I recently finished building a website for Speed’s Heating & Cooling, based in Lander, Wyoming. It was a fun experience working with Curtis Tronolone, geothermal expert extraordinaire.

I advocated for a WordPress site so that things like featured projects, testimonials, and minor text changes could be done on the fly, without the need for a web designer. I also like that in a few years, they could go in and change the look of the site without worrying about losing the content.

For over 25 years, Speed’s has been installing residential and commercial heating and cooling systems, including geothermal systems. Visit Speed’s *new* website now!

Fleetly is a workout app for the iPhone that I have been using, and loving, for the past few months. I have been working out at the gym at work all Winter and until this app I was intimidated at using the weights. Instead I would resort to spreading my time among the ‘TV watching machines’ like the elliptical and stair machine. This app has full workouts that I can choose from. I feel like I have a purpose with the weights now, not just randomly lifting things to look cool.

Once you click into an exercise it will show you a quick explanation and sometimes include a 5 second video showing how to properly do the exercise.

Gamify it and I will do it. I have said this over and over again. I am hooked on getting points and I am not ashamed to say it. Fleetly cleverly employs the game mechanic of setting a goal number for yourself and then making it difficult to reach that number. I still haven’t reach it! If you don’t work out for a day you see your number start to drop. I find myself going to work out just so my number doesn’t drop any further.

I would love to test out what it would be like to have friends on Fleetly. I could see myself challenging people or having their workout motivate me.

I have just synced my Nike+ account to Fleetly which is pretty nice, although I can no longer guesstimate how long I ran. Nike+ keeps me in check with that.

I would highly recommend checking out this app! Become friends with me if you do.

A few things I wish Fleetly did better:

• Didn’t crash as much.
• Logged my workout better. 22 points to run up stairs, 3 points for a hour long upper body workout?
• Real-time stats. I have learned a hack of restarting the app to get the stats to reload.
• Ability to say that 3 reps of 20 was too easy this time.
• A better coaching / hand-holding system. Give me some of the basics like how many reps to start out with, and some standard safety pointers.

I am lucky enough to have a close contact at the Lander Art Center that let me design the poster for their latest exhibition. It was a fun experience with a tight deadline and I would love to do it again and again.

The bird started out as an eagle but soon morphed into a parrot and is now maybe a hawk. The flower is supposed to represent an indian paintbrush, a local flower with an arty name.

What do you think of the poster? Designers please critique!

More information on the 32nd Annual Red Desert Audubon Wildlife Art Show

Animated gifs have been making a comeback recently, but there was a high learning curve in creating them. Enter Cinemagram. This free app lets you easily create animated gifs on-the-fly and post them to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

Easy to use, but difficult to master. What’s not to love about this app? Get it today and friend me on it!

Get Cinemagram on iTunes.
Check out Cinemagrams from others.

For the last three months I have been posting graphic design works that have inspired me to a tumblr site. Cassiopeia is the name of the constellation shaped like a W in the northern hemisphere sky and now the name of my design inspiration site. Check it out, I usually post 3-5 pieces a week.

http://cassiopeia-mag.tumblr.com/

We put things we like on Facebook. We put things we like on Pinterest and on Tumblr. Where do we put the things we don’t like?

I was looking at this new identity for DC Entertainment and I recognized a great example of when brands should not combine all of their sub-brands under the same look and feel. I wanted to share this realization with the same enthusiasm that I would with something that I liked, but where?

Is there room for a repository of the things we dislike?

Someone just rated my sandwich at a 57%! Come on, it’s way healthier than that. Over the last few weeks I have been taking pictures of everything that I eat, and I don’t mean in that arthouse Instagram kind of way. I have been submitting my food for social approval on the iPhone app, The Eatery.

You snap a photo of what you are eating and you have the option to add a little blurb about the food. As soon as you take your photo it quickly asks you to rate other people’s food. So while I let my lunch soup cool a bit I play judge and jury to the world’s lunch plate. A tuna sandwich? I rate it 60%, an apple 100%, a lasagna and a beer–22%!

About the time I start getting bored and super hungry from staring at other people’s food I get a notification–Your soup was just rated on The Eatery – 90%! Huzzah!

It’s so simple. I have always wanted to track my food intake but counting calories and trying to figure out how many @*$&^ servings I had was just ridiculous to figure out. Show 30 people your food over the course of a week and let them rate it healthiest to least healthy and you’ve got some real data to work with.

It took me a couple days to begin to see the value in this app. For one, it makes me conscience of exactly what I am eating. If I know there is going to be a jury of my peers rating my salad, I am going to put a lot less dressing on it. Why? Because I want better points. (See: Gamification.)

Another bit of value that I realized was that I was able to track my daily trends. I ate less healthy today than I did yesterday. I need to make up for it tomorrow.

The app isn’t without it’s hiccups. I would say that the biggest downside (or upside) is that it all depends on the photo itself. Take a beautiful sun-lit photo of lasagna, showcase the veggies in it, and you will get a higher rating than if you just snap a photo top-down in a florescent room. I know what I am eating is unhealthy but if I am a good photographer I can game the system. I guess the big point here is that you are only cheating yourself–unless you are using the app to become a fabulous food photographer, then you have got the hookup for three critiques a day of your work.

An example of the differences in ratings based on the photo was made clear when I made some curry for dinner one night. I got a 54%. I later reheated the curry for lunch the next day and got an 83%. I made sure the avocados were not saucy and took the photo next to the window. The differences in the rating are pretty drastic.

Even with the subjectivity of god-knows-who rating your food, this app still gets to the root of healthy eating. It makes you conscience of the food you are eating, and that is a great thing. 87%!

Are QR codes are dead? I have not heard anyone tell me a good QR code story–although I have a good one involving the DC Metro and Where’s Waldo. What are some ways to breathe some real life into these little black and white boxes?

So every one is getting smart phones. So every business is slapping a QR code on every surface they can. Who cares when the only thing we are going to see is, at best, a review and at worst a non mobile-optimized website of the company.

We need a new idea or technology that is going to make me care about scanning a QR code. Think about it. I am out of my house, and I am busy. You want me to take 5 minutes out of my day to not only glance at your ad but learn more about your product? Are you a street vendor yelling at me? No thanks! I honestly don’t care what you are selling even if I do care about your product.

One app to rule them all…

For QR codes to survive there needs to be a central app that everyone uses to scan the code. The code is not a URL, but text. The text will have code inside of it that interprets what you are scanning. Example:

Type:Clothing,Shoes Company:Teva Type:Riva,Leather,E-Vent

Once I scan the QR code (remember that I am using one central app) it takes me to a page that shows me button to write or see reviews of the show, a button for the Teva facebook page, a share button, a check-in button, a button to allow me to snap a photo of the shoes, or a button to watch video related to the product. Based on tags the app will be able to distinguish between clothing, restaurants, outdoor brands, etc. and serve related channels to learn and share.

Is the QR code on an ad for a dress you think your friend would like? Scan the QR code and among other buttons will be one to share this dress with a friend. Sophia just messaged you back on Facebook that she “loves that freaking dress and thanks for sharing it with me!” Sophia buys the dress two minutes later.

Is the QR code on a movie poster outside of a mall? Among other buttons being presented once you scan the QR code is one that lets you purchase movie tickets. You probably already clicked the button to watch the trailer, and clicked the button to look at the reviews.

Take the QR code out of the hands of the marketer who is trying to guess what one thing you might want to see while you are looking at the code and put the QR code into the hands off a third-party app that gives you all of the possible options under the sun.

Why one app?

It needs to be one app because it needs to be third-party to make the scanner know that he is not being sold out or manipulated.

It needs to be one app because it lets us all have the same conversation and the same experience.

TL;DR - Edit (01/24/12) – I am asking specifically that QR codes act as virtual tags for real world objects, and that we need one central scanning app to be able to offer us different options based on the tags provided.

Over the weekend a NOLS alum posted a picture of me from the NOLS catalog to r/pics on reddit.com. Check out the post on reddit, and some of the fallout from it on failblog.org. I have to say that it didn’t feel like I thought it would to become a front page reddit picture.

I was a little worried what the comments would be about, but mostly it’s just stuff I have heard since high school. This gem stood out though, “I don’t think the laptop is the weirdest thing – guy looks about 14 years old with a full beard.” Thanks to Andy and Brooks for trying to make me a meme.

Make your own Laptop FAIL guy .gif at my expense.

You know when you are working on one thing but you start playing around and all of a sudden you have something completely different, and random… and kind of awesome? That’s what happened when working on some coffee icons tonight. I present to you a brand identity for a fictional company, Java Monkey! Americanos and banana bread. Yum.

Harvest Vs Fresh Books

While Fresh Books might have a few more features and seem a bit more intuitive, Harvest ended up being the way to go for my freelance design business because it allows for unlimited clients at the base price (~12/month). Fresh Books cuts you off after 25 clients and then charges you ~$40/month for unlimited clients. I would love for a few more features but Harvest is the way to go for small businesses getting started.

Don’t Get Stuck!

Choosing the right app for invoicing and time tracking can be tricky because you need to input your data to figure out if the app is right for you, but by the time you figure out that it isn’t, it becomes a tedious process to move your data anywhere else. It seemed like Fresh Books billing plan played into that, which turned me off a little from them and seemed shady.

Test each app with a small data set before jumping all the way in and think about the long term growth of your business when looking at pricing plans.

I was lucky that my company is still in it’s infancy and I only had a week’s worth of time tracking and invoices to haul from Fresh Books to Harvest once I did the math and realized I needed a cheaper option and didn’t want to get capped at 25 clients.

My Wish List for Harvest

I tried Fresh Books before Harvest because of the reviews I read online. I was very close to buying a year subscription before I read about the 25 client cap at the base price. I chose Harvest because the price was in the realm I could afford, and because it still did mostly everything I needed. Here are a few things I wish Harvest could do:

• A separate expenses tab – Having to click time sheets to get to my expenses seems unintuitive and hidden. I would like it to be easier to log office supplies expenses for my company without having to fake that I am my own client.
• Dashboard as first screen – When I first log in to Harvest I would like to be brought to graphs, charts, and details about my account. (That might be counter to what Rory Sutherland had to say about Online Banking.)
• Big Timer Button – It’s small, and unintuitive for me. Then, once I click it, I forget I clicked it and it runs my time until they send me an email asking me if I am really still working at 4am (I did actually like getting that email from them).
• Better Usability with Projects – I would love when I click done on a timer for a project it prompts me to input what tasks I worked on during that time. This would allow for detailed invoices. Currently, there is one big overview description for the project and when I go to create an invoice I edit each description to fit in with the tasks. Maybe I missed a tutorial somewhere?
• Client Log-In – Maybe this is the trade off in price. Fresh Books allowed clients to log in and see / pay there invoices online.
• Custom Colors – There is a small range of colors to choose from when customizing your app, it would be great to allow for a custom hex value to be applied so that my company’s color could be used.
• Descending Activity Feeds and Time sheets - This would allow me to easily see my history. Without having to scroll form week to week.

I’ve started sharing design inspiration on cubbi.es. Check me out and subscribe to the RSS feed! Cubbi.es is a photo-sharing site that was advertised with Diaspora* as the first app that integrates into the social network. I can save photos to my cubbi.es by holding down the Shift key and clicking an image I am interested in, simple and awesome.

http://cubbi.es/2aea9050512822e9

Over the next few weeks I will be posting various highlights and thoughts from TEDxBoulder.

The following video is from a different TED event, but was played in between presentations at TEDxBoulder.

Studies show that sketching and doodling improve our comprehension — and our creative thinking. So why do we still feel embarrassed when we’re caught doodling in a meeting? Sunni Brown says: Doodlers, unite! She makes the case for unlocking your brain via pad and pen.

Sunni Brown is co-author of GameStorming: A Playbook for Rule-breakers, Innovators and Changemakers. She’s known for her large-scale live content visualizations, and she is also the leader of the Doodle Revolution – a growing effort to debunk the myth that doodling is a distraction. Using common sense, experience and neuroscience, Sunni is proving that to doodle is to ignite your whole mind. Look for her second book, The Doodle Revolution, in 2012.

This is part of an application to Wieden + Kennedy’s WK12. If you thought it was funny or clever, please tweet this out with the button below!

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After hearing from peers, and entrepreneur blogs, how everyone needs a mentor, I started thinking. I could not, off the top of my head, name one person that I looked up to. I recognize people everyday that I think have great ideas but I never thought of it as being a role model, hero, or mentor. So I decided to put some thought into it and make a list.

The first person that popped into my head when I started my list was William McDonough.

This designer / architect is challenging the status quo throughout the world. He works with the Chinese and US governments, the auto and design industries, opening their eyes to the possibilities of sustainable design. I learned about him when watching his TED presentation, and it has become The GO-TO TED video when I introduce people to TED. I still have not read his book Cradle to Cradle, but it’s now on my list.

My entry for this week’s Mortar & Pencil challenge. Crushed and twisted grass clippings and rubbed the grass into a white t-shirt. Download the large .gif file of typeface.

A little type experiment.

Spent the evening experimenting with wallpapers, posters, and hype animals for shickadoo.com.