Pemaquid Communications

More than 8 million people downloaded Firefox 3 in a 24-hour period, setting a world record, and more than 28 million download have taken place since the browser was released June 17.

BBC News »

Today turned out to be an interesting study in usability, the power of Habit, and backwards compatibility. A colleague - she’s an über-geek - casually asked if I was running Firefox 3, the latest (beta) version of the popular open source browser put out by the Mozilla Project and released into the wild last Tuesday. Nope, I said, but I can fix that soon enough (it sounded like something worth doing). I downloaded it.

Alas! My productivity took a detour.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to knock FF3, and it’s got lots of worthy improvements, especially in the area of security. It easily updated my bookmarks and reconfigured my plug-ins. New plug-ins were easier to install and pop ups were easier to deal with. But, as they say, it is the little things that count.

For me, that was things like the browser chrome. Whoever designed FF3 must have loved Netscape 6+ and Safari, because the chrome looks very similar to those browsers. Not a big deal, but it was a “little” detail. It took a split-second longer for me to find my bookmarks and links in the chrome (which were not _quite_ where they used to be), and all those microseconds added up to a usability issue. It reminded me of a basic tenet of usability - Don’t Make Me Think!.

In other words, the more a person has to think about how to complete a task, the less they are thinking about the task itself - and that makes it tough to concentrate. Apps that make you think will ultimately be less successful than those that don’t.

I could have lived w/that. But the clincher for me was the download error I got when I tried to install Firebug 1.1 (the version that is supposed to run on FF3). That did it - I need my Firebug! Back to Firefox 2 - at least for now.

Editor’s Note: Eureka! I found Firebug 1.2, which does in fact work on FF3. So… with that, I can bounce back up to version 3.

Scanning through Cameron Moll’s book Mobile Web Design, and he points out the difference between Art and Design:

…what separates design from art is that design ‘is meant to be functional’.

I couldn’t agree more. The graphical, visual look of a Web site, in order to succeed, must serve to make the site useful.

Bumped into a link today that provided good food for thought: It’s about the Not-just-for-profit Company.

Sure, money is the oxygen of business, but even more importantly, you have to be working to create a life worth living - both for yourself, your employees and your Clients.

As we grow, I want to make sure Pemaquid is about generating great ideas. If we do that, I’m sure the money (at least enough of it to live off of) will take care of itself.

We are hard pressed to do all the work ourselves these days, but are willing to do so until we find just the right person. Are you up to the task?

We are looking for the next Front-End Superstar to join our team. We are in Startup Mode. The ideal candidate for this position thrives in an idea-driven culture, is “always on” and in tune with teammates, is as resourceful as 007 and has a will to win like Mean Joe Greene.

In this position, you’ll be creating the graphic design, xHTML and CSS for some of the biggest and best-known companies in Maine and beyond.

Requirements

• You have solid experience w/W3C compliant, cross-browser compatible xHTML and CSS-based layouts
• When it comes to graphic design, you are Fully Loaded (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) and use those tools creatively
• You possess a strong knowledge of design basics and principles
• You understand the WAI Accessibility Guidelines and Section 508 compliance
• You understand what Progressive Enhancement means w/o googling it before the interview
• You can spot a 1px difference at a glance (and it makes you twitch)
• You suck down new technologies like Gatorade

Extra Credit

• Flash
• PHP
• You know the difference between YUI, jQuery, Prototype, Ext, and Moo Tools, and you know X is better than Y and Z is terrible.
• You know your way around a server control panel (not just FTP)
• You have an inner calling to program for the iPhone.

About Us
Pemaquid Communications, LLC combines great visual design w/easy-to-use content management systems to create solid interactive Web sites that provide a great user experience. We a leading designer of sites that meet W3C Accessibility guidelines, adhere to Web Standards, are cross-browser compatible and produce valid xHTML and CSS. We are not graphic designers or programmers (though we do those things) - we are Interaction Designers.

Our goal is to create joyful, useful online experiences for our Clients and their customers.

Pemaquid Communications has scored three nominations for techMaine’s annual Best of the Web Awards. Pemaquid tied for the most nominations of any Maine Web design studio. The nominees are…

annie|catherine.com
Best e-Commerce Site

The site features exquisite stationery for any occasion, along with fine art prints, calendars and something racy called Go-Go Wrap! The company manages over 200 product listings in more than a dozen categories, along with order tracking and fulfillment, through a custom version of Pemaquid’s Commerce Manager.

More about annie|catherine »

MidcoastMaine.com
(Southern Midcoast Maine Chamber)
Best Non-Profit Site

This site draws out the visually appealing nature of this part of the Maine Coast. For many Internet searchers, the site is a tourist gateway to the region and it was very important to the Chamber that the site, through its look and feel, compare favorably to similar sites for more well-known Downeast destinations.

More about MidcoastMaine.com »

The Big Easy - www.bigeasyportland.com
Best Arts & Entertainment Site

The Big Easy is Portland, Maine’s premier night spot. The club wanted a new Web site that rocks as loud as they do. The Content Manager allows easy-self-publishing of upcoming events as well as multiple Photo Galleries of local bands in action on its stage. The design really makes you want to be there!

More about The Big Easy »

Best of the Web award winners will be announced at techMaine’s Gala, taking place May 20th @ the Eastland Park Hotel Ballroom.

Last weekend marked a milestone for those of us involved in the online world here in Maine. Joe Michaud, who had led MaineToday.com for the last dozen years, stepped down at the end of April, and many MaineToday “alumni” were on hand at Ri Ra last Friday to wish Joe well (Ellen Kanner, an old co-worker who now is a Web designer at Dartmouth, even came down from Hanover).

Folks who spent time working under Joe’s leadership have gone on to form successful, influential Web businesses in the area: Franklin McMahon (former MaineToday.com Creative Services Manager) now has a well-known photography and podcasting company; Justin Davis now heads Portland Web Works, a Pemaquid competitor whose Clients include the Maine Office of Tourism; and (because I like to enumerate things like this in groups of three) I’ll throw myself in there as well.

Way back in the mid ’90’s, when we barely knew what a “browser” was, Joe and a small team at the Portland Press Herald created a skunkworks to try to figure out this “Internet thing”. What developed was a series of Web sites that coalesced to form MaineToday.com. Under Joe’s leadership, MaineToday won many awards, often against larger competitors, and became known as a standard-setting creative force in the mostly bland world of online newspaper publishing.

We were always testing boundaries. I remember covering the 2000 election from the studios of our television partner, WMTW. My job was to post up-to-the-minute blurbs to the MaineToday site about the local, regional and national returns coming in that night. It was pretty radical for a newspaper to have someone publishing on the spot with very little editorial oversight. We didn’t call it blogging back then, but that’s exactly what we were doing.

Now Joe is hanging out a shingle as a consultant to said newspaper industry - and they really need to hear from someone like him. Newspaper ad revenue continues to erode, and those dollars are not migrating to publishers’ digital facsimiles of the printed word. Newspapers’ core revenue centers have continued to lose out to online competitors like Craig’s List (want ads), Cars.com (automotive ads) and Zillow (real estate ads).

My take is that it won’t be long before the creative destruction precipitated by the Internet drives newspapers to the same fate as encyclopedia salesmen. However, if there’s anyone who can help smart publishers figure out how to best take advantage of their remaining assets - strong brands, relatively large audiences and strong advertiser relationships - it’s Joe Michaud.

Before launching a new site, it’s always a good idea to run a check on its accessibility to folks with visual or other physical disabilities.

One of our favorite tools for checking Web site accessibility is no longer available. The WebXact service from Watchfire had a very comprehensive free assessment tool that not only checked accessibility but also other important components of the Web page to make sure it was well-formed. Alas! IBM, which owns Watchfire, decided in February that the tool would no longer be offered for free - it now costs a very steep $1,580 for a 12-month license.

Not surprisingly, according to one metric I use, the site’s traffic plummeted in March to half of its previous levels. I expect April’s traffic numbers will be down even further. Perhaps a better idea would have been for IBM to continue offering WebXact for free while posting ads for content relevant to those using the service.

No matter. Other excellent free tools are available. Here are a few we use at Pemaquid:

• Cynthia Says Portal (contentquality.com) - from HiSoftware, a company that develops accessible software. Just enter the URL of a page in question on your site, and the service will run a report to show how it measures up against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and Section 508 guidelines. The report is thorough and runs very fast. It’s become the spot-checker-of-choice for many top-flight Web design firms.
• WAVE - runs a similar report when you enter the URL of a page. Offers a visual view of the page as well as some other features, including a text-only view. Not as comprehensive as Cynthia Says. Here’s a report on Pemaquid’s home page

No accessibility tool is perfect, but these two can help you avoid making obvious mistakes.

Finally, I should add Web designers shouldn’t rely on any tool to tell them whether their work is accessible. You need to do your homework. Required reading: the Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines for accessible Web design.

About a year ago I had a mid-life crisis. I pulled out my bass guitar, which for years had been gathering dust under the bed in the spare room, and looked to join a blues band. Fortunately, I didn’t have to look far.

I play bass and sing backing vocals (badly) in Bluezberry Jam, a great group of folks here in Portland, Maine. My band mates are: Myra Robinson (vocals, percussion), Dave Collins (vocals, guitars), Rudy Gabrielson (keyboards, harmonica, percussion, electric dulcimer, vocals) and Rick Cormier (percussion).

They are all more musically gifted than I am, but I make it up by leading one of the most talented Web design studios in Maine.

In my spare time I recently rocked out an updated site for the band. It uses the Pemaquid Content Manager for self-publishing content. I had some fun w/creative copywriting and design, and it’s got a lot of Pemaquid’s typical interactive goodies, including accessible sliders and photo galleries.

We hope you find it musically delicious! Hope to see you at a gig soon…

Wordpress 2.5 was released about a week ago. It sports an administrative interface that was redesigned by Happy Cog. I’ve kicked the tires on it and it’s a lean, clean machine. You may want to upgrade.

Seems like everybody is Twittering these days (or at least everyone in the wonderful world of Web).

For the uninitiated (unindoctrinatred?) Twitter is a service that let’s you tell your buds where you are and what you’re doing in up-to-the-minute detail (emphasis on “minute” as in ‘my-NOOT’). You can post to your Twitter via a cellphone text message and your pals subscribe to be notified when you “twitter” (verb). You can “follow” the tweets of others, having the site alert you by cellphone when friends update their accounts.

It’s this “text-message-broadcasting” that makes Twitter unique.

I’d always been of the opinion that all this twittering is not especially useful, and that instead of making life easier it adds an unnecessary layer of complexity. I recently had the perfect opportunity to test that assumption: the 2008 SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. I knew some folks who were going to attend and Twitter seemed like the perfect way to stay in immediate contact as we fanned out across the cavernous conference facilities.

At that it worked reasonably well. “Panel in Ballroom A rocks! - u should b here” or “I’m coming down from the second floor - meet me at the 4th Street entrance and we’ll go to lunch” were typical posts. On the other hand, I concluded that I could have easily survived - as I have for many years - without the tweeting.

There’s a certain tyranny about using Twitter. Ostensibly, one of the biggest reasons to use Twitter is to let your pals know where you are or what you’re thinking in up-to-the-minute fashion. So you can easily fall into a post-early-post-often-vortex in order to keep friends informed (otherwise, after all, they might think you’re dead, and come to look for you at your last-twittered location).

Many technological tools are like this. There’s a tantalizing enticement to do something you’ve never been able to do before (”Cool, I can send a single text message to a Web site and it can alert all my friends? Dude!”). We spend a lot of time in front of our computers… because we can (I’m guilty as charged). We use devices that save us time - but if we then fill up that newly-found free time with activities that aren’t very meaningful, our quality of life goes down, not up.

There’s a usability message here: before adopting a new technological device or app we should take a serious look at whether these tools truly help make our lives easier and better - or merely different.

Would you ever call an apparel retailer like L.L. Bean and ask for a pizza? Even if you did, would you expect them to assist you? Well, that’s just what a customer service rep at Zappos.com did, according to company CEO Tony Hsieh, who led a discussion on Top Ten Lessons Learned in e-commerce at SXSW Interactive.

Hsieh recounted the time when (at a different) conference, someone couldn’t get a late night pizza from room service, he jokingly suggested they ring his call center. Zappos, he said, focuses its branding on providing superlative customer service. The rep came through, providing the names of 5 pizza joints in the vicinity of the hotel.

Zappos sells apparel (primarily shoes) but Hsieh said that delivering exceptionally great customer service is key to their branding strategy - and their success. He said it may be more expensive to do that - Zappos provides free shipping and staffs its call center so that the average hold time is only 15 seconds - but its viewed as an investment, not an expense.

Hsieh says that important because when it comes to e-commerce, customer loyalty, repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals are very important to developing a successful business.

Here’s Hsieh’s Top Ten Lessons Learned in e-commerce:

1. e-commerce is built on repeat customers
2. word-of-mouth really works online
3. don’t compete on price
4. make sure Web site inventory is 10% accurate
5. centrally locate your distribution
6. customer service is an investment, not an expense
7. start small, stay focused
8. don’t be secretive; don’t worry about competitors
9. actively manage your company culture
10. be wary of so-called “experts”

Here’s a link to Hsieh’s presentation.

Here I am at SXSW Interactive, in Austin, Texas. If they nuked this town right now, they’d eliminate the talent behind the world’s most popular and innovative sites and set back Web development ten years - as well as perhaps 80% of the world’s MacBook Pro users.

I’m glad to be here for the second year in a row. I’m not so glad my bags are not…

The Big Easy, located at 55 Market Street in the heart of Old Port, is Portland’s premier music venue. Club owner Ken Bell was looking for a hip new look that would give folks a great way to easily look up upcoming shows. More importantly, he wanted a way to easily self-publish photos, calendar listings and links.

So, we rocked until our fingers bled onto our mouses and created a new look that we hope makes you want to head downtown. Ken says feedback has been very complimentary so far - thanks everybody!

The site uses the Pemaquid Content Manager for self-publishing of content. Ken & Co. will also be using Pemaquid’s email service for enewsletters.

Your Rockstar Design Team are:

Walt Craven - Graphic Design, guitars (Walt is also the lead vocalist for local band Lost on Liftoff)

The Elusive Dr. Jecker (that’s Dr. Jennifer Ecker, Pixel Surgeon) - Web design, lead guitars, keyboard, harmonica, ukelele

Rob Landry - (yours truly) Interaction Design, Programming, bass, drums, vocals (yes, bass & drums at the same time)

Rock on!

Gettin’ on a Big Ol’ Jet Airliner later today to head to the biggest, baddest scrum of Web-slinging early-adopters the world has ever seen.

Yep, SXSW Interactive ‘08.

Two years ago, there was blogging. Last year, online video. This year it’s… (you guessed it)… All Things Social.

I’ll be reporting live.

Wow, that didn’t take long! A few days after we posted a message about how only certain folks could post their thoughts - or job postings - on MaineBusiness.com, the MaineToday.com property has retooled and opened things up so that anyone can set up their blogging shop.

Do we already wield that much clout in this town?!?

Nah, the changes were planned. We talked to Carl Natale, MaineBusiness’ Chief Information Innovator (he says he’s not an “editor” or “content developer”) last week. Anyway, it’s nice to see that we can post our own job openings on the site if we like.

Yep, we set up a MaineBusiness blog. Right now I’m looking for a catchy name. Comment if you have any ideas.

The other day I surfed over to the blog on Internet marketing written by Rich Brooks, President of Flyte New Media, and bumped into this job posting.

Interesting read - if you’re a job-seeker, that is. The rest of the business community would find it hard to glean anything useful.

It didn’t take long to find another job posting. During the same week.

Huh? I thought this was supposed to be about Internet marketing.

Funny, I’ve never read Bill Nemitz’ column in the Press Herald and found that he was on the lookout for copywriters. A column like that would never make the light of day.

Things are different at MaineBusiness.com, a title run by MaineToday.com and Blethen Maine Newspapers, according to Carl Natale, the editorial staffer who manages the site’s bloggers. I’ve spoken to Carl and he said he found nothing inappropriate with the post.

I beg to disagree. Shameless self-promotion that doesn’t add value to a site’s core readership should be out of bounds.

I was Carl’s predecessor at MaineBusiness.com, and when I ran the show, I was careful to instruct our columnists (this was back before anyone was a “blogger”) not to use their space to directly promote their business.

MaineBusiness.com’s stock in trade is its credibility. Without it, it’s just another Blogger.com (and I’d hate to see that happen).

Speaking of Blogger.com, Carl says that by the end of the month MaineBusiness.com will be rolling out a new set of blogging tools that will allow anyone to hang a shingle and roll their own blog on the site. If anyone can set up a blog about anything, that’s one way to diffuse the issue. We’ll look forward to that.

Cardiovascular Consultants of Maine provides state of the art heart care to patients throughout the region. Based in Scarborough and with facilities in Augusta, Waterville, Sanford and Farmington, their goal is to be known as the preeminent full-service cardiology group serving Northern New England.

They approached Pemaquid recently with a story that’s not uncommon: a staff member had set up their site several years ago, but things had evolved to the point where it was difficult to manage the information quickly and in an organized fashion.

Problem solved. Pemaquid created a design that, among other things, features an online resource library on heart health, heart disease prevention and the meaning of cardiovascular terms (think “Cardiomyopathy”, “Coumadin” or “ACE inhibitors”) that are important to people undergoing cardiac care.

Pemaquid provides ongoing content updates for CCM, as well as Web hosting services, and as with all our Clients, we focus on speed as well as design execution. April Donovan, Cardiovascular Consultants’ CEO, says we’re hitting our marks:

I find Rob Landry and his staff to be responsive, professional and reliable. They listen to our needs and offer innovative solutions through great design and quick delivery.

It’s been a pleasure working with April, Elise Plummer, Samantha Smith and all at Cardiovascular Consultants of Maine, and we look forward to working with them for a long time to come!

Firefox fans will be interested to know that version three of their favorite surfboard for the Web just went Beta yesterday. However, unless your inner geek can’t resist, you might want to hold of on downloading it for a bit. V3 lacks a number of important plug-ins, and it sometimes doesn’t render sites as it should (that’s why there’s a beta period, right?).

The word on the street is that Firefox 3 has solved most issues related to memory leaks and security - already very good - is new and improved.

Firefox is now used by roughly 20% of Internet users.

Firefox 3 download page & release notes »

Wednesday I was the guest lecturer at an e-business class at the University of Southern Maine. The students will be working with us on Extreme Makeover - Web Site Edition.

I’m happy to report that no fruit was thrown, and no snores were heard.

In fact I heard a lot of great questions (”Are there any types of projects you wouldn’t take on?” Answer: yes, but not many. That’s for another post.)

One question was inevitable, I suppose: “How do you make money building Web sites in Portland, Maine?” (Remember, this is a business class.)

After being in the Web design business for more than five years, here’s my answer. It might sound corny or trite, but it’s worked for me.

Identify a problem and then solve it. Over and over. Better and better. I started as a mild-mannered (OK, maybe not so much) HTML coder, then one day a Client asked whether I could help them create a content management system. I realized that interactive programming and databases were involved, so I developed the skills to meet that need. Over time Pemaquid has developed Web hosting, e-commerce and search engine marketing services to meet other needs we’re asked about all the time.

Focus on building relationships. Take good care of people, treat them the way you want to be treated and they will take care of you and they will come back to you again and again (See? I told you it was going to sound trite). A significant percentage of our new work comes to us through existing Clients. When someone says to a business contact “You should work with XYZ Web design”, giving you that third-party endorsement, it’s much more powerful and persuasive than just about any other sales pitch you can whip up.

Do those two things, be creative and always on the lookout for new trends in your industry, and the money (knocking hard on wood here) will usually take care of itself.