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A quick note to our clients using SlideShowPro & OS X

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February 28, 2011 @ 1:58pm

Updated — February 28, 2011 @ 1:59pm

by Jeff Byrnes

So, it seems that the recent release of Flash Player 10.2 has some issues on Mac OS X when trying to upload to SlideShowPro Director.

If you encounter any trouble uploading files to your SlideShowPro Director interface, head on over to this link to download an updated release to fix it.

You can read more details at SlideShowPro’s site.

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compatibility, Flash, SlideShowPro

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An Easier Canvas to Draw On

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October 22, 2010 @ 9:20am

Updated — November 4, 2010 @ 9:45pm

by Jeff Byrnes

Spotted this one courtesy of Think Vitamin, it’s called Ai->Canvas, and it’s an Illustrator plug-in that exports to an HTML5 canvas element. Very cool stuff.

Basically, you make your shapes in AI, export using the plug-in, and the necessary code to draw your shapes is generated. You can even do animation with it, which is definitely very cool.

For those who haven’t yet read up on it, the canvas element is a JavaScript-based method for drawing vector-based images, which is exactly what Illustrator outputs. So the two are a natural match.

If you’d like to read up more on canvas, the best resource I’ve found so far is Mark Pilgrim’s chapter on canvas at Dive Into HTML5.

Let us know if you build anything cool using AI->Canvas!

Tags

Adobe Illustrator, canvas, code, HTML5, javascript, Web Development

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My new favorite: HTML5 Boilerplate

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October 8, 2010 @ 12:31pm

Updated — November 4, 2010 @ 9:44pm

by Jeff Byrnes

So, this popped up on my radar a few months ago, and has been absolutely indispensable for building sites using HTML5. It’s called HTML5 Boilerplate.

It’s not a framework, which I’ve found can be constricting in how you build out a site, but instead gives you a great jumping off point. The site itself has a great list of why it’s cool, but here are my favorites:

The index sets out some great precedents to follow, namely putting as much, if not all, of your JavaScript in the footer (even jQuery itself!), having a local fallback for your CDN-served JS library, but otherwise is a blank slate for you to work on.

I highly recommend giving it a try for your next project.

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HTML5

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HTML5 amazingness

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September 24, 2010 @ 12:11pm

by Jeff Byrnes

So Microsoft has turned the publicity machine up to 11 for the IE9 beta release, and there’s some truly impressive pieces that have come out of it. Most notably, the Lost World’s Fairs! These are three graphically and programmatically impressive pieces, using all manner of techniques. The two most impressive to me, however, are the Atlantis World’s Fair and the El Dorado World’s Fair.

Both sites are long, vertical layouts, taking advantage of absolute, relative, and fixed positioning, Typekit for rich typography, Modernizr to make sure things play somewhat nicely in less capable browsers (IE7 & IE8, for example), and jQuery as their JavaScript library. Both also utilize Lettering.JS, a rather interesting piece of JavaScript they developed to enable, as they call it, “radical Web Typography.”

Lettering.JS takes whatever element you hand it, parses through it, and provides you with a series of individual <span> tags for each of the letters in your element. So, using their example, you can provide it with this:

<h1 class="fancy_title">Some Title</h1>

And you’ll receive this:

<h1 class="fancy_title">
  <span class="char1">S</span>
  <span class="char2">o</span>
  <span class="char3">m</span>
  <span class="char4">e</span>
  <span class="char5"></span>
  <span class="char6">T</span>
  <span class="char7">i</span>
  <span class="char8">t</span>
  <span class="char9">l</span>
  <span class="char10">e</span>
</h1>

Seems like it just makes span-itis, right? Think again. Each of those spans can now be individually styled, which, when you look at their examples, suddenly grants you the ability to do some very impressive pieces of work. Yet, it leaves your markup nice, clean, and easy to maintain.

Lettering.JS goes two steps beyond just the letter-wrapping, offering the ability to create <span> tags that wrap whole words or even whole lines. The line wrapping takes its cues from <br /> tags, so this:

<p class="line_split">
    Line 1<br />
    Line 2<br />
    Line 3
</p>

Becomes this:

<p class="line_split">
  <span class="line1">Line 1</span>
  <span class="line2">Line 2</span>
  <span class="line3">Line 3</span>
</p>

Taking a look at Atlantis World’s Fair and El Dorado World’s Fair, you can see just how impressive this technique can truly be. The markup is super clean & relatively lightweight. To avoid a FOUT (Flash of Unstyled Text), they do have their JavaScript loading in the <head>, but even with that, things still load quite rapidly.

Seeing as IE9 can handle pages like these just as well as Firefox 3.6+ and Safari 5+, it seems like the web is about to get a whole lot nicer.

Tags

CSS3, HTML5, IE9, javascript, jQuery, typography

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21st Century Handshake

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August 23, 2010 @ 10:05am

Updated — July 13, 2011 @ 11:18am

by Andrew Kim

In late August, Apple started their attempt to start push mobile payment solution into the hands of the consumer. In a recent Engadget article discovered Apple hired a new Product Manager of Mobile Commerce.Honestly, Apple and Paypal is just behind Japan where established mobile phones are fully capable of transactions in trains, convenient stores, and online payments.

21st Century Handshake is making digital transactions with a swipe of technology. Its exciting to see some excitement in this progress where cloud transactions are effective for every mobile user. Paypal has been effective with their users in creating bump payments between iPhones. Unfortunately, if you don’t have Paypal there is no software out there yet that matches their success. Looking forward as the most handheld device in the last decade phones and smartphones alike will be the force redefining online banking.

Related Articles:

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Apple, ebay, iPhone, Paypal

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Social Media Tools for Parents (Part 2 of 2)

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August 19, 2010 @ 1:58am

Updated — July 13, 2011 @ 11:20am

by Andrew Kim

Welcome to Part 2 of this week’s look into the significance of social media in hands of consumers. All it takes is one mother to take down Pampers’ new line of diapers overnight. Like I mentioned last week companies have used social media and networking intensively in their websites, packaging, and PR in all medias.  There is a dark side to this when your premier relaunch of your product line goes into a downward spiral.

Proctor & Gamble’s strongest baby brand is Pampers’ with a line of baby diapers and wipes. Pampers’ earlier this year revised certain diapers with Dry Max Technology. Without a doubt a prestige brand like Pampers’ would test their products extensively before releasing it. Slowly individual mothers have been reaching out to the internet and social media in sharing stories. The product that came into question was Pampers Swaddlers or Cruisers with Dry Max. At some point several mothers in different markets started a new movement on Facebook. The controversy started with a mom noticing several diaper rashes and investigated it with her pediatrician. Diaper rash has been a common problem for newborns and young toddlers, and there are plenty of solutions in dealing with it. No matter what advices, diaper creams or old wives tales that she encountered it didn’t help her baby. I personally used the product as well and my own child would have similar symptoms. These mothers eventually concluded that these several rashes or in some cases chemical burns have originated from the Pampers’ diapers.

Proctor & Gamble responded with normal PR practices in showing proven tests from various sources that these diapers were clearly 100% safe. With social media mothers continued to unite with one voice and demanded a recall of these diapers. Since May 2010 several mothers in Ohio have gone into court filings against Proctor & Gamble. What we can learn are companies cannot be naive any longer where social mediums have given mothers the tools to take down a Goliath. Of course I’m not scaring future businesses in avoiding social media, but to use it to stay ahead or be on guard of the modern consumer. The public are forgiving people, until a company thinks they know better. Elative marketing’s approach with clients is to look into long-term strategies and anticipate for anything.

Recent Article #1: Social media empowering parents with complaints against Pampers
Recent Article #2: Procter & Gamble in Bind Over Moms’ Web Attack on Pampers Brand
Recent Article #3: Pampers Parents Irritated at P&G Push-Back
Recent Article #4: Parents upset over P&G’s Pampers diapers

Tags

baby, child care, Facebook, newborn, Pampers, Parenting, pediatrician, Proctor & Gamble, social media, Swaddlers, twitter, Yelp

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HTML5 video solutions

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August 17, 2010 @ 3:33pm

Updated — August 20, 2010 @ 8:23am

by Jeff Byrnes

So everybody’s excited about HTML5, and the native media capabilities it brings; specifically the <video> tag. But at the moment, support is a bit tricky. To quickly reiterate:

So, as you can see, things are all over the place. To properly implement HTML5 video, we need to supply two video files: one file encoded with H.264/AAC contained in an MP4, and another encoded with Theora/Vorbis contained in an Ogg. It would also be wise to create a WebM version of your video as well, to future-proof yourself for the day when Theora is deprecated completely.

Now, once you’ve got your video files encoded, the matter of embedding them correctly raises its ugly head. Thankfully, there are a few ready-to-go solutions for this.

First up is Video for Everybody, created by Kroc Camen. VfE serves up HTML5 video (MP4 and either Ogg or WebM) without JavaScript. This is the very first solution put forth for easy HTML5 video support, and, as Kroc himself writes, should in no way be considered a long-term solution. But he’s being very forward-looking, and not very generous with his work. The primary goal with this player is to use no JavaScript, and thus make it as widely compatible as possible (think RSS readers & other JS-disabled avenues.)

Next, we’ve got Video JS, which, true to its name, relies on JS. However, unlike VfE, the controls are consistent between platforms, which is definitely a marked improvement.

The third and, in my opinion, most promising ready-made solution for HTML5 video is SublimeVideo by the gurus over at Jilion. This is a player with not only a consistent UI, but tons of additional features, a full-window mode (and a full-screen version in Safari!), and it’s being neatly packaged up. Unlike the other two, however, it’s still in-progress, and it will only be free for non-commercial use.

So there you have it folks; some readymade HTML5 video solutions; enjoy!

Tags

HTML5, javascript, video

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Social Media Tools for Parents (Part 1 of 2)

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August 9, 2010 @ 10:42am

Updated — July 13, 2011 @ 12:24pm

by Andrew Kim

Part 1: Sooner or later parents of different generations and ethnics are getting involved with the basics of social media. Not as intensive as tweeting, but Facebook has strengthen family networks and rapid fire feedback. In this week’s blog is about the highlights of search engines and social media networks for parents. Next week I’ll give an example of a PR disaster companies need to be aware when their brands can be disseminated and easily tarnished overnight.

Using Google, Bing, Yelp, and Wiki-Everything on the iPhone has given my wife, wealth of knowledge from the apple tree in a matter of seconds. As first time parents we are constantly seeking new methods and make split-second decisions as a family. What’s great is pulling information from several websites or batch of links from Google before getting it from the doctor’s office. Relying on the feedback of hundreds of other blogs has given us the second opinion we needed. Yelp has been the best in finding hopeful brick and mortar business where they have effective in seeking the right care for our child. Of course if something is obviously wrong and want more thorough information please consult with your pediatrician.

Facebook has been a great asset to get information, promotions and a structured way in giving back companies our feedback. How valuable is that? Companies not yet in online marketing must take advantage in these technologies, before spending critical funds elsewhere. Elative Marketing has the strong platforms for clients and companies can use to implement immediately.

Tune in next week.

Tags

baby, child care, Facebook, newborn, Parenting, pediatrician, social media, twitter, Yelp

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Facing the (Font) Future

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August 6, 2010 @ 4:14pm

Updated — August 16, 2010 @ 8:37am

by Jeff Byrnes

It seems as though the technology for representing fonts on the web are finally coming to fruition. With the W3C’s near-adoption of the WOFF format (it has remarked that “…it expects WOFF to soon become the ‘single, interoperable format’ supported by all browsers.”), @font-face seems poised to become the firm technology for embedding fonts in a site.

Previously, techniques like cufón & sIFR were the best way to deploy a font not commonly installed across all systems, or to guarantee a particular font is used. These required JavaScript alone at best, or a combination of JavaScript & Flash.

So with that, I give you the most bulletproof, known as the smiley variation, way to deploy @font-face to your site (courtesy of Paul Irish):

@font-face {
    font-family: 'Graublau Web';
    src: url('GraublauWeb.eot');
    src: local('☺'),
         url('GraublauWeb.otf') format('opentype');
}

It’s always good to know how it all works, so definitely head over to Paul Irish’s article, but you can use Font Squirrel’s @font-face generator to simplify your life.

Now, however, the biggest hurdle is the licensing. Since we are basically allowing for the downloading of the font files, things can get a bit sticky. Thankfully, many of the font foundries are coming around and crafting new licensing, and even creating web versions of their typefaces. At the very least, they’re joining forces with other JavaScript-based solutions like Typekit and Fontdeck. We’ll see how it all turns out.

Tags

@font-face, CSS, CSS3, cufón, fonts, sIFR, typography

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Tweet Your Menus, Dine with Immediate Satisfaction

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August 2, 2010 @ 12:39pm

Updated — July 13, 2011 @ 12:18pm

by Andrew Kim

Having that midnight craving or sick of fast food solutions at work? Give your local social media food trucks in your neighborhood a try. Out the door of the usual greasy, iced, and forgettable foods, say hello to the new tech buffet line. How can we say no to Twitter, Facebook, blogging and every other social media avenue? It’s the perfect vehicle for informing your customers instantly of your restaurant or event. You can actually enjoy something good and know when andwhere to be back for more. Significant challenges for meals on wheels are telling their customers when and where to find them. Today’s iPhones and smartphones give businesses affordable way to mass market their brands overnight.

A combination of Elative Events and Social Media services can provide businesses with direct marketing and cost-effective feedback. Utilizing social media for events, product release dates, PR alerts, and limited promotions are great to put information out there. Setting up these services for your website or business can save you on traditional marketing and reinvest where its more important.

So do yourself a favor find your local food trucks and treat yourself.

Kogi BBQ Truck, Greater Los Angeles, California
Dessert Truck, Greater NYC, New York
General Bao Bun Truck, San Francisco Bay Area, California

Tags

dessert, Facebook, food network, food service, food trucks, restaurants, social media, social networking, twitter

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One Response to “Tweet Your Menus, Dine with Immediate Satisfaction”

  1. Jeff Byrnes on August 2nd, 2010 12:45pm

    Hey, I saw something about this the other day, very cool stuff! I wonder if there’s any food trucks here in Boston…

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