The Definitive Modal Layer

For the last couple of years we’ve been using modal layers where it made sense, basically most places where we would’ve used pop-ups in the old days, i.e. modal layer is to Web 2.0 what the pop-up was previously. But all the while I never felt like I was able able to lock down any solid way of doing this. Every time the issue came up I’d re-visit the functionality, never overjoyed with my latest implementation, so I never came up with a final solution. Depending on the website I was working with and the libraries they were already using…

Masters of the Universe – A Web Systems Suite

Okay so this is really fun. Just over four years ago I was working at a popular mortgage company as a back-end Tech Lead and was tasked with developing a PHP web framework to replace the dated and abominable system they currently had in place. Their current “framework” was like the ugly bastard child of an MVC… with grade three burns. In other words it was total shit (all these years later and I still seem to harbor a great hate for it). The web had been advancing quite nicely and we were now looking at the birth of Web

Overriding The Default Text Selection Color With CSS3

Finally getting round to testing out some CCS3 techniques I’ve been reading about and drooling over for the past year. Noticed a site I swung by thats text selection color wasn’t the browser default so I looked it up and found out how to change the background and font colors. It’s nothing new, people have been doing it for a while, just this is the first chance I’ve had to start playing.

Yellow Bird Camera – Video Unbound

Today I came across a tweet linking to a demo of what the Yellow Bird camera has to offer. I was blown away but I had work to get on with so I put it to the back of my mind and moved on, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Then later at lunch I was explaining it to some colleagues, it was the first free moment I’d had to reflect on the technology after a busy morning, and I started to get overloaded with ideas of how this technology can be implemented. And more than that I never…

More Augmented Reality

Our team recently had the agency’s first stab at the Augmented Reality craze that’s going down lately. We launched this a few weeks back. We didn’t have much of a budget at all so it’s no great masterpiece and we’re relying on our target audience (8-18 years) not having been previously exposed to the technology, so hopefully they’ll find it fresh and fun. Basically the packaging and magazine ads have the image needed for the experience, we’re not promoting it in any way, it’s just a viral… seeded campaign. Here’s a neat example of how it works:

For the most

Video Slideshows With Animoto

Researching for a client recently I came across a neat little service called Animoto. The problem we had was needing a photo gallery that lives on a single page. Not a huge problem in itself and any of these… would work, or numerous others I’ve worked with or built over the years. But the issue here is the CMS we have to work with doesn’t have the ability to upload media, this has to be done separately via FTP, so it’s a messy process and not ideal to leave in the hands of the account team. So I figured

Comic Effect using PHP GD

For some reason I decided I wanted to create a comic-ized image of myself from a photo. I think initially I wanted it to create myself some sort of digital avatar, but in the end it was out of pure obsession. See I figured it was a really normal thing to want to do and I’d find a bunch of free websites out there where I could upload a photo of myself and it would convert it. Not so (admittedly I was searching from ‘comicize’ when I think the correct term is more like ‘posterize’), there are some sites out…

Microsoft Tag: A Mobile Tagging System

A colleague of mine sent this my way http://www.microsoft.com/tag/. It’s a fairly new beta service that Microsoft is playing around with called Tag. Coincidentally it’s in a similar vain to something I am currently working on, Augmented Reality…, which we’ll be launching later this week. Anyways back to the point, I love it when something that should be complicated is super easy to use, and that’s what I love about this. It took no longer than 10 minutes from receiving the link in an email to having a printout in my hand that launches my blog when my

Brine Join the Tribe Campaign

This week was quite exciting for me and my newly formed team here at the agency. We re-launched our client’s website (an incredible feat we pulled off in only 4 weeks from design to launch, but something I’ll talk about in another post) and we launched the digital arm of the new campaign “Join the Tribe”, which in essence is built around the idea of featuring tribal warrior masks built from new 2009 Brine lacrosse products.