This was a fairly comprehensive site with a lot of different components and a client with an eye for detail. The main features of the site include:

• jsp image slider on the home page with text
• A blog re-purposed as a newsfeed
• A client area with Dropbox like functionality (great for sharing engineering docs when they are too large for email)
• Dojo slider displays for projects and services
• Lightbox call outs

The project was not on a set timeline and getting it right was more important than getting it done (they had an existing site already). There was a lot of emails and phone calls back and forth in between adding elements and gathering feedback. From little tweaks to a couple of big changes early on, it was a challenge and a lot of fun to work on and I managed to learn a lot as it went along.

Concept Engineering already had a good handle on their branding and did not want to veer too far away from that. The colours, logo and some other key elements were important to keep to prevent losing the familiarity gained with their prior branding efforts. Like many other clients we talk to, they simply needed a site that they could maintain without waiting on somebody else to make those changes and so I built the site with Concrete5. They can make their own updates easily, add projects, add staff and generally manage the site on their own, only calling me if they are too busy or get stuck on something.

A big thanks to Jason, Gary and Cam at Concept Engineering for their business and their input.

_________

Also, just a reminder to check out Yeggers. I’m still poking away at the concept and trying to validate whether this is a viable way to garner website clients. If you know someone that might be interested, please pass it on. Feel free to leave a comment with what you think of the idea, pricing, value, etc.

I took the idea of website development and design and thought about ways to reduce the up front costs for clients and this is what I came up with. Essentially, for a tiny setup fee and an on-going monthly subscription, we’ll build a website for your business, or band or what have you and take care of the whole thing for you.

At this point, it is an experiment and we’ll see how it goes. We already have the infrastructure in place for our own sites and clients, so we can honor any signups for an indefinite amount of time. What remains to be seen is if the business model works for generating revenue and if there is a market for what is essentially an amortization of the development costs over a period of several years.

I’ll post occasional updates as things go.

What is SOPA?

I have not read the legislation in full, but have read pieces of it on blog posts, Reddit, Techcrunch, and thousands of comments in article threads. In a nut shell, SOPA will allow the disabling of sites that have violated the content rights of another party. Essentially, at the DNS level, a site can be turned off to US site visitors if a site is accused of infringing on other’s content rights. While I understand that content owners have a right to protect their work, I think it was said best in an article I read that, and I paraphrase, this is a “nuclear bomb for the internet when a surgical strike is necessary”.

Why is This a Concern?

The internet has allowed, for the first time in human history, everyone to have a voice. Information a hundred years may have taken weeks or months to spread and was controlled and shaped by media forces now happens instantly. News wires and printed news papers allowed for word to spread more quickly, but with a delay of a day. Radio and Television were again faster, but like newspapers, suffered from editorial control whereby stories could be spun, ignored or made more important than they really were. The internet gave the people a voice. Unfiltered, on the ground, often wrong and without citation. But it also allows people to their truth to the world, as they see it, in real time.

Not only has the internet democratized information and made the sharing of information real time, the last ten years have led to a cultural revolution of independent artists, musicians, and authors. Not so long ago, record labels were the only way to get your music heard and the labels decided what we would hear. Now, the cost of recording and distributing a “record album” has become essentially free. An artist can share their work with world with a few mouse clicks. A writer can display their talent (or lack there of) via a blog, or they can self publish through one of several means. Part of this cultural shift has included liberal ‘re-mixing’ of the mediums. Bands sample other bands, artists add paint to someone else’s photo, a blogger quotes sources in their work.

This remixing does not rely on a small percentage of content creators. This remixing is done by countless numbers from every country in the world. From funny Imgur photos posted on reddit (tens of thousands a day), to music mash-ups, to re-dubbing movie clips on Youtube.

While the internet shapes and evolves culture across the globe, those that started, grew and controlled industries whereby content was created have seen their bottom line impacted. This has made them angry (and their shareholders angry) as they have clung to old business models and watched their margins slowly chip away. They no longer have the total and complete say in who the biggest musical artist will be this year. They don’t get to tell us who the artist is that will break large. They don’t get to spoon feed us the news they want to. While it would seem prudent to find ways to adapt and use the capital they have to dominate in a world with new market rules, they instead decide to sit back and use that capital to fund lobby groups to protect “the good ol’ days”.

So People Should Just be Able to Steal Their Content?

No. We already have copyright laws, trademark laws, patents and a host of other laws that can be used to force someone to take down a page, photo, song, etc that infringes on their content. Unfortunately for the big content creators, these laws require that you actually deal with lawyers and courtrooms and judges (actually, often a C&D letter from a lawyer is enough). SOPA will undoubtedly require some kind of lawyering, but instead of being forced to remove the content, the entire site is blocked at the DNS level. At this point, I don’t see any means of defending oneself against a SOPA takedown either.

Some of the corporate supporters of SOPA have claimed that their support is based upon the need to prevent counterfeit goods purveyors from outside the reach of US law enforcement from chipping away at their sales. I get this. If you spend time designing, researching, sourcing, creating, marketing and distributing content or a product, you don’t want some factory in China selling lower quality versions of your creations at a fraction of your price. That being said, I don’t think someone buying a $20 knockoff of your $300 product is really the customer that would ever buy your $300 product.

I don’t know what the answer is to prevent this type of infringement, but I know SOPA is not it. Let’s look at a service like Youtube. I don’t think it’s a big secret that there is content infringement on Youtube. There are tens, probably hundreds of thousands of videos that have  some form of infringement.

I have seen music remixes, movie redubs, people dancing to a track that probably wasn’t licensed and a million other examples of content infringement. The old school content creators get angry at this because someone is using their product without paying them. What do savvy content creators see? Free advertising. If somebody remixes my music into their video and their video goes viral, then more people hear about me and check out my music. If someone redubs my serious drama with funny lines and it gets passed around Reddit, then people learn about my serious drama and some of those people will seek my drama out after they’ve had their share of lols. The Dave Matthews Band became successful partially because of their taping policy when they were just starting out and playing shows to 30 people. The encouraged fans to tape the shows and share them. This was nearly unheard of at the time due to the draconian and short-sighted policies of the record labels (though bands like the Grateful Dead had tapers for years, mainstream acts rarely allowed live tapers). As early fans shared these tapes with friends in neighboring towns, DMB rolled in to play shows to larger and larger crowds on their first time in town. To this day, they still allow taping and encourage trading.

I had a video that was shot on a public street corner where a shop was blaring music through their outdoor speaker system. That video cannot be listed publically because I was infringing on the musical artist that someone else was broadcasting into a public street. We’ll call this type of situation “Unintentional Infringement”. How many videos are recorded with a stereo or television playing in the background? What about someone else’s artwork? If I have a painting on my wall and it is in the background of a photo or video I put on the internet, have I not reproduced the work without permission? I think this is a pretty slippery slope.

What Happens if SOPA Passes?

As I understand it, SOPA allows sites to be shut down without any avenue for defending against the order. For people accessing the internet in the USA, SOPA would see sites disappear from the web at an unknown pace. Given the way the record industry and Hollywood have pursued some offenders aggressively, I would expect them to flex their new found SOPA powers in a way to make the largest possible example as a warning to other infringers.

With a site like Youtube, my unintentional infringement could potentially lead to Youtube being shut off for all US web users. While it likely wouldn’t be my video that tipped that scale, the loss of the medium would be huge. There are plenty of great videos on the site that educate, entertain and enlighten and don’t infringe. Is it worth nuking the whole site instead of the surgical strike?

If the corporate “creators” decide to pick that fight, then say good-bye to Facebook, Reddit, Vimeo, WordPress, Tumbler, Flickr, myspace, countless blogs and independent websites. One also has to question if Google search would be shut down as it often shows results for sites that have infringing content. There goes Bing, Ebay, and a host of others.

This legislation is scary stuff. The internet has made it possible to have your voice heard, no matter how smart, stupid, right or wrong you are. SOPA opens the door to remove your voice. And if this legislation passes in the US, you will see similar legislation imposed on countries around the world.

What Can I Do?

If you’re in the USA:

Check out this post: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ngd4r/i_work_in_news_this_is_how_you_stop_sopa/

And write your representative in Congress: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

Outside the US?

Talk with American friends and family members to ensure they understand what may happen if SOPA is passed and how it will affect them. Encourage them to become vocal about it.

Learn more about SOPA and your government. There’s a good chance they are starting to think this is a good idea too.

I spent a bit more time tweaking, tightening and messing around and managed this:

Working with Doug over the past little while, I have seen numerous pictures of the property and the area and people surrounding it. Doug splits his time between Edmonton and the DR and has shared tonnes of information about living there, the food, the lifestyle, the people and more. I have on more than one occasion tried to point out that I might be able to better complete work and design for his projects if he were to fly me to the DR, but to no avail. Hopefully my future holds a trip for even a short vacation. Hopefully during the middle of an Edmonton winter too.

As to the production? Pretty much value budget tools all the way around. Prezi was the canvas with pictures text and video all laid out there. I then used Camtasia to record the screen and audio as I panned through the Prezi presentation. The whole thing is shot in one take with the only edits being splices at the beginning and end and fading the volume in and out. It took a few versions to find something that worked, something that Doug liked, and had the timing right. There were countless dry runs to try and get the timing right and somewhat close to the music’s beat.

The music and some of the photos came from here. If you look closely, the Youtube video has simply been embedded into the presentation layer. The crop I made at the beginning of the video was to cut me pressing play.

While I don’t foresee any Oscar nominations for this season (I didn’t one for this either), it was pretty fun to do, especially since Doug was throwing around ideas and I thought I’d take a stab at something. If you happen to be a developer/financier looking for a project and you want more information about Doug’s Royal Palms project, you can get in touch here: http://solaltagroup.ca/contact-us/

Anyways, I’ve got a couple of projects on the go for clients, a couple of personal ones and a few client sites that we launched recently. For now, here are the recent launches:

1. Brock Communications – http://brockcommunications.ca

This site is part of the Brock Group of companies that we built the PHSP enrolment for last year. We’re working on a revamp of some of their sites and this is one of them. We’re streamlining and modernizing the design of their existing sites and implementing eCommerce on some of them.

2. Brock Associates – http://brockassociates.ca

Another from the Brock Group. You can see between the two that the layout and theme are the same with the logo and header font colours being the distinctive changes between sites. I’m happy with the clean look on these and the brand theme running between sites.

3. Pride Automotive - http://prideautomotive.ca

Pride Auto is a family owned auto shop one neighborhood over from me. Mike and Sam are brothers that opened on the southside recently and have invested heavily in their shop and equipment. We’ve thrown around a lot of ideas and there is more to come on this site (fleshing out the forums, eCommerce, etc), but they were lacking an online presence and so we’ve launched before adding all the bells and whistles. Look for more coming here over the holidays and into January.

4. Solalta Group - http://solaltagroup.ca

I’ve done some work on projects with Doug and his partners before and really enjoy working with them. They don’t like being hands on with the “tech” stuff and we work in an iterative fashion to find a solution. Doug needed a site that could start to showcase his 30+ years as a Developer and have some place online to point people to. We’ll be adding to this one over the next few weeks and months, but I think it’s clean and succinct.

That’s it for now. Have a great holiday season, stay safe.

-b

Apparently, the change comes with some big changes to hangouts that should make them more effective.

More here: http://mashable.com/2011/09/20/google-plus-open-beta/

and here: http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/20/google-plus-beta/

Or you can just head to http://plus.google.com

Things have been getting pretty busy around here and we’ve got a few contract positions open that may lead to continued contract or full time work.

Short Term Contract – WS-Security

We need someone to step through and validate the the WS security on a client’s system. Anywhere up to three days worth of work available immediately!

Embedded Hardware Developer

Looking for someone experienced with board level development for embedded systems. You’ll need to know C/C++, QT, and work in a Linux environment. Ideally an engineer position, a developer that is also an electronics entusiast would be considered.

Android Developer

We currently have a project requiring some immediate attention. Contract based, we need to deploy a tablet application for a client.

Web Developer

Looking for a talented web developer for ongoing contract work for now, with the possibility of a full time position in the near future. Looking for someone with experience building complicated web applications, that has knowledge of general business systems.

What we Offer

Stress, impossible deadlines, sweatshop like working condi…. Er. Still here eh?

We operate from our palatial headquarters located on the southside of Edmonton, Alberta. Located close to artery roads and a block away from key bus routes, the office is pretty easy to get to and from. It even has some windows and is air conditioned. We have desks and chairs to go with them and some of them are not cinder black and milk crate contraptions.

We have core hours between 10 and 3, but otherwise hours are flexible. Friday’s, when not under crushing deadlines are usually social with a few beverages. Friday’s with crushing deadlines are less social, but still have beverages. This is when the magical code that must never be touched again is written.

We pay fairly, can offer health coverage to employees, and we’re growing rapidly. Check the sidebar to see how to apply.

Early Adopter (EA): Our social networking, early adopting hero.

Friend (F): Tech savvy, but slightly behind the cutting edge.

The Setting:

The dark confines of a damp computer room that smells like stale Doritos and warm Red Bull. A lone figure sits in front of his computer screen, typing madly as he connects to friends over the mighty internet.

Early Adopter – Social Network Chat Tool: “Hey, I’ve got an invite for this new social media service on the web. You should join. I’ll send you one”

Friend – “What does it do?”

EA – ” We can tell each other what we are doing in 12 characters or less, share 1px by 1px thumbnails with each other and videos of precisely 43 minutes and 12 seconds that can’t be paused or stopped once started and they play only at full volume. It’s fricken awesome!”

F – “Umm, but what about “http://..com”? You made me join that one because it was the shortest domain name in history. There’s no pics or video, but at least we get 32 characters to debate. Or “http://noprivacy.com”? It’s the perfect communication platform other than the fact they sell everyone’s information to up and coming social media platforms so they can get started with a new user base. Besides, I’ve spent so many hours of my life trying to get people onto the newer platform so we can talk. Some come and some don’t, so instead of having one really good site to communicate with everyone, I have to log into a whole bunch of different sites. I’m sick of this. In fact, screw them all. I’m going outside . I’m going to talk to real people, in person. No character limits, no pics, no video. Fuck social networking sites!”

EA – “Umm. Okay. Should I still send you an invite?”

F – F is offline

EA – “Hey Friend 2. I’ve got an invite for this new social media service on the web. You should join. I’ll send you one”

EA repeats this exercise with numerous friends, for numerous platforms.  Eventually, social media platform fatigue (SMPF) sets in. EA loses all hope of having one site to rule them all. Then turns to surfing Reddit* all day.

*Nothing wrong with Reddit at all. Lots of cool people talking about lots of cools stuff. It ends up being the one social platform that works because it doesn’t rely on the people you know being there.

SMPF is real

SMPF is real. I saw another site launched today (or recently) called Heello (though, I’m informed it is pronounced “Hello”). It is a Twitter clone. Only it has pictures in the stream and you don’t have to refresh the stream. That’s it. Now there is some talk about how the founders of Heello are making a point because Twitter made their photo sharing service for Twitter redundant (yeah….. building a “business” on somebody else’s platform is not always a good idea). Even if they are making a point, it’s a stupid point and a waste of their time and resources. Get over it.

Now, I’m all for creating services that help people. Help their business, help them learn a new skill, help them communicate, anything. Provide some value. But this social network shit just has to stop somewhere. Not forever, but for a while. Why would I join a new service to create a new social network from scratch, wait weeks or months for friends and interesting people to show up, so the service could provide value, when I could log into the exact same service where all the benefit is already there? What value does a Twitter clone provide? What value does it provide that Twitter doesn’t?

Now I’ll admit that I’ve been pretty happy with Google+ and would recommend it, even with it’s issues, over Facebook any day. While Facebook allows me to see photos of my nephew half a world away, and keep in contact with numerous people, there are numerous things I don’t like about the platform. Google+ looked to be a viable alternative that had built on Facebook’s shortcomings (along with Twitter’s, Flicker, and a numerous other services). I chose to invest my time in platform that was unique and that, so far, does provide value. I still visit Facebook every day or so, because many of my contacts are still there and I do try and keep up with what’s going on in the lives of my friends and family. Eventually, I’ll stop visiting FB altogether.

The Social Media Platform Market is SATURATED. If you are working on a mass market social media platform, just stop. Stop right now. Stop your team members, your boss, your investors, anybody involved. Ask yourself these questions:

1. Have we confused viral with social? Are you building ways to spread the word about your app/site or a platform for people to connect on?

2. How does what we are building add value to people’s lives or the public in general?

3. If we’re making a better mousetrap, is it going to be compelling enough to have a large enough number of people dedicate their time to rebuilding a network on our platform. (Now ask yourself that question again. Then go create an account on Heello and build a network of 200 followers, or listeners, or whatever the hell they call them there, that you invite from scratch. Now ask yourself the question again).

4. Are we changing the world or just trying to get an investor that will cough up a whole bunch of money?

5. If we built something that was to really, really to change the world, what could that be (and take hours or days with the whole team talking about passions, and needs, and real value. There will be an idea there that even if it fails will still be far more fulfilling than creating AFSN (Another Fucking Social Network)).

Note: If you’re building a niche social network for teens to find summer jobs, or people to donate money to sponsor post office boxes for homeless people, or something else that truly provides value, then go for it. The answers to the questions above will justify it. Just spare us all another clone.

You can’t.

When you click on links like the one you just followed from Google+, you open yourself up to phishing scams, or getting your account hijacked. If I was a clever type, I’d have the link come to a page that looked like Google+ and tell you to log in again, at which point I’d have your log-in information for all the linked Google services. And chances are you use the same passwords for other sites too, or use gmail as your password reminder account.

Google+ is gaining popularity faster than any other social platform to date. Within days, an application that could port over your Facebook stream to Google+ appeared and after thousands had signed up, someone traced through the code and found out that the service was collecting way too much information about you and your social network. More applications and “services” are going to show up. They will reshare themselves to your stream if you click on them.

Sorry to have brought you to this page when you were expecting a really cool application instead. Hopefully, this prevents a few people from spreading the inevitable as thieves and spammers find their way to Google+.

A few things you can do to protect your accounts in case you accidentally fall for one of these things:

1. Don’t click suspicious links in your stream (besides, who cares who looked at your profile? Do you walk down the street and research every person that casts a passing glance?)

2. Use unique passwords for every site you use. I suggest installing Lastpass and using the password generator it provides.

3. Protect your Google password like your bank password. Because so many services are linked with Google (gmail, Plus, Calendar, Docs, etc), having your Google password compromised can quickly and easily change your life for the worse.

4. Change your passwords often. Okay, even occasionally. Just make it a habit to spend an hour or two on a Saturday every month or two to go through an update your passwords.

5. Don’t use crappy passwords. Ensure all of your passwords use a mix of capital and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols (when allowed). Or use Lastpass and remember one really strong password while letting the service remember the rest.

6. Don’t share your passwords, especially with strangers or internet friends.

Hope this helps.

If you are reading this post and you didn’t come from a link on Google+, here’s what you missed: I shared a goo.gl link on Google+ with the phrase “Cool! This app lets you see who has been viewing your Google+ profile”. Very similar to the bait links that self perpetuate on Facebook and I expect will start showing up on Google+ soon enough. A bit of a social PSA if you will. I’ll probably try some variants on the link text to see what happens and share some results in a forthcoming post.