Here’s a simple process to “publish” a local HTML build on a Mac.  This can be useful for quick demos of work to other team members.  Or (this is how I used it yesterday), viewing work in virtual machines for Internet Explorer testing.

1. Add this somewhere in your shell profile.  For me, this is at ~/.profile.  Garrett supplied this tip to us.

alias server='open http://localhost:8000 && python -m SimpleHTTPServer'

2. Open up a new terminal window and change directory to the folder containing the work you want to stage.  Run the following to create a simple web server.

server

3. Now, you can go to http://localhost:8000 in a web browser to view the directory you launched the server from.

4. Install the localtunnel gem following the instructions on their site.  It’s pretty simple.

5. Stage your build using localtunnel by running (assuming you have a public key generated in the standard location) the following.

localtunnel -k ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub 8000

6. Now you’ll be able to view your work at http://****.localtunnel.com.  Badical.

While finishing up a project over the weekend I ran into an issue where the video player just displayed an infinite loading screen rather than actually playing. Odd. I checked the JavaScript console to see if there were any JavaScript errors or if there was a 404 request for the video, which neither of those were actually the case. I tried to visit the file directly, and what do you know, it’s asking me to download the video, it didn’t start playing in the browser like it should’ve. After realizing the only reason this would happen would be because the server must not be returning the correct Content-Type header and the browser didn’t know what to do with it, I gathered the MIME types for the few videos formats we were using and updated the nginx mime.types file and restarted the server. What do you know, that solved the problem and after refreshing it displayed the video and it played as expected. So to help anyone else who may have ran into this issue and not really sure what to do, I have both the nginx and Apache solutions for you. Hopefully soon all web servers include these new MIME types to their default configuration files, but until then be sure to include these in your server setups for future projects.

nginx

Apache

As you most likely know, all the top shops in the industry are taking part in a voyeuristic web cam concept put together by the beloved FWA. It’s safe to say everyone in the industry has the luxury of working in inspiring spaces, so we’re gonna hold off on sharing that for upcoming shows.

Our initial FWA TV introduction revolves around the idea of what’s missing in digital relationships and taking advantage of the very personal nature of a web cam.

Here at BKWLD, we understand and take pride in meeting our clients and peers “face to face.” That being said, in our creative process we acknowledge that a project’s success starts with an in-person/real relationship. Everyone who uses the web, of course, has plenty of digital relationships (hundreds, at the least) where the odds are you’ll never meet that person in reality, nor even know what they even look like.

Our idea is to try to make that first step of introducing ourselves in a more human light to the industry. We all have our personas on the web, so here’s our chance to put our faces out there in a real, awkward, humble, yet confident, and approachable manner.

For the first week’s show, we’ll introduce to you our Sacramento team. We figure’d viewers have been checking other cam feeds here and there, so we broke down our Sacramento team into the following time slots below.

Get ready to watch us squirm…

Tune in Here @ 3:00pm: http://thefwa.com/fwawebtv

Team web cam time slots:

Veronica : 3:00
@VSkarshaug

Chad: 3:07
(too cool for school)

Jeff: 3:14
@jeffdoe

Matt: 3:21
@mattcarvalho

Ethan: 3:28
@iamethanmartin

Garrett: 3:35
@garrettb

Donald: 3:42
@buk_d

George: 3:49
@GeorgeToGo

Joe: 3:56
@bkwld_joe

Josh: (out of the office)
@joshreddin

Ryan: (out of the office)
@ryanvanni

Ok, not to be too big of a tease, here’s a recent photo of our Sacramento office (box checked). Next week our Seattle office will take part. I know they are chomping at the bit to show off their people and brand spanking new office.

Over the last couple years we have had the opportunity to speak to various classes and programs full of folks enamored with the sort of work we get to do, and clients we get to do it for.  What’s funny is that we are always beside ourselves and left slightly confused with how enamored they are.

Just about this time every year, I get several emails from local, national, and some international folks looking for a summer internship.  And for the last nine we did not offer anything.  The truth is we never saw the value, for them at least, in having a handful of young people running errands, and handling miscellaneous to-do’s.  Nor did we believe we had the time to really offer the hopeful lot what they might be looking for.  But that was then, and this is now…

This is now our 2nd year providing an alternative kind of program.  One not for the faint of heart, lazy, or half-assed.  If you are looking for an internship that sends you on coffee runs, or where most of your time is spent on your own Facebook page, this isn’t for you.  If you are looking to get a first-hand, and hands-on perspective into what and how it all really goes down, this is for you.  It will be fast-paced, stressful, fun, exhilarating, you will want to pull your hair out, you will want to dance in circles.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
Over the course of six weeks, a select group of six interns will be fully immersed in one fast (normal in the real world) paced project. You will be a part of client management, pitching ideas, and complete digital strategy including web, mobile, social and experiential…as well as all of the production headaches and home runs that we get to experience in a full day here at the Buk.  All of this will be done for of a real BKWLD client and if your work makes the cut, the client loves it, your work may even be used in the real world.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR
We are looking for a small group of dedicated and hard-working people.  We have no age limits, experience requirements, or education minimums.  However, we are looking for people with an inherent interest in marketing, design, and digital (duh). The right candidates will be interested in careers as producers, creative directors, technical directors, art directors, developers and storytellers. We expect this group to take it serious.  100% attendance, attention, and effort is required.

THE CALENDAR
In a nutshell, the weeks will look a little like this:

Week 1 – Immersion

• Introduction
• What is the process
• Client introduction
• Product discovery

Week 2 – Conception & Planning

• Story boards
• IA / Wireframes
• Revisions & Approvals

Week 3 – 5 – Production!

Week 6 – Case Study

• Document strategic analytics
• Write & submit case study

INTERESTED?
Sound good, want to see if you make the cut? Head over to bkwld.com/u to take the next step.

In this post I’d like to review how we use Google calendar, iCal, Basecamp, and Unfuddled to help manage projects across our computers and iphones. As with many tools, the challenge is not finding one, but combining them in a way so the result becomes greater than the sum of the parts. Specifically I’ll cover three use cases – managing individual schedules for team members, day-to-day tasks, and project milestones. Then I’ll review how to create this setup by syncing Google Calendar, Basecamp, and iCal so everything lives on the cloud. With this setup anyone can access the granular details of a project, or easily see a comprehensive overview from either their computer or iPhone.

Google Calendar for scheduling projects:

At the heart of our scheduling setup is Google Calendar. Each employee at BKWLD has a calendar, and this is where we assign people to a project for each day of the week. The point here is to provide a broad overview of every employee’s week, not to provide granular details of specific milestones or todos. Each Friday Dan and I cover who is working on what for the following week and input it in GC on that employees calendar. We keep it high level, listing only the project name, and one or two words of what employee is working on, such as  ”Project name, flash dev.” If someone is out for vacation, it goes here too. In order to have access to coworker’s calendar’s just add them on your GC homepage under “add a coworker’s calendar” by entering their email address. Here is a screenshot of GC settings tab. You can sell the coworker’s calendars that I have access to edit, and other that I can only view. :

Google Calendar for day-to-day tasks

As producer, I’ll also use Google calendar to schedule internal meetings, client calls, or events outside of work for all us Buk folk, such as Ignite Seattle, the NW Pinball Show, or our upcoming Paintball outing. I know some producers prefer to use iCal for scheduling meetings, but I like Google Calendar because everyone invited can see the relevant info directly on the invitation, instead of having to open the invite in iCal to view the time, location, call-in number, ect. I’ve found that many clients don’t use iCal so it’s nice to have a tool that’s browser based.

Managing project milestones in Basecamp

At BWKLD we use Basecamp for most of our projects. At kickoff a producer will add the milestones from a project schedule to BC. From there, everyone assigned to the project can view the milestones and have visibility to both their portion of the project, and the overall scope. We also assign milestones directly to employees in bc. This is important because both Google calendar and basecamp milestones, as well as Unfuddled milestones, sync to iCal. To subscribe to a milestone calendar in basecamp, just go to the milestones tab, and click on the “subscribe to iCalendar” in red. You can subscribe to a global iCalendar where you’ll see all the milestones for each project, but I prefer to subscribe to each project individually. The advantage to subscribing to individual iCalendars is that iCal allows you to color code each project’s iCalendar different. This is really helpful if you are working on multiple projects concurrently. Check out this link for more info:

Using calDav within iCal to sync it all together

Now you can sync google calendars and basecamp to iCal. Consequently, by looking at iCal you will have ONE place to look to see the following:

a) events from your own google cal (meeting invites and your schedule on a daily level)

b) calendar of other people you have access to on google calendar (helpful if you are ever making a schedule or want to see who is working on what)

c) all milestones from any basecamp projects you’ve subscribe to. If the dates are ever changed in basecamp, just refresh iCal and you’ll see new dates updated.

It’s great to have one place to look to see how the project milestones from basecamp are lining up with individual employees schedule. To set this up, follow the steps here for syncing using calDAV on iCal Desktop by following this link and clicking on “Enable Google Calendar in Apple’s iCal”:

Recap:

Below is a screenshot of how your iCal will look after you’ve done all the setup:

On the top you’ll see Dave.Brown@bkwld.com – this is my BKWLD google calendar only. This is where I’ll see my meeting invites, and receive pop-up reminders throughout the day for upcoming meetings.

Next down is Gmail – this is a personal calendar, so by checking this box I’ll see anything personal. Helpful when I’m checking to see how a travel schedule lines up with  my personal life. I also add my wife’s calendar so we’re all synced up too.

Next down is Delegates. This is the list of all the people you’ve added on Google calendar under “add coworker’s calendars.” If you want to add/modify these settings directly in iCal, go to preferences>Accounts>Delegation.

Finally is Subscriptions – this is the list of projects subscribed to on basecamp. We’ve also be using Unfuddled at BKWLD recently and you can also subscribe to individual calendars through Unfuddled.

Now you’ll have complete access to all the info you’ll need for any project, easily accessible for a project. If someone asks you “who is assigned to x project and can I move them help on project y” you can easily see who is working on each project, look at when the next milestone is due, and see who else may be available to help based off of current workload.

Syncing with iPhone

You can also setup calDAV on your iphone so you will be able to keep your iCal and iphone calendars kept in sync wirelessly. You’ll be able to add/modify event made in Google Calendar on either you iCal desktop or iCal on iPhone without having to do a physical sync. Here’s how to setup CalDav on your iPhone:

Regarding seeing your Basecamp milestones on your iPhone the best option is simply periodically doing a physical sync between iTunes and your iPhone. Within iTunes you can choose which calendars you want to sync by going to the info tab> Sync iCal Calendars and selecting them there. This works for me because I often do a physical sync daily to update my podcasts and other content. Frankly we don’t move milestone dates around that often, so doing a physical sync every few days works out fine.

My favorite thing about this setup is that everyone involved in a project has the info they need. All devs and designers know when the next milestone is due for each of their projects. As Mr. Dan Fields would say, “Project Managed.”

Here at BKWLD we like to keep things such as our everyday work flow and culture as transparent as possible. I thought it would be a fun idea for everyone whom wanted to take part to list their top 5 or so most used apps.

Some of the apps listed are pretty standard and some not so much. We are always interested in exploring new apps so, please recommend away!

Jeff Toll – Creative Director

Photoshop - “Open and running every day, all day.”
TextEdit – “I get grief for using this but it’s lightweight and simple, simple, simple. I’ll start using a more robust text editor sometime soon. I use it for writing quick storyboards and concept explanation etc. ʻPagesʼ is upon the horizon…”
xScope- “Covers my ass for screen resolution guides at the very least.”
iChat- “Communicating with our Seattle office and random jackasses.”
iCal -“I’ve been getting better and better with my organization.

Robert Reinhard- CTO & Partner

Pages - “I haven’t touched MS Word in over 2 years and haven’t looked back. I love how it handles styles, it’s like easy CSS in a word processor.”
OmniOutliner - “For taking notes on conference calls.”
MAMP Pro - “Powers My LAMP dev environment. Makes it easy to setup additional testing vhosts (test dev rather than local host).”
TextMate – “When is 2.0 gonna come out?! I’ve been flirting with switching to Coda, but I miss some of the hotkeys.”
Socialite -“Aggregates feeds from Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, and Digg all in one place, plus allows me to post comments/tweets.”

Scott Thiessen – Flash Developer

Safari -“The Activity Window and Web Inspector alone are enough to make me feel like the king of the Internet.”
TextMate - “Lots of power for so little toolbar.”
Sequel Pro – “This is phpMyAdmin’s gorgeous, sophisticated sister. Unbelievable that this app is free!”
Spot Color + Developer Color Picker - “Slick way to grab colors from the screen, tweak them in your favorite gamut, and spit out hexadecimals.”
Quick Look - “Not really a stand-alone app, but I’ve definitely forgotten what it’s like to use a computer without it.”

Matt Aebersold – Flash Developer

Flash + AS3 - “Although thereʼs a steep learning curve, learning object-oriented AS3 has opened up so many doors, and is such an intricate and expansive programming language. Itʼs allowed me to create some kick-ass web designs.”
Coda – “Once a site project is completely set up, the complete integration is incredible, and so intuitive. Once I made the switch I’ve never looked back.”
MAMP - “Helped me do PHP dev on my local machine. Extremely helpful in every way.”
Things - “Awesome to-do app. Easy to set up and manage. So simple, and It’s what’s not included that makes it great. plus syncing over dropbox has make this invaluable. That said…”
DropBox – “Awesome cloud storage. If I point my apps there, than they sync on all my computers (iTunes, Things, etc…). Plus online file recovery is very easy.”

Sean Monahan – Flex Developer

Eclipse w/Flash Builder 4 Plugin - “Paraphrasing a Josh Reddin-ism, ʻItʼs a text editor for fully grown men.ʼ Upgraded from Flex Builder 3 stand alone and my opinion of Eclipse has greatly increased. Eclipse also has plugins for PHP dev, Unfuddle (our ticket tracking software) and Ant (for oneclick builds)- all this allows for a one-step development environment for Elastic.
Calculator -  “Boring, I know, but good for doing quick math. I use this a lot when programming Uls. Bonus: it has a “programmer” view for doing fancy binary math.”
Last.fm – “I like its music picks better than Pandora and the artist bios and photo streams are freaking sweet.”
Photoshop – “What doesnʼt it do?”
Adium - “A slick IM client that supports just about every IM service in existence.”

Aaron Egaas – Web Applications Lead

Chromium - “Browser of choice, nightly version of web inspector is as good as firebug without the performance hit.”
TextMate - “Code keeps me paid, and TextMate keeps me sane.”
iChat - “Remote communication, PM requests.”
MailPlane - “Multiple Gmail accounts? Like to keep ‘em separate? Notifications? Native web app feel with label and everything? Gets me into GCal, too.”
Terminal - “I gotta ssh into servers to push code, so I use some sweet aliases to keep it all organized.”

Dave Brown – Senior Interactive Producer

Adium
OmniOutliner - “Great for taking notes.”
FontLab Studio - “Converting fonts.”
Justinmind Prototyper - “Havenʼt really used this yet, but Iʼve heard great things.”
Adobe Media Player - “Checking/watching native flv.”

George Plendl – Front End Developer

Linkinus - “Best IRC client for a mac. irc.freenode.net, #jquery is a great place to learn and ask questions.”
Alfred - “Quicklaunch application for which aims to save you time in searching your local computer and the web. Replaced ancient Quicksilver app!”
Snippley - “Basic text and organization app.”
Beyond Compare - “Easily compare files, folders, images, anything. Itʼs great!”
TextMate - “The best text editor for Mac and a powerful abbreviation engine for HTML and CSS. Saves hours!”

Shelby White – Design Intern

DropBox - “Best app for managing projects between projects. I also use it for freelance in getting assets.”
Adium/iChat - “Adium manages contacts better but iChat actually sends files.”
Coda - “My favorite app with FTP for html/css.”
Wordpress - “ Where I’ve spent most of my last year and a half.”
TweetDeck - “Nice for managing my tweets…”

Joe Leoni – Producer

TweetDeck - “Best way to stay informed of Chad Ochocincoʼs daily workouts or Snoop Doggʼs ʻbreakfast activitiesʼ.”
iChat - “Instant messaging: extreme convenience and extreme inconvenience all wrapped up into one.”
Garageband - “Now anyone can be a MC, and youʼll probably be better than 99% of radio hip-hop.”
Pages - “Iʼd rather be using Word, but close enough.”
Solitaire - “The best way to play with yourself.”

Veronica Skarshaug – Administrative Assistant

Stickies - “Nice way to save on physical sticky pads, and info that I need on a daily basis is easily accessible.”
TaskMate - “Great for keeping my to-do’s in order.”
Numbers - “I like to make spreadsheets, I’m a total nerd.”
Preview - “Makes things easy, easy, lemon squeezy.”
iChat - “Because, duh.”

The Hit List – “Awesome and free GTD app to keep my days/life organized.”
Transmit – “Gorgeous UI and experience to easily upload my files.”
Adium – “My favorite chat client especially when used with the iPhone message style.”
Cicero – “Dashboard widget that fulfills my Lorem Ipsum needs. Used and abused daily.”
Photoshop – “There is a light on under this icon all day. Content aware fill has come in handy on more than 1 occasion.”

Central Park

Yummy Dinners

Racking up loads of frequent flyer miles for personal use…..

All sweet  perks of tireless travel, however the insights gained and personal bonds created with my clients far out way the value of my deep and diverse Gowalla passport!

Over the past three years BKWLD has cultivated a fairly rich stable of retail clients; challenger brands that need to create a one on one relationship with consumers through a truly “branded” web experience in order to grow market share and earn relevance in saturated vertical categories.  A brand website, not to be confused with a B2C e-store (even though they can work in cohesion) in the one chance brands have to, truly tell a story especially when we are dealing with minimal media dollars  limited to aspirational life-style shots and cheesy headlines for half page ad in the typical industry pubs. To truly look  and the DNA of the brand, the common thread of products sold and the motivation of the consumers purchase decision is a healthy and sometimes eye-opening exercise I enjoy conducting at our now custom and mandatory brand discovery kick-off meetings.

So now myself, the assigned CD, PM and often times CEO Ryan Vanni (he picks great restaurants) all shlep out to: Boulder or Carlsbad or MorrisTown New Jersey to meet with our new clients and learn everything there is now know about these brands and why people actually pay full retail for the stuff they sell.  We start out asking what we think are pretty simple questions: Who is your target,what does your brand stand for, what other brands do they wish to emulate etc. Often to blank stares and confused looks around the table!  Not only is this shocking but exciting as we begin to peel back the layers of what really makes these brands special.  This exercise had lead to some of our best work and would have never happened had we not got off our ass, and pushed these brands to think a little.

Currently we are “getting personal”  with Gregory packs on some product launch strategies, Smartwool on a new brand site, and Chobani Greek yogurt on a new social media platform, that being said my next three weeks are booked with face to face meetings that will lead to  some new Discovery Gold!

My Two Favs:

Gravis http://www.gravisfootwear.com/
Status Quo: T&A, Tats and killer tubs.
Discovery:  Gravis is smart, stylish and interesting to people who just like to be rad.
Results: an award winning brand site that makes the killer product the star, not the killer backside 720 the sponsored athlete can boost.

Red Ledge: http://www.redledge.com/
Outdoor Industry: Beards, Fleece, and snoot bubbles as we climb K2
Discovery: Red Ledge is real, honest, functional and funny as hell!
Results: a site the pokes fun of the industry and speaks to the real consumer, and a tagline that says it all: “Functional, Affordable Clothing – For Those Who Exist in Reality.”

We’re big Gowalla users at BKWLD, thanks to Aaron getting us started on it.  We’re also big on going to lunch together.  And our location right near Pike Place Market gives us a lot of options.  Now you can follow along at home!

One of the goals BKWLD planned for ourselves this year was to attend more events and conferences.  More accurately: to attend events at all.  In previous years we’ve balked at the cost of most conferences and the expected return we’d get on that money and time.  We decided to give it a chance with the SoDA Click New York event last year, to see whether our assumptions had been valid.  It was a good experience, largely because it got us out of the day to day and thinking bigger picture.  Thus this year’s initiative was born.

We went to StackOverflow’s Dev Days earlier this year.  One big plus of it was it’s cost: $100 a head.  The speakers gave us an overview of technologies that we don’t use regularly (there wasn’t a lot of LAMP love) and the FogBuzz keynote made me realize that some of the issues we’ve faced in the growth of ground(ctrl) and Elastic aren’t unique to us.  Which brings us to SXSW, which 6 of us just back from.

We brought a pretty big team to SXSW and it works there since the conference is so multidisciplinary.  During the day we split up often, so that people could meet with other folks who were there or attend panels specific to their interests.  As anyone who is our friend on Gowalla will attest (sorry for all the spam), we “checked in” to let each other know where we were.  Some of the panels I enjoyed the most were on iPhone UI design, new methods of tactile interaction, and the marketing strategy behind the Bing launch.  I was able to meet some the Appcelerator dev’s at the meetup they held, which was a great opportunity for me to ask them questions.  During the night we caroused between the free parties that different companies held (Pure Volume, Gowalla, etc).

So will we go again? I think so.  In talking with our crew, it sounds like we unanimously agreed that the panels lacked enough depth.  Many were overviews or stated the obvious too much.  There wasn’t enough detail and brainy insight.  That being said, there was usually a tidbit or two I picked up from the panels I attended.  And, there was a lot of value in getting time with coworkers in a stress free environment.  As opposed to doing some extracurricular activity (like our snowboard trip in December), the framework of a conference focused our conversation on work themed stuff, spurning creativity and new ideas.  I think this last point is what would have me taking us back again.  While we could plan a fun activity locally for a much lower cost, having a structure based on learning (even if it fell short) is special about going to a conference and led to growth outside of the sessions.

Next up for us is An Event Apart in Seattle.  If your company is thinking of going to industry events and you want to chat about whether it’s worth the cost or not (I’m still chewing on this myself), hit me up in the comments.

Recently both Jeff and I were asked to contribute to an article in this month’s How Magazine about working on projects that conflict with your personal ethics. Although I was just ever-so-slightly misunderstood by the writer who summarized that my “primary motivation is making money”, says article, I was thrilled to contribute. Now do not get me wrong, I like many other business people am excited by a healthy margin, but for crying in the night it is not my motivation, let alone my “primary” one.  If that were the case wouldn’t I be dealing in hedge funds or commodities or something like that?  But hell, how often do you get asked to contribute to such a great magazine, and maybe even more valuable to me, I now get to complain about being misrepresented (the italics represent a sort of douche bag tone in my voice).  So that’s something too.

Thankfully for the internet I have the luxury of publishing what was sent to them as my true views on the subject, and thankfully for my not-so-very-prolific-blogging-career, I have an article “in the can”.  So here goes:

Quite simply put, it is the designer’s job to visually convey the message they are hired to deliver.  A lot goes into doing that well, and being diametrically opposed to a project’s purpose definitely would not help.  So then even if a designer did try to set their personal beliefs aside in the spirit of “gettin’ the job done,” at what point does that become irresponsible and a disservice to the paying party?  No matter how much you loath the purpose, to me that plain disservice becomes its own isolated case of ‘wrong’ as a business value.

To me I think a number of things go into considering an assignment, and certainly personal morals and values are not the least of which that would play a part of that filter.  Obviously the more typical filters for me as the CEO are, will it enhance our brand, is it financially responsible, will it burn out the team, do we like the idea, etc…Normally the project’s nature is much more innocuous then offensive to any set of morals.  You know, selling a backpack, an mp3 player, a piece of software, and so on.

Being of the more independent mind set, I would provoke any designer, or anyone else for that matter, to simply turn down what they want to turn down for opposing any personal moral or value.  Certainly freelancers have that liberty, and as an employer I give my team that same liberty.  Now sometimes we disagree on whether a project is good for the company, and we listen to those opinions as well.

Earlier on in our history we did get approached to do a couple projects that did in fact oppose my personal beliefs.  I think I’d prefer to not get into the nitty gritty as to what and why, but they started somewhat harmless.  We took the projects, and as they progressed through development, the projects became more and more opposing.  At first I simply personally backed-off from offering my help.  One of which we finished, although I would argue not our best project ever (serving my earlier point), and the other we resigned.  From those experiences I know now to stay away from projects I do not believe in.  But again, that encompasses much more then morals and values these days.

2009 had been a challenging year for all of us.  And in a year that I would of expected to take any paying project, we have turned down more then we ever have.  That does not mean every project is a party, but it does mean to choose whether or not to accept it through some sort of filter that you (either as an independent or agency) have defined so that you, your team, your portfolio, or your bottom line is served, and then in turn the client is best served.