Digital Brand Services

Why Google and Amazon are in the hardware business

joebarnett — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:12:30 +0000

Revenue is one reason to get into the device business but more importantly. The company that owns the device exercises great influence on what is on the device… not total control (ie. Apple Maps) but a lot of control… and control over who gets access to what data from the device.

Coca-Cola Content 2020

joebarnett — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:17:52 +0000

Coca-Cola outlines plans for the current decade of storytelling, a changing media landscape and the future of marketing.

Part One

Part Two

Stamen Maps

joebarnett — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:52:56 +0000

Today I discovered the amazing and beautiful Stamen Maps, a project from design firm Stamen. The maps are usable under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 3.0) license, with examples and easy links to fork a GitHub repository. Be sure to check out your neighborhood in both Watercolor (displayed above) and Toner. Check out the gallery below for some more map projects from Stamen as well.

Maps

Smashing Magazine

joebarnett — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 21:40:27 +0000

Another great spot to find up-to-date web design, development news, tutorials, ideas, thoughts and reviews. They also have an excellent selection of ebooks (and some printed books as well)

Awesome jQuery Timelines

joebarnett — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 21:11:32 +0000

Here is a cool resource – a jQuery powered timeline! Simply provide a JSON file of data, or more interestingly it’ll pull from a Google Doc (template provided) so it is easy to edit and update, even for non-programmers.

The creators have also made it easy for the timeline to pull in information from a variety of sources including Twitter, Google Maps, YouTube, Vimeo and SoundCloud.

Timeline was created and built by Vérité.co, as a project of the Knight News Innovation Lab

Great WordPress Resources

joebarnett — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 18:19:52 +0000

The WordPress Codex

Use it, learn it, love it. Filled with useful tutorials, function references, developer resources and more. If you’re serious about WordPress this is the reference library you will be coming to often for information. The “Getting Started with WordPress” section is great for those new to WordPress and the “Developer Documentation” is fantastic for those more comfortable with digging into the inner workings of WordPress.

WPMU

WPMU is a resource-rich website with lots of useful information – the free side is supported by a premium subscription model for access to over 150 themes and 100 plugins. WPMU prides themselves on their support and in our experience is quite good. Many plugins and themes are WordPress Multisite and Buddypress compatible.

WordPress Plugin Directory

The first stop when looking to expand the functionality of your WordPress site should be the main WordPress plugin directory. Sometimes it is useful to resort to paid plugins but it is always worth looking for quality free plugins first. Make sure to check that the plugin is compatible with your version of WordPress (there are many older plugins still available) and it’s always worth a look into the comments section to see what people are saying about the plugin.

Paid WordPress Themes and Plugins

While it is very possible to create an amazing WordPress website with free themes and tools sometimes it can be worthwhile to purchase some premium, paid content for your website. Some of our favorites are:

WPML (WordPress Multi-language) – the best multi-language plugin available for WordPress. There is some effort required to set it up and get it working but well worth it if you need a multi-lingual website.
Gravity Forms - an excellent plugin that lets you create forms using an awesome drag and drop interface. Excellent for data collection or surveys.
SEO Smart Links – good plugin for inter-linking content on your site, or adding in keywords to link to external or internal pages. There is a free plugin available but it is not as well supported as the paid version.
Slider Pro – very configurable slider that supports multiple sliders, many options for individual slides, sliders and more.
Event Espresso – if you are building or need to support event information, registration and management look no further than this plugin.

Search Engine Land

joebarnett — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 20:54:15 +0000

A great resource for learning about SEO, SEM, Social Media Marketing, the latest news concerning internet marketing, search engines and much more. The SearchCap daily email (or RSS feed) is a great way to keep up-to-date.

How to Choose a WordPress Theme

joebarnett — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:02:42 +0000

When building a new WordPress site, there are a few possible ways to go about developing it – you can build a theme from scratch, or base it on a WordPress framework – but my favorite way is to find a theme that has the majority of the functionality that you’re looking for and them customize from there. Spending extra time finding a theme that has many of the desired features can save many hours down the road on custom development and design.

Where to find good themes

There are many free themes available, and some of them are very good (and some are not) but paid themes generally offer the best features, documentation and crucially – support. Prices range from $30-$80 and many offer a fixed price for access to all themes that company has created. Here are some of our favorites.

Themeforest

Studio Press

WooThemes

Elegant Themes

Ars Technica

joebarnett — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:01:56 +0000

Billed as the “biggest site you don’t know about”, with 8 million monthy unique visitors. Ars Technica is a fantastic resource to keep up to date on a variety of technology topics. The forums are also an excellent source of information with a much better signal-to-noise ratio than most public forums.

Responsive Web Design Resources

joebarnett — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 20:43:17 +0000

Responsive Web Design has been the hottest topic in the web design world lately, essentially it allows webpages to resize to fit whatever device is displaying the content. The means no more ‘mobile sites’ and can reduce the amount of whitespace and deadspace on larger resolutions. Currently responsive design and fluid designs are still hard to work with but the future is bright with possibilities to display content across all devices in a consistent manner.

Media Queries

At the heart of responsive web design are “Media Queries” – these allow you to serve different CSS files based on different criteria. Most commonly, these are used to load different CSS files based on browser width. Narrower screens will load a CSS file tailored to a smaller screen.

CSS3 Media Queries

Web Designer Wall has a great tutorial (with demo pages) about CSS3 Media Queries – Check it out!

Frameworks and Templates

15 Responsive CSS Frameworks Worth Considering

Good list (though slightly out of date, responsive web design is evolving quickly) of available frameworks and grids for use in responsive web design. Speckyboy also has an excellent post with 40 examples of well done responsive layouts and designs.

Books and Articles

Responsive Web Design Techniques, Tools and Design Strategies

Smashing Magazine has posted a large list of Responsive Web Design links, resources and examples – this is definitely worth checking out.

Responsive Web Design (Book)

From the author who started it all – Responsive Web Design is an e-book or physical book published by A Book Apart, the publishing arm of the always respected A List Apart.

Examples

Mediaqueri.es

Mediaqueri.es is a website with a great list of example websites that use media queries and responsive design – browse away and find some great examples!