Here’s a fun story about Queen Bee Creations.
They’re a hot company here in Portland that makes tres cool bags (amongst other things), and they’re growing like crazy. They desperately needed a new website to support their burgeoning business, and no off-the-shelf e-commerce system could do the job right. Besides requiring 100% creative control over the presentation of their site, they needed a system for managing retail and wholesale customers, tools to match their manufacturing and fulfillment processes, and a platform that would scale with their business through the holiday season and beyond.
That was eight weeks ago, and today they’re open for business. We couldn’t have done it without a great client, or the kick ass design team at Fresh Fruit.
And we definitely couldn’t have done it without UpSale, the e-commerce platform we built specifically for growing retailers who need sophisticated tools and a high degree of customization. We’re excited by how quickly it let us build the Queen Bee site, and with two more sites coming down the pipeline, it’s turning out to be everything we hoped it would.
Anyhow. Enough self promotion. Queen Bee Creations has gorgeous products and is run by fantastic people, and I’m thrilled we were able to work with them on this project.
Cheers!
Unexpected headline of the year: “Monkeys kill Delhi deputy mayor,” courtesy of the BBC.
In February I’ll officially run out of reasons to not buy an iPhone. Direct from the horses mouth:
Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.
[...]
P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch.
Thanks, Apple.
PDXCoop is a Google Group oriented around the discussion of co-ops in Portland, and I encourage anyone who’s interested to join.
It’s just getting started, so please introduce yourself!
We had the ultrasound, and it’s a boy! With arms and legs and everything!
This ultrasound was way more interesting than the last one (in which he vaguely resembled a dinosaur and/or an omelette). It’s just about the most awesome thing in the universe to see the heart beating (valves flapping away), and watch tiny feet and hands pushing about. The little dude even flipped us off after we measured his brain size. Go figure.
Anyhow. Gender has been clearly determined, and it’s kinda funny to watch the social transmission of our friends and family grinding into BOY mode. Nova’s family is a vast network of grandmothers, mothers, and girls … so I imagine there’s going to be some hand wringing and consternation while adjusting to having a little boy in the family.
Here’s a crafty idea: paper prototypes for web sites. I stumbled on a few links at UIE.com about paper prototyping that span 10 years. It seems to have some staying power.
I’ve done some of this on an informal basis, but these guys are really into it. Has anyone out there gone through these sorts of exercises? What are your thoughts?
… the Wife and I find out if we’re having a boy or a girl. Or maybe a dinosaur. Wouldn’t that be cool? My inner nine-year-old is stoked on an Ankylosaur.
That said, fair warning to family members who don’t want to know the gender before the stork arrives: stop reading my blog for the next few months.
On my evening’s ramble ’round the web, I found a link to Werner Vogels‘ post titled “Working Backwards.”
Basically stated, when he’s working on defining a new product, he starts with the press release, and works his way backwards through a FAQ and user manual. Then they actually get around to building it.
It’s roughly analogous to BDD/TDD software development techniques.
Anyone out there do something similar when coming up with products?
If you’ve developed a taste for olive oil … check out The Olive Press. It’s amazing stuff. A friend gave us a bottle of the Sonoma Valley Blend, and it’s the best I’ve had. If you’re looking for a gift for someone with culinary inclinations, this one will go a long way.
Sun released a couple of servers based on the new T2 processor today. Heaps of people have blogged it, so here’s a bunch of links to what people are saying. This one looks like what the T1 should have been — it was impressive for some targeted benchmarks, but the new chip is a big step up in terms of throughput and floating point performance.
