Category Archives: Websites

Can you be a web designer without knowing HTML & CSS?

By Tom | Published: July 15, 2010
photo credit: Török Gábor (nyuhuhuu) I only listen to one podcast regularly*—the 37signals semi-monthly offering, which provides insights into the thoughts and processes at the seminal web shop. The last three episodes from the 37signals podcast have been a design roundtable discussion with Jamie Dihiansan, Jason Fried, and Ryan Singer. In actuality, this three-part series has been [...]
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Behind the new website design

By Tom | Published: March 26, 2010
Most mornings before my courses, I check through my emails with a cup of coffee. Since the time zone difference between Spain and the U.S. is pretty significant, I usually get a good idea of how the day ended back in the States, and then a few hours in class to think about what I [...]
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Thinking versus doing

By Tom | Published: March 14, 2010
photo credit: dreamsjung One my favorite parts about designing and developing web projects is that the end result is something. A shiny new site layout, a functioning web app–it’s gratifying. But it’s essential not to get haphazardly lured into a project because of this gratification. If I dive in and fire up Coda or Fireworks, I’ll undoubtedly waste a [...]
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New website for a good time, a good cause

By Tom | Published: February 22, 2010
This past Friday, the relaunch of the Flip Cup World Championships’ website was completed. I’ve been a participant in this event for the past several year and it is easily one of the highlights of my year. It’s a great time, for sure, but it also serves a good cause–over $125,000 have been donated to [...]
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Ryan Singer, 37signals podcast

By Tom | Published: February 4, 2010
photo credit: cln_finch Ryan Singer, product manager and designer at 37signals, talks about the company’s design process. Download the MP3 I found this interesting as 37signals’ process relies on everyone pitching in at a variety of levels–information architecture, user experience, design and back-end development. At times, I’ll hear that these types of a role demand a person with [...]
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QA work with Notable

By Tom | Published: December 22, 2009
QA’ing website builds is not an easy task.  There are countless issues to check and comments to wrangle. From copywriting, to <TITLE> tags, to image exports, to functionality. Depending on the site, there is a lot that can — and will — go wrong during testing. It’s a fact of life that there will be several [...]
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Save money with ultra-clean HTML & CSS

By Tom | Published: August 30, 2009
photo credit: chudo.sveta If you’ve worked on a web design project, undoubtedly you have heard web designers proclaim their proficency in coding hand-crafted, clean HTML & CSS. From a geek standpoint, the “right way” to code a website is with ultra-clean code. Naturally, web designers place a lot of importance on doing things the “right way”.  [...]
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The real You with Facebook Connect

By Tom Buchok | Published: July 7, 2009
I am continually impressed and encouraged with how Facebook Connect is bringing real people to the web. Unlike virtually every other service out there — including Twitter — users make up identities and act under this pseudonym. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but social norms are definitely lowered when I can be sk8erboi28 [...]
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Twitter data suggests older demographic? Nope.

By Tom Buchok | Published: April 16, 2009
 I’ve been sent a few articles recently proclaiming the prevalence of the 35+ crowd on Twitter.  Here are some links for background information: Twitter older than it looks — Reuters Twitter traffic explodes … and not by the usual suspects — comScore And here’s a graph that’s handy for discussion: There is absolutely no doubt that Twitter is exploding [...]
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What is Social Influence Marketing?

By Tom Buchok | Published: March 11, 2009
photo credit: h de c Razorfish unleashed its 180-page digital outlok yesterday.  The valuable, compelling information starts on page one. In the Trends to Watch section, they write, “Social Influence MarketingTM will go mainstream in 2009.” I don’t fully have my head around Social Influence Marketing — but it is trademarked, so maybe someone from Razorfish [...]
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