Crucé Design

• A very useful and super sexy Wordpress plugin for editing in place. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/front-end-editor/ #

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• New Website Launch: Johnnie Gachassin, LCSW at http://lafayettetraumatherapy.com Johnnie is an awesome and amazing counselor. Check her out! #

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Johnnie Gachassin came to us to design a web presence and ended up doing a complete branding package. She was a joy to work with and I wish I had 10 more clients like her. You can visit her site here: http://www.lafayettetraumatherapy.com.

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We recently completed our first international client project for the Pontifical North American College located in Vatican City. The seminary college is charged with training and preparing the next generation of Roman Catholic priest’s and religious and stands in the shadow of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The site had been maintained for many years internally by individual seminarians while studying at the NAC. It had become very disjointed and the goal was to unify the various sections under one common design. We worked closely with the students to create a design that is traditional, strong, yet still fresh and modern.

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Creativity is at the heart of innovation and for something to be creative, it must be novel and useful. Likewise, innovation must be both novel and useful. Amidst all of the technical advancements in today’s age of digitalocracy, seamless integration stands out as a key attribute of innovation. Google has been a stark force in innovation for the internet and with Google Apps, integration is as smooth as a beautiful baby’s butt!

Subtlety in my alliteration is left to be desired. I have hope though. Google Apps includes Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Contacts. A point of clarification is needed before we move on in that Google has “Apps” but “Google Apps” is their suite of collaborating apps coupled with domain and user management for business, schools, and non-profits. The easiest way to think of Google Apps is it is Google’s answer to Microsoft Exchange and Apple’s MobileMe. While Google Apps are useful at the individual level, they are especially useful for businesses. A variety of businesses have made the switch to Google Apps.

What makes Google Apps special?

I’ve already hinted at one of the things that sets it apart, integration. There is more to it than that. Each of these applications has valuable attributes in and of themselves. The incredible ways each of these applications integrates with the other is well…incredible but on top of that. Each one of these integrates with a number of devices and other software. So let’s take a moment to peruse some of the individual virtues of these apps and then delve a little further into the cardinal virtue of integration.

Mail, Run your business, not your email server

Gmail was one of the first apps to be released from Google. A hallmark of Gmail is the enormous amount of storage it offers. When it was first released to a limited number of users, Gmail did not have a delete button. This was one way that Google was able to boast of the large amounts of storage it offered. Instead of deleting or sorting messages, the powerful search engine in Gmail allows you to quickly access that one message you need at the precise moment you need it. Gmail does come with a delete button now but it is as powerful as ever offering 25GB of storage.

Another great feature with Gmail is its spam filtering. When it comes to spam, there’s not a speck of potted meat in your email. The integration that Gmail offers is also powerful. Pushing email to your iPhone is simple and easy. Outlook also easily syncs with Google Apps. Holding in consideration the storage, filtering, and easy access, it is clear to see the dynamic appeal of using Gmail.

The level of enterprise service that Gmail offers is usually only accessible to larger organizations that can afford the IT-beast that is Microsoft Exchange. If you use Exchange then you will most definitely save money. See how much here!

Docs, Online documents with real-time collaboration

Seamless in its integration with Gmail is Google Docs. Collaborating and sharing information with clients, friends and family is simple and easy. Google Docs allows you to share files or folders with others. It also allows you to limit how much access others have to these files. Word documents, spreadsheets and presentations are all featured in Google Docs providing a cloud computing format for accessing, editing and sharing these documents without attachments. Google Docs’ formats are also compatible with many popular formats offering quick and easy exporting.

Calendar, Manage meetings and work together efficiently

The calendar app is an extremely useful tool. It offers group calendaring as an easy way to manage scheduling of groups. It also offers a feature for employee individual calendar. This app makes it easy to schedule appointments, integrate with email, share project calendars, and has access with a number of mobile devices. It even allows you to publish calendars and embed them into web pages. It is no wonder then why so many businesses are taking advantage of these numerous virtues.

Contacts/gTalk/Video, Share contacts and video accross an organization, and chat to collaborate

Google Contacts integrates with all of its apps offering a powerful and efficient way to connect your contact info with the number of other apps that Google features. It also syncs easily with the iPhone and gives you the ability to share group contacts.

The cardinal virtue of Google Apps is integration. The connectivity of information is mind boggling. From one source, all of this information is stored and interconnected in a user-friendly way. Access, usability and functionality meet with such seamless integration that the lines between the apps are blurred. Beyond its compatibility with itself, Google Apps offers compatibility with a number of devices and other software. These benefits have found their way into being actualized by non-profits and small businesses alike.

Two Examples of Using Google Apps

Google Apps have a number of benefits for non-profit organizations. For one thing, it’s free, free, oh and by the way, it’s free! The learning curve for Google Apps is more like a small bump. Typically, with functionality comes a trade-off of needing a lot of technical know-how. Google has managed to decimate this trade-off exchanging functionality with no money and techie knowledge needed. One other really cool feature for non-profits is that it allows you to send email from your name@domain.org without paying expensive fees.

Small businesses also have much to gain from switching to Google Apps. It is free for up to 50 users. As mentioned a number of times, it offers full and seamless integration with the iPhone. Having access to all of this information from anywhere offers you the ability to share and collaborate on documents on the go whether you are working from the office or even the coffee shop. Instead of spending all of your time trying to keep employees on the same page, Google Apps offer simple and easy sharing options that allow your employees to be connected to information with little sweat on your part.

If you haven’t considered Google Apps before then this is the horn blowing. Switch to Google Apps and start collaborating! There are a number of testimonials of businesses who have completely enhanced the way they do business by switching to Google Apps. This is innovation as it is rarely encountered. Experience it for yourself if you aren’t one of the many already encountering the virtues of Google Apps.

Resources:
www.google.com/a
http://www.youtube.com/googleapps

Deployment Guide: http://deployment.googleapps.com/

Case Studies: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/customers.html

Tags: apple mobile me replacement \ calendar \ chat \ collaboration \ contacts \ exchange \ gmail \ google apps \ google docs \ integration \ replace exchange \ seamless \ Video Print This Post

To say that the internet has revolutionized the accessibility of information is a gross understatement. The web has very quickly become one of the most important and widely used socio-technological advancements well, ever. As the number of stuff on the web increases, the variety of stuff on the internet also increases. More pertinent here is that the number of junk or noise on the web also increases. Utilizing web standards is a way to optimize the so called stuff on the web to be more than noise but rather, a melody.

Why do web standards matter? It can feel like the advocacy of web standards support the suppression of individuality while pushing for a conglomerate of conformity. Certain groups such as the Web Standards Project definitely don’t hold this view. Uniformity can be good! No, I am not saying you need to be a member of the communist party or anything. Rather, consider how web standards can increase your web site’s usability, accessibility, and all around function-ability (pushing for that 3^rd –ability there).

Function-ability

Just having information on the web is not enough. Somehow, that information needs to do something; to inform perhaps. The Web Standards Project describes Tim Berners-Lee’s dream for his invention, the World Wide Web, as “a common space where users can share information to work together, to play, and to socialize.” In this dream we see information doing something, being accessible and useful. Web standards allow for web designers to address several constraints of the web including those of search and devices.

The surfing metaphor is extremely overused when describing how people use the internet and will be further overused here. So, you put a web site up, a wave if you will. How will you get surfers to that wave? One of the greatest and underappreciated things to come out of the web is Google. Search engines are an integral part of how people use the web. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way to organically optimize a web site to work with search engines, effectively bringing your wave to the surfers. Google provides so many great tools to assist you in SEO even if you are not an SEO expert. What this gets to is attracting a bigger audience to your site. Basically, mais get on dat Google!

Accessibility

An interesting thing to point out about surfing is that people use so many different types of boards to surf. Your wave may behave very differently from those taking their time on the long board (beefy desktops) to those looking for quick access on their new boogie boards (iPhones & Blackberries) . Web standards matter in that they allow you to work with the variability of the numerous devices out there that search the web. Amazingly enough, following web standards allows you to optimize your web design for a multitude of devices without a lot of effort on your part.

Usability

Moving on from the surfing metaphor, let’s consider how web standards can affect load time. Even with the behemoth processors that are out today, the fact remains that messy code will increase load times. Web standards emphasize simple and elegant coding methods which produce faster load times. This allows for optimal processing for everything from the long board to water skis to pirogues (ok, had to use the surfing metaphor just one more time).

Staying informed about web standards is yet another way that web standards do matter. This allows you to stay on top of the technology that’s out there and effectively utilize what works from the hassle of experimenting with what doesn’t for future proofing.

For these and many other reasons, web standards do matter. They don’t suppress individuality as much as they provide an optimal paradigm for expressing that individuality.

Resources

Web Standards Projet: http://www.webstandards.org/
A List Apart: http://www.alistapart.com/
World Wide Web Consortium: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/
Web Standards Entry on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_standards

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I have to admit…I am lazy when it comes to things that don’t pertain directly to my family, clients, or friends. So social networking is one of those things that I know is important but I just can’t waste an entire day on it. But below are a few suggestions to help you spend time doing what is important and let social networking fuel itself.

1. Find a service that can update your statuses across services.

Finding a service that lets you sync or link all of your various networking services together. HelloTxt is a great service that connects most of the major social sites and provides a mobile website as well when you are on the go!

2. Learn to update all at once and one time a day maximum.

This goes for email too, but pick a time of the day to allow yourself some social networking time. Set an alarm if you need to and say “when the clock strikes 2PM I am done!” This will eliminate the distraction of getting sucked in for hours just checking who did what in Mafia on Facebook (I hate Facebook Apps by the way)

3. Pick one service to be your “home base” and from there feed out.

If you spend more time on MySpace make that the one that you do most of your work on, and connect people through your site to this “home social base”. Having a central location for things can also help when we talk about the last step intergration. Mine is Facebook…MySpace is just too cluttered for me

4. Mention other people often and linkbacks. Retweets are your friend!

Linking is a huge part of social networking. When you retweet some random company’s post they notice. It is a free chance for you name and profile to pop up on someone else’s radar. This is also true about making comments on blog posts. This not only puts your name and website address on someone else’s site it can help to boost your Search Engine rankings. This also rings true to following others. Make sure you keep up-to-date with what other people are saying about your business or your industry in general.

5. Integration is the KEY!

If you use a blog to syndicate content and keep people updated on your business then you have one of the greatest tools to save you time. If you are using Wordpress there are countless plugins that allow you to connect your blog directly to your various social networks, I am a fan of Twitter Tools and Wordbook myself. You can also add services like ShareThis to your site to allow your users to post your content to their social networks. Make sure to use your website to also alert people to the various places you network. Don’t be afraid to be bold and say “I DON’T USE MYSPACE! DON’T MESSAGE ME!!”  Just make sure to tell them that you are plugged in and show them all the ways they can find you!

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Well it has been about a year since we had a site redesign so we decided to dust off the site and spruce it up. I guess I should say that we did more than “spruce” it up. We did a complete brand overhaul. New logos, colors, vision, etc!

The new vision of Crucé is centered more around the idea that “we” are a group of designers, developers, writers, and yes, geeks, that care deeply about the connection or cross between communication and design. Our goal is to provide our clients with a unified perspective about their web and graphic marketing to help speak their message to the masses.

Design

Website: With a new focus on web development as well as print and graphic design, we wanted to launch a site that gave users bigger pictures of our work. We also added the feature of a blog to help clients get a better picture of the skills and philosophy that drives our business.

Logo: Our new logo, crafted in vision by the collaborators and illustrated by Black Sheep Studio is actually the face of owner and lead geek Daniel Kedinger. We wanted people to feel a connection with the business, to feel you know us before you ever meet us. The hair and glasses strives to impress upon our clients that we are trendy geeks.

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Content Management Systems are a dime a dozen these days. Every PHP designer with any teeth probably has made one or another to prove they can make a kickass CMS! Usually though, these CMSes are horribly difficult to use, are closed box systems, and force people to get locked into their proprietary technology. The BIG reality is that there are only a handful or so that are actually usable for clients. My clients across the board need something that is web based, easy to use, and doesn’t require a Computer Science degree to manage.

I have tried my fair share of open source CMSes and have generally one complaint about all of them, they aren’t user friendly. This is usually tied to the fact that some PHP programmer designed the system and user interface with little to no help from graphic designers.

Enter Wordpress.

I couldn’t find a better way to describe it than the main quote from their website.

“WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.”

I have been using Wordpress for all of my sites for about 3 years now and will never look back. It has everything a guy couldn’t want and more! To save you and me time, I am just going to list out the pros and cons. I will let you decide.

Pros

• FREE! FREE! FREE!
• widely used and developed (Ford, Yahoo, eBay, CNN, New York Times)
• highly extensible (thousands of plugins available)
• easy templating & well documented (php based & the Wordpress Codex)
• very user friendly (if you can use Microsoft Word you are good to go)
• did I mention FREE! (Open Source)
• you can get a completely free blog to get started (Wordpress.com)

Cons

• still makes blogging the main UI focus
• no caching out of the box

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The Catholic Underground crew was looking for a fresh face for their website which provided a place for listeners to dig deeper into detailed information. We tried to provide a “underground” feel while sticking to the “new media” shiny look.

Launch CatholicUnderground.com

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