It was a busy (and short) four-day work week; but, we still managed to kick out a few blog posts and make it to both RailsConf in Portland and TechCocktail in Chicago. Judging from the dev team's tweets, RailsConf has been a good trip and then some. I can say first-hand that Frank and Eric did a great job with their first TechCocktail conference. As expected, hanging out with Corey from Squidoo was fun and thought-provoking, and sharing ideas with all the other speakers and attendees was inspiring. That said, after a long week of traveling, it's good to be home!
Continue reading "VigeWeekly: Out and About"
Congratulations to Amanda Ripley who launched her new web site this week (with a little help from us). We always love being able to celebrate with clients, and we look forward to following up her site launch with celebrating her book launch on June 10th.
After one of our clients -- and a couple of us individually -- experienced a recent WordPress hackfest that plagued a minority of the platform's users, Jackson posted about why these security breaches happen and ways to prevent them in the future, sparking a good exchange with our good friend Gil.
Speaking of hackfests, judging from Stuart's slides (PDF) and David's photos, last night's Refresh the Triangle event down in Durham was very tech focused. It's great to see the balance of topics being discussed by the group.
Now, onto the blogs!
Continue reading "VigeWeekly: Launching Sites, Libraries, and Ruby Hack Night"
Thanks to everyone who came out for last night's Social Media Club DC event hosted here at the Lab. Unfortunately, SMC conflicted with RefreshDC, so I wasn't able to venture into Arlington for that event this month. Maybe I'll see you at the TECH cocktail conference in Chicago on May 29, where Corey and I will tell the story of how Squidoo went from an idea to profitability. It's a good one.
The big news at Viget this week was that Tom joined us as our new design director. I haven't even worked with him a full week yet, but I can already tell why people told me he'd be a great fit. Welcome, Tom!
Continue reading "VigeWeekly: Connecting Ideas, Photos, and Friends"
So far, May has been busy balancing lots of deadlines, but we managed to write a few blog posts in the midst of our client work.
A big aspect of what we do here is work on finding the right folks to join Viget. Emily describes how she finds balance in recruiting; particularly in distinguishing personality and professionalism in the cover letters, resumes, and portfolios we receive. She encourages, "Be confident, but above all, be real." Great advice.
Want more advice and insights? We've got 'em in our blogs this week.
Continue reading "VigeWeekly: Balance in Our Blogs"
We have continued to write as much as we can for our new fangled blogs here at Viget, but we're proud to say that this week, one of us went old school. Ben authored his first book entitled, Practical REST on Rails 2 Projects, which is now available on Amazon and would be a great selection for any Rails developer (not that I'm biased ...). Congrats, Ben!
Also, while we were chatting up the Tech Cocktail DC crowd last Thursday, Viget South was attending the jQuery discussion at the sixth meeting of Refresh the Triangle.
Now, let's get back on track with what's been happening in our blogs this week.
Continue reading "VigeWeekly: From Candy to Capistrano"
We were super busy this past week in our blogs and in the DC scene, too, when we visited Refresh and Tech Cocktail 2 last week. Plus, we all headed to a ranch—which included horses, jeeps, and skeet shooting—to celebrate Viget’s birthday last Friday.
Now we’re taking a breath just long enough to recap the week in blogs.
Continue reading "VigeWeekly: We Can’t Stop Talking"
As usual, we’ve had another busy week here at the Lab. We’ve been reading the latest books and blogs, playing with the latest tools, and attending some cool events. Plus, we’re happy to have launched the BlogPotomac site in support of the social media event that’s going down on Friday the 13th of June. Hope you can make it.
Without further adieu…
Steph’s post touched on Sonia Simone’s Copyblogger article that highlights how users are more easily called to take action with decisive content. Steph is all about having copywriters involved when trying to entice readers to take action, but she adds that clients must first decide on just a few calls to action for users, saying, “Ultimately, it’s better to make some assumptions that can be corrected later about what users want rather than slapping seventeen callouts in the right sidebar and hoping one sticks. And when it comes to getting from Point A to Point B, who wants to find a fork—or seven—in the road?”
Samantha reviews Ellen Lupton’s new book, Graphic Design: The New Basics, which she says is now her “new design fundamentals go-to guide.” She says the book is refreshingly simple amid other design books out there that are overly complex or dated, so she thinks designers of all skill levels would find it a valuable resource. P.S. See what else is on Samantha’s bookshelf.
Clinton tells us Why Google App Engine (GAE) matters, saying, “I can run web applications on Google’s grid and have access to their authentication and back-end data store? Sign me right up!” He notes that critics won’t jump onboard because of GAE’s limitations, but says those restrictions can provoke creativity and inspire enhancements. We’re interested in provoking creativity and enhancing our own work here at Viget, which SP discusses in his post, “Open Source, Take Two.” We’re aiming, kind of like Google, to facilitate creative discussion by pulling back the curtain and making some of our code publicly available and asking other to contribute to what we’re working on; that way, we can all learn something while we collectively contribute to the progress of the larger Rails community.
Trace reviewed the Potomac Tech Wire Internet Outlook Conference he attended on Thursday morning. Speakers like Scott Frederick of Valhalla Partners, Laurence Hooper of Loladex (one of our clients), and Chris McGill of Mixx all contributed to a positive discussion about the growing tech community in the DC area, from how to obtain venture funding to how to grow and implement an idea in today’s technology market.
Thanks for all the super dialog in our blogs, and we hope to see you next Thursday at DC’s Tech Cocktail 2. Have a great weekend!
We love it when our clients win awards, which is why we’re cheering this week—Kettler, a local real estate firm that’s among the nation’s top 20 multifamily developers, was honored by the National Association of Home Builders for having the Best Corporate Website. Kudos to Peyton for his award-winning design.
Now ... To the blogs!
Continue reading "VigeWeekly: Spontaneity, Color Shifts, and Social Media Stigmas"
How are The Doors related to the iPhone? Scrabulous’ user interface to YouTube Analytics? They’re not, really. Except that they were among all of the “gems created” (you’ll get that reference later) this week across our four blogs.
Continue reading "VigeWeekly: From Scrabulous to Gems"
This was an especially emotional week for our bloggers, who talked about tapping into users’ feelings and caring about cookies to getting over their fears of Web 2.0.
Continue reading "VigeWeekly: We Care!"
