed frustrated and the audience missed the inspirational work that these people do.
Additionally, the elimination of Q&A time make the conference a one way conversation. Q&A adds to the collaborative and interactive magic of the event and puts conference goers in touch with the leaders in the industry. I felt frustrated sitting in the dark, in an uncomfortable chair, without a good place for my laptop, watching the host get to have a conversation with the speakers.The Bottom Line
A valiant first effort. The bad and ugly can be easily fixed. Metaliq seems to have good instincts about speakers and seems to understand the community. I look forward to next year, but will look for some changes to the format before I buy my ticket.
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Virtual Immortality: the digital afterlife
Three generations have now been using computers most of their lives. We have been busy collecting digital photos, music, and movies. Recently, we have begun uploading our digital assets to the Web and sharing them with each other.
We have also been busy expressing and describing our thoughts using blogs and online profiles. As of late we have begun connecting these profiles to one another, creating a complex landscape of online social networks. When we look at how fast things are changing we see that much of this innovation has happened in just the last 5 years.
Now imagine leading a quality digital life for 50 more years. What will happen when you die? What will become of your online accounts? Your data? What do people pass on to their heirs? Can your survivors box up your digital life and archive it? Or will the data be lost without people to tend it?
Or will the data live on forever? Can our digital self image achieve immortality?
A whole industry will be born to answer these questions and satisfy a desire that has existed since the beginning of time - the desire for immortality. We all can't have a terra cotta army in our tomb, or a great pyramid above us. But for a fist full of dollars we will be able to maintain our digital footprint for all time. Just you wait and see. -
Does Duplicate In-site Content Hurt SEO?
Question: Does posting some in-site duplicate content help, hurt, or have no impact on SEO?
Example:
This post by Todd Coats titled “Trippin’ on Acid Park”:
http://blog.capstrat.com/articles/trippin-on-acid-park/
Also appears on all these URLS:
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/acid/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/creative/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/legend/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/park/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/raleigh/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/reflector/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/simpson/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/vollis/
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/whirligig/
http://blog.capstrat.com/authors/todd-coats/
All but 4 of those pages are exactly the same as the original page. Some pages are different from the original page in that they contain the other posts that share the same tag.
My questions are:- Does it hurt us to have duplicate in-site content?
- Are we diluting our link value for any given post by posting the same content to multiple URLs?
- Or, are we getting a good bump because we have 3 to 4 times as many “pages” that are loaded with key words (albeit on pages with identical copy)?
Interesting Note:
A Google search for “acid park” reveals that Google only indexed 3 of the above links with a reference to those key words:
Another interesting note:
This page:
http://blog.capstrat.com/tags/raleigh/
Was indexed by Google, but a search for acid park does not return this page. Why?Numbers
Our 1300+ page Web site has only a fraction of that number of actual posts. Posts often appear at 5 or 6 different URLs.
A little looking around revealed a couple of opinions:Search Engine Guide says “Such duplication also leaves you open to splitting link value between multiple URLs. If someone links to a (page), they may link to any of the multiple versions, instead of a single primary version/URL. This can cause the search engines to give weight to the "wrong" URLs.”
SEO Book says “Interesting tactic by Google. If too many pages on the same site trip a duplicate content filter Google does not just filter through to find the best result, sometimes they filter out ALL the pages from that site.”
Thoughts from the experts? -
Let the Gesture War Begin!
Multi-touch will be the next quantum leap in the evolution of human/computer interaction by creating an "intuitive" way for users to use their fingers to interact with computers without the whole mouse/pointer abstraction. It has the potential to simplify complex click and drag procedures with simple "gestures" which are combinations of movements of your fingers on the computer.
These gestures will amount to a new language that will allow people to interact with computers in new ways. This will need to be a universal language that transcends spoken word and culture. This language will need to be able to evolve, but provide enough consistency so that users can use the devices around them.
My question is who will create, manage, and evolve the gesture language? Will there be multiple languages to learn? Will users be saddled with having to make the choice once again to be a "Mac guy" or "PC guy"?
The problem arises from the fact that multi-touch processing will most likely happen at the OS level. And that means Microsoft, Apple, and the Unix/Linux community need to work together... Oh, who am I kidding... Microsoft will make their gesture language so that it works well with Microsoft office and IE. Apple will have the most elegant gesture language, but it'll only work on Apple hardware. The open source community will have to work for another decade to gain some consensus.I hear the saber rattling and the gears of war, but can't we give peace a chance?
Wanna learn more?
Jeff Han demos multi-touch at TED -
12 Hours in a Visual Designer's Shoes
The creative team was slammed recently, so I spent a day as a graphic designer creating one of the designs for a client presentation. It felt like stepping back into an old, loved pair of shoes that I haven't worn in a while. Those shoes were stiff but still comfy once they loosened up.
A design project typically has several designers assigned to it. Each designer creates a visual idea that is shown to the client, who judges each and chooses one over the others. Having my work next to Shane and Scott Buzik's filled me with a need to really step up and deliver something great.
But I had forgotten things about the hard world of the designer, like the fact that even though you might come up with a great design, it may not be chosen. Harder yet is the reality that hours or days of your time may ultimately be abandoned as the project pursues a different direction. This is hard to imagine for most people whose cumulative effort is rolled into the solution.
But in the five years that I designed Web sites the hardest part was always facing that blank, white canvas that you start with. This situation is made easier by the presence of well-crafted UX and strategy documents. But it is still daunting to open Photoshop and see that white page staring at you.
So the next time you are in a design review, remember that each design represents a lot of hard work. Give each one the attention and chance it deserves. Talk about each one's strengths as well as its weaknesses. When the review is done, consider giving some feedback to the designer. Think about what it must be like in the designer's shoes.
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Raison d’être of the corporate blog
To me the goals of the corporate blog are to develop our employees as thought leaders in their individual practice areas, attract the attention of new clients, and engage current clients in dialog. While talking to ourselves is fun, I see the primary audience as our colleagues and clients.
But this is, as a whole, the blog of an integrated marketing communications company and it is a beast of many colors. We have people blogging about programming, PR, lobbying, design, and more.
In a world where there are specialized blogs that talk about the most niche subjects, how can a blog that talks about everything from Python programming to peep jousts be relevant (as a whole) for anyone but ourselves? So while search engines may pick up specific posts that may reach specific audiences, can you imagine anyone outside of Capstrat subscribing to our general RSS feed?
So I ask, is part of our strategy to get people to subscribe to the blog? Or do we want to focus on search engine pick up of specific articles?
If so, can you imagine anyone subscribing to a blog that covers such a broad range of topics (besides ourselves)?
Do we need to categorize our posts and feeds so readers can see more relevant discussion?
If so, what mechanisms can we devise to do this? -
Holy Standards Compliance, Batman! Internet Explorer 8 might actually not suck.
Microsoft is feeling the heat in the browser arena. Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is in development and they are planning to robustly support RSS, CSS 2 and Javascript. No way?! IE 8 might almost be as good as Firefox 2!
After putting the last nail in Netscape's coffin in 2001, Microsoft rested on its laurels and enjoyed the spoils of the browser war. Since then Firefox has taken a quarter of the browser market by winning people over with it's standards support, tight security and an easy add-on framework. After waiting five years, Microsoft finally released Internet Explorer 7. But their loss of market share is driving them to immediately jump into full development of Internet Explorer 8.
But regardless of motive, this is fantastic news. It seems that browser competition is once again driving innovation in the browser business. It really speaks to the maturity of the open source movement that Mozilla is spurring Microsoft to once again take browser innovation seriously.
Read more about IE 8 here.
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Addys 2008: It's all about me, and us, and the community.
The 2008 Triangle Area Addy Awards were last Friday night and there was something for everyone. Video, interactive, print, branding, advertising and PR people all had opportunities to walk up and grab some crystal awards. And the food was good too.
But to me the best part about the Addys is that you simultaneously participate as an individual, as a company, and as part of the larger creative community. People cheer because they themselves, or their company, or their friends in the larger design community get props for doing good work.
All that love brings a richness to the community. Add to that an open beer and wine bar and you get a fun evening to remember.
PS. McKinney, the areas largest firm didn't participate. While they might feel like they are beyond local competition, they are missing out on an opportuniuty to have fun and connect with their peers. Too bad for them.
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