Tools of the Trade

We're all accustomed to being victims of bad email practices. Just last month, Valarie indulged in a little self-therapy by ranting about one of her own experiences.

Economic conditions have provided additional incentive for IT decision makers to explore open source technologies.  Shrinking revenue streams have forced business to conserve cash.  Using open source represents one way to do so, since not only are licensing fees eliminated, open source technologies can often be leveraged and supported at lower cost and with more widely available resources than

I'm driving a rental car this week, since last week's drizzle got the roads just slick enough that my car hydroplaned into a street sign. I wasn't injured, but my car needed to visit Doctor Body Shop for the next few days.

The insurance claim and car rental went pretty smoothly; no complaints. Until now.

As one of Digett's resident wordsmiths, I occasionally comment on poor online copywriting practices such as incomprehensible business-babble and the use of overly casual language.

The job I had just prior to coming to Digett almost didn't happen. After discovering the listing in the San Antonio paper (that's a wood-fiber display device, for some of you), I did what any other modern job seeker would: I went online to check out the company. I was horrified to find practically nothing.

Last month, I gushed about Tom Martin's Mardi Gras Twitter experiment as an innovative use of this ever-popular micro-blogging service. In that post, I focused primarily on the citizen journalism aspect of his efforts; after learning a little more about his goals and looking over the analysis of the event, I probably should have saved some kudos. Turns out Martin was ambitious enough to try and change perceptions about Mardi Gras—and it looks like he succeeded.

A few weeks ago, one of Digett's developers and I ran across some buggy behavior on a site that was still in development. We knew it was a problem that we had encountered and solved at least once before, but it certainly wasn't recent enough for either one of us to remember in detail. So we checked STS.

I recently attended a workshop series called UX Intensive, hosted by Adaptive Path. For four days, I and about 100 other web enthusiasts examined four key elements that contribute to a successful website design: Design Strategy, Design Research, Information Architecture, and Interaction Design. I've put together a list of four insights to better web design, one for each day of the week.

Every once in a while, we get pointed questions from prospective clients about the return on investment of major online marketing efforts. That's not a bad thing; indeed, we would encourage anyone looking to invest in any marketing effort to take efforts to objectively analyze and quantify ROI. Notice, however, that I said "objectively." Ah, there's the rub.

No online toolbox is complete without Photoshop, a power tool I use every day. Two weeks ago, I attended a Photoshop cram session taught by the Bob Vila of Photoshop, Bert Monroy.