Just Launched: Sunday Brunch
We're very pleased to announce the launch of Sunday Brunch! In early 2009, Sunday Brunch will open up as an online dress shop. For now, you can check out artwork by a featured artist of the month and read the blog of proprietor Judy Kou. We look forward to adding e-commerce capabilities to site very soon. Be sure to sign up to get invited when the time comes!www.sundaybrunchdress.com
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An E-commerce Site in Less than 10 Days
We don't recommend it most of the time, but if it's a must and the price is right, we'll get your project done ASAP. And by ASAP, we mean a fully branded e-commerce site in less than 10 days. Kind Snacks asked us to help them move to a new e-commerce platform - the sleek and powerful Magento - and we got on it right away. Several late nights and some back and forth, we finally had a fully functional site ready to work for the holiday rush. The site definitely has room for improvement in terms of design and features, but given our tight time frame, we're pleased with the results.Visit: www.kindsnacks.com
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MorePeaceCorps Holiday Cards
To supplement the holiday donation feature at MorePeaceCorps.org, we designed these holiday cards and had them printed for a pretty low price at Overnight Prints. Doesn't have the fancy letterpress or foil stamp effects, but it's a quick and sharp print for a simple card.
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Just Launched: Kinded.com
We recently helped Kind Fruit & Nut Bars launch Kinded.com, a guerrilla marketing campaign that encourages kind behavior in a "pay-it-forward" format. The chain starts off with a card that is given out in select cities. This card comes with a code that can be used to enter the latest kind acts. As the card gets passed around, it accumulates more and more kind acts. Check out a couple of screenshots below:
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With Houses Like This, No Need for Hotels
In January 2009, Barrel & friends (five of us total) will be doing a week-long Northwest trip, hitting up Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver.The other day, as we looked into accommodations for the trip, we decided to venture away from the usual chain/trendy hotels and found some interesting options.
Among them was this cool-looking 3-bedroom house in Portland, which we were able to reserve for $232 a day (includes taxes and cleaning fee). The house is eco-friendly, has a very nice modern interior, and is a close drive away from downtown Portland. We thought this was a great deal for five people since a standard hotel room would have cost pretty much the same if not more.
We also found this awesome lodge about 2+ hours from Seattle, but the inconvenience of the location prevented us from renting. We would definitely get this for more relaxed, get-in-touch-with-nature sort of trip. Next time!
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We Blame Co-op for All the Changes
In the past, time tracking had always been a chore. Even for client work that we billed hourly, we ended up writing the hours on scraps of paper or worse, we guessed the total number of hours at the end of the week. Even with Harvest, an online time-tracking application that we joined two years ago, we found ourselves too lazy and unmotivated to properly log our hours. Our primary use for Harvest - and the reason we kept paying $15/mo - was to keep tabs on the hourly work that freelancers did for us (and that wasn't too often).
Then sometime last month, Iridesco, the smart dudes behind Harvest, released Co-op, an app that allows you to "Stay in tune with your co-workers." In some ways, it's like an internal Twitter that you can use to let others know what you're working on. We thought this was fun and played around with it for a day, pasting funny links and telling dirty jokes. We then decided to try out the time-tracking function, which linked Co-op directly with our Harvest account. Perhaps we could finally maximize that $15/mo subscription fee, right? Little did we know that it would completely change the way we approached and managed our work.
Gone are the days of guesstimating hours spent on various client work. We instantly became diligent about wanting to track our time. Why? Because through Co-op, the activity of time-tracking is a social one. Whether we work from home or at the office, we're able to see who's doing what at what time and for how long, all in real-time. It makes everything more urgent and motivates us to be more productive - in a manner not too different from wanting to rack up extra points in a video game (except some points are redeemable in dollars - w00t!).
We also love that at the end of the day or week, we can see exactly how we fared - how much time was spent on billable work, how much time it took to complete a particular project, and how much time we spent chasing mice. And with the compilation of all this data, we now have a much better understanding of how our business operates - how much time we actually devote to design and development, how much "work" we actually get done each day (versus the mindless browsing, chatting, nosepicking, etc.), and which projects net us the fattest profits (meh, need more).
As we marvel at how much Co-op has changed the way we work in just a few short weeks, we regret not having used Harvest more thoroughly in the past (it's got a bunch of great features that we totally ignored before) and feel the need to acknowledge how powerful the "social" element can be in motivating people to use an online app. Hats off to Iridesco for a superb product.
This post took 35 unbillable minutes to write.
The alluring Mad Men-based scenario introduces the Co-op's features.
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Just Launched: JustJaredJr.com
We're pleased to announce the launch of JustJaredJr., the new blog from celebrity blogger extraordinaire Just Jared! Yes, we now know who Miley Cyrus, Vanessa Hudgens, Zac Efron, Ashley Tisdale, and the Jonas Brothers are - quite well, thank you very much. And we even have Taylor Swift's new album playing in the background as we work. Visit: www.justjaredjr.com
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