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Quote of the Week:

never slice cheese toward your fingers

never slice cheese toward your fingers
Originally uploaded by notchcode.

3 stitches, and about 8 lidocaine injections later and i am back in action, typing with one hand.

hurts more than those xacto injuries ever did.

Labels: accident, finger, xacto

posted at 3:52 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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11.28.2006

secure

I've been reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon over the holiday weekend, and it reminded me just how paranoid I can be sometimes. It's basically a sci-fi mysery thriller set in the late 1990s and World War II, and is about gold, codebreakers, nerds like Alan Turing, marines, and more nerds. But the thesis is this: encryption is a good idea.

So to that end, I've reviewed Notchcode's security practices, and made some improvements. All client data is now encrypted, as is all communication and data on our project management site. And all the backups and archives are encrypted. Never mind that they are already locked in a Fortress of Solitude-like structure, but now in addition to being physically secure, the bits are secure, too.

I've posted some queries up at Apple's Support Discussions database about this issue, too. The Mac has a mostly-useful feature called File Vault, which encrypts your "Home" directory, where, presumably, all of your documents are stored. Except when they're not. File Vault also has the added problem of being a bit slow, and buggy--at least in my experience. So there are a lot of people who have given me some other options to think about, including everything from general backup strategies, to specific products to use.

One thoughtful poster asked me what my industry's standard practices were regarding encryption and data security, so I checked: the AIGA, at least, has very little to say on the matter (this seems to be a theme with them: when it comes to some of the nitty gritty operative details of how to run a Creative Firm, they avoid all discussion, choosing instead to talk about the larger issues. Which is fine. But when you are getting pragmatic, it's a bit annoying for your professional organization to be so high-minded).

So, I solicit your opinions, gentle reader. Leave a comment for me using the Notchcode Contact Form, if you have any experiences to share or advice to give. Now excuse me, while I type in my new 4096-character password and get back to work!

Labels: aiga, encryption, mac, security

posted at 9:41 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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11.20.2006

Turkey

A list of things I'm thankful for:

My clients (of course!). The notchcode universe wouldn't be the same without you. In fact, it wouldn't exist. So you're like our own little personal singularity. isn't that cool?

Turkeys. I'm not talking about the birds. I'm talking about all the ideas and concepts that we thought were really neat, and then fell like so many flying thanksgiving dinners out of the sky, felled by the well-placed aim of a good critic. Sometimes these critics are our clients (thanks, again), sometimes it's the market, sometimes it's another designer. But without the occasional Turkey, you end up with a white-bread, pedestrian, bland, out of the can jello mold cranberry sauce of a design universe. And who wants that?


Everyone who reads this. Thanks for caring. Although I know most of you don't visit the notchcode creative site, and get your blog fix from RSS feeds, I'd love to have you stop by and see what we do here. Really. Get to know us. And let us know what you think of the work you see there.

Now it's time to get out of Dodge (or Denver, in our case). We'll be offline for three (work) days, and back on Monday. Have a wonderful thanksgiving, and try not to stare at the computer screen the whole time.

posted at 8:49 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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11.16.2006

E-mail campaigns and tools to use

I am not an expert on e-mail campaigns. However, I have done a couple of them recently, as part of larger integrated marketing efforts, and have some thoughts and rants.

First off, I will direct readers to fellow designer/communicator Heather Gardner-Madras's recent article on Choosing Bulk Email Software to Match Your Communication Goals. It's well-researched, and comprehensive.

Following that, some impressions of some recent e-mail campaigns for those new to the game:

There are a lot of do-it-yourself options out there. You can simply send out e-mails from your e-mail program (using the Bcc field for your addresses, of course, to avoid broadcasting everyone's e-mail address to everyone else). Some problems with that:

• hard to track any response other than an e-mail back to you. You want to be able to measure how many people actually opened the e-mail, and who then took action on top of that. That will allow you to see, for example, how attention-grabbing the overall piece was, and then how effective the call to action within it was. Hard to do with your PC's e-mail program.
• creating a compelling visual design. Some e-mail programs allow rudimentary HTML capabilities, but you won't have the control you need to create an integrated piece of your marketing strategy.

The next best solution: find an online campaign solution that has pre-built templates, and plug in your content. Campaigner is one option I've come across that does this. You can then use their tools to upload your list of e-mail addresses (you did get permission from the account holders to send them e-mail, didn't you?), manage link tracking, and report results to you after you send your message out.

Even better: have your designer (you do have a designer, right? If not, I know a guy) create a customized HTML page that you use in your campaign's e-mail template. You can then use a self-serve tool like Campaigner, or ramp up to a more full-service option like those described in Heather's article. Either way, you get more control over the look and feel you present to the recipient; and integration of all your outreach to your prospective and current client bases is too important to ignore.

If you use a self-service tool or a full-service company to organize and fulfill your e-mail campaign, make sure you know what their limits and standards are before you start building your piece. One case I recently ran across is a group that uses table formatting to help register clickthoroughs with their database. I am not a fan of tables (well, except for tabular data), and designed the entire piece in CSS. Needless to say, hilarity ensued, mostly with the non-programmer sales rep at the company trying to explain to me why the test e-mail I received looked like a kindergartener's attempt at aping my original design, rather than the elegantly styled code that my client had approved. Next time I'll design my piece in tables--or not use that particular company.

Lastly: test, test, test. Look at the way the code renders on as many platforms as possible, including handheld devices like Blackberrys and such. Browsercam.com is a great resource for people who don't have five or ten computers laying around waiting to run browser tests. See how it looks in Gmail and Yahoo!Mail, too--you can do this by sending an e-mail test from the company running your campaign or the self-service tool of your choice. Make sure it works before you send it to all your valuable clients and leads.

I won't get into the type or amount of content that's appropriate for an e-mail campaign here; there's about a 975,000 articles' worth of things to say about that topic.

That's all for now. As for me, it's back into the world of holiday-themed cards. Yep, everyone has to have one. It's like this season's Easter Bunny.

posted at 5:42 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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11.02.2006

Pac-Man

And for those of you who appreciate a graphic bon mot, I give you the Pac Man chart.

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Fun shoots

It's always nice when your photo assignments are actually fun, even when on the face of things they look otherwise.



I had a blast shooting a group of lawyers on an oil rig this morning, about an hour north of Denver. This is just an outtake, something they asked for after all my "real" shots were done. But even this turned out nicely. All the folks were friendly, the rig operators were helpful, and there was even a dog from the ranchette next door to this leviathian tower that insisted on being included in a couple of the shots. Should be fun to show to the clients next week, and see if they are as happy with the results as I am.

posted at 10:20 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

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