Period Three Blog » 2007

Jul312007

Oregon Trail

Posted by Gene in Random Stuff

I don’t know how many of you remember the Oregon Trail game back from middle school (I know that dates me…) but I came across these great sites recently that sent me into a fit of nostalgia.

Although its efforts are largely forgotten today, MECC (the makers of Oregon Trail) was perhaps one of the most influential and important organizations in the field of educational computing to have ever operated. It was also more successful and had a much larger impact than earlier projects and initiatives to improve education and increase the awareness of computers in education.

I just remember playing this game for as long as I could during english class, doesn’t say much for my school I know, but fond memories of dysentery and bandit raids still linger…

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Jul272007

SEO-Browser.com

Posted by Gene in Marketing

Found this very nifty little web-app www.seo-browser.com. Go there and run your home-page through it, you’ll see the page as a search engine or text-only browser will see it. Very helpful for SEO Marketing projects for sure.

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Jul252007

Technorati reloaded

Posted by Gene in Random Stuff

Technorati the popular blog and misc web info aggregator website has recently relaunched with a brand spanking new look. I have to question though the navigation element title “WTF”. It doesn’t mean what you think it means, they use it for “what’s on fire” but c’mon folks, I know the internet crowd’s demographics are known to be younger and hipper but that’s really not too professional… or am I just missing the point?

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Jul182007

Finally.

Posted by Jay in Marketing

Have you ever been typing in Word and wondered, “If only there were an inline ad for Viagra in my document.” Or maybe… “I really love playing those ‘punch the monkey’ games, I wish Excel could let me know where to find them.” Well, Microsoft wants to make that a reality by sending ads anywhere and everywhere on your computer, based on things on your hard drive such as:

user document files, user e-mail files, user music files, downloaded podcasts, computer settings, computer status messages (e.g., a low memory status or low printer ink)

They’ve patented it! The “mother of all adware“.

[A patent] for an “advertising framework” that uses “context data” from your hard drive to show you advertisements and “apportion and credit advertising revenue” to ad suppliers in real time

Furthermore:

The benefit to the user is the perception that the ads are more relevant, and therefore, less of an interruption. The benefit to the advertiser is better focus and a higher chance of conversion to a sale.

Thanks, Microsoft.

via Daring Fireball

Comments (4)
Jul162007

Top 10 local online markets in the US

Posted by Gene in Marketing

Not really sure if anyone cares about this sort of thing but me, but recently while reviewing some statistics and such I came across Neilsen//NetRatings top 10 local online markets in the us. They track the top 10 markets by time spent online and unique visitors. Click the image on the right for a zoomed in view of the ratings table. There’s nothing really out of line there from what you’d imagine if you just thought about it in terms of population. But it’s just neat to see how the major US cities stack up against each other in terms of time online.

The data are part of the MegaView local set. Nielsen//NetRatings uses a random-digit-dial panel and metering technology to report audience measurement and advanced tracking. Whatever that means.

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Jul122007

Perfectly simple

Posted by Jay in Design

Mark Boulton launched his new site last week and boy is it a wonderful piece of work. Everything is perfect about it, from the layout, the typography, the subtle colors, even the couple of sketchy illustrations in the sidebar. Under the hood it’s designed with as much thought and skill as the interface. It’s perfect. We espouse simple design here at Period Three and I hope we achieve that for the benefit of our clients, but this site just pushes all my buttons. In Mark’s blog about his launch, he says this about simplicity:

Simple really doesn’t come easy though; like good tea, it has to be stewed for a while. The design for this site was stewing away for about six months. Most of that was getting the brand right—the tone of voice, the typography, the colour. All of it took bloody ages.

That is what is fundamental about simple design. It’s not easy. Just because you can throw some type on a white field and call it minimal doesn’t make it good. It takes skill, knowledge, experience and talent.

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Jul112007

Staples Customer Satisfaction System

Posted by Gene in Business

So I went into my neighborhood Staples store this past Saturday and purchased a desk and file cabinet for the office, they informed me that they didn’t actually have the items in stock but that they would deliver them to me on Tuesday “Guaranteed!!”. That’s not so bad, I didn’t really feel like loading that stuff up anyways as it had started to rain outside. “Tuesday is fine” and off I went. Tuesday comes and goes and no furniture delivery, I’m not really mad yet. So today (Wednesday, that would be the day after said guaranteed delivery time…) I get a call from their “automated customer satisfaction system”, the purpose of the call was to inform me that my delivery was going to be one day late, not only that but based on their “automated scheduling forcasting” they were now unable to “guarantee” the originally promised delivery date… Now i’m no customer service master, but that has to be the weirdest customer satisfaction situation i’ve ever been party to. I would have to give the Staples customer service department an “F” for that…

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Jul092007

Simpsons Movie Avatars

Posted by Gene in Marketing

I just love the viral marketing strategies that movie studios employ to get the word out about their upcoming flicks. I’m also a HUGE Simpson’s fan and can’t wait for the movie to come out. The functionality they’ve rolled out on the simpsonsmovie.com website is simply irresistible. You could lose yourself for hours just sitting there creating Simpson-esque avatars for all your friends.

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Jul062007

Fascinating? Really?

Posted by Jay in Uncategorized

I’m struggling to find the point of this article by Douglas Karr, titled Is the next President of the United States running Linux?

According to Netcraft, Ron Paul’s site was previously run on Microsoft IIS but as of June 5th it’s now on Apache!

That’s worthy of an exclamation point? That’s like saying Ross Perot used to drive a Ford, but now he drives a Chevrolet! His results show that the majority of Republican candidates have websites hosted on Windows servers, while a majority of Democrats run something other than Windows (Linux or FreeBSD). He sums it up by saying it’s ‘fascinating’. Please, Douglas, tell us why it’s fascinating.

Comments (5)
Jul052007

Fadtastic: 25 ways to improve your website

Posted by Gene in Design

Very good list of items for general consumption on how to improve your website from Fadtastic. Some of these i’m guilty of taking for granted when rushed. This could make a really good checklist when you are summing up a website for a client.

My favorites on the list:

- If you’ve got any code snippets that could annoy the user, like resizing browser windows or opening new pages in a new window, then remove them. Just because you like something a particular way, your users may not. Don’t take over their desktop.
- The correct use of headers (in a semantic, logical manner) can produce fantastic results. The H1 tag is the most important - try using some keywords in there.
- Check (or get others to check) the site under as many conditions as possible. Try to do this every time the site has a significant update. It’s worth it as it only takes a minute or two.
- There’s a big trap that often people fall into. Whitespace. How many times have you heard “we need to fill that space and cram the text in a bit more”? More text in a single area isn’t a good thing. It can make it harder and less enjoyable to read the content. It you had a shop would you cram as many products in as possible? No. You’d let them have space so they get noticed. Do the same with your text.

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