IDEAS

Have to admit, seeing this technology focused commercials gives me the goose bumps.  Saw this today on Hulu, we fortunate enough to find on youtube, tell me what you think?

I thought this was cool.  Members of design agency in Colorado will be gathering today to have a funeral for the Death Internet Explorer 6.0. Oh those words sound so nice for a web agency that pulls its respective hairs out coding for IE 6.

Here is an excerpt of the article that appeared on CNN.com.

More than 100 people, many of them dressed in black, are expected to gather around a coffin Thursday to say goodbye to an old friend.

The deceased? Internet Explorer 6.

The aging Web browser, survived by its descendants Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8, is being eulogized at a tongue-in-cheek “funeral” hosted by Aten Design Group, a design firm in Denver, Colorado.

The memorial service will feature a coffin holding a “body” that has an IE6 logo for a head. Attendees are expected to eulogize the Microsoft browser by sharing remembrances, some of which have already been posted on the company’s online funeral invitation.

“I feel terrible admitting this, but … I never really liked him,” posted someone who gave his name as Eddie Escher. “He had so many hang-ups, and he looked awful — especially in his later years. But… he was always there when you needed him. You have to give him that.”

Internet Explorer 6 isn’t exactly dead yet, and in fact remains widely used. But in recent years, it’s been eclipsed by newer, faster browsers that are better equipped to run the Web’s latest bells and whistles. Google Docs and Google Sites discontinued support for the browser Monday, and YouTube will follow suit March 13.

“The web has evolved in the last ten years, from simple text pages to rich, interactive applications including video and voice. Unfortunately, very old browsers cannot run many of these new features effectively,” wrote a senior product manager in a Google blog post. He urged users to upgrade to more modern browsers.

Read the rest of the article.

Looking for an HTML 5 countdown, check this out: http://ishtml5readyyet.com/

Found this on ign.com today and was awesome segment to watch of the very near future of motion gaming. The Wii was so revolutionary with it’s motion control that Sony and Microsoft are just now showing their developments in the area (way to catch up boys!). I guess something revolutionary should buy you at least a 2-3 year head start, I mean isn’t that what the iPhone has over the next closest phone Droid. BTW, David Spira has one in our office and man it’s pretty slick. Once the open source kicks in, unless they change their policies, its going to be lights out on the iPhone.

Check out the video below, it takes like 20 seconds and you’re hooked and asking where do I pre-order!

Week 43

This week’s themes included, for the love of Information Architecture, teamwork, sharing, Local Wisdom bringing the funny, bowling with wisdom and customer satisfaction.

The team had a second Information Architecture review meeting for one of our current intranet design projects. As an observant and empathic Account Manager, for this engagement, I was taken aback by the discussions, interactions, and overall teamwork between LW, the customer and their IT partners. What an awesome meeting. It’s always great when technology, creative, and customer business needs are aligned early. Wireframes, site maps, and content inventories can be a bit much to swallow but with a balanced diet of candid dialogue with a side of funny makes for productive working meetings.

Mid week our company had our monthly \\Share Meeting. We take this opportunity to come together and present new ideas, fresh perspectives, and also hear about the details and outcomes of recently completed projects.  These are always fun and enlightening sessions. Pinaki Kathiari and Christine Robinson really do an awesome job of putting them together each month.

Upon completion of the sharing process it was time to bowl.  North Brunswick Brunswick Zone was the location and fun was the situation.  For photo evidence please click here. Shout out to Hope Zelinski and Joseph Campbell for making the trek to the outing.

I end this week with a quote from Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder, “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” Those words were very evident this week. Till next week. This weekly review has been brought to you by Derrick Larane, Director of Sales here at Local Wisdom.

This is just one (of many) ways that Local Wisdom keeps it’s employees happy – a fun-filled night of disco bowling, pizza, wings and, of course, beer. The winner of the night is Shawn with a not-so-whopping-score of 119. Loser of the night… would be me… I swear that gutter had a ball-magnet in it.

And of course, the team’s photographers had to bring their twin Canons to the event. Here are a few photos from the night. I’ll leave out some of the more fun ones for the Facebook Fanpage.

For more pictures, check out our Facebook Fan page album.

I’m at the Giggle Berry Fair at Peddler’s Village with Afotey talking about the new games console games like Uncharted 2, Batman AA, and God of War 3.

As we explored the back looking for a pin ball game to play we found these.

This is a joystick.

Pinball machine.

And they’re all wooden.

Week 42

This week’s word is “Relationships.” Everyone now repeat after me, “ri-ley-shuhn-ship“.  A healthy company culture is one where all employees have a great relationship with one another. Not to brag (but I will) thats what its like at Local Wisdom.  And relationships outside of the company continue to lead to some interesting new opportunities. I love new opportunities (specifically when its a new website design, application development, and curation type opportunity.)

This busy week at Local Wisdom started with some tactical conversations with some of our customers. Proactive problem solving strikes again. Being good listeners, digesters and responders is a part of the norm for our team.

A new curation engagement began,  received approval on a design, and a new website architecture was presented…and I exhale.

The week ended with the four owners, Pinaki, Mike, Shawn, and myself attending a Leadership Management training at Dale Carnegie. It was an intro class but pretty darn awesome. The session focused on combining leadership and management, two terms with different definitions. With some good team based workshops and an exercise by the name of  ”Who drop the ball,” the session really made a positive impression on our group.

In even cooler news a few of us just bought Uncharted 2 and there is a 3 player online co-op mode for this game. I suspect some late nights and coffee mornings are in the future…happy Web Siting all and until next week.

This weekly review was brought to you by Derrick Larane, Director of Sales here at Local Wisdom.