July 2009
1 post
We’re launching the brand new Carsonified.com site this Thursday (July 9th) so we thought we’d give you a sneak peek at one of the major images for the site.
This is an image that’s going on the homepage of the new site. It’s a sketch by Mike, which is one of many that will be on the new site. Points goes to the first person that can figure out why we’re using heart imagery.
View full...
March 2009
11 posts
After four days, we’ve launched our first mobile widget: Twiggy. In case you haven’t been following the progress, we teamed up with Betavine to spread the word about the niftiness of mobile widgets. We thought the best way to demonstrate that was to build a simple mobile widget to show you all how it’s done.
Hopefully we’ve given you a bit more ammo to build kickass ideas for your clients and...
Elliott has created an 8-minute video that explains how mobile widgets work, from a technical perspective (see below). Hope you enjoy it.
Other news on the Twiggy front
* We’ve decided to opensource the project on GitHub, when we’re done, so you can all download the code and use it however you please.
* Mike has updated more screenshots of the progress of the Twiggy site:
View larger size.
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As you know, we’ve been working on building a mobile widget this week, called Twiggy. She’s coming along very well - so well in fact, that we’re ready to release a beta. Feel free to download it now. Love to hear your feedback!
How to use the beta
You can use the Twiggy beta in two ways:
1. Open the .wget file with Opera - it will automatically install the widget.
2. Go to the download link...
Mr Mike Kus, our esteemed designer, is recording his screen during the entire design process of creating and building Twiggy (our mobile widget).
He’s already uploaded Day One for you to enjoy (in HD!). It’s 2x real-time so that you can actually watch his design process and (hopefully) pick up a few tips!
Photo courtesy of flickr.com/photos/karenhorton
We’ve kicked off Twiggy Week here at Carsonified HQ. We’re building a mobile widget that uses the Twitter Search API.
Here are some TwitPics of the current state of the design (early stages). Mike will be regularly taking screenshots of the design.
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I interviewed Mike and Elliott to get their thoughts:
Also, we’ll be Qik’ing throughout the week, so...
Building a thriving community around your company/app/service is fuckin’ hard work.
I just came out of a meeting with a potential client who is interested in us helping them build a community and create a discussion with their target market. They’ve got amazing products and smart people - but they just don’t know where to start with Twitter/blogging/word-of-mouth/etc.
They’re a powerful,...
Next week, we’re going to build a mobile widget called Twiggy. It’s a Twitter search widget that will work on any widget-enabled phone (1,000,000+ handsets and growing).
We’re partnering with Betavine to help spread the word about standards-based mobile web widgets and we thought the best way to do that would be to actually build one :)
Here’s a little sneak peek for you:
View full size.
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As I mentioned, we’re branching out and doing a bit of design and development work (thankfully we’ve got so much work we’re now turning people away). We’re launching one of our first projects next week, which I’m really excited about.
Andy at Elevensoft commissioned us to design the marketing site for Orchestrate, a web app that helps service and maintenance professionals schedule location-based...
We’re working with Betavine to help raise awareness about mobile web widgets. I agreed to help because I really believe it’s big news for web developers, designers and entrepreneurs.
Here’s why: everyone loves designing and building for the iPhone. Who wouldn’t? It’s a very sexy, powerful and easy-to-use device. But here’s the problem, there are millions of people that don’t have an iPhone (or...
Betavine are giving £20,000 cash (no strings attached) to the person who designs and builds the best mobile web widget.
The competition closes on April 30th, so get cracking! Here’s more info on the competition and how to enter.
I had a nice video chat with Chris Messina on the topic of the future of mobile web development. We cover interesting issues like mobile web widgets, W3C standards, Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP), BONDI and PhoneGap. Hope you enjoy it!
If you’d like to learn more about how to build mobile web widgets, Betavine is a great place to start.
Photo Credit: flickr.com/photos/dkilim
February 2009
6 posts
How would you like …
1. Your URL to be posted to the ThinkVitamin.com news (93,000+ readers)
2. Me to tweet your URL (8,200+ people)
3. A free pass to FOWA Dublin, FOWA Miami, FOWA Tour (all four cities!) or FOWD London?
[Photo credit: flickr.com/photos/gaetanlee]
All we need from you is your email address. We’re teaming up with Betavine to help spread the word about mobile web widgets to...
Matt Cowen (@londonjourno) from Reuters just published a short piece on me. He wanted to talk about the fact that when times are good, everyone sings the praises of using social media transparently. However, as soon as things get tough, everyone wants to hide.
There are some important questions to answer here. The primary one being: Should businesses be transparent and honest, even when it might...
Somehow, I’ve amassed over 8,000 followers on Twitter (ryancarson) and I get roughly 37 new followers per day. I was thinking about this the other day and wondering how it happened … and if I could share any tips. Here we go:
Re-Tweet magic
Once you’ve built up 500+ followers, you need try to get re-tweeted as much as possible. If you don’t know what a re-tweet is or how to do it, Kevin’s...
I was booking a train ticket yesterday on TheTrainline.com and was impressed by a nice little detail. When you’re choosing your train time, there’s this huge grid of potential tickets and it’s pretty overwhelming. To help you, they highlight the row and column where your mouse is hovering.
Paying attention to details like that are what make using a sight really easy. Well done TrainLine!
I recently came across Mozilla’s new project Ubiquity. Here is their explanation of it:
“Ubiquity is an experiment into connecting the Web with language in an attempt to find new user interfaces that make it possible for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily. It’s a Firefox extension, so it works on Macs, Windows, and Linux. With only a couple keystrokes, it lets you use...
This text was recently uncovered from the source code of a file used by Google Pack:
“GDrive provides reliable storage for all of your files, including photos, music and documents. GDrive allows you to access your files from anywhere, anytime, and from any device - be it from your desktop, web browser or cellular phone.”
More info on the Google Operating System blog (unofficial).
January 2009
8 posts
I wanted to record a quick video response to Mike Arrington’s post about taking a break from blogging.
Photo credit: Danorbit.
I stumbled across this video this morning and really enjoyed it.
History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.
Mike (mikekus) and I (ryancarson) have been working really hard on the design for the front-end site for Orchestrate, Andy Wright’s new web app. We’ve been brought in to design the ‘public’ site that explains what the application does and (hopefully) gets you to sign up to try it out.
The web app was already beautifully designed by Jon Hicks and been coded in Rails. I can’t wait to see how the...
Our recent Twitter competition caused quite an uproar. So much in fact, that it made me think that we might’ve made a mistake. After taking time to reflect, I believe the competition was a bad idea. And here’s why.
The concept was simple enough. We’d give people an incentive to tweet a link like this:
“Please retweet this to help me go to http://bit.ly/10Sgh
or http://bit.ly/4w7t (Rules:...
Just a quick reminder that the auction for Amigo is going live tomorrow (Tuesday). For all the details, please read my previous post.
We’ve decided to sell Amigo, one of our web apps. The auction will go live next Tuesday Jan 20th at the following times:
* San Francisco: 10am * Denver: 11am * NYC: 1pm * Sao Paulo: 4pm * London: 6pm * Tel Aviv: 8pm * Mumbai: 11pm * Hong Kong: 2am Wednesday * Sydney: 5am Wednesday * Tokyo: 3am Wednesday
What is it?
Amigo is a service that matches advertisers with email newsletters, and vice...
Come join us at Carsonispace! I’m really excited to announce that we’ve opened up Carsonified HQ to be a coworking environment where we have five desks available to rent.
Here’s what you get:
* Your own dedicated desk
* Free broadband
* Free coffee and tea
* A dedicated phone line with voicemail
* Use of colour printer
* 24 hour access with your own key
* Use of the meeting room
* A...
YouTube has added a really nice touch to their site that encourages people to explore and view other videos. This has the obvious financial benefit to them of increasing video and page views, thus increasing advertising revenue.
I noticed that when you pause a video, and you put your mouse over it, a search box appears. It’s like they’re saying “Hey, why not explore some other videos?”. It’s...
December 2008
4 posts
No one is successful 100% of the time. Just look at entreprenuers like Richard Branson (founder of Virgin) and Milton Hershey (founder of Hershey’s Chocolate). They are (were) both extremely succesful and yet they’ve also had some spectacular failures (remember Virgin Brides?).
Thankfully we’ve enjoyed a couple successful ideas here at Carsonified on the web app front:
* DropSend was built on a...
The other day I asked this question on Twitter (twitter.com/ryancarson):
“My sis is looking for an affordable, but fast and reliable backup drive for her Mac. Suggestions? Is Firewire or USB faster these days?”
I got a huge number of really helpful responses, so I thought I’d go ahead and share. Enjoy!
=============================
stuscuba: @ryancarson Firewire if you can…I wouldn’t touch...
Last week I had to make the terrible decision to lay off three amazing people from the Carsonified Family. We really love and value Simon, Elliott and Dom, and it was very painful to have to let them go. We’re a tight knit group so it was tough on everyone - especially those who are having to leave. They’re talented, friendly and hard-working so I know that another company will snap them right...
Pret, a sandwich shop here in the UK, regularly amazes me with their copywriting.
In a (misguided) bid to stimulate the economy the British government has just decreased the sales tax rate here and all the shops and businesses are having to update their prices.
Here’s what it said:
==================================
(Thank you Darling!)
We’re passing on the new lower VAT rate immediately.
...
November 2008
16 posts
Dan Winchester →
Professional Services Automation (PSA) from... →
Global Services Marketplace Connecting Businesses... →
Blinksale | The easiest way to send invoices... →
Guru.com – Find freelancers at the world’s largest... →
The Monster List of Freelancing Job Sites -... →
Elance - Find and hire programmers, designers,... →
Marketing tools :: Freelance UK →
Tools for Time-boxing | Freelance Advisor →
Freelance Startup - Tools To Help Freelancers... →
FreeAgent - Online accounting for freelancers -... →
The Freelancer’s Toolset: 100 Web Apps for... →
101 Essential Freelancing Resources -... →
Freelance Jobs - iFreelance.com →
people4business - the services marketplace →
We’ve decided to do a bit of web design, development and consultancy for outside clients in 2009. As the economy is tightening up, we thought it was wise to diversify our revenue streams a bit, just in case.
We constantly get folks asking if we can build sites or apps for them, so I’m really excited to see what will happen. We’re only going to accept a few interesting jobs, so please get in touch...
October 2008
6 posts
As soon as I blogged about the Carsonified Journals we created for FOWA attendees, we had a mob descend on us asking to buy them.
I originally said we wouldn’t sell them, but I’ve caved to the masses and we’ve decided to release 100 for those who want to buy one. They’re actually quite expensive to produce so we thought we’d claw back some of the costs and spread a little joy, all at the...
I’ll be doing a 1-day workshop for anyone building a start-up. It’s Dec 12th at Carsonifed HQ, and there’s only 12 seats.
Leaving your 9 to 5 to launch your own company is exciting but a bit scary - especially with the current financial climate. However, downturns in the market are always the best time to start a company, and we can give you the advice you need to succeed. With everything riding...
“we have a tech generation that thinks that’s all... →
We wanted to express our gratitude to everyone who came to FOWA this year. We know that you have to commit your valuable time and money to hang out with us, and we really appreciate it.
So we decided to design and craft something special that we’d give to every single person who came to FOWA, so we came up with the idea of a limited edition Carsonified Journal.
Mike spent weeks designing and...