Many times the aesthetics of a website often overshadows the programming base of which it was built upon. While web development best practices can be underprivileged and overlooked, it is something that the Squeaky team strives to be on top of.
Always looking to build upon coding best practices, members of our development team recently put together a “Squeaky” script, jSPRITE, that enables images to be coded into a web design through the use of replacing HTML text. When a webpage is requested, the large image is initially loaded and can be used throughout the rest of the website for everything from rollovers to navigation elements. While this technique is nothing new, what Squeaky’s team has done is offer a different, more streamlined approach, that uses a home grown extension of jQuery that can be packaged for other web developers to use. This bypasses the need to write several lines of CSS in order to take advantage of the benefits of CSS Sprites, thus cutting down on the number of HTTP requests made to the server, thereby saving on bandwidth and network lag time. While this sounds very technical (and it is), in short the script builds a much friendlier SEO site while requiring less CSS, something all programmers and brands online will appreciate, and no doubt will want to emulate.
Click the link for a demonstration to see how the script works.
Today, Squeaky’s Co-Founder, Mailet Lopez, is celebrating her two year anniversary cancer free. We love Mailet and wanted to give her a big shout out!
If you want to participate in the fight against women’s cancer check out Revlon’s (Squeaky client) Run/Walk for Women. It takes place this Saturday, May 1, 2010 in New York. In addition, there is also an event in Los Angeles at the Memorial Coliseum on May 8, 2010.
It can be difficult to filter through all the BS politicians feed you when they hit the campaign trail. To make things easier on yourself check out Glassbooth, cofounded by Squeaky’s own, Bobby Boyle. The site connects you to the candidate that best matches your beliefs based on a non-biased quiz.
As an interactive agency, we pride ourselves on helping clients understand the most impactful ways to utilize technology. Now not every client has the same goal (some are looking to grow their business, others establish a presence in a market, etc.) but once we understand a client’s specific goal we work with them as partners to maximize impact. Understanding this, the development of new technology in the digital space is super exciting for us. I mean, we have been developing websites for clients before HTML5 was a gleam in her father’s eye – so you can imagine that we get pretty worked up over major technological leaps in the space. Which brings us to the iPad.
Unveiled on January 27, the iPad generated a ton of buzz from the get-go and has not failed to keep consumers (and media types) chatting about its capabilities. And no matter what you think about the man in black (half-turtleneck of course) and his new device, the potential it brings with it in terms of interface development and consumption is really pretty exciting. Keeping it short and to the point, there is no better example out there at this point of how the iPad can be used in fun-yet-effective ways than Theodore Gray’s “The Elements” app. The app—which was borne of a separate project that Gray had with Popular Science—targets school-age children and presents them with an incredibly powerful and interactive option for learning the Periodic Table of elements (a topic that is not always the most exciting for 16 year-old boys/girls).
For more information about The Elements and how it works to fill an important niche (and in turn maximize impact!) check out the video below.
Social coupon sharing site, Groupon, has now joined the exclusive billion dollar club with the likes of Facebook and Twitter. This is a remarkable feat considering that Groupon only caters to 54 cities in the U.S., which pales in comparison to the global reach of the other two social networking behemoths. And, to really appreciate this billion dollar number remember that the much publicized geo-location service, Foursquare, is valued at a mere $80 million.
According to statistics from Compete.com, Groupon’s site traffic has more than quadrupled over the past year. What Groupon has going for themselves is the ability to directly tie-in a simple, but genius business model. When consumers decide to participate in the deals posted on their site Groupon receives a cut of the profits, which some have suggested is as high as 30% of the overall revenue generated by participating vendors. This is a great chunk of change and a practice that future online start-ups should try to emulate.
We are digital enthusiasts with an affinity for art, culture and everything in between. Occasionally we see things we like, work that wows us and ideas we wish we came up with. Here’s the beef.
