If you’re anything like me you probably spent a good portion of your childhood forever burning the images from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show into your brain. Well there’s no doubt in my mind that Christopher Lee definitely did. He’s a young buck working for Buck in LA and he’s bringing back that Dudley Do-Right vibe with a vengeance and I’m stoked. There’s plenty of retro styled illustration in there as well as some killer stuff that’s totally his own steez. It gets me feeling all warm and fuzzy clicking through it. I just hope Snidely Whiplash isn’t behind all this or I’m going to have to tie his top-hat wearing ass to the train tracks.

www.thebeastisback.com

Matt Schreiber, Creative

As I wrote in an earlier review of Google’s “iGoogle” home page feed aggregator, my biggest issue with the tool was its limited design options (”themes”). For those that remember the earlier days of iGoogle, a max of about 10 themes existed, all of which were rather campy and poorly designed. While I’ve always admired Google for its ability to show restraint in design (and therefore promote simplicity and ease of use), I feared that these new themes were sending a signal: Google was headed in the direction of AOL, or, design for the masses. [ more… ]

In the face of stiff competition from Microsoft’s Silverlight and Sun’s JavaFX, Adobe’s Flash technology seems to be making all the right moves.
Adobe has given us the tools to make Flash dance (I haven’t used those two words together since the eighties) in new and interesting ways.

In particular, Flex 3 and ActionScript 3 have made it possible for we programming geeks to create visually rich internet applications using a strongly typed, object oriented programming language and a decent markup language. And the AIR runtime engine has enabled us to extend these type of applications to the desktop using the same programming languages and skill sets.

Now that Flex 3 is open sourced I expect we’ll see even more progress in terms of documentation and API’s in Flex 4 (code named Gumbo).

But this isn’t meant to be cheerleading camp. So here’s my hint of the day for flex developers wanting to create RIA applications. Both Cairngorm and PureMVC are strong frameworks for creating Model/View/Controller applications in Flex and Actionscript. But if you are creating something relatively simple, both of these frameworks can add unnecessary complexity and overhead to your application.

For a simpler application, I highly recommend Tom Bray’s EasyMVC recipe (unfortunately you have to log into Adobe to view his screencast). Just to keep you confused, there is a second actionscript framework calling itself EasyMVC written by Simeon Bateman. I prefer Tom Bray’s explanation and approach. He refers to his EasyMVC as a recipe. There are no source code files to download, only a explained methodology for how to structure a well organized application. It’s also a nice primer for Cairngorm development for anyone interested in learning more about that framework.

- Dan Fox, VP of Technology

We’re all familiar with the ideas of backwards compatibility and graceful degradation. Now it’s time to embrace the idea of progressive enhancement.

Like backwards compatibility and graceful degradation, progressive enhancement is not a new idea. At its simplest, progressive enhancement means that a system will provide a base level of performance, with higher performance provided for clients which can handle it. But the base level of performance must be such that it provides everything necessary to achieve the goals of the system.

For the web, progressive enhancement means providing a basic level of content for everyone, even the most primitive browsers, and then adding in more content (like multimedia) and capabilities (like fancy Flash navigation or form auto-complete) for those who want it and have the resources for it.

Progressive enhancement is surprisingly easy to apply to web projects. The industry best practices of semantic markup and separation of presentation from content provide a great foundation, and from there you can apply some simple techniques to progressively enhance that base. AJAX techniques, for example, are excellent choices for progressive enhancement, though it’s very important not to rely on AJAX as the sole provider of necessary function.

The biggest myth about progressive enhancement is that it severely constrains design and creativity, requiring a sort of “least common denominator” approach to producing websites. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. With a solid foundation of semantic markup and standards compliance, it’s easy to use progressive enhancement to create amazing websites with rich interaction and multimedia capabilities.

The benefits of progressive enhancement come directly from the basic level of content it provides, which is aimed at everyone. Progressive enhancement assures that even simple user agents can access your content and parse it correctly, which assures accurate search engine placement as well as a basic level of accessibility. And you’re still providing a top-notch interactive experience for the majority of users who have modern browsers and the resources to handle it.

- Jon Reid, Interface Development

The limited edition, artist series sneaker seems to be growing even more popular than sport-specific shoes. To take advantage of this trend, Adidas Originals partnered up with 180 LA to create a web based series called “The Left-Right Project”, that will be rolling out this Spring and Summer. Using car-sized shoes, and artists to represent the respective American coastlines, West coast artist Sam Flores is painting the Left shoe, while New York based Surface to Air is making the Right shoe.

So why is this relevant to interactive? Well, it’s spectacularly relevant web-based content that has been lighting up the blogosphere. The site provides videos, and photos, etc, but that content spills out onto YouTube and other Social channels, but more importantly, all the right blogs have picked it up to make it a pretty intense EPR campaign. I want one to paint!

David Schell, Creative

The traditional teodice problem goes like this: ”If God is good and almighty, then why is there evil in the world?” That’s a very good question that has been debated by smarter people than me for centuries. Now, I don’t know if I want to blame God for the issue I will discuss here, even though I do think that bad communication is definitely in part responsible for the bad things that go on in this world. Instead I will rewrite the problem statement to be:

“Now that we have all these wonderful media to help us communicate,
how come it is still so hard?”

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With three months down at texturemedia and one to go, I’ve been doing some reflection about my experience here: what I’ve learned, what still flies over my head like an overthrown frisbee, and how I can make the most of what little time I have left. Standing at the forefront of the interactive age as part of a company leading the charge, I consider myself extremely lucky. If anyone is in a good position to understand the digital sphere, my name falls near the top of the list. But because the Web evolves at an exponential rate, it seems like all I can do is play catch-up. And what’s ironic is that every second I do, and no matter how hard I sprint, I’m still losing ground.

That’s daunting whether you’re an intern, a long-time employee, or anyone else, for that matter. No one knew the Internet would do what it has done to media, globalization, information acquisition, humanity. I can’t even speak accurately as to what it’s doing now except growing.

Yet despite a slipping grasp on what I know to be true about the Internet, I’m not deterred by information overload. Quite the opposite, in fact. Agencies like texturemedia make content more presentable, more easily digested, more navigable, so that the ambitious learner in me can sit down at the computer several times a day without feeling inundated by Web content. I browse, I log in, I hunt like I’m getting paid by the click.

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This year texturemedia is fortunate enough to have two of our sites nominated for Webby Awards, The Pentax Photo Gallery in the best use of photography category and the King Tut exhibition site they created in the event category. Politics West, a site we produced for The Denver Post, also was an official honoree.

Both of the nominated sites are also up for People’s Choice Awards, which means that you can help us and cast your vote now! Of course we hope the sites win, but just to be nominated is a huge honor. This year the Webby Awards received over 10,000 entries from all 50 states and over 60 countries! Less than 5% were selected as nominees. Congrats to everyone on the project teams!

David Schell, Creative

If only Interactive was more ice cream parlors. When I was a kid, growing up in the South, we often visited Baskin Robbins to explore the world of flavors. I remember thinking that the bright pink and white brand experience was “immersive” and inviting. In kid’s language, a parlor visit was just plain fun.

Baskin Robbins did a good thing. They created a brand capable of surrounding customers. A visit to their ice cream parlors allows you to taste it, sit with it, share it, interact with it, and make the visit your own personal brand experience with family & friends.

The immersive Baskin Robbins experience is great brand strategy in action. We can all take a few notes and apply that same immersive experience when designing a darn good Website. Great Websites invite you to sit back (in the pink plastic chairs), explore (the 31+ flavors), navigate (grab a plastic tasting spoon), and collaborate (invite your family & friends).

I don’t know about you, but ice cream parlor terms are now going to be part of my Interactive vernacular. Such as: send us your favorite flavor, Very Berry Strawberry or Pralines and Cream, and we’ll pull up the pink plastic chairs.

Allison Kent, New Business