Brad Frost Logo Thingy

If there’s anything I shouldn’t be doing right now, its messing around in Photoshop.  I’m so busy its insane.

Google Profile

Well this is news to me.  Google apparently is now  including Google Profiles in search results.  On a semi-occasional search for my name, I found a message that said “Are you Brad Frost? Click here to create your profile”, to which I happily obliged.  Now Google Profiles has been around for a while, at least since 2007, but it was mostly used behind the scenes to integrate all your profile info between Google products. Big whoop. Added convenience.

Now that the cat is out of the bag and the profiles are visible on the Search Engine Results Pages, Google Profiles seems less like a nice little feature and more like a crucial aspect to managing your online reputaion.  You can dictate how much or little you want to share with your profile, including work info, interests, links to your other sites, and even photo galleries from Picasa and Flickr. Its a wonderful little place to aggregate all your pleasant little nooks on the internet.

This is all well and good, but this little phenomenon is going to open the floodgates for a whole host of issues.  For starters, Google’s got your number baby, and now they can put it on display for the world to see.  I can see this possibly triggering a gold rush to stake a claim in your name, to force you to get on board before the other scary, one-eyed pirate rapist Brad Frosts (yes there are more than one) outweigh your relevance.  Now this gold rush puts that oh-so-important personal information in the hands of the gatekeeper, the Big G.

Now that its specifically targeting the individual, Google can promote, demote or do whatever with anyone brave enough to attempt to manage their online reputation.  Will people who have the balls enough to post ALL their information on Google Profile outweigh those who try to maintain some deal of privacy in this online world?  For example:  “Hi I’m John Smith and I’m an accountant” will rank far below “Hi I’m John Smith and I’m a 42 year old puzzle maker living at 24 Wendy Way in Sandusky Ohio. I like long walks on the beach, Beethoven, and punching people in the face. I have 3 cats, a pig, and a shriveled turnip that I use to……” You get the point.

And out come the tin foil hats.  Is Google preparing for the eventual harvest of humanity, riding around in their Street View cars now affixed with laser-beams to thin the herd?  Is Google looking to undermine Facebook as the largest network of people?  What can they do with a gigantic network of people and a near-monopoly on search?  Will “Do No Evil” eventually become “Holy crap! We have everyone’s info, time to do some evil!”?  Doubtful, but I think its important that while Google Profiles can help quickly and easily help you set up a home base for your internet presence, the gun-to-the-head pressure of hopping on the G train might raise some red flags.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in seeing what Google Profiles looks like, check me out.

Yesterday Varien announced Magento Enterprise Edition, which is a commercially-licensed e-commerce platform built on their free open source version.  From Varien’s standpoint, I can understand their need to monetize their product, however I feel this is a big disappointment to the growing Magento development community.  With over to 750,000 downloads in less than a year, Magento’s growth has been quick and has gained a ton of momentum from developers and critics.  What better way to totally reverse that momentum by locking up the best features in a premium version and slapping a huge pricetag on it ($8,900 A YEAR?!).

From a developer’s standpoint, I was really looking forward to a lot of the features that were being hyped up by the team on the roadmap and/or forums (specifically the gift cards).  Now that a lot of beneficial features will be locked up in an expensive premium version, I expect to see that excitement and momentum from the community fade.

I liken Magento Enterprise Edition to Trickle Down Economics.  Varien will argue that developing these new features for the premium version will have a positive impact on the rest of the Magento community.  Those features will essentially trickle down into the free version over time and everyone will benefit from them. But I feel the reality is that as long as Varien is profiting from those advanced features, there’s absolutely no incentive for them to release them to the rest of the community until they’ve made their buck.  Varien will be the gatekeeper and will control the growth of the community.

Despite the “Commitment to Open Source” paragraph in their announcement, the fact remains now they have to split their attention between their community version and their commercial version.  Varien knows that its community is its biggest asset, so why alienate its passionate user base by moonlighting on a premium product?   Their release of a commercial version muddies its relationship with their community.  In forum discussions Magento team members are amazing resources.  Now that they have premium features, can they fully support the community without giving away their premium features/advice/info?  Will community demand for a certain feature result in a feature that will be released to the community version, or will Varien develop it themselves for their premium version?

It will be interesting to see where it goes from here.  How many people will jump on board with Magneto Enterprise Edition? How will the community react?  How will the development of Magento change now that there are multiple versions?

I continue to look forward developing websites using Magento. I think its a fantastic platform with a host of great tools and a ton of potential.  But I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if Mozilla came out with a “premium” version of Firefox when version 2 was released.  Would Firefox 3 be what it is today?  Is Varien stifling the growth of its open source community?

Why Bother with Landing Pages?

Its easy to understand why web designers overlook temporary landing pages: tight deadlines, the hassle of creating and maintaining a page that will only be discarded later, etc.  But there are immediate benefits of exerting that extra effort to develop a great landing page:

You’re Building the Site Already

You’re busy slicing and dicing the static content of your gorgeous future website, so before it gets chucked into a CMS, throw the skeleton up (header, footer, container) as your landing page.  Even though the full site is still being developed, site elements can be introduced and built upon later.

While developing the Complete Care Chiropractic website, I introduced what will later become functional elements of the site, but in the interim are simply placeholder divs to frame the temporary content.

Complete Care Chiropractic - the prettiest thing in the world? no. Beneficial? Absolutely.

Also keep in mind that the landing page will not be discarded, but rather dispersed when the full site gets developed.  For example, I created a “Make an Appointment” form that will later live on its own page, but in the meantime is readily accessible to any user looking to quickly book an appointment.  In fact, every element on the current page will be used elsewhere in the final build. Will it look the same? No. Will it be coded the same? Perhaps.

Think of the Users

Think of the site’s target audience and their need for your site. What are their primary goals in visiting your site? What would they benefit from more: a splashy hip graphic saying “coming soon!” or a one-page site that can help them acheive their primary goals.  I choose the latter.  Caution the user that the full site is on its way, but in the meantime you can….

Capture User Data

I’ve seen tons of temporary sites that fail miserably in this department.  Users will navigate to the site, perhaps a site they are even excited about, and be stuck with a neat-o keen graphic and nothing else.  Temporary landing pages are perfect for generating buzz about an upcoming web project,  so why not turn your lack of site into a promotional opportunity. A simple newsletter signup notifying users on the website’s release can help your site gain momentum out of the gates, instead of wasting all those views on a cool looking graphic and nothing else.

Search Engine Optimization

Complete Care Chiropractic had no web presence prior to the site I’m currently developing.  Because of this, its imperative that I get something up NOW instead of waiting for the final product.  There needs to be substantial content online so Google knows what the site is about, we can start targeting keywords, and we can feel confident when providing the inbound link to relevant sites.

What Not To Do

• Ignore a landing page all together - there are too many benefits landing pages provide
• Wait too long - stop perfecting the design and get something online, like yesterday. There’s plenty of time for perfection once you safely have a landing page up.
• Only include a graphic - a picture is worth 1000 words, but 1000 words doesn’t get you very far in regards to landing pages. Only providing graphics will keep your ADD users happy for about 2 seconds before they’re off to a cooler website.
• Not optimize your landing page - Why am I not seeing my site in Google? Maybe because the only thing in the body is an image tag with an alt=”splash page”. Instead,  use keyword-rich, relevant title, header and link tags to get started on optimizing your future site.
• Ignore email addresses you’ve gathered- You actually spent the time to collect important user data, and you aren’t marketing to them?! That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Try rewarding those early adapters instead with a discount or some cool incentives instead.

Conclusion

Landing pages are a great way to jump start your site’s web presence and ease the transition from going to zero to full blown website launch.  Giving users the ability to meet their primary goals on your site will keep them happy until the rest of the site is built.  Capturing email address and other user info is a great way to build an audience once the site launches, and if you properly optimize the landing page, users AND search engines will keep coming back for more.

My good friend Sean Eisele has recently written and directed a short film entitled Surrogate. Sean has broken convention from typical western gender stereotypes by focusing on a strong female lead character. I recently worked with Sean on Gospel of Wonderland, where I wrote score music featured in the film.   Here’s what Sean says about his new film:

Surrogate is a script that my father and I developed that we are now expanding into a feature length script. Having been raised on Westerns, it came to our attention that in such a male dominated genre, female characters are often marginalized as flat, secondary characters. They are either damsels in distress or threats to the Cowboy lifestyle. Therefore, we set out to give life to a full blooded female character with this film, one that is integrated into the West rather than disconnected from it. Under the guidance of producers Mark Myers and Erin Hudson of Citizen Skull Productions, the project has taken flight.

The film also stars good friend and Sean’s long time collaborator Max Rappaport.  That’s the extent of my knowledge about the film so far, but based on the quality of the trailer and Sean’s previous work, I know it will be absolutely amazing.

View Surrogate trailer

Adventure Gear

Adventure Gear Jacket System

Adventure Gear is a clothing brand specializing in a multi-tiered jacket system, which allows you to stay comfortable in almost any climate situation.  I was responsible for building all front end elements, including site templates, Flash production,  and Flash video with alpha channels (currently being worked on).

The New World Institute

The New World Instutute - Career Transformation

The New World Institute is a career transformation service, helping motivate people to find their true passion in life. Still ironing out some of the details of the site, I was responsible for building all HTML, CSS and Jquery.

Outside of my Pod1 work, I have been hard at work on several projects, including a website and brand redesign of renowned photographer Casey Templeton.  Also, we are working on the brand identity, website design and online marketing of Owasso, OK based chiropractic firm, Comlete Care Chiropractic. My lovely fiancè and I have been collaborating on our design, music and art since we’ve been together, and I’m excited at all the wonderful places our collaboration will take us.  Expect something here in the near future…it will be exciting.

On top of all THAT, I have been working on a redesign of Brad Frost Web, working on several large scale paintings, and along with Melissa writing and recording what will be an album this time next year.

The only downside to all this wonderful work is that my back hurts a bit from sitting so much, so I’ve recently invested in a proper office chair as well as a temperpedic pillow.  I’m sure it will be worth the investment.

Its hard to document everything when I feel like the days and weeks just fly by, but I am really trying to make an effort to be more consistent with my postings here.  Only good things to come!

Happy Up Here on Vimeo on Vimeo

Amazing new Royksopp video. Intense visual experience that’s for sure.  Its directed by Reuben Sutherland and involves a ton of After Effects. Really wild stuff.

Retro Star Cleaners Sign in Richmond, VA

Retro Arby's Sign in Richmond, VA

Retro Bowling Sign in Richmond, VA

We recently traveled down to Richmond, VA to take care of a bunch of stuff for our upcoming wedding, and while we were there we stayed with my future brother-in-law.  He lives in a cozy little part of town right off a main road that was chock full of awesome retro looking signs.

All three of the above signs are located very close to each other and they all kick ass. I’ve always loved the huge top hat Arby’s signs because of their sheer scale. I also love them because I can’t really think of any point in time these signs actually were appropriate and didn’t look out of place.  The Star Cleaners sign is fantastically retro, right down to the years of paint chipping and decay.  And the bowling sign is simple, thick and wonderful.

Paul's Boutique

The Beastie Boys have created a new website for their reissue of their masterpiece album, Pauls Boutique.   This album is definitely in my top 5 favorite albums of all time, and am also really pumped about the site.  It has a kick ass panoramic Street View-esque functionality of the famous corner of the album cover, and also has a lot of nifty Flash features. Its fun to click around so give it a spin.