Tell us a little about yourself. What do you do at Imulus?
I am one of the graphic designers here at Imulus (although I may be changing my title to “Reflection Master”). My main focus is the design of web sites but now and then I get to do print and logo design.

How did you become interested in working for Imulus?
When I came back to Colorado after graduating from college, I underwent a mass application process trying to find a job straight out of college. I had no real world experience to speak of and Imulus was hiring for a design internship. So I figured what better way to gain experience? After 6 months of being an intern, I was offered a full time job at Imulus that I was happy to accept.

I have to admit I was hesitant to work for a web design company because the focus of the graphic design program at Fort Hays State was primarily packaging. It turned out to be a happy accident because I really feel like I’ve found my niche in web design. I never really had that feeling with packaging design.

When did you first become involved in graphic design?
Junior year of high school. I had a Photoshop class and I fell in love with it.

What designers have been most influential in your own work?
I suppose that depends on what I’m working on. I guess the one that sticks out in my head is Stephan Sagmeister. I have always admired his non-conformist attitude towards design and the use of hand drawn type and illustrations in his work.

What is your favorite part of working on a new project?
The newness of it. I love the limitless possibilities and potential of a new project. I love throwing myself into it.

What is your least favorite part?
The newness of it. Sometimes staring at a new Photoshop document drives me crazy. Once I get going, however, it becomes my favorite part. (Threw you off there, didn’t I?)

If Imulus were a person, what kind of personality would (s)he have?
That person that walks in a room with a great story to tell and everyone is always eager to hear it. Definitely not someone who is politically correct, but knows how to make it funny rather than inappropriate. Someone who is energetic and enthusiastic about life.

What Photoshop tool would best help you survive in the wilderness?
The clone stamp tool. If I ever find food or resources I would never run out.

What do you want to see more of in the design world?
Bacon.

What do you want to see less of?
Bad reflections that have no sense of perspective.

If you were a Photoshop filter, what would you be and why?
I would say the Smart Blur. I try to make things more polished but I like to keep some crisp edges.

Describe one of your favorite projects you’ve worked on at Imulus.
Usually our internal projects. It really nice to have complete creative control over a project and I love to really delve into the conceptual side of design.

Where do you get your inspiration?
Bacon.

What’s the best part about working in Boulder?
The view, the restaurants, and the people.

What’s the best part about working for Imulus?
Definitely the people. Doing what I love is a very close second. Very close. Actually, I would say they’re tied.

Once in a while you come across a script that makes your life dramatically easier. Today that script was sIFR Lite.

Over the past few months we’ve been working on a client project that requires us to use a specific typeface for page headings on the website. Rather than doing standard -9999px image replacement techniques, which would have made our intern want to gouge out his eyes with an ice pick, we decided to give the sIFR replacement technique a try. sIFR 2.0 is a technique that came out in mid 2005 and has been used by a limited number of sites. Well, as cool as it is I ran into quite a few problems when first implementing it with our project. And while I got it to work I felt slightly dirty about the implementation. Luckily a couple days later I saw a post on twitter by Matt Crest about a new solution called sIFR Lite.

Today, I finally had the chance to replace the old method with the lite version and I have to say it is exceptionally well done. Dave over at AllCrunchy.com has done a phenomenal job with his implementation of the sIFR technique. Making it lighter, easier to use, easier to install, and easier to manage. In fact, it reduces the amount of work by about 5x and in my tests it seems to render better. Better aliasing and better container size detection. Check out the example I whipped up.

Here’s the javascript code required to call sifr-lite:

window.onload = function () {
	var din = new Font('din.swf', {tags:'h1'});
	din.replace('h1')
}

Two quick notes: First, I do find that without using the window.onload function that in Safari sometimes the text won’t pick up color. This is very minor and easy to fix.. obviously. Second, you will need to use the original sIFR to create the .swf files of your font’s. Simply use the .fla and .as files that come with that script to make your fonts, then call those fonts via sifr.lite.js. For those looking for an all in one option I’ve put it together in a zip file. Please recognize I take no credit for the sIFR script or the Lite implementation of it, I simply thought it would be nice to have an all in one package to make things work.

Update: After further testing it seems that this technique is not yet compatible with Flash Player 10 except in Internet Explorer. Hence, if you’re running Flash 10 you won’t see the replacement technique. I hope this gets fixed soon as a fix is already out for sIFR 2.

Update 2: From our comments Gyo over at (http://www.giordanopiazza.com) has released an updated and fixed up version of sIFR Lite. I plan to start using this again for our projects. Very cool!

For us, Flash has it’s place. It’s not a tool which we here at Imulus use with indiscretion. There certainly is an audience for fully Flash-based sites, those which cater to rich-media, highly-interactive content and animation. Examples include movie, music, educational and television based sites.

I personally get angered by sites which use Flash to achieve a certain “look” at the expense of usability. While I’m not going to attack any particular site, I think you all know what I’m talking about, and you’ve seen it before. I’m talking about sites which take over your browser and go fullscreen without your permission. Sites in which the navigation is so much of a artistic element that it no longer becomes obvious to the end user. In most cases, when I see sites which could have been built using AJAX rather then Flash I tend to think the agency was more concerned for awards then actually building a site which is functional and user-friendly.

That’s my two-cents.

Unlike the technology analysts, I’m not paid to see the future. In fact, I’m not big on predicting what’s going to happen, but in this case, I have a strong feeling. Here’s how I see it in Jan 2009:

• The US economy has tanked
• The WW economies are tanking
• The software sector (technology) is changing
• The enterprise software vendors are way down
• IT depts are shrinking – people & costs

Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time researching Cloud applications, cloud stacks, and 3rd party cloud add-ons. Salesforce.com is a well know story, but the seismic shift is how that platform has been “genericized” and built out to become Force.com. Also, look at Amazon’s EC2 and Google Apps/Code/Engine. This is truly revolutionizing application development and thus will revolutionize IT across every industry vertical. This is not about SMB, this is about companies small to very large. Companies with 10 to 10,000’s of employees. You don’t have to be a ‘digital native’ to get this.

I will also add this isn’t about social networking. As these business applications develop, yes, they will have integration points into LinkedIn, etc. But it will be about providing value to the business, not about over-communicating with your virtual friends.

A whole new breed of software is being developed for the cloud applications and platforms. New types of monitoring solutions, new types of middleware, new tools, etc. In many cases, systems and security mgmt is being re-invented, as cloud-native. It’s exciting to see.

Where is this going? I predict that the enterprise software vendors will get slaughtered this year. Many will survive, but they will look very different when the economy does start to pick up. Given that companies and IT depts are shrinking now, I predict that when the economic clouds pass, the software clouds will roll in. When companies do start spending again, they will choose cloud applications for their new application needs. They won’t have the people or the budget to go back to an “old style” enterprise application, plus, they’ll find what they need on the market, on demand, and at a low $xx/user/month cost.

I’m not saying the world will abandon enterprise software and make a wholesale shift to cloud applications. Over the last decade, companies have collectively spent billions of dollars on SAP, Oracle, etc., so integration into these “legacy” apps will be important for more than a decade. What I’m saying is that the recession/depression will lead to a massive jump in cloud application adoption. I could be wrong, but I see the writing on the cloud….

About the author: Greg Davoll is an independent consultant specializing in software marketing and product strategy. Greg has over nineteen years of enterprise software experience across an array of branded technology companies including IBM, NetIQ, Sybase, BMC Software and Embarcadero Technologies. Learn more at http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregdavoll or contact Greg at greg.davoll@gmail.com.

Over the past few years the landscape of home entertainment has been changing. As broadband internet access has found its way into households across the country the utilization of on-demand content is becoming commonplace.

Netflix, who we’ve criticized before and been pleasantly surprised by their response, has been really on top of capturing this next generation of home entertainment. In fact, it seems like they’ve secretly been waiting for this moment since the incarnation of their brand “Internet Flicks”.

When I first heard of Netflix I was in early high school, my friend’s parents had just signed up for this new service that delivered movies via mail. I was confused, how in the world did the name Netflix really correspond to mail delivery movies? Further, was it really worth waiting two days to get a movie when you could go to a local store and get it in 30 minutes? Well, as they say, the proof was in the pudding. As the internet boomed in the early 2000’s Netflix became a real time rival to those other rental services such as broke-ass-buster Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.

However, it wasn’t until this past year that I really started to respect Netflix as a company with vision. In fact, I find it almost creepy how well they’ve positioned themselves in today’s current home entertainment market.

I imagine the idea of on-demand content has to be terrifying to most rental services. With pay-per-view, Hulu, torrenting, and iTunes the idea of brick and mortar rental is on the way out. And while DVD mail delivery isn’t quite as dead as store rental it definitely has a limited lifespan.

Here’s where Netflix is different from a lot of companies. They recognized their business model was dying and instead of whining about it they acted. They didn’t whine about liscensing costs, they didn’t worry about not having a media center product. Instead they took their vision and started working. Giving their customers an opportunity to watch movies instantly on their PC’s for free. Hear that? I said FREE. By not expecting immediate returns on their investment they captured a substantial portion of the online steaming market share and the buzz around it.

It comes down to this. How many people would have been willing to pay an extra $10 a month to try online movie streaming? Maybe a few. How many were willing to try it for free? Everybody.

Netflix, whose name now seems surprisingly perfect for their service, is suddenly a leader in the online delivery world. Since they started delivering online content they’ve cut deals with a number of home media center device manufactures. Including Roku, a few Blu-ray players, and Microsoft’s Xbox. Further, they’ve bundled their online delivery with their plans at no additional cost (I imagine they make up some money by not having to use as much postage) and they’ve started adding HD quality (720p) content.

In essence, Netflix lined up their challenges, picked up a bat, and started knocking them out of the park one by one.

Now granted the battle for next generation content delivery isn’t over, but it seems clear that Netflix isn’t holding the losing hand. They’ve played their cards perfectly up to here and I can happily say that I’m a user of their service and it rocks.