A new study demonstrates the rapidly increasing impact of smart phones on Internet browsing habits.  The Pew Research Center report shows that more than 40% of adult cell phone-users in America have a smart phone.  Surprisingly, a large number of these smart phone users prefer to go online using their smart phone rather than using a desktop or laptop computer.  25% report that their smart phone is their most common means of Internet access.

This growing trend will have a dramatic impact on online marketing strategies and the way web designers and developers build the next generation of web sites. Understanding how, when and why an end user surfs the Internet and engages with content is critically important to us, especially as smart phones become the web browsing platform of choice.

Photo courtesy of Zagrev

The legal profession has been turned upside down by changes in technology, new competition, globalization and the recent recession.  Firms have been forced to rethink their business model, to reevaluate their practice areas, provide alternatives to hourly billing and implement new technology, all of which are radically changing the way law is practiced. But many firm websites don’t reflect these changes – and remain the same static law firm brochure websites of 10 years ago.

We’ve spent a great deal of time looking at these sites in conjunction with the work we do for our law-related clients and are truly surprised by what we see. While there’s some variation from site to site, we observed five troubling practices with these brochure style sites. Continue Reading →

Here it is. The day I’ve been waiting for. The iPhone finally released from the clutches of the dropped call master: AT&T. At long last my patience has finally paid off. So why did I have to ruin everything by reading the fine print?

Let’s start with the good news first. Yes, the iPhone is coming to Verizon. So all the speculation was true and I should have trusted the Wall Street Journal and bought Apple and/or Verizon stock when I first heard about it. My bad. Loyal Verizon customers, like myself, will be able to pre-order phones starting February 3rd for the standard price of $200 for the 16 GB model and $300 for the 32GB model on a two-year agreement. Everyone else has to wait until February 10th.

Additionally, the Verizon iPhone will have a different antenna configuration since it is built on Verizon’s CMDA network. This may fix the antenna problem associated with AT&T’s iPhone 4. We just don’t know yet. And you will be able to connect your computer to the Internet through the Verizon iPhone. Up to five devices at a time can use the iPhone’s built in Wi-Fi network to connect to the web.

Now for the bad news and unfortunately there’s quite a bit of it. Verizon has been touting the speed of its LTE 4G network, but you won’t be able to use it with their iPhone. Apple said the first generation of LTE chipsets would have compromised design so they created a CMDA network version instead. This means a 3G iPhone for Verizon, so no 4G data and no GSM roaming. This seems like a huge step backwards.

Another huge disappointment is that you cannot talk and surf the web at the same time. So if you are on your phone and your friend needs directions to a restaurant you’re going to have to hang up and call her back.

And then there’s the great unknown. If there are many people like myself who have been waiting to get an iPhone with a non-AT&T network, will the influx of new users create the same kind of signal problems and dropped calls that AT&T is experiencing?

Personally, I was ready to go all-in on an iPhone and my preference for user-friendly, Apple designed products remains. However, my primary interest has always been to find a smart phone that provides the features and apps to make my life easier. The limitations of this release make me want to take a closer look at other Verizon 4G phones announced at CES like the HTC Thunderbolt or the Droid Bionic both of which will run up to 10 times faster on the LTE network than the 3G iPhone.

I’m not saying that I won’t end up with an iPhone. There’s still lots of compelling reasons to go with Apple and an iOS product. I guess I’m just disappointed that the Verizon iPhone isn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be. It’s like thinking you’re getting an iPod touch and instead you get a Nano. It’s nice, but it’s not exactly what you wanted.

What’s not to love about the Chicago Blackhawks Stanley Cup season?  The Answer: The Chicago Sun-Times coverage of where the Stanley Cup Trophy has been over the summer.

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Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 Rev 2.0

I’ve built a great many PCs from parts. If you want something better-than-bottom-end, and you’re the kind of person who wants every option available from which to cherry-pick the best, building your own really is the only way to be comfortable. Not to mention it saves a bundle, as long as you’re okay providing your own tech support. Coincidentally, I take the same approach to my bikes, my furniture, and, occasionally, my friends. Just kidding.

Anyway, I recently put together a computer here for Patrick, our Creative Director, to get the most out of Adobe CS5. Of course, a bit of research goes a long way—for example, Nvidia Quadro FX family video cards, though less popular with the gaming community (and therefore less commonly purchased online for computer building), provide hardware acceleration to After Effects and Premiere CS5 rendering. But in addition to determining what pieces you want and at what price point, there are a lot of little things that have always made my life easier when it comes time to build the rig and POST it for the first time. I thought I’d share a few of these things.

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Everyone knows that print journalism is in a death rattle, and it’s tempting to wax nostalgic as paper after paper bites the dust. But when you hear comments like those of Tribune Chairman Sam Zell, it’s tough to have a lot of sympathy.

During an interview with CNBC, Zell was asked about the future of the newspaper business. What is his visionary prediction? PDFs. That’s right–the staggering problem of remaining profitable in the newspaper industry could be solved if only we could figure out a way to deliver PDF versions of publications.

“going forward, it’s going to require all kinds of different approaches, including probably most significant, the elimination of home delivery and the replacement of it by PDFs.”

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There's a reason you don't see packaging like this.

If you’ve ever left been backcountry camping, you know that it’s always a bad idea to draw your drinking water from a static source. Sure, that pond may have water in it. But when you’re parched from a day of hiking, would you rather quench your thirst from the algae-covered (and probably bacteria-filled) stagnant pond, or from a swift-moving mountain stream? The choice should be obvious.

In the past, most websites were like the pond – static pools of water. They may have looked pretty at first, but they tended to stagnate quickly. As the content grew more and more outdated, the site became about as appealing as a drink from that algae-covered water. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that when it comes to browsing the web, people’s preferences are no different—they want their content fresh.

Some of the web’s leading thinkers and interactive marketing experts see the evolution of content ‘streams’ as the future of media consumption. Gone by the wayside, they predict, will be the notion of viewers making the online journey to visit a static site. Instead, our news thirst will be quenched by a series of content streams that the user may draw from at his or her leisure.

If you think this sounds like foolish dreaming about some future web utopia, you’d be wrong. This transformation has been going on right under your nose, and we’ve already begun to see this evolution in services Twitter, Facebook and Google Finance. And one of our own clients, the American Bar Association, has already been publishing stream-based content for almost a year on their ABANow site.

Have you observed a change in the way you consume web content?

Twitter has been a topic of conversation lately around the water cooler, for reason soon to be revealed. I think that it is interesting that the “I ate crispix for breakfast” meme is still around. I wanted to counter with just one of the many ways that I employ Twitter—professional development resource.

As someone who works in the web world, Twitter fits nicely in my tool kit. After all, it is folks like us that created the service that is currently winning the Webby People’s Voice battle for the entire internet. Twitter is a representation of what the web has become: real-time, democratic publishing platform and the finger on the pulse for the planet. I use Twitter in many ways, but one of my favorites is as an aggregator for the cutting edge in web design and development. Follow my workflow outline to see how I have put Twitter to work for me. Continue Reading →

Facebook has over 400 million active users. People are tweeting an average of  600 times a second. For those of us who are still wondering who the heck are using these services, the answer seems obvious: everyone…and their mother. These enormous user bases are mighty attractive to any marketing team out there, regardless of industry, and the race is on to translate these huge numbers into something more valuable that a database of a billion daily blurbs about what folks are having for breakfast.

Now, it may just be because I’m an English major and thus love the evolution of the English language, but to me one of the more interesting results of this attempt to leverage the social media masses is the appearance of the social media lexicon in mainstream advertisements. The earliest example I can think of regarding this meeting of words involves the 2007 AT&T ad for text plans:

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They say that pictures are worth a thousand words, and that’s just one of the reasons why I love infographics so much. They can take the most complex concepts and make them accessible and humorous in a way that a well thought out 10-page paper could only dream of.  Take, for example, the image below:

I know that the best browser debate has been raging for years, and I’m definitely not about to delve into the nuts and bolts of that argument since I barely understand some points myself. But what I so loved about this infographic is that it’s a straight forward, visual representation of why everyone should be using the newest version of whatever their preferred browser may be. *coughfirefoxcough* But really, use anything you like, so long as it’s not IE6.

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