Super Bowl Party Etiquette

Epic Advice from Grandma

‘Confessions Of A Designer’, What Goes On In A Designer’s Mind

Organ Transport Lunch Cooler

I guarantee that no one will ever steal your lunch again. Available at ThinkGeek.

PlaceKitten

Need placeholder images, but don’t have any spare kittehs? PlaceKitten to the rescue!

The Friday Five is curated and written by John Suder, SUMO Heavy’s Head of User Experience and Minister of Propaganda. If you’ve got a story idea or see something feature-worthy for the Friday Five, contact John at john@sumoheavy.com. 

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We’re happy to announce that we’ve just signed a lease on new office space.

Our new home is at  525 South 4th Street, Suite 593, in the Foremost Building. We’re just a half block from South Street (4th and South), right on the border of Society Hill and Queen Village.

It was just a few weeks ago that SUMO Heavy was part of an Inc.com feature about businesses started from home (11 Businesses You Can Start in Your Pajamas).

While we strive to run a lean business, we stumbled upon an opportunity for a place that was too good to refuse. The price was right and the location is just about perfect for everyone. We also realized that it was time to make a move. While we loved working together in the Pine Street apartment, once we hired our newest developer (Sean Kennedy), we were officially out of space. We needed a place that we could grow over the next 6-12 months. And at the pace we’re growing, we’ll probably max out this space sooner than later.

The truth is, having a physical office makes our company more attractive to potential hires. To bring in good talent, you need to offer more than a seat on a couch and free coffee. And while it’s not the most important thing, we now have a space where clients can meet with us. (Also: parties!) Plus, we’re steps away from the legendary South Street. The area has had its up and downs the last 20 years or so, but it’s still a thriving scene for arts and music. And within walking distance of our office we have access to some of the best (and weirdest) bars, restaurants and music venues in Center City Philadelphia.

Once we get settled in, we’ll be posting pictures of the new digs (Sean can only build so many bookshelves in one day).

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A roundup of ecommerce, retail and design news you may have missed:

[RETAIL] [ECOM] Facebook Commerce Holds Promise for Retailers

[RETAIL] Top retailers saw big holiday traffic gains thanks to Facebook marketing

[DESIGN] What Does The Perfect Mobile Interface Look Like? (Don’t Ask Siri)

[RETAIL] [MOBILE ECOM] Shopkick: We Helped Drive More Than $110M In 2011 Revenue For Brands And Brick And Mortar Retailers

[ECOM] E-Commerce Site For Household Goods Alice.com Raises $3.6 Million

[DEVELOPMENT] 10 Signs Your Team Isn’t Really Agile

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The GMail Logo Was Designed the Night Before It Launched

via The Atlantic

Forgotten Bookmarks

Forgotten Bookmarks

Tae Kwon Do Finger Guy

Control+Alt+Delete Coffee Cups

Available from ThinkGeek

Pizza + Beer = PizzaBeer

It all started with a surplus of tomatoes, a bag of garlic & an idea that started early in the spring when they planted their garden herbs. According to the site (which looks a GeoCities design from the early 90′s),  “Pizza Beer is a Debris-free product. The Margarita pizza is put into the mash & steeped like a tea bag. A whole wheat crust made with water, flour & yeast is topped with tomato, oregano, basil & garlic. The essence of the pizza spices is washed off with hot water and filtered into a brewpot, where it is boiled for a long, long time. During the process, we add hops & spices in a cheesecloth type bag & filter the cooled liquid into a fermentation vessel. (big glass 6 gallon water jug). After a week or two, the beer is good to go. Keg it or bottle it.”

Mamma Mia Pizza Beer

The Friday Five is curated and written by John Suder, SUMO Heavy’s Head of User Experience and Minister of Propaganda. If you’ve got a story idea or see something feature-worthy for the Friday Five, contact John at john@sumoheavy.com. 

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Every Presentation Ever: Communication FAIL

The World in a Drop of Water

German Photographer Marcus Reugels captures mindblowing photos of water droplets refracting an image of a planet behind them, making them each appear to contain a teeny tiny world. (via Geekologie)

Movies Reimagined for a Different Time and Place

Graphic designer Peter Stults reimagines and remixes classic movies and movie stars.
(via Behance)

Hide Your Identity Specs

Wear these to hide your identity from the press and the paparazzi.
From Ideas Man Shed Simove.

Countdown to Apocalypse

…in case you were wondering.

The Friday Five is curated and written by John Suder, SUMO Heavy’s Head of User Experience and Minister of Propaganda. If you’ve got a story idea or see something  feature-worthy for the Friday Five, contact John at john@sumoheavy.com. 

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A roundup of ecommerce, retail and design news you may have missed:

[ECOM] Hackers Steal User Names and E-Mails from Zappos and 6PM.com
Hackers broke into the data servers of online retailer Zappos and affiliate site 6PM.com, stealing sensitive user data, the companies announced. No credit card information was stolen. Zappos sent an email to all customers to reset their passwords.

[RETAIL] Retail Sales Growth Expected To Slow In 2012
Retail sales are expected to climb 3.4% in 2012 to $2.53 trillion, cooling from growth of nearly 5% last year, the National Retail Federation estimates.

[DESIGN] Three Men And A Basement: How Carrot Creative Grew
How three college grads worked in a basement and lived off of ramen as they built “the best and brightest social media agency on the planet.”

[RETAIL] Lessons Learned from the 2011 Shopping Season
A report from the Dachis Group.[Full report here.]

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The Restart Page

The Restart Page

The Milhaus Shirt

The Milhaus Shirt by Patt Whelan/Immense Decay

Roommate Reminders

Roommate Reminders via Design.org 

NASA’s 1976 Identity Guidelines

Tim George / Full set at flickr.

Bacon Ipsum

Bacon Ipsum (via Sean Kennedy)

Pork belly shank hamburger, beef pork ball tip pig cow pastrami. Drumstick bresaola pig, tail shankle ham hock tongue. Brisket meatball leberkase pork chop turkey. Pancetta drumstick pork loin, brisket short ribs bresaola t-bone ribeye beef ribs fatback rump ham venison ball tip meatloaf. Turkey ribeye shankle filet mignon meatloaf, flank drumstick jerky jowl pork loin andouille ball tip. Beef flank pig shankle frankfurter tail beef ribs ball tip fatback, t-bone short ribs jowl salami. Flank spare ribs pork loin ribeye.  

The Friday Five is curated and written by John Suder, SUMO Heavy’s Head of User Experience and Minister of Propoganda. If you’ve got a story idea or see something  feature-worthy for the Friday Five, contact John at john@sumoheavy.com. 

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SUMO Heavy Industries was featured in an Inc.com profile “11 Businesses You Can Start in Your Pajamas” that briefly interviews its subjects on how they got their start running businesses from their homes. (Check out the full article here or skip to the good part.)

Photo: Jessica, Bob and Bart watching cat videos on YouTube hard at work.

Here’s a few things we’ve learned along the way:

Dinner for Startups

It’s Not Easy. It took a lot of hard work to get here. On top of the usual challenges of starting a business (Where will the clients come from? Can we keep the lights on?), there was the added challenge of the horrific financial climate. Not exactly the ideal time to start a business.  But, we pushed through, persevered and (eventually) thrived because we believed it what we were doing and had a true passion for the business.

We’re true believers in making our own way and using our entrepreneurial spirit to build something we could be proud of.

This isn't reality.

Stop Watching and Start Doing. If you’re out there thinking about making the leap, of starting your own company, doing you own thing – our advice is: DO IT. Got a full-time job that’s bringing you down? All the more reason to DO IT.

No excuses: Play one less video game, get your face out of Facebook, go out for happy hour a few less times to drown your sorrows, and stop watching TV – channel your energy into doing something that makes you happy. If you have the passion, the money will follow.

Right on Schedule!

Fall Down. Get Back Up. Repeat. You might fail. A few times. But wouldn’t you rather fail on your own terns than to be pushed aside (or out) with nothing to show for it at the end of the day? Or, even worse, at the end of your career?

Get your name out there, find your community and just ship something.

No one will confuse us with business consultants or life coaches. We can’t tell you how to run your life or your business. We do know that following your passion pays off and the rewards are greater than just money.

Oh, and we also learned it’s a lot of fun.

Don’t miss another post – Join our mailing list!

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[FULL DISCLOSURE] This plugin was developed by our very own Sean Kennedy, so you’ll probably get a biased view.

• Are you an avid user of MailChimp?

• Do You like WordPress?

• What about if we could somehow mash those two together — do you think that’s something you’d be interested in?

If so, RUN (don’t walk) and go download the plugin, Easy MailChimp Integration.

With just your API key and a list id, you can use a widget or a shortcode to put any of your saved list forms on your posts or pages. You can even use it in your custom templatesif you need a more custom solution.

FEATURES

• Create a Widget from any of your lists

• Add a Shortcode to any of your posts or pages

• Use a PHP snippet on any of your custom templates

• With one click, your list syncs and all your fields from MailChimp show up

• Custom classes on everything — style it to suit your needs using CSS

WHY IT’S THE BEST

All of the other MailChimp plugins I’ve tried for WordPress typically only do one thing well; that wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted the option to use my lists in any way that I wanted anywhere on the site. That’s where my plugin comes in. Easy MailChimp Integration is built to be used in the ways that suit your needs best.

You only need a Widget? Done. What’s that, you want it on specific posts only? No problem! You can do that with a shortcode. Oh no, you have 10 different lists and you want to use them all on your archives page?! No biggie, each list gets its own snippet. Need it to look different? It has unique ids and classes on everything. Do whatever you want!

TUTORIAL

2. Go to the Easy MailChimp page and set your API key.

3. Go to the list page

4. Import your list using the list id from MailChimp (even if it looks like this)

After that, you’re ready to go! If you have any questions, check out the FAQ page. If you notice any bugs or have a feature request, post it on the Github Issue Tracker or email me at sean@sumoheavy.com.

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