Ok, so I think the people over at Microsoft’s "Live" division did something right.  Live Mail, and Live Writer are pretty damn cool.  In fact, I’m writing this post from Live Writer right now.  I’m just learning them at the moment, but… seems like I don’t hate Microsoft quite so much right now.

Don’t worry, I’m sure it will wear off in time.

More Recent work!

I don’t consider it my best work, however the client had very specific goals in mind.  This is they logo they selected that fulfilled those goals.

This one is just a showcase of some stuff I did for Envirospeak.tv. Not too bad for a rushed weekend of work, if I can be immodest for a moment.

Ok, I know, there hasn’t been a lot of activity on the blog.  There has been in the workplace however.   Most of it I can’t show you. You know, sensitive material and all. What I can show you is this, a look at the direction the corporate brand is headed. It still has to remain in the same format as the old website, but it gives you some styling cues.

Hopefully we’ll see the new website in the new year, but who knows what will happen in the mean time.

The Weysafe website has been live for a while now, and while I’ve been working on power point presentations and planning for the new FFP website (based on the weysafe concept), the site has gotten a lot of virtual “pat on the back”s. Not only does it continue to get praise from employees, management, and contractors, it’s also manage to make an appearance in a few publications.

The site is now live! www.weysafe.ca
Check it out. It has a completely flash based e-learning component, content management system, and is built entirely in Flash/Flex. It also uses a visual implementation of SWFObject as mentioned in a previous post (see the traffic light, red if you don’t have the right plugin, and green if you do).

Shortly after that I did a quick CSS revamp of one of Silvacom’s brands, ISOGIS. You can check out the style of the previous frame-based websites at www.silvacom.com and www.truckbase.com, and then take a quick peek at the refreshed version of the layout at www.isogis.com.

Now that those are done, and one more website is waiting in the staging lanes for public release, I am free to move on to new things. New things being Adobe’s Creative Suite CS3 (yay .. new toys!), and the planning stages for the new Silvacom Family of websites. Not just a refresh, but an all out attack on what they were, and from the ashes will rise something bigger, better, and more importantly more accurate in describing/showing what the company is capable of.

Yes, I’m completely giddy.

The project I was talking about is now in beta stages. It’s been shown off to quite a few clients, and is somewhat of a flagship for where the company hopes to be headed.

I’ve since started another project that is a visual display for Outlook 2007. It’s basically a status tracker for employee availability. It will display, on a 40″ LCD television mounted in both campuses, the status of the employees and events of the company. Even better, it looks absolutely beautiful. I am very much enjoying the direction of the visuals for the company brand.

On that note, I’m starting to work on the company’s new website soon. It will be very nice to be able to “flex” my muscles and see how far we can take the concept. We have a lot of amazing products that we offer so far, but not enough of them are visible to new or potential clients. I’m very excited about being able to show off what we can do soon.

I can’t really post details, but my first Flex project is in it’s Alpha stages and under review by the client. When it goes live, you’ll be the first to know.

I learned a lot in how to design for Flex on this project. And what’s required to communicate between a Flash movie exported under the original AVM, and the Flex environment. The design got a little too cluttered for my liking, but I’m not the client, so I don’t get final say.

All in all, it’s been a good project.

From Craigslist.org:

“I am an aspiring wedding photographer that has assisted a professional shooter many times. I am looking to get a couple more weddings under my belt for my portfolio thus I am shooting some 2007 weddings for free. I am 26, have a fresh, very cutting edge photographic style and am very easy to get along with. I want to make your wedding day look it’s best and I am passionate about my finished product. My name is Rob and I am really excited to hear from you.”

My email to him:

Hi Rob,

First and foremost, I’m not a photographer. That being said, I AM currently looking for one. I work (and teach) in the creative industry in Edmonton, and while looking for a photographer I came across your ad.

Quite frankly, I hope you fail as a photographer. The first thing I teach my students is that “portfolio building” work done for free ruins any creative service based industry. You are offering your service for free, while other local photographers are trying to make a living from that same service. Imagine when you are done your “portfolio building”, that the next batch of aspiring photographers offer the same service… for free. Where do your clients go? Not to you. And the next season, when there is another new group of aspiring photographers?

I teach my students that the worst thing to ever happen to the creative service industry is the belief that you must work for cheap or free to build a portfolio. If you do feel that way … fake an event, or fake a wedding. find other shots to shoot where you are not stealing someone’s (possibly YOURS in the future) lively hood.

Good luck in the future Rob, if you lead the pack of aspiring photographers, I feel sorry for your chosen career path.

Nathan

I know I’m a little behind the boat on this one, but it’s very good information. Apparently, Yahoo and Microsoft joined Google in adapting the XML based sitemaps protocol found at www.sitemaps.org.

Here is Google’s first post about the project:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/06/webmaster-friendly.html

And here’s one about Microsoft and Yahoo joining the frey:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com