We all know that typical imagery of the tortured artist…the individual with an odd sense of style and penchant for nonconformity.
Read MoreArchive for the ‘Inspiration’ Category
Tea Time with Sarah Rose
Tea always seemed like a peculiar concept to me: put some dried leafy stuff in hot water, add saccharin supplement, and be soothed.
Perhaps Starbucks enlisted me at too early an age with Grande Caramel Macchiatos and its many variations. How could I even compare leaf-flavored hot water to a caramel chocolaty caffeinated shake that my mom somehow allowed me to drink before school?
In the last year, though, I’ve voyaged out to discover what the big deal was, why my dad, who remembers nobody’s name remembers Earl Grey’s when he’s sick, why my roommate always makes a cup of chamomile before…
Read MoreA methodical look at Hotel booking engines
5 major brand hotels sites evaluated by users in a formal study. See the results.
Read MoreMyths and Misconceptions about Digital Advertising
There is so much information on the Internet that it can be hard to separate what is substantial and what are the mad ramblings of a 12 year old on his parents’ computer. It’s not surprising that amongst the photoshoped pictures of Bigfoot, fake celebrity deaths, and fan-made film trailers, there is a lot of misinformation that becomes commonly thought of as fact. This is especially true when it comes to subjects like advertising where lots of people have strong opinions and are willing to share them. (I’ve had more than a few people tell me “Advertising doesn’t work on…
Read MoreFrontend Optimization, pt. 5
In the fifth and final part of our multi-part Frontend Optimization series, I’ll cover my notes from Steve Souder’s “High Performance Websites” and “Even Faster Websites” books that can help optimize your images and javascript code.
Optimize Javascript Code
- Minimize DOM Access. Manipulating the DOM is very resource intensive for browsers.
- Smart Event Handlers. Use Event Delegation. You can put on event handler on a container div and then figure out which button inside that div was actually clicked in the function to be executed.
- Reduce size of private functions (those called only within the js itself, not those called in other documents). So function foobar() would become…
What is a Choonimal? Q&A with Choonimals creator Chris Theibert.
Stopping by today is Chris Theibert, creator of the soon to be world famous Choonimals Clothing Company. If you’re looking for a shirt featuring a crazy cartoon creature , he’s your guy.
Ryan: How many times have you answered the question “What is a Choonimal?”:
Chris: At least 5x per event, and roughly 2x a week, so that would be about 204.34x a year. Math.
Ryan: What is a Choonimal?
Chris: Ha! Choonimals are a bunch of rabid, gnarl-toothed, crook-eyed, kinda scary but kinda cute animals my friends and I dreamt up in high school and continue to create even though we should…
Read MoreOne Last Hissy Fit with Fashion Designer Lisa Rigney
Dinner with one person dead or alive? Obviously, Tim Gunn.
Who’s Tim Gunn? He’s a fashion sage/life mentor to all who take his always-dead-on advice. Oh, and he co-hosts my favorite reality TV show, Project Runway. In each episode, Gunn checks in on the competing designers during challenges and says things like “this worries me” or “make it work!”
Beside the fact that I’d sit down with Tim Gunn and ask him questions that have absolutely nothing to do with fashion—Do you like Diet Coke? What do you think of this health care stuff? Can we do this again?—he’s really opened my…
Read MoreDorothée Royal-Hedinger: Chicago’s Digital Tree Hugger
Dorothée Royal-Hedinger has been a force to be reckoned with in non-profit social media advertising since she started out at See3 Communications as a new media strategist. She moved on to co-found NobleTree Media where she has worked with non-profit causes like Minds Matter Chicago and the National Association of Working Women. She created OrganicNation.tv in May 2009 and has won numerous awards including Tree Hugger’s Best Food Twitter Feed (.treehugger.com/best-of-green-food-and-health) and the Do Something American Express Grant. In addition to being a top flight social media guru, her work with OrganicNation.tv has appeared on Current TV, The Huffington Post, GOOD and TreeHugger.com.…
Easy Ways to do Online Event Advertising
One of the first advertising jobs I had was working on a midnight movie film festival for a local movie theater chain. We had a very limited budget and were forced to do a lot of different things to get our message out and in the process I learned a lot about event advertising. In a lot of ways event advertising is easier than advertising a product or brand. Your only competitors are other events going on at the time and the TV at home. If you know exactly what your competition is, it’s a lot easier to plan an…
Read MoreWhat I’ve learned: Time for the ad industry to catch up.
Ok, everyone take a deep breath. I’m not going to go on an endless rant on why I think more companies need to modernize their approach to rich media ads……or am I? (cue evil laugh) Ahhhh-ha-ha-ha-ha.
What I will say is that a little more progressive thinking would help cut out a lot of the senseless number of versions required for some companies running rich media ads and also (potentially) increase your margin for success. So how did I come to this conclusion? Through recent conversation with some ad partners and also jumping through a technical hurdle or two.
We recently…
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