ERA404

/ Don

Diss ‘n’ Gauges

Diss 'n' Gauges: Menu

I’m pleased to announce my first application is ready for sale on Google Play and Apple App Store. You can also see the information about Diss ‘n’ Gauges in my company’s portfolio.

Diss ‘n’ Gauges: Sometimes the best response is an app!

Diss ‘n’ Gauges: Multi-Pack combines all our individual meters into one great application. Are you looking for best and funniest way to start or end (disengage from) a conversation?

The Multi-Pack includes:

  1. BS Detector: Is your friend talking out of their butt? Inform them (and the rest of your party) that you’re not buying it.
  2. Dial Down the B!tch: Is your friend acting nasty or spiteful and it’s exceeding your tolerance level? Inform them (and the rest of your party) that they need to dial it down a bit.
  3. Give-a-Crap Meter: Is your friend droning on and on about something that you couldn’t care less about (say, Crossfit, for instance)? Inform them (and the rest of your party) of your disinterest in a fun way.
  4. Hottie Finder: Looking for a great way to strike up a conversation with that beautiful girl or guy across the bar? Let our Hottie Finder act as a divining rod to direct you to them!
  5. Gaydar: Often find yourself in a dance club, at a karaoke hall, or on a cruise ship with no way to hone-in on the guys around you?
  6. Fuel Gauge: Need some help deciding if you need one more or had one too many? Here’s a quick, clever way to reply to friends when they ask if you’re ready for another round.

All meters react to tapping on the screen. Tap once to trigger, tap a second time to reset. Diss ‘n’ Gauges is now available for iOS (iPhone, iPad) and Android phones and tablets.

/ Don

Mobile Websites vs. Applications

Mobile Websites vs Applications

There’s no denying that mobile phones have grown to become an increasing part of our lives. In fact, there’s a 42% likelihood that you’re reading this newsletter on your phone or tablet device, up 10% from last March. And in most cases, mobile applications would probably be overkill for your business or brand, where a beautifully designed, responsive newsletter (such as this one) will more than suffice. However, if you’re looking for something more than emails, here are some things for you to consider.

There’s a big difference between a mobile website and a mobile application. Before you can evaluate the benefits of either, it’s important to understand the key differences between the two. Both apps and mobile websites are accessed on a handheld devices such as smartphones (e.g. iPhone, Android and Blackberry) and tablets.

Read the rest of the newsletter here

/ Don

Altamira

Altamira Bison

In researching inspirational photos for some new wine labels for a client, I came across these breathtaking paleolithic cave paintings from the cave of Altamira, located near the town of Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, Spain. Just one glance at the beauty and wonder of the artwork proves why the cave and its paintings has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Read more

/ Don

Twitter Cards

[d]online - Twitter Card Example

[d]online - Twitter Card Example

If you’re an avid user of Twitter, you’ve probably noticed the new links that show up on the bottom of certain tweets in your feed. The links say “View Summary” and allow you to read the title and excerpt of an article, along with a thumbnail of the article’s featured image. Those links are called Twitter Cards, come in three different varieties: summaries, photos, and play, and have two different layouts:  web and mobile.

Twitter Cards help increase your visibility and ensourage users to click to your site by providing more information beyond Twitter’s 140 character limit. Furthermore, design and development studios with Twitter Card functionality built into their site can provide a working example for clients to see how the same functionality can be implemented into their sites.

As with most of Twitter’s APIs, Twitter cards are fairly quick to implement. All you need to do is insert some metadata, test, and apply to participate. To make things even easier, Niall Kennedy has created a WordPress plug-in to automatically scrape your post’s title, permalink, description and image URL for summary Twitter cards. After installing and activating the plug-in, preview your Twitter card by pasting the post’s URL into their preview page.Lastly, you’ll need to apply to participate. Simply enter your site and contact information here and Twitter will reply within 5-10 business days.

/ Don

The Creative Process

The Creative Process

Oftentimes when approached by clients and agencies, we’re asked about our creative process at era404. While people can easily see a step-by-step diagram of our development process, broken down by time, cost and client interaction, we have never really outlined how the creative process works here. This is partially because development, which is creative in its own right, is considerably more objective, pragmatic, and analytical. The process is linear, relying on previous checkpoints to proceed to latter ones.

Design, on the other hand, grows organically and chaotically. It pushes forward and outward in untraceable trajectories. If one thinks of development as a relay race with the baton being passed at regular relay points, design is more like a quixotic multi-player game of capture the flag. It’s undoubtedly the most challenging, gratifying (and possibly frustrating) part of our job here, riddled with stops, starts, reorientation, redirection, hidden doors, trap floors, exploration, and trial and error, relying purely on experience and gut instinct to reach the goal. And while the description above sounds daunting, it’s the primary reason we love our jobs so much.

So, depicting our creative process in a linear diagram like our development process is impossible. But each design roughly follows the same objectives along the uncharted path, which, coupled with client feedback and critiques, act as polestars in guiding us to their completion. Below are those objectives, distilled and organized as they would be in a perfect world, free of the organic and beautiful growth of real-world scenarios…

Read the whole news article on the era404 site

/ Don

25 Tips for Optimizing a Blog’s Google Sitelinks

25 Tips for Optimizing a Blog’s Google Sitelinks

The following is an excerpt from a new Informational Resource I’ve posted on my company‘s web site:

What are Sitelinks?

The links shown below some of Google’s search results (1), called sitelinks (2), are meant to help users navigate sites. Google’s systems analyze the link structure of each site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they’re looking for.

Google only shows sitelinks for results when they think they’ll be useful to the user. If the structure of the site doesn’t allow their algorithms to find good sitelinks, or they don’t think that the sitelinks for the site are relevant for the user’s query, Google won’t show them. At the moment, sitelinks are automated, but there are best practices site owner’s can follow, however, to improve the quality of their sitelinks.

Read the rest of the article here…

/ Don

era404.com Reboot

era404 screenshot

I always say that the cobbler’s kids have the oldest shoes. The last relaunch of era404.com had been in 2005, before the widespread use of iOS devices (which don’t support Adobe Flash) and the release of browsers capable of supporting HTML5, CSS3 and JQuery.

For the last few years, as all designers seem to do, I kept saying “God, I really need to update our site.” As my brother Chris always says, “the second worst problem in the world is having too much work, but it’s far better than the alternative.” era404 has been fortunate in that we’ve never found ourselves with too much idle time on our hands. That said, we’ve been seriously lacking in the capacity to explore new business development and professional upkeep and maintenance on our public image. Until now. Read more