Four Labs Blog : Viget Labs

Annual Vigekids’ Halloween

2009-11-06T11:00:00Z

Last Friday, per tradition, Vigekids (children of Viget staff past and present) paraded into both HQ and Viget South for trick-or-treating in their Halloween finest. This year was exciting in particular with so many newcomers -- there were several new babies born to Viget parents in the last year or so, which made for a fantastic array of costume-clad children big and small. Viget's Halloween festivities showcase our company culture, priorities, and great love of family, candy, cool outfits and photo ops. Check it out!

Viget on Twitter, Now a Bit Better

2009-11-02T16:28:00Z

If you follow @viget on Twitter, thanks! Today you'll notice a small change to the way we tweet links to our blog posts (which we do using TwitterFeed). Instead of just tweeting "New post: [post title] [short URL]" we'll give you a bit more information to go on.

In addition to the post title and short URL, if we're tweeting about a post on one of our four niche blogs, we'll include the appropriate hashtag (#ux, #design, #dev, or #marketing) as well. This way you'll have a better idea for what kind of content to expect. We get great feedback on how our four blogs are focused on a specific audience, so we want our tweets to reflect that focus as well.

We also want to give credit to the folks here who take the time to write the posts, so each tweet will include a credit the post author (@barn in this case). We're big on having people get to know our great team at Viget, and Twitter is a good way to do just that.

While we were playing with Twitter, we also setup a List for the team here at Viget -- it's just twitter.com/viget/team. Enjoy!

Brian’s Panel at the Internet Summit

2009-11-02T10:00:00Z

Our CEO, Brian Williams, is headed to Raleigh, NC later this week to take part in the 2nd annual Internet Summit. The conference will "showcase and promote forward thinking and thought leadership on topics related to the internet economy and web oriented technologies." Brian has been asked to moderate the Search Marketing panel discussion, which will include speakers from eMarketer, Mircrosoft, Triangle Direct Media, and Coalmarch Productions.

Brian comes south pretty often to hang out with those of us who work at Viget's Durham office, connect with clients, and spark new relationships whenever possible. We're always glad to see him.

For more information about the panel, check out the event site. If you attend the panel and you'd like to comment on the content or presentation, please rate the talk on SpeakerRate. While you're at it, come chat with Brian in person -- he's a friendly guy!

Ben Will Co-Chair RailsConf

2009-10-28T13:45:00Z

The big news around Viget this week is that Ben Scofield will co-chair RailsConf with Chad Fowler next June. Isn't that awesome? I caught up with Ben and asked him how it feels to be a celebrity.

Me: Ben, how does this news - that you'll co-chair RailsConf - compare to other professional achievements you've experienced?

Ben: This is very exciting. I'd say it's in my top 3 in terms of achieving professional goals.

Me: Let me guess the other two - writing a book and being the Technology Director at Viget - right?

Ben: Sure.

Me: One of the stories that gets told so many times around here it is almost like folklore is that you were the inspiration for Viget to become a shop that develops almost exclusively in Rails. It seems fitting then, that four short years later, you would be co-chairing the world's most important Rails conference. But what's next? Where can you possibly go from here?

Ben: Lots of places. For example, I'd like to see Developer Day, our local event series, continue to grow and help build bridges between the various development communities around the country. Also, I don't think Viget's focus on Rails is a static thing. We switched to Rails because it was the best technology. If and when there are better ways to develop web applications, we will undoubtedly make another transition.

Me: How does it feel to be a celebrity?

Ben: I'll skip that question. I will say I was honored when Chad asked me to co-chair and I am really looking forward to playing an active part in leading the Program Committee. RailsConf is a high profile conference, but the real honor here is working closely with a lot of really talented, passionate people to put on a high-value event.

Josh to Talk Analytics at AMA DC Event

2009-10-22T17:23:00Z

The DC Chapter of the American Marketing Association is hosting a "How-To Series" on Google Analytics and our resident GA guru, Josh Chambers, is leading the discussion. The training is tailored for marketing professionals looking to maximize Google Analytics and improve their online marketing efforts. Josh will cover:

The most important reports
Tips and tricks for interpreting data
Integrating marketing campaigns

If you're interested, check out AMA DC for event details and to register online!

It’s Viget Week in Falls Church

2009-10-22T12:00:00Z

We've always tried to be good members of the web community, but it's also important to be good members of the local communities where we live and work.

Three things came up this week in Falls Church, the "sub-urban village" that's home to Viget's HQ.

Falls Church City Television - FCCTV, Falls Church's local cable access station, launched a new web site this week. The site was donated by Viget under our community pro bono program. Brian Williams, Viget's CEO, is a FCCTV volunteer board member and helped unveil the new site at the station's annual meeting on Monday.
Falls Church Chamber of Commerce Luncheon - Brian attended another local community event on Tuesday, where he was the speaker for the Chamber's monthly networking luncheon. Brian's talk focused on "Social Network for Small Businesses" and sparked lots of good discussion about what to do -- and what not to do -- online.
Falls Church City Schools - Business In Eduction (BIE) - Brian was honored this week to be named the BIE Partner of the Week in recognition for Viget's efforts this past year to support FCCTV (which operates in partnership with City schools), school teachers, and the annual career fair.

We're excited to continue to build strong relationships here in our local community.

Clinton Will Speak at 757 Studio

2009-10-14T09:00:01Z

757 Studio is coming up on November 5th in Hampton Roads, VA (where the area code is 757). This is a one-day conference put together by Ken Collins of the Hampton Roads Ruby and Objective-C Users Groups that has a broad appeal for developers, interactive agencies, and start-up types. The event sold out almost immediately, probably due to the stellar line-up of speakers. Andy Hunt, Jamie Pinkham, and Viget's own Clinton R. Nixon will speak to the fifty attendees. Clinton - who has a reputation for giving very engaging presentations - will present his talk, "The Joy of Ruby."

Clinton was telling me about his talk. It sounds like he'll cover the basics of Ruby and some colorful details about the Ruby community. He also said, "I get to talk about why we chose Ruby at Viget. I'll also try to show people how they could develop faster by using Ruby and write better quality code using some practices from the Ruby community, too." I can attest - he's really looking forward to it. He did not say, "The 919 will be representing at the 757," but I wish he had!

Duke University Launches Home Page Designed by Viget Labs

2009-10-01T14:34:00Z

Duke University launched its redesigned home page today at http://duke.edu. Viget Labs worked with Duke's Office of News and Communications and Duke Web Services for the past six months to design the new home page and its secondary Spotlight pages.

The new design illustrates nine themes of the university, each of which is featured in a rotating carousel on the home page and is further highlighted on its own media-rich Spotlight page. Vivid photography is used to convey the atmosphere on Duke's campus, its notable architecture, and its place in the broader Durham community.

In addition to sharing stories and giving visitors a sense of place, Viget met a more technical design challenge with the Duke.edu redesign. The university sought to "define and promote a clearer visual identity for the institution," while still allowing schools and organizations under the Duke University umbrella to be creative with their individual web site designs.

Viget's solution to this problem was a "brand bar," an unobtrusive header than can be added above the content and navigation on any Duke site to provide brand consistency. In its default state, it's a small strip of Duke blue with the university's logo and a single link.

Clicking the link expands the brand bar to display links to other Duke schools and institutes, as well as tools, resources, and the same navigation links provided on the main university home page.

The Duke Web Services team seamlessly integrated Viget's front-end buildout with the Drupal content management system. Working with the Duke team on this project was a great experience in designing for a .edu site. They entertained innovative ideas and experimented with new design solutions, yet maintained the integrity of their established brand identity. During the design process, they welcomed feedback from the university community on a blog dedicated to the redesign project to ensure the design would serve their target audiences.

Viget Labs hopes to share with the web design community some of the knowledge we gained about designing for .edu sites. With a little luck, the Viget team may have the opportunity to go head-to-head with the design team behind the forthcoming UNC site redesign on a proposed SXSW panel, South By March Madness: Designing for .EDU.

Recession Special: 5 Great Sites to Save You Money

2009-09-30T19:53:00Z

We all know times are tough these days. Here are 5 well-done sites to help you save money on everything from credit cards and savings accounts, to local places and services, to even Chinese take-out.

Groupon.com

Groupon.com presents a new deal every day (from midnight to midnight) on a wide variety of things to do, see, eat, or buy in 25 metropolitan cities (such as "Save 69% on Teeth Whitening" or "$18 for 3 Games of Bowling and Shoes"). You can also sign up to receive the deal of the day emailed to you. They boast to have saved their users over $21,000,000 through over 400,000 groupons.

The catch? What they call "Collective Buying Power." You only get the deal if enough people also buy the deal that day. For example, a groupon is posted that I'm interested in. It has a goal of 100 "buys." I can buy it, but I'll only get it if at least 99 other people also buy it.

RetailMeNot.com

One of my personal favorites for a number of years now, RetailMeNot is a collection of coupon codes for well known (and even not so well known) e-commerce sites (free shipping, 10% off, etc). The site is community run (meaning, coupons are shared by the site's users and each contains a % success rate based on votes from other users on whether or not the coupon worked for them). The top coupons float to the top and are color coded to show which are reliable and which aren't. In short, you SHOULD NOT purchase anything online without checking out RetailMeNot first.

The catch? Even the top coupons aren't always valid, and a number of top sites have requested user submissions be blocked.

BillShrink.com

BillShrink offers you a number of ways to save money on savings accounts, credit cards, cell phone plans, and even which gas stations near you will give you the best deal. BillShrink asks for some details on your current plan or activities and in under a minute they return to you:

The pros and cons of your current plan/activities.
How much it will cost you over the next 3 years, compared to alternatives they recommend for you (and how much each of those would cost you).
How much you can save by switching to a new plan.

Their sign up process is so quick, I didn't even initially realize that I had signed up. And, after activating your account, you can save top recommendations and set up email alerts for if and when new recommendations become available.

The catch? None that I could find. I found this site super easy to use, very straightforward and to the point. They offer valuable data with the right amount of detail, and don't try to do too much.

eHealthInsurance.com

eHealthInsurance lets you get quotes, compare plans, and apply online for affordable health insurance plans. After entering some simple details about you and your dependents, the site returns possible options, complete with their components and monthly cost. You can also see which plans would work with your existing doctors and even use a helpful "help me choose" wizard.

The catch? eHealthInsurance is a helpful tool for those shopping for a new plan, but be prepared to invest some time in researching and applying for plans.

SeamlessWeb.com

Well known in the corporate world for ordering catering, gifts, and other similar items online, SeamlessWeb also offers personal accounts for finding nearby delivery restaurants in 14 metropolitan areas. Put in your address and you'll be returned:

A list of all restaurants that will deliver to you, including a view of only the restaurants that are open right now.
Details on each restaurant such as price ranges, ratings, delivery time estimates and minimum delivery cost, as well as the full menu.

The catch? It's quite addictive; you may never cook again!

Refresh Recap: The Future of Data

2009-09-25T19:56:00Z

Last night’s Refresh the Triangle meeting featured a fantastic talk from our own Ben Scofield titled “The Future of Data.” Hosted by the kind folks at Bronto, it focused on HTML5 client-side storage as well as alternatives to traditional relational databases. Client-side storage has a lot of interesting implications, both in terms of improving website performance by caching user-specific information locally, as well as building standalone offline applications that run in the browser. On the server side, the “NoSql” movement has been gaining a lot of attention among the web development community, and Ben stressed that all data storage systems have their roles, from simple key-value stores to sophisticated graph databases.

Ben’s given a similar talk at several technical conferences, and he did a great job refitting the presentation to suit the Refresh crowd of designers, developers, and “other.” A lively discussion followed the talk and continued at Tyler’s downstairs. Big thanks to Bronto for their gracious hosting, to Ben for a great talk, and to everyone who came out. To learn more, you can check out Ben’s slides and his notes on his personal site. If you’re in the triangle area, we’d love to see you at Refresh next month!

Refresh Recap: Great, Profitable Design

2009-09-02T17:30:00Z

Ferol Vernon, Director of Product Development at ReverbNation in Durham, spoke at Refresh the Triangle last week. His presentation, "Profitable Design," outlined some thought-provoking points about priorities when designing a web site. Ferol emphasized that we should keep users' profitable behaviors (like buying something or adding content to a site) in the forefront of our minds when designing a site. He also said that some things we spend a lot of time on sometimes don't have an impact on those behaviors (he mentioned fonts and the homepage - since so many users don't come in the "front door" anymore).

Ultimately, Ferol's point was that if you have the means to improve a web site's design, you'd do best to focus on the changes that will impact profitability. From Ferol's point of view, the big, irresistable button has a place at the table. Ferol described himself as a nerd first, a business guy second, and a designer third - so it's not surprising that his take on design was so focused on the bottom line.

The next day, our own Senior Designer Rob Soule gave his (internal, Viget-wide) LabShare presentation, "Design is in the Details," which offered an interesting contrast to Ferol's talk.

Rob covered 5 elements that distinguish great design from good design and presented them in this order: transforms the ordinary; tells a story; is memorable or leaves a lasting impression; moves you to action; elevates the brand. Rob's focus was on designs that achieve something new and in a refreshing way. Oh, and by the way, I think Rob specifically bashed the big button during his talk.

Of course, these guys started from different angles, so their divergence is not surprising. After mulling it over for a few days, I'd like to ask Rob and Ferol to get together and present on Great, Profitable Design. It seems that Ferol's premise could still be applied in the context of Rob's guiding principles. Not all design needs to be profitable, but when someone has both goals (profitable and great) - do the strategies need to be mutually exclusive?

Kudos to Ferol and Rob for sharing their ideas. If you're in the Durham area, you should come to the next Refresh meeting!

ClearCarbon Goes Live

2009-08-28T14:30:00Z

We are proud to announce the launch of ClearCarbon's newly redesigned web site. ClearCarbon is a full service carbon specialty consulting firm, working to find increases in efficiency while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. As a young company, they've seen great success since their launch in 2007, helping businesses like Wal-Mart, Fox, and White Wave save millions of dollars.

ClearCarbon's most important asset is their client list. Going into the project, we knew we needed a site that could keep up with their flood of new case studies and logos. We also needed to tie this work to deeper content on the site such as service descriptions, presentations, and staff specialists.

ExpressionEngine is a perfect fit for these requirements - it allows ClearCarbon to easily manage unique content types and create clear relationships between them. For an example of these relationships, check out a staff page or browse some case studies.

We also worked on a brand update for ClearCarbon, keeping their colors and fresh look. The new logomark brings industry and nature together, expressing ClearCarbon's commitment to profitable, practical solutions for greenhouse gas reduction. It was unveiled on the new site last week, and each segment of the logo will be broken out and re-used as graphics in ClearCarbon's presentations and documents.

The final site design showcases ClearCarbon's wealth of expertise with a clean, inviting design. The homepage was built to give ClearCarbon the maximum control over their content, while still feeling balanced and rich. We enjoyed working with the ClearCarbon team to create a web presence that reflects the firm's reputation as a leader in a cutting-edge industry.

David and Ben at Windy City Rails

2009-08-19T12:00:00Z

Next month, both David Eisinger and Ben Scofield will be speaking at WindyCityRails, an annual one-day conference in Chicago on September 12, 2009. For Ben, a speaking veteran with experience presenting at international conferences and to audiences as large as 600-800, this is an opportunity to hone his skills and polish his talk. For David, the conference represents a milestone in his speaking career. "My previous experiences giving presentations have been local to one of Viget's offices," David explained "so this is a great opportunity." Both David and Ben are looking forward to WindyCity. "I expect we'll meet some new people and be exposed to new ideas," Ben said, "which is what you hope for when attending events like this." David is presenting his talk "Optimizing Perceived Performance," and Ben will present "'Comics' Is Hard: On Domains and Databases."

SXSW Panel Picker Overload

2009-08-17T13:44:00Z

There are 2219 proposals in the SXSW Panel Picker. Ideally, we'd all spend three minutes reviewing each topic and reading up on each speaker/organizer before casting our votes. That would take about 111 hours (or four and a half days). Hmmm. Do you have a better approach?

One option is to start with people you already know and trust - like us! We are proud to promote the eight sessions and panels in which Viget folks are participating. We're hoping a few make it to the stage in March. Thanks for your help in getting us there. And seriously, let us know your strategy for filtering through the Picker. There are too many good topics to choose from!

Check out what we submitted...

Jacks of All Trades or Masters of None - Brian Talbot

Designing Emotion: Injecting Style Through Mood Boards - Tom Osborne

Up to Speed at South By - M. Jackson Wilkinson

Web Typography: Get Your Glyph On 2 - Samantha Warren

Designing For Content : Art Direction On The Web - Samantha Warren

Mind Control: Psychology for the Web - Ben Scofield

Difficult Domains: Alternative Databases for the Web -Ben Scofield

South By March Madness: Designing for .EDU - Jackson Fox

A Rails Rumble Expert Among Us

2009-08-14T16:56:00Z

We love the Rails Rumble at Viget. What's not to love? 48 fun-filled, creative hours to build a fully-functioning web app? Community voting and cool prizes? It's a dream come true for us (so much so that the Rumble was one of the key inspirations for us to start Pointless Corp.)

We've participated in both of the previous contests and we're looking forward to this year's Rumble on August 22nd and 23rd. We are particularly excited this year to ~~have an inside guy~~ announce that our very own Ben Scofield will be foregoing the competiton and joining the Rumble's panel of expert judges. After winning Best Solo Project two years in a row, Ben proved himself as an expert, indeed. Several other Viget developers and designers will be camping out in the office next weekend to compete. While we've been told that Ben will not have enough influence to secure their victory, we're confident that they'll come up with something awesome.

"I'm excited to see what will come out of the Rumble this year," Ben said. Good luck to all you Rumblers out there and if you're looking to get in good with the judges -- well, Ben's just not that kind of guy.