Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

Catching up on a number of projects completed over the last few months.  In late August I got a call from a client asking to quickly put together a website that he could use for his affiliate website, to resell “dot tel” addresses.

Dot tel addresses, or .tel, is a new top level domain extension, defined by the Telnic site as:

The .tel is a service that allows individuals and businesses alike to store and manage all their contact information and keywords directly in the DNS without the need to build, host or manage a website.

I found a WordPress template that I liked, and modified it to give it a fun, “Twittery” look.  Then to help my client drive customers to the site through his Twitter expertise, we created a mascot, Peppy the Porpoise, and assigned a dot tel address to Peppy: peppy.tel.

Of course, I had to have some fun, as I often do.  So using Flash I designed, animated and synced up a singing jingle soundtrack, that I wrote and performed the pitch-modified vocals on.  See video online here.

The client is negotiating to become a major affiliate with a few top .tel domainname providers.  When that happens, Peppy will make a very big splash all over the Internet.

Here’s an online video about how to manage your .tel address, once you get one.

Fortunately the WordPress upgrading process has become familiar enough, so there are few worries.  WordPress is now up to version 2.8.4. Upgraded this blog as well as greberadio.com.  Part of the process is to de-activate and update the various plug-ins that extend WordPress functionality.  Both sites now have a new Contact page, enabled by a PHP plug-in.

It’s good to see the progress WordPress software developers have made with this free web publishing platform.  I’ve worked with it long enough to feel comfortable with it for use in developing a variety of new web sites.

Here’s a few cool articles from Best Design Options covering top WordPress plug-ins and themes.

Recently completed a website facelift of a fascinating Hollywood tour service run by Scott Michaels.  Scott was referred to me by a good mutual friend, and he was in a hurry to clean up the website for the busy LA summer tourism season.  Scott specializes in touring locations of Hollywood celebrity deaths, and when the Michael Jackson tragic death occurred, there was a surge in interest.

The original website was functional, but had very little layout or graphic design.  That was the first step, which is now complete.  In a future upgrade, the site will be coordinated with CSS and CMS, especially as we look ahead at upgrading Scott’s larger, heavily trafficked website, findadeath.com.

To show a few shots from the LA roadtrip to visit Scott, I tried out a few WP plugins.  Lightbox Plus maddeningly failed to load all images reliably, and finally I found a less complex, simple yet effective plugin that works flawlessly, slimbox. Click the image icons to see a much larger photo.  They can also be navigated in sequence by clicking on the full size image’s left or right side.

Difficult to capture on camera in low light, and definitely worth a visit: The Museum of Jurassic Technology.  The bookstore itself is mind blowing.

Kurt Schwitters, "Merz Picture 25A: The Star Picture" 1920 Montage, collage and oil on cardboard, 104.5 x 79 cm, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf ©1999 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild Kunst, Bonn

This curious poem, “Meatloaf” by Donald Hall, reminded me of the peculiar brilliance of German artist Kurt Schwitters.

Twenty-five years ago, Kurt Schwitters,
I tried to instruct you in baseball
but kept getting distracted, gluing
bits and pieces of world history
alongside personal anecdote
instead of explicating baseball’s
habits. I was K.C. (for Casey)
in stanzas of nine times nine times nine.

Kurt Schwitters appearing in a poem, printed in a modern magazine, over 60 years past his death, caused me to wonder, “What would Schwitters Twitter?”  Perhaps in 1936 he would write:

Drunk on victory in the Rhineland the German masses
listen bewildered to their radios:
the Fuhrer is declaring war
on abstract art

It turns out that Kurt tweets on.

rakete bee bee

10:00 PM Jul 25th from Twitter4J

See more Schwitters Twitters here.

Collage Homage to Kurt Schwitters, by Hank Grebe, 1972, paper on cardboard, 8.5 x 8.5 inches.

Chocolatized Logo

Did this in half an hour for a client.  Quick tutorial: Found Nike swoosh online.  Placed into Adobe Illustrator, Live Trace, Expand, Duplicate, create Offset Path with rounded corners, Expand, Fill with gradients, Export to PSD.  Open in Photoshop, play with Layer Styles->Bevel and Emboss on layers.  Done.

AT&T jobs promotional e-mail header

Are they all sharing one cubicle?  Do they always have lunch together, have outrageous fun, and make their coworkers sick?  Is their boss trying to squeeze into the janitor closet to join the party?  Is she envious of their youthful exhuberance?  Will they continue to bond this closely when one or two of them are right sized?  Will I get more emails with more positions?  Does the company provide free happy pills?  Is the white male trying too hard to belong?  Are they laughing at you because they have better jobs than you do?  Are they standing waist high in a big hole?

Here it is, I’m going to write it down so we don’t forget: the secret to designing a great product. This nugget of advice appeared in Friday’s SF Chronicle, in The Tech Chronicles article by Ryan Kim, “Apple iPhone exec jumps to venture capital firm.”  In the article, the Apple exec, Bob Borchers says,

The key for developing products at Apple was saying no to a lot of features and additions and instead focusing on usability and ease of use.

iPhone 4G Prototype

Scrap iron sculpture of CP30

I am exploring Emeryville, California, as I commute to work there.  There are many warehouses such as Sherwin-Williams paint and Peets Coffee.  Drive along its flat pavement and see old trucks hauling loads of garbage bags, scrap metal and junk.  Some of the junk is recycled very nicely, as in this scrap iron version of the shiny golden Star Wars butler robot CP30.

This futuristic robot is rusty, but well preserved for a Cylon built well over 150,000 years ago.

CP30 Star Wars character close up