July 3, 2008
How To Confuse An Idiot (1)
Amazing and brilliant video with a clear explication.
Anything more to say?
June 12, 2008
Google Reader utilizes Konami Code (1)
This is sick beyond all hope; and great in many, many ways. The well know Konami Code is at Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader). Some Google Coder throw a little easter egg right on the Google Reader sidebar; just use the Konami Code to access the screenshot you see on this post sidebar; it’s amazingly cool to have something like this at Google Reader.
Just do the following while you are at Google Reader’s Home Page (that’s, http://www.google.com/reader): press up up, down down, left, right, left, right, B and then press A. You will see how your sidebar now changes! some users have reported a little sound, but I didn’t heard anything. To shut if off, just repeat the Konami Code again and you will be free. This kind of things are just what the web needs, I will be contributing to this on 15tags and the new project management system we are cooking at EmaStudios; will have a good bunch of easter eggs.
In case you are wondering what the heck is the Konami Code:
The Konami Code, known in Japan as the Konami Command (コナミコマンド Konami Komando?), is a cheat code thats appears in many Konami video games.[1] The code also appears in some non-Konami games.[2] The code was first used in the 1986 release of Gradius for the Nintendo Entertainment System [3] but was made famous in North America in the NES version of Contra
Another cute thing about this easter egg is the number of unread articles for every site on your list, which is automatically changed to thirty (30). If this reference is lost on you, a player is given thirty lives upon entering the code in the original Contra, which helps a lot.
UPDATE: thanks for the head’s up CaptionMachine! I really screwed it up before with the Konami Code ;)
May 30, 2008
Slow Blog? Improve Your Blog Speed! (0)
This kid blogs really fast!
If your blog is running slow then you may be suffering from the Guy Kawasaki Syndrome. It’s pretty common for us to start throwing things we don’t really need to our blog sidebar like advertising, search engines that load from another source, our vacations photos via the flickr flash badge and any sort of crappy code you can copy and paste to include widgets in your blog.
Bad news is, it’s a blog, not a billboard. People will come in to your blog to actually read it, not to see that bike trip you did last weekend or to see some Dell computers advertising making your blog jumpy when they scroll down. Here is a list of things you can get rid off to improve the performance for your readers: [Read more →]
May 27, 2008
Project Management Web Application (3)
I would like to announce the beginning of a new pet project here at EmaStudios. We are currently doing a Project Management System web application. Yes, you got it right; we are tired of working with emails and chat for our internal projects so we came up with the “original” idea of building something that would help us and possibly, you, to manage any kind of projects easy, fast and without having to depend on emails. The story sounds familiar don’t you think?
The difference for us will be that, we are aiming to solve specific problems for people that work on the web AND in other areas, like software development for example. That’s all I can say right now; jeez, that’s all I’m allowed to say. The good news is that, everyone will be able to have a bit of a joy with it.
P.S: for those ones who are asking what the heck happened with 15tags the status is this: Work in Progress.
Design stage: finished.
Coding stage: on the works.
Finished: 70%.
We expect to have something in the next couple of months, but sadly, the ball is a bit stopped right now… which makes me sad because we are really close to have something extremely useful to anyone.
Javier from EmaStudios HQ.
May 19, 2008
OH MAY! JASON FRIED thinks different! (1)
Will make it short because I have some huge load of work to do. I just read this post about how Jason Fried (while he was speaking at speaking in NYC at the AIGA Smart/Models) got amazed with Douglas Riccardi web site. Mr. Riccardi has a design agency with a very “simple” web site. Fried couldn’t resist and post about how great the site was, how simple and direct and why he thinks that strategy works.
That’s cool. Usual, isn’t it? just a post. What called my attention was the comments to Fried post. In one corner, we have the usual “please Jason, spit me, please please!” which I didn’t even bother to read because they where all the same. Where I really stopped by were the other ones; design agencies that can’t actually believe their idol Jason Fried says “that’s how a design agency web site should be in my opinion” while they have a totally different kind of web sites than the one Fried pointed as “wow”.
They went cu-cu. It was horrible for me to see that. Get a grip of yourself, damn it.
[Read more →]
May 15, 2008
Why I lowered our prices (0)
Guess what, I decided to lower our prices to $2800 instead of the $3500 we had since a couple of weeks. The first reaction from a current client was “hey, why you want to lower the agency prices; not biting at $3500?” my answer was this: yes, that’s the problem
What do you REALLY want to do?
In the past, we offered a basic price of $2500 and most of our works where actually in the range of $2500 - $3800, so we sit down and run some numbers. Before the launch, I decided the best for our agency was going live with a $3500 price, which will elevate our price range as well. The problem was I didn’t realized (nor any of the guys here) the new price will also come up with a new class of clients. We had some offers to do work in the last few weeks, to be honest, we had almost 15 offers to do work. We took only 4 as “not shopping” offers and we move into them only to realize, it just wasn’t our market.
Think different.
We aim to work on projects that make us go “wow” while we are working on them, like the Cellphones widget project or the Clio one (becoming notorious on the web now!), and one I’m personally really attached with, the iSchedule project. Those are projects from the so called startups we just DREAM to work with every day. That’s our market, and we got too far away from our market.
We had offers for interesting projects yes, really interesting projects; but they weren’t just the market we like to play with, and if we aren’t doing what we really love to do, then what are we doing here? That’s why I decided, by myself, it was best for the agency to drop the prices from $3500 to $2800 for a web site.
Working with “web people” is one of the best thing that happened to us, and, although we had some pretty interesting projects on our hands in the past weeks, we just can’t avoid thinking on startups and the relationship that comes from working with them. I had become almost a friend of some of the people I work with every day; and that’s priceless.
They where biting at $3500? yes sure; they where.
We liked what came up from the waters? of course we liked. Some interesting projects came up.
What happened then? nostalgia? I won’t put it like that. I believe that, our decision showed us the true meaning of our niche. Now we know; now we really understand.
Javier Cabrera
From the EmaStudios HQ.
April 29, 2008
CSS Magic: The Ultimate Guide (0)
I’m so tired of having to search on Google those little CSS tips we use every week at the job don’t you? It will be nice to have a page where the best of them (and more frequently updated) are shown for us to have. That’s why I created this quick reference list with all the CSS Tricks & Magic I usually end up using over the week. Of course, they are not all in here, but the ones that have cross-browser support, are easy to use and are updated often enough to catch up with all this crazyness (IE) we see around the web. Here they are:
Boxes with Rounded Corners
Need to have those little boxes with rounded corners around your blog or web site? here’s how:
- Nifty Corners Cube (http://www.html.it/articoli/niftycube/index.html
Fear no more, nifty Corners Cube is here. You no need to have corner images to make rounded corners anymore; this CSS/Javascript does it all. Simple to use and works in any browser. - Spiffy Corners Generator (http://www.spiffycorners.com)
Want to just copy & paste? shame on you! but here’s the solution you’ve been looking for: a simple rounded corners generator; can’t be easier to get it now isn’t it? - Rounded Cornr Generator (http://www.roundedcornr.com/)
Another way of doing a men’s work. With this generator is even easier to have rounded corners on your website. Fully customizable!
April 25, 2008
Why Guy Kawasaki Blog Sucks (Big Time) (7)
First of all (and before someone kills me), I respect Guy Kawasaki. And I respect him a lot. Even with that hair, I respect him. He is one of the few people I admire and that actually drain my day-to-day activity into reading his blog rss feed and books. If I have an advice to give to anyone is this: read Guy Kawasaki blog, the man knows what he is talking about. He understands business really well, and although you may not be in the same business as most of his public, listening and reading his blog WILL (pay attention, it’s true!) OPEN YOUR MIND to new ideas and better practices.
For those ones who doesn’t know Guy Kawasaki Blog
http://blog.guykawasaki.com
And welcome to the earth.
That said, now is time for the punch. Guy Kawasaki Blog Sucks, and big time if you ask me. I’m not talking about the content he writes there everyday, but about the blog itself which, believe or not, I designed.
[Read more →]
A day without Internet (0)
What would happen if suddenly Internet is down? not down like, half an hour, or half a day but, weeks or months? What would happen with companies like mine, or with companies like 37signals, WeBreakStuff, Techcrunch or others? The answer is here and via SouthPark. It may look silly at first, but try to think about what would happen for just a second.
I know I would go crazy just like in this clip!
April 24, 2008
Why you should not run to get there faster (0)
I was taking a beer with my ex-boss (back from the dot-com golden age era) and talking about business and life. He owns a telecommunications company today and I own EmaStudios. We were actually talking about the changes that comes to the every day business life and came to the conclusion we both have different ways to “get there” and although, both are valid; my way may be better to avoid surprises.
My ex-boss likes to run
He started on the business life very young; when he was 18 actually. He loves to have those dot-com era stories where you set up a company in a month, gathered a few couple of good programmers, started working on something and before you know it; you are already on a plane to see your angel investor who will pay for the whole company 2, 3 million dollars. He loves those stories where the guys didn’t even had a parking lot or a building, and had to put their Ikea desks together by themselves while eating on the floor because they didn’t even had a meeting table.
That’s running. That’s being in a rush to “get there before” someone. And it is good, it has worked for a lot of people: but not for everyone. Usually, if you do that, you may have a big chance of burning down your contacts (coders, designers, etc) who will begin to claim for your head when you business model isn’t paying off (for example, if your angel investor never shows up) and they start seeing those “exiting” times where they have to install the internet at the office by themselves like “he is making me work for free”.
[Read more →]