T.Y. Lin International Group’s projects are big. Really big. Like bridges, airports, and highways big. And the size of the projects is not measured just in simple scale, but of influence on the world’s infrastructure. At last, their web presence befits their impact as one of the world’s pre-eminent engineering services firms with the new T.Y. Lin International Group website.

The firm’s namesake T.Y. Lin pioneered some of the concrete techniques that have enabled giant infrastructure projects around the globe. Starting with him in the 50′s, and then carried on in recent decades by today’s far-reaching experts, the company’s expanded steadily into a worldwide firm with a strong presence in both Asia and the U.S.. Their work is used every day by tens of millions of people. Notably, they are the firm behind the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Their site is the first time their expanded company has been unified behind their one vision promise in one all-encompassing space. It’s a perfect example of how creating a company website is so often an act of defining the company itself. Read the rest of this entry »

The SFMOMA has a great exhibit up of German industrial designer Dieter Rams. The exhibit features many of the products that Rams designed for Braun from the 50′s through the 70′s, all of which are still strikingly modern and original in their design. He is famous for his “10 Principles to Good Design”, a sort of manifesto that guided his work and continues to inspire designers today. Rams’ influence can be seen in just about every Apple product on the shelf. Read the rest of this entry »

{Each week, our own resident technologist “Dr. Brisko” scours the Interwebs to find examples of the arcane and interesting. They are first shared privately in the inner FINE sanctum, where we retain some as pure trade secrets. But we switch a short list public to give you just a taste, from technology deep dives to design to the, well, unclassifiable info that just may be the cure for what ails you.}

Minimum Viable Personality
WHEN CHOOSE PRODUCT, HUMANS ONLY CARE ABOUT DOES WORK, AND IS INTERESTING.

Browser Market Pollution: IE[x] is the new IE6
Extrapolating this, if they maintain the same policy, IE17 be released in 2019, before IE8, 9 and 10 finally die. So in a few years from now, you’ll be supporting one version of Chrome, one version of Firefox, one of Opera, (probably) one of Safari, and ten versions of IE.

List of Company Name Etymologies
Coleco – began as the Connecticut Leather Company. And other strange but true company name stories.

SlideShare Ditches Flash for HTML5
… This is a milestone. 5 years ago, it was impossible to build something like SlideShare or Youtube without Flash. But the web has finally caught up.

Zynga’s profits down 95%
It’s like a FarmVille dustbowl.

Google launches ultimate jobs killer
Scan your way through the grocery store with your phone, no cashier needed.

Facebook’s makeover is a little bit scary
From Forbes, yes THAT Forbes! Over-sharing uber alles.

SpeakerDeck – Now Open to the Public
Speaker Deck is the best way to share presentations online. Simply upload your slides as a PDF, and we’ll turn them into a beautiful online experience. View them on SpeakerDeck.com, or share them on any website with an embed code.

The Elements
Cool HTML 5 site for the periodic table of elements… really.

Geek love:
In an uncertain economy, women choose brains over brawn

By now you’ve probably had a chance to check out the latest round of changes to Facebook’s user interface – and likely read/heard plenty of opinions about the new look. Facebook’s quest to display content relevant to users’ interests and usage patterns has resulted in yet another update to the News Feed. The resulting design is a bit more, shall we say, busy, for a service that’s never been too strong on design.

But for a moment, let’s put aside purely aesthetic considerations – things have gotten much more cluttered on Facebook. And let’s go with the question we’d ask as digital marketers: “How does this effect brands and their ability to engage?”

Read the rest of this entry »

{Each week, our own resident technologist “Dr. Brisko” scours the Interwebs to find examples of the arcane and interesting. They are first shared privately in the inner FINE sanctum, where we retain some as pure trade secrets. But we switch a short list public to give you just a taste, from technology deep dives to design to the, well, unclassifiable info that just may be the cure for what ails you.}

I, Interface
Applying Asimov’s three laws of robotics to UX.

The Ruins of Dead Social Networks
A requiem for BBSes, the forerunner to today’s social networks.

Samuel L. Ipsum
[BEEEP!]ING PLACEHOLDER TEXT! In keeping with the expletive theme, for those who want to generate some saucier placeholder content.

SEO for Non-[BEEP!]s
With this great quote “Good SEO is a by-product of not being a [Beep!]” We’ve edited this NSFW title, but if you’ll click through you’ll read about practices worthy of an expletive.

List of Changes in the Star Wars Re-releases
Han shot first!

The Great Lie – Lorem Ipsum
Content shot first!

Portland ranks 11th in list of world major bike-friendly cities
… “The smallest city to make the Top 20 list is Portland. We are aware that it doesn’t technically fit into the major cities category, but we were curious to see how the USA’s top cycling city would fare… Besides, we’ll never hear the end of it from Portlanders if we leave them out…”

PointPoint
A Plugin For Pointing To Things

Not sharing is caring
Facebook’s terrible plan to get us to share everything we do on the Web.

Unfolding the IKEA Effect: Why We Love the Things We Build
The IKEA Effect refers to the tendency for people to value things they have created/built themselves more than if made by someone else – in fact, nearly as much as if an expert had created the same item.

Radiolab:
An appreciation by Ira Glass

{Each week, our own resident technologist “Dr. Brisko” scours the Interwebs to find examples of the arcane and interesting. They are first shared privately in the inner FINE sanctum, where we retain some as pure trade secrets. But we switch a short list public to give you just a taste, from technology deep dives to design to the, well, unclassifiable info that just may be the cure for what ails you.}

How long do users stay on pages?
Quick answer, not long at all. Maybe you’re already gone by the time you finish this sentence.

Why your business needs a Chinese name
What’s in a name? If you’re in China — the world’s second largest economy — a lot. In a country where each character carries its own unique meaning, the characters used to transliterate a company’s name can make or break it.

The Mysterious Paper Sculptures of Edinburgh
One day in March, staff at the Scottish Poetry Library came across a wonderful creation, left anonymously on a table in the library. Carved from paper, mounted on a book and with a tag addressed to @byleaveswelive – the library’s Twitter account – reading …

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The Chateau Ste Michelle mobile site, in action at Chateau Ste Michelle talking about the Pink Martini concert that was in action at Chateau Ste Michelle.

Credo Capital is a capital management firm providing financial planning and investment management services to high net worth individuals and institutions (you know, people who still have capital to manage). And their new website at http://www.credocapital.com/ manifests a brand that’s equal parts cool calculation and personal approachability.

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