Facebook is trying to take over the world/the internet/your life! Or at least, that’s the impression someone might get by perusing blogs, news aggregators and general web industry water cooler discussions.  With the implementation of their “Instant Personalization” feature, Facebook basically drew back the curtain on the amount of personal data they’re willing to share with other sites. Couple this with the brouhaha over their almost constant mis-steps and backtracking with regards to their privacy policies and it’s almost like Facebook can do no right.

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I’m a little late to the party.  This work was discovered last week, I think. You can even see pictures better than my iPhone could manage here, but on my walk to work this morning, ignorant of the news, I thought there was a slim possibility I was the first to notice this Banksy work in the west loop, only a few blocks from Manning’s Office.  Oh, and the Battleship Potemkin reference is particularly funny to me too…

The work is on the side of Veerasway Indian Restaurant on Randolph, two blocks west of Halsted in the west loop.  The adjacent lot used to have a building but it was very recently demolished, opening up the wall on which the work appears.  I remember seeing the staircase between the buildings when the demolition was taking place, and the mark it left on the wall provided the perfect setting for a Potemkin parody.

The end of an era is upon us:  floppy discs will no longer be manufactured as of March 2011. Sony, the last real manufacturer of this lovable but decidedly antiquated storage form announced this week that they’ll be halting sales in Japan (the last real market for it), and have already begun shuttering their international sales in all but a few countries.

This announcement really doesn’t affect most of us individual users, as computers these days don’t even ship with floppy drives (Curse you Apple!), but tech blogs around the country (see: cnet, crunchgear, and NYTimes techblog as examples)  lit up as geeks everywhere waxed nostalgic about the good old days when awesome games like Oregon Trail and Number Munchers loaded off of 3.5 inchers and every kid was assigned their own disc in computer class…ah those were the days. (Oh okay fine – that was me in the kitchen the other day but still! Oregon Trail RULED!)

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Q&A is our chance to get inside the head of some of our industry’s movers and shakers. In this installment, I interview Kyle Smitley, founder of environmentally-friendly childrens clothing company barley&birch. Her designs can be seen on the children of celebrity moms like Jessica Alba and Sheryl Crow.

PM: So in the interest of full disclosure…you’re a perfect interview for what you’re doing with b&b, but it doesn’t hurt that we’ve known each other for a long time. (Kyle and I are from the same small town in rural Ohio.) Do you want to sort of start out with the Reader’s Digest version of your background and what you’ve been up to in the time leading up to starting b&b?

KS: Well, I graduated from DePauw University with degrees in Philosophy and Environmental Geoscience and minors in Spanish and Chemistry. While there I was lucky enough to travel the world and work with a lot of great organizations helping others. After graduation, I took the LSAT while working in Washington D.C. and then got out to San Diego, where I surfed all day and dreamed up a business where I sold childrens clothing in order to fund the dozens of good causes with which I’d worked in Haiti and Central America.

The business was born as barley&birch and we opened our doors in February of 2009, in some of the darkest moments of the recession and right int he middle of my first year of law school. We had no money whatsoever, so we worked hard to get all the free press we could. I didn’t sleep for about 8 months of my life, I believe.

In November, I was named one of Inc. Magazines Top 30 Under 30, and by our first anniversary, we were selling in 30 retail stores, moving into larger office space, and revamping the website we’d quickly outgrown. We have funded 3 schools and a clinic in Haiti and El Salvador. We hope to see upwards of $1.5million in sales for 2010. We will be announcing a plethora of great partnerships and undertakings.

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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 →

Tonight our beloved Blackhawks take to the ice to face Nashville, beginning a month-long bid to bring Lord Stanley’s Cup back to Chicago for the first time in 50 years. (The very idea of the Music City having a hockey team is, of course, preposterous.. but that’s another post.) So here at Manning, we’ve spent the last few weeks scraping the bottom of the creative barrel trying to think up a way to show our support.

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Time to break out the champagne and noise makers – we just got nominated for a Webby! We’re one of five finalists for best website in the Law category for creating the ABANow.org website.

There are two opportunities for us to win. First, a panel of judges will select a category winner. Second, the public can vote as part of the People’s Voice Awards. So here’s how you can help. Go to The People’s Voice and vote for ABANow.org under the law category. Voting for the People’s Voice Awards is already under way and continues on until April 29th. Every vote counts, so in the great Chicago tradition, vote early (and often?)!

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We’ve been hearing a lot of discussion lately from folks looking to harness that Web 2.0 phenomenon known as “social media” to help promote their brand/business and generally gain exposure to the millions of people blogging/tweeting/yelping/facebooking/youtubing/what-have-ye. While we’re all for reaching out to clients and promoting transparent interactions between businesses and users, I often get the nagging sensation that some people are approaching social media the wrong way, and so are losing out on what it could and should be.

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I, like a number of my Manning colleagues, come from a film/video background. One thing that you learn early in this medium is that pre-production holds the keys to success for a moving picture. For whatever reason, however, pre-planning for web projects can seem mysterious, pointless or as a means to pad budgets. Just like a film production, pre-production and planning are vitally important for web success. I have a stumbled across a number of succinct and well written articles about planning and preparing for web projects that I would like to share. Continue Reading →

FirstGroup, the largest provider of surface transportation in North America, selected Manning to develop an online strategy for four of the firm’s major business units. The company wanted this strategy to help integrate corporate acquisitions through consistent branding across service types and website platforms. They also wanted an easy to use content management system and one provider for all their hosting needs.

As part of that strategy, Manning recently launched the site for the company’s First Vehicle Services division. The site was designed to target key decision makers by showcasing the company’s fleet maintenance services. In addition to the First Vehicle Services site, Manning has developed sites for First Student, the nation’s largest student transportation provider, and First Transit, which operates a number of mass transit systems throughout North America.

We invite you to take a ride on the new First Group sites.