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Like many here at dynamIt, I am pretty much addicted to my iPhone. It has a way of slowly edging its way into our daily routines, one day at a time, until suddenly we find ourselves wondering how we could possibly survive without it. From virtually anywhere (we’ll save the AT&T coverage debate for a later post) I can check email, the weather, Twitter, Facebook, and the list goes on and on. Yes I know, this is not news to those of you living outside of a cave. However, one recent app download has changed the way I look at my smartphone forever: Everyday Looper, developed by Mancing Dolecules.

This app is a four-track recorder/looper. That means I can record four separate tracks that play concurrently, which repeat indefinitely. Some of you might not be familiar with the concept of looping, so I shall explain. Looping is basically just as simple as it sounds: record a track that continues seamlessly when played back to back with itself, over and over. There are a few artists out there who are fairly well known for this technique; Andrew Bird comes to mind, especially when he performs solo. With a stomp of his looper pedal, he will begin recording a riff, then another stomp to stop recording – which also causes the recorded riff to begin playing immediately. Stomping in tempo is crucial to make the loop seamless.

I’ll run through the process I typically follow when I open up Everyday Looper, tip the phone landscape, and prepare to record. By this time, I’ve been playing around with a riff and have some idea of the tempo. So, I swipe one finger down to bring up the tools menu and tap the click track generator. From there I will choose a tempo (ranging from 40.00 beats per minute to 240.99), the number of beats (16 would be four measures in 4/4 time), tap “Generate,” and then I’ve got a metronome filling one of the four available tracks. Obviously you don’t need to use a click track, but it makes it a great deal easier to ensure your loop repeats perfectly. Next, I’ll plug in headphones, and double tap the screen to start the loop playing. Now I’m free to lay down a track, while ensuring I’m in tempo. Once this initial track is recorded, I’ll usually delete the click track. All it takes to delete a track is a two-finger swipe along that track. Adjust volume on a track by a single-finger swipe – the track gets brighter as its volume increases.

So now I have one track, and the metronome track has been deleted. I can lay down up to three more tracks until all four slots are filled. However, with its latest update, Everyday Looper gives you the ability to merge any or all of the tracks, simply by dragging one into another. I just save the file before merging the original tracks, record some more music, and save again under a different file name – this comes in handy later, as you will learn.

Once the loop is finished to my liking, I need to get the music off my iPhone. Fortunately, this app has a great built-in HTTP server for this task. If my iPhone isn’t already connected to a network via WiFi, I’ll exit the app and do that. Once I’m connected, I just open up Everyday Loper again, and from the tools menu move the “Start/Stop HTTP Server” slider to “On.” Next, it gives me an IP address to visit in the browser of any computer also connected to the same WiFi network. From this page, I am able to download each track of each saved loop. As I referenced before, this means I have those un-merged tracks saved as part of one loop, and then the other tracks saved in another. Each of the tracks are saved as uncompressed WAV files, so adding them to GarageBand or Logic Pro for further manipulation is easy.

As previously mentioned, I really don’t go anywhere without my iPhone. Meaning, I now have a little recording studio in my pocket wherever I go. The interface is extremely usable and elegant, using swipe and tap gestures in a way that is very intuitive. Simply put, this app makes the recording process portable and that much more enjoyable. Features like the click track, on-the-fly track merging, HTTP server, and individual track WAV output make this $5 app extremely powerful. Now there is never an excuse for me to forget the riff I was playing in my apartment the night before, at a friend’s house, or even out around a campfire. Most importantly, this app is just fun to use. So to all of the music-loving iPhone users out there, download this app and go make some music!

P.S. No, I couldn’t just write all of this without letting you hear some music I made. Hope you enjoy a short loop recorded last week, and later edited a bit in GarageBand.

Ah, the future of music..

I’ll be the first to admit it: I’m not the best dynamit developer. My work is a derivative of the great Bobby Whitman, whose ability to figure this stuff out is nothing short of legendary. But hey, we stand on the shoulders of giants. I just happen to stand on the shoulders of my longtime business partner. Although I could go on for ages talking about Bobby’s wit, I’ll stick to his work for now. One particular piece of note is a series of implementations we’ve completed with the Google Calendar Application Programmer Interface (API). These calendars rock. They’re AJAX-fueled pieces of magic which provide to the visitor a bunch of ways to search and sort all sorts of calendar information. We can leverage the best technology in the business (Google) to roll out sophisticated calendar implementations in a matter of hours (not days).

A little context: in 2009, dynamit introduced a new web site for the Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD).

The web strategy we prepared with CCAD is fairly complex, a major tactic of which is the focus on the numerous events that occur at the college. The technical requirements can be summed up as the ability to conditionally display, filter and search a multi-threaded calendar of news and events in locations throughout the site. Like most academic institutions, CCAD is involved in hundreds of events per year. These events include student work exhibitions, faculty events, the academic calendar, student groups, continuing education, and many others.

It’s a familiar challenge: people rely on web sites to learn about what’s going on with an organization. A major element of this challenge is creating an interface which is both easy for the administrators to update and intuitive for users to find exactly the information they seek. Rather than re-create the wheel by creating a custom database and interface to handle the problem, we opted to use the Google Calendar API.

The basic idea is that we can leverage existing, mature technology created by Google to meet the particular needs of the client. The benefits to the client are reduced development time, a time-tested administrative interface, a fully customized user experience, no recurring software fees and a host of features provided by Google.

You’d never know by looking at the interface that it’s running on the power of Google, but the features provided by the API (including searching, filtering by thread and filtering by date range) provide a high-value solution with massively reduced development time.

So how does it work?

Once the client web site is set up to talk directly with Google (via Zend libraries, for those of you who are interested), you can rather easily submit a query to Google to retrieve events with particular parameters. Want events from a certain thread? In a certain time range? With particular tags attached to it? Ask ye of Google and ye shall find.

Once you ask Google for a certain set of information, it spits back at you a rather lengthy response with a bunch of information. After that, it’s a matter of parsing out the information to get and display only what you need. The trick, however, is in displaying it properly.

The way we do it is that we ask Google for a particular set of calendars (aka ‘threads’) that match the need of the visitor. For example, we may ask Google to show us all the threads of type “News” (Alumni News, Student News, Faculty News, etc) in 2009 that mention the word “art” in either the title or description of the event. Google spits back an answer. Our task is to then take the results from each of the disparate threads and combine them into a set of results that’s ordered by date — all of this without refreshing the page (there’s the fancy AJAX part of it). The events are color coded by calendar type so that the user can easily show/hide particular threads to continue to narrow the search. The icing on the cake is that the interface is fully customized to fit the needs of the client. No more ugly calendars that don’t meet the branding standadrs of the clients or are so modular that you can’t gracefully interface them with existing site functionality.

For example, if a client wants to conditionally display a rich description (loaded via AJAX) to accompany a news item, the software can display the additional information. Or, if plain text will meet their needs, we can show a brief blurb to give some context to the event. The calendar has unlimited potential for customization, just as if it was written from the ground up.

The developer’s time can then be focused on creating an excellent and appropriate user interface, instead of meddling with the behind-the-scenes details of assembling a working calendar. The implementation of the dynamit Google Calendar libraries can be accomplished with Javascript and XHTML, without the usual dependency of on a large number of database and server-side-scripting hours.

The end result is a calendar which is straightforward for the developer to deploy, easy for the content administrator to manage and intuitive for the visitor to browse. Awesome.

Yes, I know – it’s a horrible pun. But it’s true.  The South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference is over the top in every regard.  The 15,000+ attendees, crowded sessions and who’s who list of presenters makes for an ostentatious spectacle.  Not to mention the parties — the crown jewel of the SXSW experience.

Having attended SXSW last year, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect.  Or perhaps more important, what NOT to expect.  I think what drives the popularity of the event is the people and culture BEHIND technology and not the hardcore technologies themselves.  If you’re looking for a tutorial on the latest and greatest server software, you’re in the wrong place.  But if you want to hear the story (the failures, personalities, and inspirations) behind the newest Google innovation, you’re in the right spot.  Because at the end of the day, it’s all about people — and so is SXSW.

That said, there were a few notable takeaways from SXSW 2010:

Geosocial Applications
Gowalla and foursquare are gaining serious traction.  Both companies released upgrades days before the conference in preparation for this Spring Break for Geeks.  With such a concentration of tech savvy users, SXSW is a veritable test lab for the latest and greatest ideas and gadgets.  Everywhere I went, the first thing everyone did was “check in” to grab the cool little “badges.” Being somewhat skeptical about games that require me to announce my whereabouts, I must admit to being impressed.  In the immediate sense, it was very handy seeing where other people were hanging out.  It allowed for more chance encounters instead of firm meet-ups which is basically impossible at a chaotic event like SXSW. In the future, I can see incentives and gameplay evolving where users get actual rewards for performing normal daily tasks.  Still in the “PONG-like” state of evolution, foursquare is already being used by  coffeeshops  who give free pastries to every person who checks in X-number of times.  The biggest takeaway for me is the psychological power of gameplay. People like to be recognized as a leader (or “mayor” in foursquare) and they like mini-rewards for doing otherwise mundane tasks (picking up/dropping “badges”).  The pieces-parts of these social games are just beginning surface.  It’s going to be very interesting to see if these geosocial applications become the next “must have” in our daily lives like the darling of SXSW 2007 – Twitter.

Content Worth Talking About
Now that social media tools and technologies have been mainstream for over three years, attention is being focused on how to offer content that actually does something productive.  The experimentation time with Facebook and Twitter is over.  We’re now in the “what’s our SPECIFIC strategy and EXACTLY what content should be used” phase.  There were two social psyhologists that were particularly interesting: Ben Scofield (“Mind Control: Psychology for the Web”) and Dan Ariely (“Perfectly Irrational”).  Scofield offered the following rule(s) of thumb when developing Web site content:

• Likeability – Be likable (no kidding!)
• Social Proof – Show people what their peers are doing
• Authority – Demonstrate that you are trustworthy
• Reciprocity – Give people something for free
• Scarcity – Tell people when time is running out
• Commitment – Give people a low cost way to commit
• Decoy Effect – Make it easy to compare choices

The more your site can offer content that delivers on these points, the more persuasive and effective it will be.

@Anywhere
Finally, the big hullabaloo was Twitter’s announcement during the Monday keynote address by founder Ev Williams.  Early speculation was that Twitter would unveil it’s new advertising model.  Instead, Williams anticlimactically explained their new @anywhere service which will be rolled out to select publishers (such as the NY Times) in the near future.  Basically @anywhere is a little overlay that will be on websites that allows you to follow somewhere directly from that site.  Imagine reading an article, clicking on the author’s name and selecting “follow” via a popup window instead of visiting Twitter.com in another window (or a 3rd party app like Tweetdeck), searching for their name/handle and following.  They’re basically trying to eliminate the disconnect between publishers and Twitter.  Cool?  Yes.  Underwhelming.  Very much so.  But in true Twitter fashion, this understated release will probably be turned into something much more impressive and practical by 3rd party developers — just like the rest of Twitter’s history.

I’d highly recommend attending SXSW as it’s definitely a unique experience.  Just be sure to wear comfortable shoes and stock up ahead of time on sleep.  See you next year!

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to talk to the Columbus Chapter of SMPS about personal branding. The group was really interested in how digital (primarily web and social) affected their personal brands and the way they positioned their businesses.

There have been lots of great articles written on the subject, and Dan Schawbel continually produces great content on the subject. Brandweek had a great article on Authentic Personal Branding and years ago (1997) Fast Company’s article “The Brand Called You” really started the conversation.

So yeah, we get it. Personal branding is more important than ever because so many facets of our lives are being indexed in search engines. Often people focus on the negative aspects, but the reality is that there are huge opportunities to build a positive reputation online. Go ahead…go ego Google yourself and see what you find. (I’ll wait….)

So – what’d you find? Is it representative of how you would describe your personal brand (does your perception match Google’s reality)? Is there anything there at all? Its critical for those search results to position you in a favorable light, but its just as valuable to your employer for your brand to be strong and for you to be known as an expert.

So, where do you start?

1. Identify your passion (marketing, finance, politics, digital, etc.)
2. Identify other thought leaders in your niche – read, comment and share their work (attributing it appropriately of course)
3. Take note of channels where others talk about your subject (there are millions of channels to build your brand, be sure to align your efforts in places where your audience seeks information – and don’t forget your Google profile.)
4. Create assets to support content you’ll create – pictures, backgrounds, etc.
5. Create profiles on the appropriate tools (don’t forget a Google Profile)
6. Regularly create content in your niche that is web friendly, keyword rich and interesting to others
7. Share personal information, but respect a hierarchy of content where topical information and the sharing of others information on the subject dominates the content.
8. Commit time to shape your brand daily – contribute, comment, consumer content, share it, etc.
9. Don’t spam people with messages to share your information, earn your endorsements and grow your reach organically.
10. Remember sometimes the content you find second nature is new to someone researching the topic, share your tips, things you find interesting and other resources that have helped you along the way.

Picture this- you’re at the office early one morning, attempting to structure your day. You have dozens of tasks to complete, a handful of decks to proof, a UXD to finish. You finally get your day in a position to be productive, and someone asks you about lunch.  This scenario may be a stretch, but probably not by much. So the day rolls on, you miraculously manage to knock out 80% of your goals, on top of the emergencies, distractions and fires you had to put out, and you’re feeling pretty good. 8pm- time for dinner, right?

Well, if your business serves customers and is in any way influenced by the digital/social space (hint: that’s everyone), you know the value of staying educated. In fact, a sizable chunk of your ‘work’ is probably spent reading and learning. In fact, nearly half of our team spent the better part of this weekend doing exactly that in Austin, at SXSW. Such is today’s topic: The current pace of the industry, and staying ahead of the wave. (no, not Google’s…)

Simply keeping up is a full time job. So many outlets, so little time. RSS feeds and Blogs, Facebook and Twitter, Foursquare and Gowala – Oh My! How is any regular person suppose to manage, digest, and take away something beneficial from all that noise? There are seemingly hundreds of methods to do so, and it’s easy to get caught up in the wormhole, managing how all the pieces connect and new methods of communicating between them all. You find yourself obsessed with staying ahead of the game, just to be ahead. But to what end.

Am I using the best application? The most popular?
Who has the best user interface?
Who is saying which platform has the better experience?
Which version should you actually go with?
Whose blogs should I read?
Whose tweets should I follow? And how do I find them?

To cut through the noise, the trick is knowing from who you gain value. You may spend an hour a week reading somebody’s opinions simply because they have 30,000+ followers, but if those ‘insights’ never make you think longer than a few seconds, chances are you should focus your energy elsewhere. Quality content is not a popularity game. The ability to quickly and effectively filter good information from bad is a very valuable skill set. Direct your attention to dynamIt’s blog roll (to the left) for a few examples of quality resources – at least to us. Knowing what your colleagues, competitors, and thought leaders are reading can be pretty valuable, and lend some insight into what makes them tick.

This concept is not revolutionary, I know. And ironically, if you’re reading this then you already have a great handle on this skill. I write this because this is my second week with dynamIt. Being new to the agency industry, I am in the unique position to of having a fresh perspective. I sit at my desk writing this, it’s 7pm, and the only thing telling me to go home is my stomach. I love it here. There was a point in my life where I was convinced I would be a University Professor. I wanted an environment that not only encourages constant learning, but requires it. Lucky for me, I’ve found one just like that (only without the additional tuition required). The group I’ve joined has found a way to make work, play. Additionally, they understand that in order to be at the top of your game, you have to genuinely enjoy not just the work, but the learning that fosters better work. These guys get it.

If you want to teach us, learn with us, or share with us, give us a call.

Take a look around, there are examples of good design all over. The icons on your computer screen, the street signs outside your window, the vitamin water on your desk, each are pulling for your attention so that you might notice them, interact with them, or even buy them. Have you ever really taken a step back, and thought about how the choices you make each and every day are influenced by design?

No matter the situation, the way something looks is the first thing that anyone has to form an opinion, liking or perception about. The first time you meet someone, before you know anything about them, you judge on appearance. When you are shopping for shoes, before you slip them on to test for comfort, you judge them by the way they look. Or even a web application, before you dive into it’s functionality and how it works, you judge it based on the design. The fact of the matter is, good design is valuable, because it influences these perceptions, and ultimately your choices.

Recently I was having a conversation with the newest member of the dynamIt team, Andy Hutter, who had just purchased a new TV for his place. So I asked him which television he chose. He said that his decision came down to an LG or Panasonic, and he ended up choosing the LG because of how slick it looked. Two televisions comparable in price, picture, size and specs, but Andy chose the LG because of it’s design.

Design on the web is no different. People will form lasting opinions about a company or organization based on the way their site looks, and make choices based on that. Users make nearly instantaneous judgments of a web site’s visual appeal. These impressions impact perceived credibility, usability, and ultimately influence purchasing decisions. Web users form first impressions of web pages in as little as 50 milliseconds (1/20th of a second), according to Canadian researchers. Check out this article that highlights a study on the “halo effect” and “cognitive bias“, supporting the theory of first impressions in web design.

Sometimes it can be hard for designers to make clients understand the value of good design. A lot of companies/organizations settle with a free template, a site done in Frontpage, or having their secretary’s son do it because he is a computer science major. There is a ton of value in investing in a good web presence, because it’s a lot more than just making a pretty page on the interwebs.

It Will Improve Your Company Image

Visual communication is an integral part of a customer’s experience of a company or product, and it plays a key role in building a brand image.

It Helps Reach Company Goals

Good design is backed with a strategy. Our process at dynamIt allows us to discover a client’s objectives with thorough strategy, and this leads to design solutions that push to accomplish company goals for the future.

It Establishes Trust

Many studies have shown that the design of an unfamiliar ecommerce site will greatly impact the decision making process when a user goes to buy a product. I know that when I go to buy something online, if the site design sucks, I’m leaving.

You Will Stand Out Among Competitors

There is a lot crap on the web. I think this is pretty straight forward.

Even though your site may have superior products and services, an initial negative impression from a poor design can steer customers towards your competition. You only get one chance to create a good first impression, make it count.

Are there other scenarios where design has influenced you?