It sure has been a while since my last real post. I sure do miss blogging on a regular basis, however it’s just been far too busy these past few months to even think about anything but work at Netgenetix. Where I left off in October we had just started ramping up for some Olympic projects at work. We ended up doing quite a bit of work considering the small size of our company (thus little resources). A summary of our work for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics:

• • Olympic and Paralympic Torch Relays
  • 8 Personal Video Message Terminals
• • BC Canada Pavilion
  • 3D Immersive Theatre in Green Room
  • 3 Glass Touchwalls in Green Room
  • 2 E-Postcard Terminals in Green Room
  • Introduction Touch Screen Content for Green Room
  • CIRS Building Touch Screen Content for Green Room
  • Project Management of the New Media Room (with interactive touch screen cubes)
• • Canada’s Northern House
  • 2 Personal Video Message Terminals
  • Green Screen Interactive Terminals
• • Robson Square
  • “Front Page News” Newspaper Kiosk

Personal Video Message Terminals are kiosks you walk up to and record a video on. The ones on the torch relay were used to record videos in each community on the relay that would be played in Robson Square during the Games. The e-postcard version used at the BC Pavilion took a snapshot of you in the Pavilion that you could add a message to and send to family and friends via email with a message. If you were there, you probably saw one – so, what did they look like? or, I have a close up sexy photo.

The 3D Immersive Theatre showcased the fun things you can do in BC as the viewer follows a family on their vacation in the province. The theatre included not only 3D visuals, but wind effects, rumbles, and scents.

The Glass Touchwalls showcased four energy efficient companies in BC in a fun game-like format. The touchwalls are approximately 8ft tall clear glass with the interactive space at about chest level (for touch usability).

The Introduction Touchscreen simply showed you the different areas of the Green Room and a little bit about each area. For example, it would tell you where the Glass Touchwalls and the 3D Immersive theatre was. We supplied the illustrated graphics and text content.

The CIRS Building Touch Screen simply allowed you to view videos on how the CIRS Building was conceptualized and how it would be environmentally friendly. We supplied the illustrated interface to navigate these videos.

The New Media Room is the area of the pavilion which featured 3 large multi-touch cubes which allowed the visitors to wipe away layers of animation for such products as the Need for Speed video game as well as watch behind the scenes clips from movies like District 9. We provided the project management for this room. Watch the video featuring “The Curious Tree” cube.

A Green Screen Interactive Terminal is a booth you can walk into and record fun videos in front of a green screen to send to friends and family. It’s great fun and the videos to choose from can be customized by the venue or client using it. Watch a video of someone using it.

The Newspaper Kiosk was a fun free way for people in Robson Square to have their photo taken on the zip line, with the Olympics mascots, or in front of the GE Ice Plaza. It uses the same green screen technology as the Green Screen Interactive Terminal except it takes a snapshot as opposed to a video and presents you with a print out of your picture on the front page of the news. See some cool people in the Vancouver Sun.

Needless to say, we were quite busy and there was a lot of overtime worked, however it was quite the experience and I wouldn’t take it back at all. I loved being involved and working on something that was for a bigger cause.

In December, we had our annual Christmas banquet for Toastmasters and I performed speech project #10 – “inspire your audience”. So, in case you missed it, you’ll find the text version on my Speeches page under “Attainable Dreams”.

Now that the Olympics are done and my year of being President at Burrard Toastmasters is coming to and end, it may be time to take a step back and look at what’s coming down the path next.

Until next time, adios.

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It seems as though my blogging has taken a steep dive for amount of posts as of the last month eh? I’ve been working on a couple of freelance projects as well as trying to get the ball rolling for the Toastmasters year ahead. One of my freelance projects for an old acquaintance who is an excellent photographer now, will be up shortly – we’re just putting the finishing touches on it and getting his portfolio optimized for the website. The other freelance project is still very much a work in progress as far as the development goes. The design is finished and looks pretty darn good if you ask me, however I’m a little rusty and not all that experienced at building Wordpress themes so it’s taking me a bit longer than usual to pump it out.

As for Toastmasters, my first month as Club President has been okay however since it is summer we have some difficulties filling all the roles every meeting since many members go on vacation or would probably rather be outside in the nice weather. Once September hits I think the club activity will pick up again, which will be nice – and then I can really start pushing our goal for President’s Distinguished Club.

If you live on the internet as I do most of the time, you may have heard that web developers and designers of all kinds are finally fed up and cannot stay quiet anymore on the subject of Internet Explorer 6. Enough is enough!!! If you agree I suggest you join the campaign by adding an anti-IE6 icon to your online profile pictures in the very least (I’ve used mine on my twitter account). Here is an anti-IE6 image for your convenience in a large size so that you can scale it down to the size needed for your image.

Also, see below my example:

– Rebekah

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I do solemnly swear that I will truly and faithfully, and to the best of my skill and knowledge, execute the powers and trusts reposed in me as BURRARD TOASTMASTERS CLUB PRESIDENT!!!!

That’s right. Club elections took place, and I will be the new Club President for Burrard Toastmasters. Because that’s just how I roll, and because I’m freakin’ awesome. I actually don’t officially become Club President until July as we go through a transitional period and a training session. The point is I’m progressing in my usual pace again, yay! That’s all I have to say about Toastmasters today.

This week’s handy links:

• • 10 useful tools for choosing the right color palette
• • 5 must know web design polishing techniques
• • 50 ways to become a better designer
• • 10 Wordpress plugins guaranteed to save you time
• • 22 CSS Button Styling Tutorials and Techniques
• • Designers predict web design trends for 2010

–Rebekah

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I guess I’m a little behind on my Toastmasters updates eh? Well, last week I did the Invocation, which is what starts off the mood for the meeting. Usually people talk about things that are really meaningful or generally serious and inspiring. So I decided to do something a bit different and, again, steer in the direction of happiness, which I’ve posted in the comments for this entry.

This week I did the word of the day and the language evaluation. I have to admit when I was trying to think of an uncommonly used word the first one that came to mind was  “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. Yes, its in the dictionary! However, that word is a bit silly, and as Justin mentioned, I didn’t want to make people hate me. So instead I chose the word “flabbergasted” cause its a fun word and its not often used. I have to say though, compared to previous meetings, everyone was good at attempting to use the word. Woot. 1 point Bekah.

Also, Jess did a last minute speech which she threw together in something like 20 minutes (or less!) for tonight’s meeting. She talked about interviews and what you can do to have a better shot at getting a job offer after leaving an interview and feeling good about any interviews you have – without feeling like you could have done better after you leave. And, of course, it was nothing short of amazing. I don’t think there will ever be a day when she doesn’t amaze me with her abilities and skills…

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As for Netgenetix these days…

The boss is having me learn flash… that’s gonna be awesome. I know the basics and a decent amount of AS3 from school but I never got into it much at that time. So I got a book and have been doing some self-teaching but its a bit slow right now with how busy I’ve been… however I’ll hopefully be starting a class for it in the fall probably. I’m actually pretty excited… I’ve always had super good ideas for things that could happen in flash but obviously don’t have the patience for the design part of it (as usual)… but once I get good at it and I’ve got Justin to design stuff before hand, then that will be pretty sweet.

Also, I’ve been wanting to write a few more new blog entries for Citrus however haven’t had much of a chance lately. If anyone has any good ideas or things for me to write on regarding SEO please share! (Anything you’d like to know?)

Oh! And the NHL Playoffs started today! How exciting! Yay for the Canucks first win against the Blues! This means an overload of support emails on our free hockey pool website, PickupHockey.com. I’ve been helping out with these support emails a lot over the last couple days and I’m not sure what it is about them… but I’m ADDICTED! I dunno what it is, but I’m addicted to replying support emails and doing so as soon as humanly possible! It’s actually pretty exciting, Pickup Hockey is growing so much and it’s freaking awesome… I’m not sure what it is but I love watching the number of registrations and daily visits continue to climb. I’m proud to say I contribute to keeping one of the biggest hockey pool websites on the internet alive and well!!!

Anywho, that’s enough rambling for one night. Later!

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I’m sure the majority of web users only use the web, image, or map search functions of Google. However there are many tools that Google offers which aren’t necessarily advertised on the main site, or even in their ‘more Google products’. They’re usually found in the Google Labs and one of these tools in particular can help one in the beginning phases of an SEO upgrade – and it’s called Google Trends.

Google Trends allows you to view search trends by multiple terms and compare them. This allows you to see where the trends lie for your specific industry in terms of keywords and what your target market is looking for. This tool can be very powerful depending on what you use it for. It can allow you to see seasonal trends and steady traffic patterns that you otherwise may have missed. For example, you can search for yearly events like “xmas gifts” that you think may have seasonal trends:

It’s also possible to browse trends based on calendar dates rather than searching for them by viewing the Hot Trends. For example, by browsing the top 100 hot trends of November 4th, 2008 it’s obvious you’ll see the majority of results circle around the 44th presidential campaign between Barack Obama and John McCain.

It is important to remember that just because a certain search term is a ‘hot trend’ does not mean that you should put into your keywords or website content if it doesn’t fit with your topic. If it isn’t already apparent to why it’s a bad idea to incorporate content that doesn’t fit your topic or audience I strongly suggest you revert back to either my post on copywriting for SEO or Jess’ post on building the right audience.

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In the past, several search engine optimizers have heavily discouraged fancy navigation menu systems; rather recommending using search engine friendly menus based on HTML and styled with CSS. Up until now the primary language understood by search engines has been HTML; however Google has unleashed the ability for its spiders to crawl and read JavaScript.

This means that the navigation on your website can now have dropdowns and flashy effects without sacrificing SEO. A good example of this is the Monitronics website. About a month ago they launched a new site built with DotNetNuke and the Solpart version 1.7.2 menu system. DotNetNuke’s Solpart menu system relies on JavaScript to run. In the past, this would have been strongly discouraged as with scripting disabled no menu items are visible, which equals bad for SEO. However, now that Google has spidered the new JavaScript menus they will appear in the Google cache and count toward SEO value for the site.

Yahoo’s cache is a little different in this case though. The main menu text is visible however without the drop downs. Yahoo has successfully cached the text rendered by the JavaScript but failed to read the JavaScript code itself therefore failing to spider the drop down menus and the menu links.

Even though Google spiders can now index JavaScript, this level of accomplishment is yet to be seen for Yahoo. Considering Google is Yahoo’s closest competitor I don’t see this being the case for long. In July 2006 a study showed that 43.7% of web users search with Google versus Yahoo at 28.8% of web users. This means we aren’t home free with JavaScript and SEO quite yet but it does mean a very large step in the right direction and good start to 2009.

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