Big Trousers
We caught up with Phil and Petrina from Big Trousers. Big Trousers is a design and consultancy group with expertise in marketing and advertising.
It's always good to speak to others who work for themselves to share experiences and knowledge. Funny how the stories are similar. We had a great chat and talked about everything from web cams in Fiji to why people still buy PC's... couldn't come up with an answer on that front.
We forgot to ask where the "Big Trousers" name came from - perhaps we can reveal that another time.
If you'd like to see just how hard Phil and Petrina are working just visit their site for the webcam.
Peace
David
Posted on Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Let's go shopping!
Yesterday we launched our all new online store. This store has been re-written from the ground up and features a nice intuitive workflow for both shoppers and store owners.
Some of the highlights...
- Show/hide shopping cart
- Freight can be calculated by weight of products
- Order management area for owner
- Order status view for customers
- Great product search function
The new store is fully database driven and gives the owner the ability to add/update and remove products and categories, and add product pictures via their web browser.
Check out the first live release here at Choc Art
Posted on Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Martha, Efront and RSS
A warm welcome to Martha Baartz and her new website. It was a pleasure working with someone as calm and relaxed as Martha. She certainly knows her tunes and is as accomplished as the site will tell you.
As often happens with artists like Martha, they need to be continually updating their fans and the jazz punter on where and when they're playing. A content management system is an answer but we're kinda fond of the answer.
We banged our heads for a while and decided to setup Martha's homepage with an RSS feed in a blog type format. This let's Martha's fans subscribe to her site and everytime Martha updates it with CD releases, gigs and events they're all made instantly aware.
Sweet...
Mark
Posted on Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Got tribal.
We spent some time with Rob Findlay from Tribal DDB today.
You walk into 3 floors of open plan workspace that overlooks the foyer (correct pronounciation is FO-YAAY, it's French), with racing wheels and awards scattered all over the place.
Nice to see an environment so large buzzing with activity (also nice to see Macs thriving). Tribal DDB have an exciting client list ranging from A to V (ANZ to Victorian Tourism) - they're no doubt working on getting the WXYZ sorted out.
Rob gave us a power overview of Tribal DDB and talked through some of the work they've got coming up. It was great to get some perspective on what's out there.... you just never know!
Good Karma,
David
Posted on Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Know what you're good at - then stick to it.
We caught up with Daniel Dawson from Cootacom this morning. I saw the Cootacom-mobile on the road a few weeks back and checked out their website. We often get asked to take a look at hardware issues and to be honest when it comes to us and Windows.... well, it's like "The Wedge"..... not funny.
It was interesting to see the parallels between Cootacom and Efront. The IT industry is so broad that many people assume if you can create a web site you can fix a computer (and vice versa).
After talking to Daniel and seeing his operation it's good to know there's a team that has a strong service ethic that we can refer our PC clients to if they're having problems with their hardware.
Posted on Thursday, August 10, 2006
Blogging Breakfast
Well here I am on a Sunday looking over some ideas for The Breakfast Show website. Good to have the domain name sorted out and a placeholder up now too - The Breakfast Show.
I'm looking forward to doing this site. Complimentary media (in this case TV and internet) work is always interesting as there's lots of great content and the saying - CONTENT IS KING - has never been more true. In an age where blogs are taking up much of the (cyber)space out there it's becoming not only important to make sure you can update your site, but essential.
Looking over The Age website at the moment you'll notice that many of the journo's now run daily/weekly/monthly blogs. This not only brings with it a more immediate and instant line of information, but also the ability for the readers to comment and reply on the stories they read.
There was an article published last week on Kevin Rose and the success of his creation - DIGG. If you don't know it, Digg is a web 2.0 site that is described as 'user driven social content'. Basically when it's readers (diggers) find an article of interest, they 'digg it', submitting it to a database where the amount of 'diggs' it gets will determine its listing on the website. So, the more people that dig the story, the better it's listing on Digg where millions of users will see it. You dig? ;)
So, what does this all mean? It's an interesting take on content. Stacks of users decide what gets seen on Digg all the while the site itself doesn't house any new information, just the links to interesting stories, articles, reviews etc. With the web getting bigger and bigger, it's a great way for people to sift through all the info out there and try and find what interests them, and their fellow diggers of course.
For me, this just proves the 'content is king' saying again. In regards to The Breakfast Show these guys currently have dozens of great guests dropping by week to week, commenting on society, the arts, drug use and anything else they can get their hands on. I'm excited to be working with them as access to this type of content does not come by every day. The ability to harness this via the web will ensure a great level of success and return traffic for their site and another great pool of information for the people watching the show.
Posted on Sunday, August 06, 2006
7 Days gone...
So, Dave (my business partner) has left me.
Well, he's gone kiteboarding for 2 weeks in the Cocos Islands. I heard last night that he's having a blast and is loving the boarding out there. It's a small little island well down off the south coast of Indonesia.
Since we started Efront full time (1st of May 2006) this is the first time either of us have operated for more than a couple of days individually. I keep getting asked if I'm being hammered or got way too much to do and whilst that's true by far the hardest thing is not having a kindred person to chat to and bounce those ideas off.
I am starting to find myself discussing Zune and the like with Gough and Stella, my two staffordshire bull terriers. And although they, like me, are more predisposed to the Apple product (Gough argues that you can't eat a Microsoft) the conversation is just not that enlightening. Try nutting out some code problems with them....
Anyways, great to hear you're havin a blast DV and I look forward to seeing you back here next week.
Posted on Wednesday, August 02, 2006
