Checking out my site on Plank’s iPad. Looks pretty nice. But then again almost every site does look nice on this thing!!

Taking off from IAD on the way home for Austin, TX.

As Anile said…

“@stevey my ears were fighting the urge to pop just by watching!” — http://twitter.com/anile/status/10685809345

(photo by the amazing ncbeets)

Another post from Austin, TX — SXSW 2010.

During a panel today, a new buzzword (to me at least) popped up…

"Data Exhaust"

This is the by-product of you interacting with the internet. When you search Google, when you create content, when you tweet, when you update your favourite app, you leave behind a trail of bits that slowly dissipate. These include logs & caches, content that references your content, metrics and date time/stamps and other sorts of tailings.

That "exhaust" from your interaction is valuable, it can be mined for info even if that data has been anonymized. It can make other people quite a bit of money. Some people disagree that this should be the de facto way everything works.

I’m no expert in any of this, but when the term came up my first immediate reaction was, how does this relate to driving a gas guzzling car that creates the fumes the buzzword references?

Should we be concerned about reducing this emission? Is there such a thing as ZERO emissions interaction with the net? Should it be your right to have that? Or would a complete anonymization remove all useful functionality? Will we see a movement towards a "clean" internet, where you at least have control of that emission or can choose how much is spewing out behind you, without slowing you down?

http://www.plankdesign.com/en/blog/posts/sxsw_day_3_2010

Leaving tomorrow AM for Austin/SXSWi 2010. This will be 3rd time attending and the excitement is still just the same. Looking forward to some inspiration, conversation, beer and great tex-mex food !!

Should be amazing — if you’re there find me via:

twitter/stevey | sitby.us/stevey | or leave me a msg here.

Couple more shots here:
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevey/tags/monstertruck/

Great video on the building where we work.

Attending WordCamp Montreal 2000. Follow along on Twitter at #wcmtl

A great new client has been released for accessing twitter on the Mac OS Desktop. It’s called Nambu.

Although still a bit buggy and rough around the edges — It has a couple features that I’ve been after:

• Native Mac App - Nice and fast (no slow/clunky AIR code)
• Parses #/Topic tags
• Built in Twitter search — with “smart” updating results
• Support for photos (even direct from iSight) and shortened links
• Groups
• Easy to use “multiple accounts”
• Dead simple “retweet”
• Keyboard shortcuts for everything
• Translate feature
• Free version for iPhone/iTouch

It’s not perfect yet - it’s crashed a couple times on me. But it’s well wort looking at.

http://www.nambu.com/

I’ve become a convert to the Getting Things Done philosophy. I always liked it conceptually but had not committed. No — I use about 85% of David’s workflow to keep track of my work (@plankdesign) and it’s slowly moving into everything I need to get done.

I’ve been working with different systems over the past 1/2 year - none which stuck. Things has been great for the past 3 months I’ve committed to it; It’s fast and easy; It’s trust worthy and I can quickly do mini-reviews and more lengthy reviews with little fuss. Painless.

But it’s not shared. My Things list is mine and mine only.

Thankfully my good buddy Elbert has started working on a web app called Nirvana (inspired by Things) which is meant for small teams. The same principals but applied to a group of people who work together.

It’s not ready yet — the previews I have seen look fantastic though. I’ve also been giving advice and lending a hand making it the best it can be. I’ll be writing up a separate blog post later on for Nirvana.

For now… Follow along here | Website

My interpretation of the “Party Animal”.

http://wonderfulbeyondbelief.com/#1

Well worth checking out — even though there’s only 8 photos.

Photos here:
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevey/sets/72157614161660006/

http://www.plankdesign.com/en/blog/posts/warren_night

(photo by NCBEETS)

Work place hijinks w/NcBeets.

Best viewed large on black

My Macbook Pro died this AM (actually the video chipset died).

I went through the “genius bar” reservation process at the downtown MTL mac store and was done in record time (45 minutes from confirming the appointment at the plank office online - to - sitting there and having the issue resolved); with the news that Apple is ordering me a new logic board for free due to a known video chipset issue (first I heard). This leaves me laptop-less for 5 days as they get the part and instal.

Thank god I had a full Time Machine backup from late afternoon yesterday. I was able to copy my TM archive over to a spare plank iMac and boot it up just as if I was in front of my laptop.

Easily the best recovery from a disaster I could ever imagine. After many years working with computers — it’s almost stunning how well it all worked.

Use Time Machine. It’s worth any slowdown’s or pain’s it might cause.

My fellow Planker Geoff has put together this fun little game with a healthy dash of tongue in cheek humor.

An homage to one of his favourite classics Missile Command - keep the media away from Sarah as she defends her “politics”. Look for the secret Hannity bonus — brilliant.

http://www.sarahpalinspincommand.com/

In Montréal and looking for a job at a great Web production company — or maybe you know someone to FWD this along to? We’ve been VERY busy working on some great jobs (a bunch I can’t talk about yet), and we’re in need of help…

We need help! Again! — by Plank
Plank is actively looking to add to our Montreal-based team. Are you young and eager and looking for experience? We are looking for a junior production person with basic knowledge of internet / digital design, programming, and integration. We need someone who can complement our team and is interested in working on exciting projects, generally in the fields of entertainment, technology and social action.

Your tasks will include:

• Simple graphic production;
• Building website templates;
• Website maintenance.

Our Expectations
We’re looking for someone fun! But seriously, you should have the following:

• 0-2 years of related experience;
• Willingness to work locally in our Montreal office;
• Proficiency with Photoshop & Illustrator;
• Knowledge of HTML, CSS and PHP;
• Be passionate about all things digital.

We are a close knit team that continues to grow, and we’d love to meet you to see if we can squeeze you in. We want you to be part of our team for a long time to come. We offer a competitive salary, normal business hours, a comprehensive health and dental plan, and a great work environment. Act now! While there’s room.

If you think you would like to be part of the team, please email your CV, portfolio and cover letter to warren@plankdesign.com. If you would like to learn more about us, please surf around our site. We hope you’ll join us!” — http://www.plankdesign.com/en/blog/posts/need_help_again

Get even more of a taste… Flickr Plank Group | Twitter Plank

Makes the office much brighter and it’s really a bigger/nicer changes than we had thought it would be.

We finally got a sign for the company.

My pop ran some nice wood through the CNC machine at his work to “cut out” our logo. We then stained and mounted it up with plexiglass, hardware and chains. Just in time for our 10th anniversary!

Matches the website fairly well all things considered.

A client of ours in NYC, Ultrabland, produces some amazing spots/trailers and teasers for some of the cables networks. They have always impressed me with there “ultra-editing” chops — but this takes the cake.

Watch the award winning Cinemax “Sounds Good” Spot.

Great blog post from “The Man In Blue” with thoughts and comparison on some great typographers; their fonts and their handwriting.

There’s a couple in here which I love; and would use as fonts themselves!

“The handwriting of typographers intrigues me because it raises so many questions, big and small: Do typographers exert some extraordinary control of the pen that laypersons don’t? Does a typographer’s handwriting influence the typefaces they produce? Has the rise of digital communications made handwriting redundant? Do modern typographers, born of digital tools, lack the finesse of their more wizened counterparts? If so, does that change the way their type is designed?

And then, there’s just something strangely … meta … about looking at the handwriting of people who work with type.

So, to satisfy my own curiosity I asked a number of prominent typographers to send me a scan of their handwriting. This is the result…” — Read the full article

and…

Bonus: Here’s mine.

The lack of blog posts/tweets and sleep over the past couple weeks has been due to us racing to get out the Fantasia 2008 site.

Trying to improve it every year and thankfully we have the process down — in order to run through close to 1000 images (films and graphics) in a week. Whew** .

I’m very happy with it overall; we’ll be continuing to work on it as the festival kicks into gear next week. The festival revs up to full steam tonight - maybe this year I’ll even get to go see a movie or two !! Cya there.

Plank blog post | Fantasia 2008

Hoping Warren is having a great time in Chicago; this looks like such a cool event — right up his alley.

“Warren is attending the SEED3 conference in Chicago

Our fearless leader is off today in Chicago attending the 3rd SEED CONFERENCE.

He’s one of a lucky 270 people listening to and discussing the topic “Learn about taking control of your own work by seeking out methods to inspire new thinking and adopt unconventional ideas about collaboration and business via six presentations and discussions led by 37signals, Segura inc, Coudal Partners and friends.”

We’re eager to hear what happens, and knowing Warren, he’ll pull a year’s worth of inspiration from this excellent event.” — Plank Blog post

http://www.seedconference.com

A site that we did a while back has received a facelift courtesy of our team.

The www.citizenvoices.gg.ca is aimed at a younger audience; and is to be an outreach from the Governor General to those around her (in a way that her official canadian gov site can’t do - we don’t work on that one).

I’m really liking the new layout. I found the older one worked very well in the design phase, but lost a bit of its structure when applied to real world data over the year that it was live.

This new homepage design really helps bring together the additions and improvements they’ve been making in their content.

Great work!

Visit www.citizenvoices.gg.ca