SOPA / PIPA Overview

At a high level SOPA and PIPA are proposed legislation, in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate respectively, that would require search engines, advertisers, ISPs and other internet entities to regulate content and be responsible to remove allegedly infringing content. In theory, the ideas behind both bills are important and are recognized by many to be necessary in the fight against piracy, but the current versions are very broad.

Online Protest

Other sites like Wikipedia, Craigslist, Wordpress, Flickr, and Reddit.com took similar stands and provided information on how to contact your local congressman or woman. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter were flooded with the SOPA/PIPA related posts and were likely large contributing factors to the widespread movement that took place Wednesday.

Was the Protest a Success?

SOPA and PIPA related searches trended very high on Google all day. Below is the list of the top 20 trending searches from Wednesday, January 18th, and 6 of the top 20 relate to online piracy. If users did not immediately sign the petitions, at the very least, it sparked some interest to educate them about the proposed legislation. Google says more than 7 million people signed the anti-SOPA petition, while Twitter reported 2.4+ million SOPA-related Tweets in a 4 hour span. More than 162 million people saw the Wikipedia blackout page. It’s evident that the protest had a positive influence on the online and social media communities, but did the ‘decision makers’ get the message?

The update makes it easier for users to interpret the data and includes great visuals to display user interactions and total reach of the content.   One of the new data points ‘People Talking About This’, informs page admins the number of people who created a story about your page. 

Upon initial login, page admins will be alerted to take a 5 step tour of the new layout and get themselves familiar with the new data. If you have already “skipped” the tour or want to take it again it is always available to you from the settings dropdown in the top right corner.   

Below is a quick snapshot of some of the new data and graphs that Facebook provides.
When a page admin initially logs into Facebook Insights the ‘Important Metrics’ are displayed with a graphical representation below.

Like the old Insights, the basic metrics will continue to be displayed, but modified with cleaner and easy to comprehend graphs. New data and graphs include how many people are talking about your page and the viral reach that the content is creating.

Like in the previous version, users are still able to export their data, but only as far back as July 19th and users can only filter data for a span of 89 days. It’s still uncertain if the date range will expand going forward, but either way the updated reports are a nice feature to allow admins a way to verify their social media efforts are targeting the right audience.

If you have any stories or tips on using the new Insights, please share them in the comments section below.

What if Angry Birds were real?

Angry Birds has been called 'the new Super Mario Bros.' I'm hard pressed to find someone with a smartphone who hasn't played it. Since Rovio sells the plush Angry Bird characters, we decided to make the game a reality.

The setup is surprisingly simple, though it took me a little searching to get it right. Instead of building a slingshot, we opted for a three person water balloon launcher. To make the bricks, we first bought 1/2'-thick foamcore from a craft store, but it proved to be too flimsy when we put the relatively heavy plush pig on top of it. Since we wanted the game to be a bit of a challenge, we had to find something else.

While walking at the Yorktown Mall near our office, I found Brilliant Sky Toys & Books. They happened to carry exactly what I was looking for; Melissa & Doug Jumbo Cardboard Blocks. These blocks are similar to ones I remember in play areas when I was little.

These blocks are heavy enough to pose a challenge when struck by a plush bird launched from a distance. In addition to the difficulty of hitting a narrow target (you're essentially playing a 2D game in a 3D world), this means that our Angry Birds game isn't a walk in the park. It's more fun because of the challenge.

We set up the large Angry Birds course at the client, and for about an hour took turns hurling plush birds at plush pigs. A lot of shots missed, and the participants experimented with different techniques of holding the birds, different strengths on the slingshot, and other techniques. We even tried to spread out the target to make it wider, but that actually made the game more difficult. In the end it appears that it's easier to focus on one target than it is to have several in front of you.

Here's What You Need

Want to build your own Angry Birds game? Here are links to the products we used to assemble it.

• Plush Angry Birds & Pigs
• 90 Yard Water Balloon Launcher
• Melissa & Doug Jumbo Cardboard Blocks

Did you build your own? Tell us!

If you try this or another version of a physical Angry Birds game, we'd love to know! Tweet us at @KeyLimeTie or email us at info@keylimetie.com.

This past weekend, I spoke at SocialDevCamp Chicago with developers about how to integrate social sign-in features into their webistes and apps. Here are some of the key points from the talk.

What is 'social sign-in?'

Social sign-in features enable your website visitors to register for your website or application using an existing login of their choice, such as their Facebook, Google, or Twitter profile.  As a web developer, you can leverage a third party as an identity provider and at the same time you can reduce 'login fatigue' for your users.

Some benefits of using social sign-in on your website include:

• Increased conversion rate
• Better contextual data as you gain access to the user's profile information
• Less effort to implement (do you really want to write Yet Another Authentication Service?)
• Increased security by leveraging the third-party provider's security features

As a website owner, you face the challenge of designing a compelling enough experience to make users want to register and dig deeper.  Just 25% of users are generally willing to complete a registration, and 76% give incorrect or incomplete information when signing up for a new service.  People are more willing to return to (and purchase from) sites that automatically recognize users.

Why Not Social Sign-In?

However, there are some cases in which you would not want to implement social sign-in.  You need to be comfortable handing off critical site functionality to a third party (if you are in a regulated industry, this may be prohibited due to security requirements).

When implementing social sign-in, there's a tradeoff: use a convenient service such as JanRain and you are charged once usage exceeds a certain threshhold, whereas if you implement yourself, your effor to implement (also a cost) increases.

Further, know that at any point, Identity Providers (IDPs) like Facebook and Google can change their API, breaking your site functionality and forcing you to immediately stop and adapt your code for the changes.  When you use social sign-in, you trade convenience for control and dependency on a third party's system.

Best Practices

To get the most out of social sign-in, you'll want to use the social network's branding, which lets your users know that the process of creating a new account will be quick, painless, and trusted.  Also, make sure to offer multiple identity providers (e.g. Google, Facebook, OpenID, Twitter) so the user can choose which service they prefer.  You can streamline your user's registration by pulling profile data from the third party service, and always give a clear indication of when registration is a success.

Providers and APIs

• Identity Providers include: Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Yahoo, OpenID, MySpace, Flickr, etc.
• Stand-alone APIs include: HybridAuth (PHP), OmniAuth (Ruby), SocialAuth (Java, .NET)
• Service APIs include: JanRain, Gigya, Windsoc

Chris Grove will be teaching developers how to build login sequences for applications using Twitter, Facebook, Google and other popular services. People suffer 'login fatigue;' they've grown tired of being required to create a new username and password for each service they join. Grove's talk will show just how easy it is for developers to relieve their users' pain by giving them an option to use an existing account.

SocialDevCamp Chicago is a weekend conference for entrepreneurs and developers who build social web applications. Several KeyLimeTie employees are a part of the team that produces this annual event, which draws several hundred attendees and has featured speakers from companies including Google, Facebook, Groupon, and the W3C.

See Chris Grove and others at the event July 26-28. Visit the SocialDevCamp website for more information and to get your tickets.

View the full Periodic Table of SEO Elements on Search Engine Land

A couple of months ago, the guys over at Search Engine Land put together this Periodic Table of SEO Elements. It’s a high level overview highlighting the most important factors in Content, HTML, Architecture, Linking, Social, Trust, and Personal, and also notes things not to do to avoid negative consequences.

Instead of hard-and-fast lists of SEO "DOs" and "DO NOTs," this infographic assigns a weight to each element and breaks out the chart into multiple categories (On Site, Off Site, Violations, and Blocking) and sub categories (Content, HTML, Social, etc). This makes it easier to note the relative impact an action will have on your overall SEO rankings.

It also emphasizes that fresh, high quality, engaging content is among the leading drivers for the search engines and ultimately the user, which is just with what Google has been stressing in recent news and through the Google Panda update. The chart underscores that no single factor will guarantee results. Over 20 other factors go into search rankings (both positive and negative). Most “on page” factors, elements like Titles, Headers, Meta Tags, and URLs, have been common in the SEO industry for years. Whereas, some "off page" elements are new to the practice and might take some time to develop. Practitioners have been focusing efforts on elements like Shares, Social Media, and Reputation over the last 12 months.

Finally, there are elements that are usually associated with "black hat" tactics, such as Stuffing, Hidden tags, Link Spam, and of course thin content. These will result with a negative impact on the website.

This infographic is a great resource for both people new to the SEO world and people that work in the industry on a daily basis. It’s a great source to refer to when creating new content and web pages. Search Engine Land did a great job of simplifying how these complex concepts are communicated. The Periodic Table of SEO Elements makes it easier to both practice good SEO and communicate good SEO practices to clients.

It's a debate that's raged since the first smartphones hit the market: should you develop native mobile applications, or web sites that are optimized for mobile devices?  The answer seems as elusive as ever.  The fact that we're still having the debate is itself something of an answer though; both are viable solutions.

The debate is so often framed in either-or terms, however there's no reason you can't do both.  If you expect that you have customers who will download a mobile app, then you also have customers who will find your web site on a mobile browser.  A mobile-optimized web site is increasingly important for most businesses, and should be a starting point for anyone asking the question to begin with.

Ask the Right Question

But the real question, from a technology perspective, is how to expose more sophisticated functionality to your mobile customers.  Native apps will usually be more fluid, be able to access all of the features of the device, will conform to the experience the user expects for their specific device, and will usually perform better than web sites.  They will also usually cost more to develop and will be limited to just those devices on the selected platform (iOS, Android, etc.)

A web-based application, on the other hand, will run on any smartphone (more or less).  But, you won't get access to all of the hardware features of the device, and the interface will not look like the native apps that it will run alongside.  Another downfall that's often overlooked is that it is harder for potential users to discover web applications, as compared to browsing a centralized app store.  On the flip side, there are a lot more developers out there who can work with web technologies than with the native development environments, and they are often cheaper.

This is just touching the surface, and there are no hard and fast rules.  It might seem, for instance, that gaming is best done as a native app - and this is undoubtedly true for games that rely on high-framerate 3D graphics.  But games that are suitable for Flash or HTML5 may work very well as a mobile web app.  So spend some time up front, and ask some questions.

• What technologies are feasible?
• What are your potential users' expectations?
• How critical is performance?
• How will you market and distribute the app?

Every project is unique, so don't let anyone tell you there is only one answer.  Your project will drive the answer that's right for you.

Interested in your own mobile app?

If you are interested in developing an app, or extending an app you already have to multiple platforms to reach a wider range of users, contact KeyLimeTie at 630.598.9000 or sales@keylimetie.com.

Here are the quotes, with links to articles:

'A (video chat) app like Skype provides an extra layer of interaction that helps reinforce your message. If you have to air a grievance or a concern, a visual rendering can carry a lot more weight,' says Chris Pautsch, CEO of KeyLimeTie LLC.' Quoted in: The apps: Skype, GoogDocs || The user: Justin Seidenberg, owner, Kiqstart Music.

'An app like that allows (Mr. Jahn) to work directly in the same digital medium he uses to present his work,' says Chris Pautsch, CEO of the Downers Grove app-development firm KeyLimeTie LLC. 'There's also something to be said for not carrying around all that paper.' Quoted in Helmut Jahn meets iPad: The very best apps for small business.

Interested in your own mobile app?

If you are interested in developing an app, or extending an app you already have to multiple platforms to reach a wider range of users, contact KeyLimeTie at 630.598.9000 or sales@keylimetie.com.

For the second year in a row KeyLimeTie has been named as one of "Chicago’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For" by the National Association for Business Resources (NABR). Here's a link to the press release we just issued about the honor.

Receiving this award again further validates for us KeyLimeTie’s continued commitment to fostering a positive work environment where employees feel valued and can develop to their full potential. Results were determined based on the responses our employees gave to the survey distributed by NABR. As CEO and Co-Founder, I'm happy knowing employees expressed their enjoyment of working at KeyLimeTie in such a way that allowed us to receive this award again.

This past weekend I attended my first hackathon: the Ji-V Hack. After a long day and a lot of fun, our team came in 2nd place. I learned a lot in the process and hope to participate in another hackathon soon.

In the morning when I arrived, I first walked around and talked with a few of the other participants. Our team then assembled and we listened to the organizers describe what we needed to do. Team KeyLimeTie consisted of Richie (senior software engineer), Jennifer Wittman (designer) and me (software engineer). At the last minute, the organizers assigned us a new member—a beginner developer named Austin. Austin is in high school and participates in the 21st Century Youth Project, a program that teaches students mobile development. We got the opportunity to mentor him as we built our app, and he was a helpful addition to our team.

Our team building our apps (Clockwise from top left: Jennifer, Richie, Andy, Austin).

This hackathon challenge was to develop a mobile website and app that benefitted GiveForward, a company that helps people raise funds for loved ones in medical need. The website and the app actually had two different purposes. The mobile site would show a profile, easily accept donations, and let people share using social media. The mobile app was to be a tool for the fundraiser manager, who is often a loved one championing a sick person’s cause. GiveForward’s staff suggested the app let managers update the fundraiser news page, see who has donated, send thank you notes to donors, and offer a social media sharing tool.

Once we got started, our team discussed our approach. Richie and I have C# .NET experience, so we decided to create the mobile website in MVC3. Richie built the website, and I built the mobile app for Windows Phone 7. As Austin was learning Java programming on Android, we decided to give him a crash course in C# so he could help me develop the WP7 app.

Me posing with Motorola Product Manager Jinnan Sun, who awarded me my new Droid Pro phone.

Austin took to C#/WP7 development quite well. I asked questions to make sure he had a good understanding of what I was showing him. Once his developer tools were all set up, I asked him to create a page for the mobile app and to ask me questions.

By the end of the day, Richie and Jennifer had a prototype mobile website up in MVC3. Austin had created a few pages for our mobile app, and I showed him how his pages would integrate into mine. I was chosen to present to the judges and other teams, then it was time to wait. I watched the other presentations and a martial arts performance that was held while the judges deliberated.

At long last, the staff announced the winners, and we won 2nd place! We also received a surprise award for the team that did the most to mentor their student teammate. I was excited to receive a special mention for helping Austin along with a Droid Pro phone. Austin won a Blackberry Pearl for being the first student to show a prototype of a mobile app he helped develop.

Overall, I had a fun experience at the Ji-V Hack and I’m really looking forward to more hackathons in the future.

Update: MotoDev posted this article outlining the Ji-V Hack on their blog, and kindly mentioned KeyLimeTie and me.

Greetings from San Francisco! Chris Grove and I are at the Apple WWDC conference all week learning about all of the new features coming out from Apple very soon. In Monday’s Keynote, several things were announced including details on the new Lion OS, iOS5 and iCloud. As a participant of the conference, we received access to the iOS5 beta and there’s a lot of great new features. Here are some of the ones that are of particular interest.

Notification Center

The current notification system on the iPhone is pretty weak. There’s no way to review or respond to them individually and they interrupt whatever you’re doing (e.g. playing a game). With iOS5, all of your alerts are now in one place, including new emails, texts, friend requests and more. In addition, you can have stock quotes and weather displayed. From anywhere on the phone, simply swipe down from the top of the screen to enter Notification Center. When new notifications come in, they briefly display at the top of your screen without interrupting what you’re doing. When the phone is off, the Lock screen displays notifications as they come in, and you can interact with them with just a swipe.

iMessage

iMessage is a new messaging service that replaces the old Text Messaging system. You can now send as many text messages as you want from your Apple device to anyone with an Apple device. You can send text, photos, videos, locations, and contacts and as you can now track messages with delivery receipts and read receipts. When in a conversation with someone, you can see when someone’s typing similar to instant messaging applications. Because all messaging is stored in iCloud, you pick up where you left off on any of your other Apple devices.

Newsstand

Newsstand is a new built-in app that manages your magazine and newspaper subscriptions. Whenever you buy new newspaper and magazine subscriptions from the App Store, they will be accessible in this new app. Apple has deals with the six major publishers and with the rise of online publications, whatever your read should be available in this new app.

Reminders

Up until now, you had to create calendar appointments to create reminders. iOS5 introduces the new Reminders app for organizing tasks with due dates and, optionally, locations. If you opt to use locations, you can be reminded based on your location. For example, the reminder could be “Call Tracy when you leave work”. When you leave work, Reminders will detect the location change and alert you. Reminders also works with iCal, Outlook, and iCloud, so changes you make update automatically on all your devices and calendars.

Twitter

When Twitter first came out, I didn’t get it. It took awhile for me to really see benefits, but now I check out Twitter pretty much every day. Whether you like it or not, Twitter is huge and not going away. In fact, it’s only getting bigger…so big, it’s now completely integrated into iOS5. You only need to setup your profile once under Settings, and then you can tweet directly from Safari, Photos, Camera, YouTube or Maps.

Camera

My kids are in just about every sport possible...baseball, soccer, swimming, hockey…you name it. I like taking lots of pictures and because the iPhone camera is so good, I use it more often than my Canon SLR. Sometime I need that camera ready in 2 seconds and it’s a real pain when you have to click the On button, slide the unlock slider, maybe exit the current app, find the camera app and click it. That can take a good 10 seconds…add a few more seconds if you have to type in an unlock code. No more! With iOS5, you can open the Camera app right from the Lock screen even if you have a lock code. Also, the camera screen now has grid lines, pinch-to-zoom gestures, and single-tap focus and exposure locks. And do you hate the button on the screen to take photos? Now you can press the volume-up button to snap your photo. And if you have Photo Stream enabled in iCloud, your photos automatically download to all your other Apple devices.

Photos

One of Apple’s main goals was to eliminate the need for a computer (see next feature for more). With iOS5, you can now crop, rotate, enhance and remove red-eye without leaving the Photos app. With iCloud, you can automatically push new photos to all your iOS devices. It’s automatic...nothing for you to do. And it’s free!

In the example below, I took a picture taken on my iPhone from my daughter's ballet recital, clicked the Enhance button to bring out the colors and then cropped it. Only three taps of my finger and it looks so much better.

PC Free

Wasn’t it annoying when you opened up your iPhone for the first time and the first thing it showed is that you need to plug it into your computer? With iOS5, you no longer need a computer. Now you can activate and set up your device wirelessly, right out of the box. And with iCloud, back up and restore your device automatically.

Wi-Fi Sync

If you’re like me, you have multiple Apple devices. My wife and I have iPhones, we have an iPad, and my work laptop is a MacBook. Sometimes I buy music or apps on my iPhone, sometimes on my Mac, sometimes my wife buys stuff…how do we keep it all in sync? We have to constantly sync our devices on the Mac each taking turns to centralize everything and then re-sync…a nightmare. iOS5 ends that! You will soon be able to wirelessly sync your device to your Mac or PC over a shared Wi-Fi connection. Every time you connect your device to a power source (e.g. overnight for charging), it automatically syncs and backs up any new content to iTunes.

iCloud

What is iCloud? In a nutshell, iCloud is an online storage system where all your music, apps, latest photos, email, contacts, calendars, etc. are stored so it’s always accessible from your devices. By utilizing iCloud, all your devices stay in sync without manually syncing! Oh, and it’s free!

iTunes Match

I saved possibly the best for last. Do you rip your old CDs and load them onto your Apple devices? Or maybe buy MP3s from other websites? That’s a lot of work and isn’t it a pain how they are treated differently from iTunes songs. iTunes Match solves all of that. iTunes Match allows you store your entire music collection in iCloud for just $24.99 a year! But instead of taking hours (or days for those of you with a huge music collection), it only takes minutes. iTunes already has pretty much every song every recorded (over 18 million so far) and can match your files to theirs. It only needs to upload the few they don’t have. And as a bonus, all the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality even if your original copy was of lower quality.

Consumers are showing increased interest in Windows Phone 7 devices, known for their fresh, intuitive user interfaces with a clean design. Microsoft is well poised as a contender in the smartphone market dominated by Apple and Google. At KeyLimeTie, we're seeing growing interest from clients as well, and are engaged in several projects to take existing iOS and Android apps and build WP7 versions of them.

Analysts have projected that WP7 could overtake the iPhone's marketshare as early as 2015. Today the WP7 app marketplace is still in its infancy, so getting an app in the Marketplace now allows for more visibility, and there's really an opportunity for the best apps to ride the platform to success as it grows. Microsoft is even offering co-marketing opportunities to promote popular or name brand apps. With the 'Mango' update expected in the fall, 'WP7's capabilities will be on par with iOS and Android,' says Peter Morano, CIO at KeyLimeTie.

Another advantage of Windows Phone is the rich developer tools Microsoft provides; these tools allow for rapid development of WP7 apps, which means these apps can cost significantly less to develop than their iOS and Android counterparts. Microsoft invited KeyLimeTie COO Brian Pautsch (@brianpautsch) and CIO Peter Morano (@petermorano) to attend an intensive, week-long Windows Phone development accelerator where Microsoft made their WP7 developer trainers available to assist with projects, with the aim of releasing apps to the store that week. With Microsoft pushing development on the platform aggressively, KeyLimeTie is seeing more opportunity to reach customers on this intuitive platform that is a natural extension of the team's .NET development capabilities.

Need Windows Phone Development?

If you are interested in your own Windows Phone app, please contact KeyLimeTie at 630.598.9000 or sales@keylimetie.com. Follow us on Twitter at @KeyLimeTie.

We're thrilled to announce the release the Naperville Running Company app for Windows Phone, based upon our earlier iOS version. The Naperville Running Company app allows users to calculate their run pace, view recent store news, upcoming events, and receive alerts on things related to the store. If you have Zune installed on your PC, you can download the app from the Marketplace.

Microsoft invited KeyLimeTie COO Brian Pautsch (@brianpautsch) and CIO Peter Morano (@petermorano) to attend an intensive, week-long Windows Phone development accelerator where Microsoft made their WP7 developer trainers available to assist with projects, with the aim of releasing apps to the store that week. With Microsoft pushing development on the platform aggressively, KeyLimeTie is seeing more opportunity to reach customers on this intuitive platform that is a natural extension of the team's .NET development capabilities.

Need Windows Phone Development?

If you are interested in your own Windows Phone app, please contact KeyLimeTie at 630.598.9000 or sales@keylimetie.com. Follow us on Twitter at @KeyLimeTie.

KeyLimeTie CIO Peter Morano is scheduled to present his talk, 'Developing a Successful Mobile Strategy' at the American Press Institute's 'Mobile Media: Opportunities on the Move' conference July 18-19 in Washington, DC.

Pete's talk will discuss the inevitability of adopting a mobile strategy for your business. A successful mobile strategy must have reaching your customers and your market as its central goal (and this doesn't necessarily require developing a native application). Pete will share several important elements to consider when developing a mobile strategy, including methods for connecting with a mobile audience, effective audience engagement, mobile platform differences and the impact this can have on market reach.

As applications continue to migrate toward the web, mobile devices are becoming inextricably linked with our everyday lives. According to The Mobile Internet Report released by Morgan Stanley, within five years, more users will connect to the web via mobile devices than desktop computers.

Mr. Morano has been a featured speaker for the Knapp Entrepreneurship Center’s Lecture Series at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. He is a graduate of DePaul University with a B.S. degree and an M.A. degree in economics.

KeyLimeTie CTO Chris Grove served as a panelist this past month at the Mobile Visionary Roundtable for the Illinois Technology Association.  The roundtable focused on "cross-platform" app development, or developing apps for multiple operating systems including iPhone, Android, Windows, BlackBerry and others.

In today's mobile ecosystem, developers have the option of developiong either "natively," (in the specific development environment and language for the corresponding poatform), or using a cross-platform development environment where the app is written in a single codebase and compiled for each target operating system.  Both have their advantages, and the choice comes down to how suited the type of app being developed is for each.  Cross-platform environments are best suited for simple apps and apps that have an entirely customized user interface and do not rely on the phone's built-in user interface components.  Conversely, apps that use deeper features of the phones/OSes might require coding in the native environment.

Another possibility when considering developing for cross-platform use is to create a native app or a mobile website.  This decision comes down to use case.  It's worth noting that native apps are six times more popular on the iPhone than mobile websites, but less popular on tablets, according to this ReadWriteWeb article.

The bottom line here is that mobile sites have different use cases than native apps.  Apps are stronger when it's necessary to use native features of the phone (such as the camera, location services, accelerometer, or light), where websites shine when it's more important that the user find the information they need quickly and efficiently.

Cross-Platform applications have inherent risks.  First and foremost, by nature the developer becomes dependent on the vendor that created the specific cross-platform Integrated Development Environment (IDE).  With iPhone developers already undertaking risk of an app tied to Apple's ever-changing rules and control over the App Store, for some, adding risk to a new vendor in a fast-moving marketplace constitutes unnecessarily high risk.  Roundtable participants drew parallels between cross-platform app development today and the choice to develop in Java vs. HTML/JavaScript on the web in the late 1990s.  At the time, companies poured resources into the cross-platform environments of the day, while as the web evolved, only a couple survived.  Before investing in a cross-platform envirionment, it's important to evaluate where the vendor is likely to be three to five years out.

Finally, with cross-platform development, there's always the added cost of additional project management.  "The more platforms an app will support," adds Grove, "the more groundwork you have to lay, and the more emphasis you have to put on quality assurance."  Each additional platform adds a level of complexity; user interfaces are different, some devices have physical buttons where others have touch screens, and some have standard navigation elements.

Interested in your own mobile app?

If you are interested in developing an app, or extending an app you already have to multiple platforms to reach a wider range of users, contact KeyLimeTie at 630.598.9000 or sales@keylimetie.com.

KeyLimeTie sponsored the Microsoft Web Camp for Chicago on May 26-27, hosted by Developer Evangelists Clark Sell and Brandon Satrom and drew over 300 attendees. The event is a part of a national series designed to allow people to learn to build websites using ASP.NET MVC, WebMatrix, OData and other Microsoft technologies.

The first day of the Web Camp featured all-day sessions covering MVC 3.0, WebMatrix, jQuery, and HTML5. The second day featured hands-on sessions and a 24-hour hackathon sponsored in part by KeyLimeTie. Five teams survived the intense, 24-hour hackathon and presented to win their share of $2,500 in prizes that came from sponsors KeyLimeTie, Telerik, and Hackatopia.

For more information on future Microsoft Web Camps, visit the Web Camps site.

As a Senior Software Developer at KeyLimeTie, my day-to-day work requires me to focus on some very technical issues. A typical day may include creating a REST web service, optimizing software for thread-safety and performance, or even critiquing open-source frameworks. Although these technical challenges are satisfying, I never really need to tap into my right-brain skills which include extensive graphic arts and music experience.

In my free time I enjoy merging these technical and artistic sides and my latest project is the iPhone game I’ve branded as "Twisted Maestro." This easy to learn game presents a player with a piano-like device used for testing finger dexterity and visual acuity.

Gameplay Approach

When deciding how to model the gameplay of Twisted Maestro, I first had to acknowledge that I don’t fall into the target demographic of many of today’s popular games. I frequented video arcades during the early 80’s, but over time I’ve very much drifted away from being a gamer. I evaluated recent games and found those which require unusual dexterity and movements were not very satisfying for me. So I consciously decided to take the Zen approach of "Beginner’s Mind" and disregard any presuppositions I may have about the latest gaming trends. I wanted to make a game that was attractive for its simplicity, one that was visually stunning and was appealing for its difficulty and physical challenge.

Twisted Maestro early concept wireframes.

Design Strategies

Typically, the UX and navigation patterns of handheld games don’t follow the same guidelines as a professional business app would, designers take liberties to do whatever they can to create unique interfaces. Contrary to this trend, I wanted to follow the Apple Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) as much as I could without sacrificing creative design. For example, since the upper left corner is the sacred location for the Back button of navigation, this is where I placed the Audition button which leads back towards the keyboard home screen for performing an audition.

Another aspect I thought to be important was to target the physical needs of as many people as I could. When performing an audition on Twisted Maestro, knowing the amount of time remaining is important to get the best performance. Recognizing that the majority of the population is right-handed, I placed the time indicator where it would be least obstructed for viewing by a right-handed player. A physical limitation I also wanted to address was that of color-blindness. Original prototypes arbitrarily used green and red for gameplay indicators, but I later changed these in order to respect players with red-green color-blindness, the most common case, and give them a better experience.

Realistic-looking, oversized keyboard.

I wanted the overall graphic design of the game to be realistic and seem like you could actually be holding the auditioning device. I tested different sizes for the buttons and found that using a larger button gave the perception of a larger, more realistic device. Also contributing toward this realism are very high-resolution graphics, textures with intentionally aged effects, as well as keyboard audio recorded in a professional studio.

Gameplay Tuning

The difficulty of each level and the scoring algorithm were not easy to determine and took many iterations to get correct. In order to find proper values, I gained feedback from a wide array of testers ranging from preschoolers to teenagers to senior citizens. I needed the game to be rewarding for younger and less nimble players, but also be appropriately difficult for the more advanced gamers. I find the ultimate compliment to be when a player wants to play the game “just one more time”.

Conclusion

Creating the Twisted Maestro game proved to be very challenging in many ways. I spent most of my development time in two areas - fine-tuning the gameplay and scoring algorithms, and refining graphics to give the perception of realism. The final game has been getting great reviews worldwide and I owe its success to the many testers who contributed their honest feedback during development iterations.

I enjoy my role here at KeyLimeTie and I certainly don’t strive to be a professional game developer, but this personal experience has been extremely rewarding and I’m anxious to leverage what I've learned for a KeyLimeTie customer project.

Download Twisted Maestro on the App Store

Twisted Maestro is compatible with iPhone, iTouch, and iPad Visit www.twistedmaestro.com or download from the App Store.

Interested in Your Own Mobile App?

If you are interested in putting the skills of developers like Patrick to use developing a mobile app for your company, please contact KeyLimeTie at 630.598.9000 or sales@keylimetie.com. Follow us on Twitter at @KeyLimeTie.

KeyLimeTie's Chris Grove will serve on the panel for the Illinois Technology Association's Mobile Visionary Roundtable on Wednesday, May 18. The panel, moderated by Mobile Visionary Roundtable chair Alex Bratton and also featuring Ron Franczyk of Red Foundry, will cover cross-platform app development. Come and hear these experts discuss cross-platform development tools, native application development, and technical design concerns of building a cross-platform application.

Date: Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Time: 8:30am – 10:30am
Location: ITA/TechNexus – Conference Room A/B, 200 South Wacker 15th Floor, Chicago, IL 60606
RSVP Here: http://www.illinoistech.org/event.aspx/3409

Three weeks ago, Google announced the +1 button, an experiment that they hope incorporates social recommendations with search results. Since then, a portion of Google users have begun to see a +1 button next to their search results when logged into their Google accounts. If you don’t see it immediately, visit the Search Experiments section of Google Labs and enable this option.

The +1 button allows you to inform other people in your network about a website you like by simply clicking a button. It works a lot like Facebook’s “Like Button,” but it does a little more. The +1 Button also influences how these sites show up in others’ search results. Plus, users can always undo a +1 if they didn’t mean to flag the site.

The +1 button appears to the right of the search result title. Here you
can see the +1 icon as it appears after you recommend a link.

The +1 button is still in an experimental stage. If you don’t see it on Google automatically, sign in to your Google account, visit Google Search Experiments. Select the +1 button as your Google experiment.

Now visit Google and search for something. Click the +1 button, and you will see a confirmation screen (like the one below), which requires you to opt into the service.

View Your +1’s

After you have joined, you will be able to control all the pages you +1’d on a “+1’s” tab from within your Google profile. You do have the option to make this tab public through your Google profile, or keep this information private (default).

Combining Search Results with Recommendations

Google stated in their announcement, “The beauty of +1’s is their relevance—you get the right recommendations (because they come from people who matter to you), at the right time (when you are actually looking for information about that topic) and in the right format (your search results).” Google understands people use recommendations and reviews as part of their decision making on a daily basis; reviewing restaurants, purchasing TVs, cars, computers, cell phones, etc.

Social Networking

Google currently highlights who in your social network has previously tweeted a link that appears in a search result.

Google has been experimenting with bringing social media into search for the last couple years; allowing users to merge Google services (Buzz and Chat) with third party sites, like Twitter and Facebook.

Google currently displays results from third-party social media sites; for example, if one of your Twitter friends has tweeted a link, that is shown in search results.

For the time being, only users you are connected with through Google services will be the only ones that can influence the +1 matches. These Google based services include:

• Your Gmail chat list
• Your 'My Contacts' group in Google Contacts
• People you follow in Google Reader or Google Buzz

Whats Next?

Google has plans to allow publishers to place +1 buttons on web pages, similar to Facebook’s Like button and Twitter’s Tweet button. To be notified about when this button is available, sign up here.

Once proven and optimized, the +1 button could be a great addition to search and a major “plus” when trying to incorporate social media into the bigger SEO picture, if done correctly. One of the biggest obstacles for Google is going to be developing a large user base that users adapt to and use. This is where Facebook’s Like button has a distinct advantage; they already have a massive network of users. Will those users want to sign up for another social account that they have to create and manage? It’s definitely going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

Last week, Facebook announced their new Send Button. Similar to the Like button seen on most up-to-date websites, the Send button connects the page you are currently visiting to your social network on Facebook. This helps make the web more 'social' for users, and it also further secures Facebook's dominance as the most popular US website and most widely used social network.

How does the Send Button work? It appears on a website just like the Like button. Instead of publishing a 'Like' to your news feed, the Send Button allows you to send any Facebook friend group a private message with a link to the current web page. For website owners, the Send Button makes it much easier for visitors to share your content directly with the people who are most interested.

KeyLimeTie is integrating the Send button on applicable websites moving forward. Can you think of ways your web visitors could benefit from this new feature? If it's been a while since you have refreshed your website, and you're looking to take advantage of social sharing and social media to promote your offerings, give KeyLimeTie a call at 630.598.9016.

Voting is now open, so please visit the CityLIGHTS awards voting survey and cast your vote for Parts Town within the "Best Strategic Use of Technology" category before voting ends on April 29, 2011. Winners will be determined based on a composite score of judges' rankings and community voting and will be announced at the ITA CityLIGHTS Awards Gala May 12. We hope to see you there!

Why Parts Town?

In 2010, Parts Town was recognized by Crain’s Chicago Business as the 9th fastest growing company in the Chicago area.  Over the past five yeras, Parts Town has boasted a 953% growth rate, placing them near the top of the prestigious Crain’s Fast 50 list.  The company was also named to the Inc. 5000 list for the second year in a row, and were the #1 ranked restaurant parts distributor on the list and the 28th fastest growing Food and Beverage industry contender overall.

Ahead of the Pack with Mobile App

As the number one OEM restaurant equipment parts distributor, Parts Town is constantly looking ahead to find new ways to differentiate.  In 2010, they launched the industry's first ever mobile application, "Mobile Equipment Manuals" available for iPhone and Android (read the press release). The Mobile Equipment Manuals app allows restaurant technicians with iPhones and Android phones to find and download the manual associated with any one of thousands of equipment models while in the field.  This saves valuable time for the technician and the restaurant, helping them diagnose problems, identify parts, order replacements and make repairs more quickly.

Parts Town's website also features a robust e-commerce site that provides users with easy access to restaurant equipment parts, offering same-day shipping on all orders placed before 8PM EST. They're truly committed to the success of their restaurant and repair technician customers, and seek to continuously innovate through use of technology.  This allows Parts Town to stand head-and-shoulders above competitors in an industry not known for being cutting edge.

KeyLimeTie believes Parts Town should be nominated for the Best Strategic Use of Technology award because they use technology to put their customers' needs first.  They are proactive and stay out in front of their industry, this in turn allows them to provide superior service while fueling their growth.

About the CityLIGHTS Awards

A panel of more than 40 judges representing the Who’s Who in Illinois technology reviewed nominations and selected the finalists for the Illinois Technology Association CityLIGHTS awards. Judges hail from major organizations including Microsoft, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, New World Ventures, and World Business Chicago, and newer entities including Technori, Viewpoints.com, Marchie Enterprises, Inc., SmartSignal and midVentures. The list of past winners includes companies like The Point (now known as Groupon), GrubHub.com, NAVTEQ, Model Metrics, Smart Signal, Mayor Richard M. Daley, and Jack Noonan.

June Cohen, executive producer at TED, gave a talk at SxSW entitled Radical Openness: Growing TED By Giving it Away. She outlined the counter-intuitive steps that TED has taken over the past several years to open up the elite, private conference to the world. While conventional wisdom told them to treat the TED brand like a luxury and keep it scarce, they were driven by their singular goal of spreading ideas. Instead of devaluing the brand, opening TED content yielded some surprising results.

Cohen discussed three distinct phases of opening up TED: making TED Talks available freely online, allowing independently produced TEDx Events, and the TED Open Translation Project. Throughout the talk, Cohen emphasized TED's singular goal of spreading ideas. They used this goal to guide their decision-making, especially when ideas were controversial and it was easy to back down.

One key motivator behind releasing TED Talks online was to relieve some of the demand for the conference itself. However, the very next year TED sold out quicker than it had before (one week) even though the registration fee increased by 50% to $6,000, and had a 1,000 person waiting list. Today, the 900 TED Talks have been viewed over 400,000,000 times around the world.

Content Accessible on Any Platform

TED set out to reach people everywhere with online TED Talks. They factored in geography and changing media consumption habits, which change quickly and vary based on the time of day. In this way, they didn’t think about releasing “web video," but rather video content that is accessible via any platform (computer, mobile, tablet, set-top box, etc.) and adapt as habits change. They embraced an open model and released the talks under a Creative Commons license, allowing people to do anything they wanted to (non-commercially) with the video.

Designing an Emotional Connection

TED Talks aim to evoke contagious emotions, elevate the viewer and make them feel lifted above themselves through human storytelling. The videos begin with a compelling attention-grabber, foregoing speaker intros from an emcee, so they can grab people within the first five seconds. These fundamentals dictate how the content is shot, edited, and delivered. Most viewers watch TED Talks via a mobile phone, so speaker close-ups and tight edits are a must as they help create the emotional link between the viewer and the speaker.

An Accidental Global Team

Two years ago, TED created the TEDx events as a way for independent organizers to host their own TED events. These events adhered to strict branding, content, and operations rules including the stipulation that TEDx organizers could not make a profit; this ensured that the goal behind each TEDx was consistent with TED’s overall goal of spreading ideas.

Though they launched thinking there would be a couple dozen TEDx events, in the first two years people around the world have hosted over 1500 events in 96 countries and in 35 languages, ranging from the world-class TEDxAmsterdam to TEDxAmazonia in the rainforest and TEDxKibera in the largest squatter city in Africa. TEDx transformed a global audience into a global team, creating volunteers who have become truly invested in the same mission as the parent organization. As each organizer has their own personal mission, they aren’t only giving but also getting something back in return.

TED openAPI: The Next Open Frontier

As Cohen outlined the progression of open projects at TED and how the impact of each has surprised them, she then announced the TED open API as the next wave of openness. The API will focus first on giving app builders access to TED’s video content library and metadata (topic, ratings, speaker, date, etc.), allowing developers with great ideas the ability to re-package and re-distribute TED content in new and engaging ways. Why open up the API? According to Cohen, every time TED has opened their community, they’ve been 'utterly moved, awed, inspired, delighted, and pushed further.' They’re waiting to be surprised by developers, and believe the best ideas are the ones they haven’t thought of yet.

What makes openness work?

The steps toward openness outlined in this talk are counter-intuitive, especially for an organization with roots as a premium, exclusive brand. Openness works for TED because people generally desire to be a part of something larger than themselves. Cohen insisted that openness can work for other organizations, and to do so, she gave a few steps to help enable that openness:

• Draw on a passionate user base (it doesn’t have to be large)
• Put forward a clear goal that inspires that base
• Provide clear guidelines, with rewards and consequences for desirable and undesirable actions
• Allow your community to police itself through karma, moderators, and an open feedback loop; the community is the best enforcer of any rules
• Make your contributors, speakers, developers, and others into rockstars by recognizing them any way possible

Cohen concluded that openness isn’t easy, that it takes time and goes against human instinct to stay closed and protect things one is close to. It’s difficult to fight against this tendency in an organization, and these battles weren’t foreign to TED. To make openness a success, one must go beyond the fear of pushback and get out of one’s comfort zone.

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SxSW Interactive has received more than its fair share of press coverage in the past several weeks.  The blowout conference is billed as the "hip" place to be for new media companies, entrepreneurs, designers, developers, UX architects and social media mavens.

Please join KeyLimeTie on Wednesday, April 6th from 3:00-5:00pm at the Illinois Technology Association, 200 S. Wacker Dr., 15th Floor for a SxSW Interactive 2011 Attendee Recap and Discussion by area attendees of SxSW Interactive in Austin, TX. To attend, please RSVP on the ITA website.

KeyLimeTie Presents:
SxSW Interactive 2011 Attendee Recap and Discussion

Sponsored by Illinois Technology Association

Synopsis:
If you attended SxSW, this is your chance to meet with fellow attendees, compare notes, and reinforce what you learned.  If you did not attend, come hear firsthand accounts from people who went.  Share your opinions and hear others thoughts.  Is SxSW worth attending next year?  Is it 'over,' or just evolving?  What are the key takeaways?  How are Chicago companies taking what they have learned and applying it to their businesses?  This session will feature both a moderated panel and an open discussion.

Panelists:
Tim Courtney, Director, Marketing & Brand Strategy, KeyLimeTie (@timcourtney)
Barbara Maldonado, Social Media Strategist, Legacy Marketing Partners (@bmaldonado)
Brad Flora, CEO, NowSpots & WindyCitizen (@bradflora)
Scott Robbin, Code & Development, Weightshift (@srobbin)

Click here to RSVP

Special thanks to our hosting sponsors, the Illinois Technology Association and our participating panelists.

'Cross-platform' today means more than the difference between an iPhone and an Android phone. There are many device types, ranging from desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets, TVs/set tops, GPS units to cars. True cross-platform UX means accounting for all of the various ways users will access your content. Longino said, 'There are two choices; ignore multiple devices (which many are doing), or you can account for them.' It isn't simply about adapting content to specific screen sizes.

Devices, Users, and Context

Longino smartly broke down the topic into three realms of understanding; devices, users and context. User behavior varies between devices thanks to a plethora of factors including screen size, weight, input options, and wireless options. Users will behave differently with a heavy device that they have to lug around than they would with a smartphone or a tablet that are relatively easy to carry and hold. Developers should seek to understand the users themselves. Who are they? Do they have certain characteristics or tendencies? Will those attributes affect how they want to use your app?

Longino defines context as 'device + user + situation.' When designing for a particular context, ask three questions; who is using the device/service, what are they doing, and how are they doing it? For example, when TED released its talks to the web, they considered the various ways people watched video on the web based on time of day, and changed their thinking from delivering web video to delivering engaging video content in the medium of the user's choice.

Architecting for Multiple Contexts

Longino focused strictly on UX, but at KeyLimeTie we understand that cross-platform considerations extend into application architecture. For one large client, KeyLimeTie CTO Chris Grove architected a full web service and REST API with the business logic living on the server. The website, which became the first application to use the service, existed as a thin client that called the API. This works for many types of applications, though it's worth noting that it is difficult to implement on apps like interactive games that require a significant amount of processing on the device.

Building an API first offers developers the most flexibility for designing and developing cross-platform apps that serve a variety of contexts. It becomes easy to implement new apps—even for device types that don't yet exist.

Summary

Consider that multiple devices, user types, and situations exist. Be aware of the various contexts through which people will use your app. Remember that users are real people with real needs, behavioral predispositions and stories, so you can design apps that maximize utility for them. Once you move to development, architect your application so you can develop interfaces for multiple devices efficiently; consider building an API and web service so the business logic can run server-side and create thin clients for the web and various mobile devices.

If you are looking to build a mobile app or cross-platform experience, call KeyLimeTie at 630.598.9000, and make sure to follow KeyLimeTie on Twitter.

Last weekend at SxSW, I attended the panel entitled Federating the Social Web, moderated by Evan Prodromou (StatusNet) and featuring Monica Wilkinson (SocialCast), Kevin Marks (MicroFormats.org), and Dan Peterson (Open Social, Google). They held a robust discussion about the standards and practices that are enabling interoperability between disparate social websites.

The fundamental definition of a “federated" social web is that there is no single source of anyone’s social data, rather sites and services interoperate through standard protocols. This removes development barriers and allows for easy syndication of social data.

It’s About Creating a Fluid Experience

Why work to enable interoperability across the social web? Wilkinson says it’s about creating a fluid experience, a continuum that allows you to bring your social network with you as you move throughout the web and from app to app. The Facebook platform already does this well, as we’ve seen Facebook capabilities become embeddable into other sites (i.e. the Like button, Facebook Comments, etc.). In the enterprise, ActivityStrea.ms allows business app developers to shatter the clunky iFrame and create meaningful workflows between apps.

Peterson stated up front that he does not “work on social for social’s sake," instead his desire is to enable work with the technologies, and within that lies the real staying power. Looking back, email was developed within the academic, military, and enterprise communities and then crossed over into everyday life. The social web is taking the exact opposite approach; first the social web established itself among consumers, and now social technologies are transitioning to the workplace.

Kevin Marks sees social as an “integration point between a lot of different systems." That is to say, the common denominator between business apps is people and the tasks they perform. Open social is about making previously incompatible islands interoperable. It covers both technology interoperability and policy interoperability. Software developers, he asserts, are better at the former than the latter. The real opportunity lies in permitting Company A to exchange social and work data with Company B, and enabling granular permissions to be determined on a per-transaction basis.

Federating: Top-Down or Bottom-up?

Some groups tackling this topic are attempting all-in-one solutions, while others favor more incremental and organic approaches. Top-down approaches that dictate standards to others have been known to experience slower adoption.

Microformats add context to data that can be intelligently read by other services, providing a more incremental approach. For example, an hcard denotes a person or place, and a rel="me" attribute indicates that the target URL is another page about the same person, and so forth.

PubSubHubbub further enables bottom-up federation by making it easier to subscribe to RSS and Atom feeds, still a standard for syndicating data across the web. PubSubHubbub is an open protocol that uses web hooks and semantics around the exchange of the subscription to lower the requirements for pulling a lot of content from different places. Instead of writing code that polls all of the various feeds to which you are subscribed, it allows your site to become a passive listener, lowering the effort to develop a federated social platform. “If you are using Pubstubhubub enabled activity streams," Prodromou said, “you are at a good base level to participate in the social web as it is evolving."

How to Start: Focus on Your Core Business

As you take steps to integrate enterprise or social activity, the overwhelming takeaway from the panel was to focus on your experience over the various technologies. It is imperative to know why you want to federate. What behaviors do you want to enable? “Federating" your social activity is not simply enabling one massive protocol; there is no single stack to implement and then you are done. For this reason, build your experience and your workflows first, and look for protocols that enable the outcomes you are looking to achieve.

For more information on federated social websites, check out the following posts and resources:

• Evan Prodromou’s post: What is the federated social web?
• And his follow-up: Features of a federated social web
• Microformats.org article on how to develop a new microformat
• Google Code specification on Making AJAX applications crawlable

If you are looking to build a website or enterprise application that is socially-enabled, call KeyLimeTie at 630.598.9000, and make sure to follow KeyLimeTie on Twitter.

KeyLimeTie is attending SxSW Interactive for the second year in a row, to immerse ourselves in the latest technologies, meet with clients and partners, grow our business, and have a good time. This year, we're particularly interested in learning the latest in mobile and tablet user experience, social media as the field matures, and game theory.

We'll be Live Tweeting

Who do we want to meet?

CEO Chris Pautsch and Director of Marketing Tim Courtney will be attending sessions and parties in full force, and we look forward to meeting you. We especially want to meet you if you are an advertising, marketing or interactive agency who needs amazing mobile and web app developers. We approach our client relationships as true partnerships (we're not just saying that, ask us for references) and love working with creatives.

Connect with us!

The absolute best way to reach us it to send us a tweet. Follow @ChrisPautsch and @TimCourtney and ping us to meet up.

See you at SxSW!

My nephew Nate is shaving his head again this year for the St. Baldrick's event at the Downers Grove High School on Friday, March 11. He's been growing his hair out since August and now is raising money from family and friends to donate to cancer research.

When Nate's friend Mikayla was just 5 years old, she was diagnosed with a Wilms tumor, a form kidney cancer. During her treatment to overcome disease, she temporarily lost her hair, prompting Nate to volunteer his head for St. Baldrick's. This is the second time Nate is participating in this charitable event.

Make Chris shave his head, too!

Nate is just over halfway to his goal of raising $3,000; if you need some extra encouragement, Chris Pautsch, my brother and co-founder of KeyLimeTie, has agreed to shave his head if his son Nate reaches $3,000. Click the

You can donate online via Nate's St. Baldricks' Foundation page or by calling 888.899.BALD.

Kris Hartner of Naperville Running Company was interviewed by Naperville Community Television in a spot about mobile apps for retail. The segment featured the store's iPhone app, built by KeyLimeTie.

Hartner describes how the app features an events calendar, links to register for an event, and has plans to add mobile shopping. The app receives 20-30 downloads per week—an impressive number for a local store.

Watch the interview featuring Kris Hartner and the Naperville Running Company iPhone app by KeyLimeTie on the Naperville Television 17 website.

Need an app for your company?

We're happy to discuss how you can use a mobile app to help boost your brand by providing users entertaining content and fun experiences. Give us a call at 630.598.9000, and make sure to follow KeyLimeTie on Twitter.

Last weekend I had the privilege of participating in UX4Good. KeyLimeTie enthusiastically signed on as the Livestream Sponsor, and I worked with the social media team that produced the livestream and liveblogging.

UX4Good is self-described as a 'wildly ambitious effort to design systemic solutions for some of the most vexing social challenges.' Produced by our agency partners Manifest Digital, the weekend brought together 40 top user experience designers and 10 gifted visual designers to participate in a weekend challenge to design solutions for five nonprofits who are tackling large-scale social problems; Streetwise, CeaseFire Illinois, Third Teacher, The Adler School of Professional Psychology and the Global Lives Project.

A Hackathon for UX Designers

This idea appeals to me personally because of my history with the 'hackathon' concept; hackathons are generally short (24-48 hour) all-night developer contests pitting people and teams against each other to design and code the most innovative app in a short period of time.

KeyLimeTie has taken the 'hackathon' concept into clients with considerable success, positively affecting innovation culture in large organizations and giving employees greater voice and visibility (if this idea appeals to you, we should talk). In the community, KeyLimeTie CIO Peter Morano produces the hackathon at SocialDevCamp Chicago and consistently supports other peoples' hackathons, which over the past couple years has fostered a growing hackathon culture among regional developers.

While hackathons are mostly developer-centric, UX4Good was like a hackathon for UX designers. Teams had 24 hours to learn about their organization, its goals and challenges, and then propose and present a solution that would affect large scale change for the problem if implemented.

The Third Teacher team scopes out the problem in classic UX designer style: Post-It Notes!

This approach seems far-fetched at first. Friday afternoon I sat in on the CeaseFire team as they began dissecting their challenge. A common discussion thread was 'who are we as designers to tell these organizations what they should do differently?' As the team dove into their chalenge and learned about how people involved with CeaseFire confront violence day after day, there was profound respect for those in the trenches—and a bit of internal combustion as they negotiated their role vis à vis the CeaseFire volunteers who would be coming on Saturday to talk with the team. For more, read my post covering the experience of sitting through CeaseFire team discussions.

So, how can UX designers affect change?

In any organization, nonprofits included, often people involved get so close to a set of problems they lose the ability to see things from an outside perspective.

The Social Media command center 'Animal House'

'We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.'

—Albert Einstein

UX designers have training and experience in applied behavioral and motivational psychology and can offer perspective to help cause-focused groups achieve their aims. UX4Good is pioneering the notion that one doesn't have to volunteer at a soup kitchen or donate large sums of money to affect change, rather, they can offer their unique intellectual skills that can also have an impact. The proof, is in the long-term impact, in seeing the solutions applied and measuring the results. That will take cooperation and collaboration from the nonprofit beneficiaries and the volunteers and designers who help implement the solutions.

View Photos & Learn More About UX4Good

Learn more about UX4Good on the UX4Good website. Check out the event blog for writeups and the UX4Good photostream on Flickr. UX4Good 2012 is planned for New Orleans. For details and to get involved, contact the team via the UX4Good website and follow UX4Good on Twitter.

Special thanks to Chris Pautsch, CEO at KeyLimeTie, for getting the company involved. Also, I'd like to thank Jim Jacoby, Jason Ulaszek, Jeff Leitner and Bryan Campen of our agency partner Manifest Digital for welcoming me on the volunteer team.

KeyLimeTie is live at UX4Good as sponsors and participants. UX4Good is a 'wildly ambitious effort to design systemic solutions for some of the most vexing social challenges'. 40 top user experience (UX) designers and 10 gifted visual designers are gathered at Chicago's Adler School of Professional Psychology for day two of tackling 'problems that matter' in the first-ever design competition of its kind (Check out our very own Creative Director, Kevin Mech quoted in this post discussing the Streetwise team's early approach).

Watch the Livestream Today

Watch the UX4Good livestream sponsored by KeyLimeTie with interviews from UX experts in town, talking about their experience as they go through the challenges throughout the day. Also, at 5:00pm CST, Saturday January 29 there will be a live broadcast of the teams' presentations. Don't miss them!

Follow Along on Twitter and Flickr

Follow the live tweets on Twitter. Please re-tweet posts and write in with your comments and questions. Use hashtags #ux4good or #uxxu for general conversation, and these specific hashtags for each of the challenges: #ceasefire #thirdteacher #adlerschool #streetwise #globallives.

Watch the Flickr stream as the UX4Good social media team posts photos of the action.

KeyLimeTie is excited to have the opportunity to sponsor the UX4Good conference produced by Manifest Digital and the Insight Labs, a 'wildly ambitious effort to design systemic solutions for some of the most vexing social challenges'. On January 28th and 29th, UX4Good will host 40 top user experience designers and 10 gifted visual designers for a weekend of tackling 'problems that matter' in the first-ever design competition of its kind.

UX4Good will pair these designers with executives from leading non-profit organizations that are addressing the social challenges of unemployment, urban violence, public education, community mental health and cross-cultural understanding. Representatives from Streetwise, CeaseFire Illinois, Third Teacher, The Adler School of Professional Psychology and the Global Lives Project will team up with UX4Good participants for a 24-hour focused period to build solutions to assist these organizations in furthering their respective missions.

KeyLimeTie at UX4Good

KeyLimeTie will be sponsoring the UX4Good livestream, helping connect people around the world with the goings on at the event. We're also helping out with event social media and will be providing subject matter experts on mobile applications and usage trends to assist the teams as they build solutions for their respective nonprofit organizations.

Follow UX4Good Online

UX4Good will be livestreaming the event as well as providing updates throughout the weekend via an event liveblog. Follow the progress of the event via the UX4Good website on January 28th and 29th, and follow @UX4good on Twitter.

KeyLimeTie's CTO Chris Grove will present an in-depth introduction to iPhone applications at the next midVentures DESIGN+DEVELOP workshop series on January 20th between 4:45-6:00pm at the Sync Technology Center. The talk is for both technical and non-technical people looking to:

• Understand the opportunities iOS apps provide for your business or product
• Select the right full-time developer, development firm or freelancer
• Market your app once it is in the iTunes Store

Guests will also gain from KeyLimeTie's insights from experience as one of the leading iPhone development firms in the Chicago area. Visit the midVentures website to learn more and register to attend the upcoming DESIGN+DEVELOP workshop, and see KeyLimeTie CTO Chris Grove talk about iPhone development.

The first DESIGN+DEVELOP series was held in December and had over 150 attendees spanning the gambit between entrepreneurs, investors, designers and developers for two workshops on design and development methodologies. This second DESIGN+DEVELOP will focus specifically on the opportunity and how-to of mobile app development for both Android and iOS.

About Chris Grove, CTO, KeyLimeTie

Chris Grove is KeyLimeTie's CTO and principal iOS developer.  At KeyLimeTie, Chris architects and develops mobile solutions for enterprise clients including iPhone/iPad apps, developer APIs, and server-side solutions for mobile integration.  As CTO, Chris keeps abreast of developing mobile trends across platforms and leads KeyLimeTie's mobile development team consisting of iOS, Android and Windows Mobile developers.  For more than 15 years Chris has designed and implemented custom solutions in diverse industries such as insurance, finance, publishing, energy, time tracking, and construction. 

About KeyLimeTie

KeyLimeTie is a full-service design, development & digital strategy agency, helping clients communicate more effectively and intimately with their customers through interactive marketing channels. Specializing in web and mobile technologies across a variety of platforms, KeyLimeTie provides content management, ecommerce, and custom application solutions, while also assisting customers with social media campaign and reputation management.      

If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad running iOS 4.0 or later, you can download the Official Lava Lamp app on iTunes.

KeyLimeTie and Lava Lite were featured in this July 19, 2010 Crain's Chicago Business article, and Lava Lite's digital forays have been mentioned in industry publications including Home World Business. KeyLimeTie is pleased to have the opportunity to collaborate with an iconic American brand like Lava Lite.

The Lava Lamp is one of the most recognizable cultural icons of the past 40 years and has become synonymous with the hippie movement of the 60s and 70s. What the public doesn't know is that Lava Lite sells more Lava Lamps each year now than it did in the 60s and 70s combined. Lava Lamps are more recognized and loved than ever, and have very strong brand awareness and staying power with young consumers. An iPhone app was the next logical step for Lava Lite to extend their brand onto the popular mobile platform.

Need an app for your company?

We're happy to discuss how you can use a mobile app to extend your brand like Lava Lite did. Give us a call at 630.598.9000, and make sure to follow KeyLimeTie on Twitter.

QR Codes are becoming more and more visible in the world around us. For example, Best Buy now features them on all of their price tags, linking the physical product to the product's page on their mobile website. Scan the tag and you can view product specs, pricing information, compare with other products or share with friends.

Links to mobile product pages via QR Codes aid your customer's decision-making process. Savvy consumers want more information at their fingertips so they can make an educated buying decision. Offering a mobile product page could mean the difference between someone leaving your store and comparing elsewhere, or purchasing the item then and there.

Note that mobile web pages prioritize information differently than desktop webpages. Mobile web users have shorter attention spans as they seek information while on the go. Mobile screens are tiny, making traditional three-column desktop web designs cumbersome to browse and navigate. Connection speeds are slow and are occasionally interrupted, and the user has little control over their environment. Mobile users are most often focused on a single task and are not multitasking like they do on desktops or laptops.

A Best Buy mobile product page.

An awkward Comparison screen.

How Best Buy Can Improve

Best Buy tries to get the mobile browsing experience right with product comparisons, but forces too many steps to make it practical. The Compare button takes you to a page displaying your product in one column opposite a column instructing you to search or browse for a product with which to compare. Browsing the site's hierarchy takes 4-5 clicks to approach a similar product, and the user can't be faulted for not knowing the proper search terms. Instead, the website should be intelligent enough to display similar products, allowing for a one-click selection to a competitive product. The lesson here? Help your users accomplish their goals quicker.

Making Your Mobile Web Pages Useful

Approach mobile web pages with the desire to only display the most relevant, timely information. Your users are looking for a specific outcome based upon the context of their visit. In the case of Best Buy, users are looking for product information, comparison data, or even to price compare on competitors' websites. Don't be afraid of the comparison, they're in your store and ready to buy. Facilitating competitive comparisons may be touchy, but by letting the customer be in control you're building loyalty and trust.

Tying QR Into Mobile Web

If context is king on the mobile web, you can control the context by driving visitors via a QR code. Place QR codes within specific offers and messages, and you set your customer's expectations from the start. Now you have a good idea of when and where the user will visit your page. Here are a few practical applications, with examples of how the code can be used:

Have a use for a mobile website or integrated QR codes?

If this article sparks your interest and you see a need for mobile landing pages and QR codes for your company, give us a call at 630.598.9000. And don't forget to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.

Nate Pautsch as a reindeer in a 'holidized' photo.

Hallmark Channel Ultimate Holiday App

The Crain's article also mentions a new app in KeyLimeTie's portfolio, which we developed in partnership with Manifest Digital. iPhone users can download the Hallmark Channel Ultimate Holiday App to experience '365 days of holidays,' create a gift list, and the most fun feature of all, 'holidize' your photos and share them with your friends via email and Facebook. Look for the iPad version coming soon.

Ultimate Holiday Gets it Right

Branded apps are difficult to get right, because the temptation is to advertise and be self-promotional. The Ultimate Holiday app provides interesting content (365 days of holidays), useful features (My Gift List) and entertaining features (Holidize My Photos) in addition to promoting the Hallmark Channel's schedule and having a Coca-Cola sponsorship. This branded app keeps the promotion light and fun, creating a positive experience for the user and affinity toward the Hallmark Channel.

Need an app for your company?

We're happy to discuss how you can use a mobile app to help boost your brand by providing users entertaining content and fun experiences. Give us a call at 630.598.9000, and make sure to follow KeyLimeTie on Twitter.

PartsTown chose to take the most popular feature on their website, 'Find Equipment Manuals', and turn it into a mobile app. The web feature receives tens of thousands of hits monthly, and now anyone with an iPhone or Android phone can download over 15,000 parts diagrams and manuals for free, saving paper and getting repair professionals the information they need while in the field.

Restaurant equipment repair professionals deal with thousands of different pieces of equipment as they go throughout their jobs. When assigned to fix a broken unit, they'll need to look up the part, order a replacement and read the manual for how to fix it. It's impractical for repair professionals to carry with them all the manuals they need, and they can't always count on the restaurant to keep the manuals.

Rather than simply seeking to extend their brand with an app, the PartsTown Find Equipment Manuals app is truly useful to their their customers.

Download the iPhone version or Android version now.

Need an app for your company?

We're happy to discuss how you can use a mobile app to help boost your brand, increase productivity or shave cost. Give us a call at 630.598.9000, and make sure to follow KeyLimeTie on Twitter.

How about an iOS version of the piano from Big?

Some people online report that the table is fake, but the developers at tableconnect.co.cc are spending their time developing additional prototypes instead of debating online critics with too much time on their hands.

Of course, all we can think of is the piano in Big on steroids. Just imagine what would be possible if Apple produced a high-resolution iOS that allowed for multitasking and multiple users on a surface. While researchers are building multi-user, multitouch platforms in the lab, an iOS with these capabilities would bring the benefits of the vibrant App Store and developer community, populating a platform like this with useful apps rather quickly.

Need an app for your company?

If you're interested in building your own app, please let us know. We're happy to discuss how you can use an iPhone, iPad, Android or Windows Phone 7 app to help boost your brand, increase productivity or shave cost. Give us a call at 630.598.9000, and make sure to follow KeyLimeTie on Twitter.

On October 27th and 28th, the American Nuclear Society took one of KeyLimeTie's newest iPad applications, ANS Radiation, to the field. While it's not a Geiger counter (oh how cool it would be if it was), ANS Radiation is a questionnaire tool they use to educate the public about their exposure to radiation around them every day.

The app prompts you with a series of questions ranging from the type of building in which you live to how many hours a year you fly and how many medical tests you undergo. This then adds up the amount of millirems per year (1/1,000th of a rem), which is the international unit for measuring radiation.

The American Nuclear Society asked KeyLimeTie to build the app so they could better engage with guests at the USA Science & Engineering Festival, a festival created to re-invigorate the interest of our nation’s youth in science, technology, engineering and math. The festival was held October 27th and 28th in Washington, DC. The ANS staff estimated about 3,000 visitors came by the booth throughout the weekend.

The American Nuclear Society is a not-for-profit, international, scientific and educational organization to unify the professional activities of those within the nuclear field. The ANS boasts approximately 11,000 members including engineers, scientists, administrators, and educators representing 1,600 plus corporations, educational institutions, and government agencies.

Need an iPad app for your company?

If you're interested in something similar, or another application alltogether, please let us know. We're happy to discuss how you can use an iPad application to help boost your brand, increase productivity or shave cost. Give us a call at 630.598.9000, and make sure to follow KeyLimeTie on Twitter.

We're happy to announce that KeyLimeTie has opened a satellite office at the new Sync Technology Center located at 322 S. Green St. in Chicago's West Loop, an 18,000 square foot loft that is becoming a 'Merchandise Mart' of sorts for tech business needs in Chicago. The Sync Technology Center features hand-picked service provider partners that collectively provide services most companies need including mobile apps, mobile websites, ecommerce, SEO, social media, video production, and PR.

KeyLimeTie will contribute to the success of the ecosystem at Sync Tech Center by providing mobile app and mobile web design and development services to startups and established companies who conduct business in and around the Sync Tech Center. The move also expands our footprint and establishes our downtown Chicago presence, allowing us to more easily answer the web, ecommerce and mobile needs of Chicago-based companies.

The Sync Technology Center is also home to the Syncubator Fund, a seed investment fund for startup technology businesses. As creative entrepreneurs themselves, KeyLimeTie's founders look forward to working with the new ventures in which the Syncubator Fund invests and assisting in their estblishment and growth. We see the Sync Technology Center as a promising catalyst for startups that will play a pivotal role in growing Chicago as a technology entrepreneurship hub.

Visit KeyLimeTie at the Sync Tech Center

If you are visiting the Sync Technology Center or if you wish to meet with KeyLimeTie about a mobile app, mobile web or website need, call 630.598.9000 or email us at info at keylimetie dot com for an appointment. Also, don't forget to follow @KeyLimeTie on Twitter.

You can read the article posted on the Michigan Avenue Magazine website, or to see how it looks in print, click the image below to see the full size image and make sure you like BeeCloser on Facebook.

Need someone to design your site or mobile app?

Let us know if you are interested in KeyLimeTie working with you like we work with Monika. Give Chris a call at 630.598.9000, and don't forget to follow us on Twitter.

Continuing our recent theme about QR codes, here's a code we found at the end of a TV commercial on Fox. The QR code leads to the Videos tab of a mobile microsite promoting the new Fox TV series Lone Star. There are also tabs for a Homepage, Photos and Cast. No other calls to action exist, other than to check out content related to the show.

The use of QR codes on television allow advertisers to take a difficult to measure mass medium and gain a direct response from viewers, closing the loop on their mareketing efforts. Further, using a QR code on a TV commercial effectively extends the length of the advertisement for the people who click the link, bringing even more value to the advertiser.

Combine QR with a Strong Landing Page

Combine this with a carefully constructed mobile landing page and well written copy and you can capture the interest of easily distracted mobile users. Here are a few things Fox's mobile website does to capture that interest effectively:

• It tells you how long the videos are. This helps because mobile users know they don't have much time. Seeing video times between 75-90 seconds increases the likelihood of someone watching your clip.
• The site itself contains few pages and gets straight to the point. The videos give teasers of the show, Photos capture interest through action shots, and the Cast page shows the actors playing in the show.
• The home page mashes up all three other tabs into one page you can scroll through. If this is the only page you visit, you will still get a cross section of all the content the site has to offer.

Strangely, the site is missing social media links. We can only suppose that this was intentional, perhaps to keep people from clicking away from the mobile site and losing the opportunity to engage with the content they're currently consuming.

We've just begun to see the practical uses for QR codes. Whether on broadcast TV, a web video or another medium, here are a few other applications you can use:

• Mobile App download page (iTunes App Store or Android Marketplace)
• Mobile landing page for your business
• Email List or SMS Alert opt-in form
• A local business listing, such as a restaurant page with reviews, hours, reservation link and address

Have a use for mobile landing pages?

If this article sparks your interest and you see a need for mobile landing pages and QR codes for your company, give us a call at 630.598.9000. And don't forget to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.

A couple weekends ago my wife participated in the Chicago Blackhawks Mad Dash to Madison 5K run. While walking through the event with the kids, I stopped by the Allstate tent. To my surprise, the event staff was using the iPad app KeyLimeTie recently created for them. Until this point the app has been in testing, and it was rewarding to see it being used in the field.

Allstate's event marketing team is a frequent presence at cultural and athletic events around the country. Their reps staff booths that encourage people to get competitive insurance quotes in exchange for premiums and sweepstakes contest entries.

Going Paperless for Lead Capture

Until recently, Allstate has handled their contest entry/lead capture with a simple paper form. While these are quick and easy to fill out for the public, they take time and money to enter into their database after the event. The solution: KeyLimeTie worked with the Allstate Innovation Lab to produce an iPad app that lets people register a sweepstakes by filling out their contact information and completing a brief survey. By using the app, Allstate anticipates they'll save significantly more cost in data entry than the app cost to produce.

Why did we use the iPad? This handy device is the right size for the general public. Using iPhones or iPod Touches would make entry difficult, as non-users could have more difficulty with the keyboard. Plus, the larger devices are more difficult to steal at a booth in a congested area.

Need an iPad app for your company?

If you're interested in something similar, or another application alltogether, please let us know. We're happy to discuss how you can use an iPad application to help boost your brand, increase productivity or shave cost. Give us a call at 630.598.9000, and make sure to follow KeyLimeTie on Twitter.

Lately we've been playing with QR codes in various applications, both for clients and for ourselves. Most recently, we created KeyLimeTie t-shirts to wear at events or casually in the hopes of sparking conversations. The shirts themselves needed to be fun while providing a way for people to connect with KeyLimeTie rather than just seeing our name. A QR code was an intriguing solution, but could we do it with a twist of lime?

We took our basic code and made a few modifications, even going so far as to embed it in our logo. Because QR codes are optical and based on contrast, we merged our striped tie logo with the code and produced a visually appealing, yet still functional QR code.

We then tiled the code throughout the tie graphic to make it appear as if the entire tie was part of the QR code. Because the graphic retained the standard registration, alignment, and version markings in the widest part of the tie, the incomplete codes throughout the remainder of the tie are ignored. And since the lime and grey colors provide enough contrast against the dark background, the QR code is easily scan-able despite the coloration.

This was the most intriguing approach for presenting our QR code, however, we chose not to use it for the first iteration of the t-shirt. We'll look for additional opportunities to use it in other materials in the future. Considering the immediate recognition of a standard QR code, we opted to use the basic code on the front and an artistic play of our name on the back.

More Creative QR Codes

If you're interested in creating your own, you can also find entire communities devoted to QR arts, such as the QR Arts gallery and fan page on Facebook. It's amazing what you can do to one of these codes while maintaining the code's readability.

Have a use for mobile landing pages?

If this article sparks your interest and you see a need for mobile landing pages and QR codes for your company, give us a call at 630.598.9000. And don't forget to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.

Today and tomorrow, KeyLimeTie team members are on site at midVenturesLAUNCH, billed as the largest startup conference in the Midwest. midVentures LAUNCH has two full days of programming and puts companies on stage to launch their products in front of press and investors, providing an opportunity to compete for prize money and attract the attention of venture capitalists. For complete details, check out the midVentures LAUNCH website.

We'll be representing our interactive design and development services, specifically mobile development. As avid supporters of the business community in Chicago, we are eager to partner with companies who look to technology such as iPhone apps, Android apps and mobile websites to strengthen customer relationships with people whether at their PCs or on the go.

Will Cook it For Us Steal the Show?

The Cook it For Us team at KeyLimeTie

The Cook It For Us team won grand prize at the SocialDevCamp Chicago Hackathon and KeyLimeTie helped them gear up for their midVenturesLAUNCH Demo table as a part of their prize. Rumor has it they're baking cookies for anyone who comes by their table for a demo. We think this will help them steal the show, so visit Cook it For Us, tell them KeyLimeTie sent you, and eat one of their yummy cookies!

Eager to Partner With You

We're thrilled to see the Cook it For Us team demo their concept at midVenturesLAUNCH and gear up to attract investment capital. We're also eager to connect with companies who need mobile apps, mobile websites or traditional websites to accelerate their businesses to the next step. If you see us there, connect with us!

Connect With Us

Please make sure to follow @KeyLimeTie on Twitter and Like us on Facebook. We do our best to share useful information about the web, enterprise software, mobile technologies and how you can practically use social media for business.

Watch Google's video on Voice Actions:

How well does it work?

This third-party test drive praises the complexity of the appliation but notes it's still lacking in the field. The test of usefulness here is the speed and convenience to complete the desired (often routine) task. If it ends up taking less time to manually complete the task, or if you have to switch to manual to choose between search options, the practicality of the feature diminishes.

It's cool, but when will it catch on?

Google prides itself at releasing features the iPhone doesn't yet have. It's no surprise Voice Actions has more commands than Voice Control on the iPhone, a feature I use almost daily to place calls. Like the Android test drive link above, the iPhone feature has some humorous inaccuracies, however for dialing, voice activation is accurate for 80-90% of the people I call. However, just this weekend I get the sense voice commands haven't yet caught traction. The other day I was driving a car full of techies on the bleeding edge who chuckled when they heard me talking to my phone to make a call.

Have you used this feature on the Android phone yet? If so, tell us about it!

This year, KeyLimeTie ran the MC 200 relay from Madison, Wisconsin to Lake Michigan in Chicago for the second year in a row. For us, it's been a real team building and an opportunity to bond outside of the office. Plus, the event proceeds go to benefit the Special Olympics of Wisconsin and Illinois.

This is the second year we have participated. This year we focused a lot more on training and getting our times up. And, it paid off! We shaved two hours off our 2009 time of 35:21:13, running the 200 miles this year in 33:26:32.

Check out photos of Team KeyLimeTie on Flickr.

The KeyLimeTie team included:

Yep, we ran all this way.

Anthony Avallone
Brian Pautsch
Brian West
Butch Zemar
Chris Grove
Chris Pautsch
Dan Strabbing
Dean Giorgetti
Geoff Skyles
Joe Giorgetti
Michael Wick
Peter Morano
Sam Dekin

We can't wait to do it again next year!

KeyLimeTie is thrilled to be a sponsor and contributor for the second year in a row to SocialDevCamp Chicago, a weekend conference for people developing software and growing businesses on the social web. The event is being held this Saturday and Sunday August 14-15 at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, with the pre-launch party on Friday night at the Illinois Technology Association. We hope you'll join us there. Check out the full schedule for more details and be sure to register before tickets sell out.

$2,400 in KeyLimeTie Services to Hackathon Winner

We're most excited to see the developer Hackathon contest that our very own Peter Morano started last year at SocialDevCamp gain so much more momentum this year. Since the grand prize winner will receive a demo table at midVenturesLAUNCH at the end of September ($750 value), KeyLimeTie is throwing in 16 hours of graphic design and innovation consulting services ($2,400 value) to help them prepare their app for the limelight. We can't wait to see what the teams come up with.

We're Contributing as Staff, Speakers and Judges

This year we're more involved than ever. In addition to Director of Marketing Tim Courtney (@timcourtney) as conference co-chair and CIO Peter Morano as Hackathon chair, our COO Brian Pautsch (@bpautsch) is participating as a Hackathon judge, Pete (@petermorano) is talking about the catalytic nature of Hackathons at 1:30 on the panel "Using Hackathons & Code Sprints for Innovation and Social Change," and I'll be a panelist during the 10:00am Saturday session "Killer Social Apps: 5 Trends Shaping the Future of Brand Engagement".

We're excited to have the opportunity to share both our passion and our expertise to the lively, energetic, creative and talented people who make it a priority to attend SocialDevCamp each year.

Please join us at SocialDevCamp, and if you come, please say hello!

The entire article can be found on Crain's Website.

Besides being a gripping and entertaining app, we’re truly excited about the potential influence user-generated Lava Lamp concepts may have on future product design and development. We’re also anxious to see how well the integration with Social Media for sharing lamp designs on Facebook and Twitter will increase brand awareness with the iconic company.

Social Media

We're also working with Lava Lite on social media campaigns for their signature Lava Lamp product. You can follow @LavaLamp on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Let's Work Together

If you're looking to dive deeper into mobile for your company, give us a call. We'd be happy to talk through your goals and devise a plan that uses apps, mobile web, or both to help you connect with your customers on mobile.

Get Updates from KeyLimeTie

Please follow @KeyLimeTie on Twitter or "Like" us on Facebook. We do our best to share useful information about the web, enterprise software, mobile technologies and how you can practically use social media for business.

We're happy to announce the release of our latest iPhone app, a pace calculator and customer engagement app for the Naperville Running Company called 'NRC Runner'.

You can download the app today on iTunes. Here's what the app can do:

• Pace Calculator that lets you either tell the app your desired distance and anticipated time to calculate a pace, or key in a desired distance and pace to determine how long your run will take.
• Events Calendar that keeps you up to date on the events Naperville Running Company sponsors and participates in throughout the year, so you can join the fun.
• Special offers, store news and sale information so you can stay up to date with your favorite running store.

Here at KeyLimeTie, we take our running competitions seriously—so seriously that we just completed the MC 200 Madison to Chicago 200-mile relay a few weeks ago. Naperville Running Company is our one-stop shop for all the gear we need, and we're thrilled to work with them on the app.

Let us know what you think!

Need your own app or mobile website?

If you're looking to get into mobile and like what you see, give us a shout. You can contact us via email or phone at 630.598.9000.

KeyLimeTie sponsored a hole at the Hope to Give Golf Outing last week that raised over $6,000 to benefit Childrens Memorial Hospital. The outing was held at Stonewall Orchard Golf Club in Grayslake, IL.

Hope to Give produces fund raising events that raise money for children, families of children and organizations specifically created to help children living with life altering medical conditions. They strive to bring hope, money, and support to those that need it most through various fund raising activities and events.

Check out the video of the outing below, and the list of outing sponsors on the Hope to Give website.

Thanks to our employees, I'm pleased to announce we were just named as one of “Chicago’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For” by the National Association for Business Resources (NABR). Here's a link to the press release we just issued about the honor as well.

In a nutshell, we're thrilled and thankful. It reflects the effort and consideration we’ve put into developing a constructive, relaxed work environment that has enabled us to attract and retain some of Chicago's most talented individuals.

What's great about this honor is we were selected thanks to our employees' responses to surveys the NABR distributed to our employees. They expressed their enjoyment of working at KeyLimeTie in such a way that ranked us in the top 101 companies in the area.

So, to that we say thanks. Thanks to everyone who each day makes KeyLimeTie what we are. We're honored to be on this list.

Google recently announced the release of Google Caffeine, the latest version of their search engine.

To help you get ready, back in September we wrote about three things to prepare for Google Caffeine. Have you implemented those steps?

Now that Caffeine is live, here is what you can expect:

• Search results that contain more relevant content including more recent blog posts versus aging items. While people expect businesses' rankings to be affected, marketers don't yet know exactly how.
• Content will now be searchable within seconds after it is crawled. This is because Google is processing content immediately instead of in batches like before.
• You won't see a change in the ranking system, because Caffeine's big changes are in the indexing architecture. If rankings are impacted, it will be as an indirect result and only visible at a later date.

What can you do?

According to Google, there isn't much content creators can do to take advantage of Caffeine, but it will benefit publishers indirectly. However, with properly configured social media profiles, people are starting to see their fresh content indexed within a few hours of posting a link to the content via their social accounts.

Why these changes?

According to Google, 'People's expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.'

Looking to dig deeper?

Read these articles on Google Caffeine to learn more.

• PCWorld: Google's Caffeine Gives the Search Engine a Boost
• Search Engine Land: Google’s New Indexing Infrastructure 'Caffeine' Now Live
• Video of Google's Matt Cutts talking about Caffeine (starts at 1:15)

Get Updates from KeyLimeTie

Please follow @KeyLimeTie on Twitter or "Like" us on Facebook. We do our best to share useful information about the web, enterprise software, mobile technologies and how you can practically use social media for business.

Facebook "Community Pages" have added new ways for people to connect around interests, but at the same time they pose a potential threat to your company and your brand. How so? They create public pages (that nobody owns) around any common interest people have added to their profiles (for example, music artists, movies and products). If you manage a popular brand, don't be surprised if you find pages on Facebook with your product or company name on them, displaying content you didn't write and can't edit to your liking.

Like it or not, the days of completely owning your own message are gone. You can't hide behind press releases or your own claims anymore, especially if your company and your products get a lot of attention. Networked customers and stakeholders who have an opinion about you—positive, negative and all shades inbetween"will find each other. Today, your brand has evolved into the sum total of your customers' and stakeholders' thoughts about you, as shared on the web.

How do Community Pages work?

Facebook says they aim to make each Community Page "the best collection of shared knowledge on [this topic]". They do this by bringing in the topic's Wikipedia article along with recent posts mentioning the subject. This means whatever people are saying about the area of interest—good or bad—has the potential to get aggregated. Read Facebook's blog post on the topic for a full understanding of how this works.

Read About What is at Stake

If you represent your company's image or if you are involved in corporate communications of any kind, take the time to fully understand this trend. John Bell says Facebook Community Pages are no big deal once you accept what they are. Invest the time to read his article for an analytical perspective. Once you've read that, study Jeremiah Owyang's matrix on how Facebook Community Pages impact brands and consider the advice he brings as a seasoned analyst.

Example: BP on Facebook & Boycott BP Pages

Take BP for example. When you search for BP on Facebook, you'll see a list similar to the one on the right. The first result, "Boycott BP," is a Fan Page, or a page that a user created and owns. The fourth one, an Organization page, is a Community Page. It shows the Wikipedia summary for BP and aggregated user posts on the company—all negative, given the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Your Words and Actions Matter

While you never can insure against a coordinated social media attack, you can take action and do a few things consistently that earn respect and loyalty from your customers:

• Deserve the trust you seek by being honest. Transparency doesn't mean showing all your cards, but it does mean telling the truth about the claims you make.
• Demonstrate expertise. Build trust by showing your competency through how you interact socially on the web and through the content you produce about your product and industry.
• Demonstrate your commitment to your customers. Follow through on the promises you make both privately and publicly. By doing so, you'll give them every reason to speak well of you, and no reason to speak ill.
• Empathize with them. Even when people have bad experiences with your product or service, a little empathy goes a long way. See the problem from their perspective as you resolve it by doing the first three things.

The Best Defense is a Good Offense

You can pre-empt bad PR by creating your own advocacy program of engaged customers who promote you online. Jeremiah Owyang outlines how with this handy checklist.

Get Updates from KeyLimeTie

Please follow @KeyLimeTie on Twitter or "Like" us on Facebook. We do our best to share useful information about the web, enterprise software, mobile technologies and how you can practically use social media for business.

Just when you thought all the good domain names were taken, there's now a new opportunity to snap up a memorable domain—or even your brand name if your .com is taken. If you have a registered trademark, you can apply register yourname.co via the .CO Registrars today. If you don't have a trademark, you'll be able to get it as early as June 21.

What's this all about? Just like .biz, .info and .name, .co is the latest of what the industry refers to as "top-level domains" to be offered for domain name registration. The unique thing about .CO is it already carries similar credibility as .com around the world (think .co.uk, .co.au etc.) and that this is the first time .CO domains are being offered as top-level. If you're interested in background information, check out this Wired Magazine article on .CO domains.

Is it worth grabbing?

Yes and No. If you want your domain now, during the Global Trademark Holder phase, it will set you back $300. At that price, it’s not worth it for small businesses.

Once this becomes available at the $30 price, then it’s probably worth it. 'Dot-co' rolls off the tongue. It connotes "company" and carries the familiarity of "dot-com." Plus, you have the opportunity to grab your first choice domain name if your dot-com is taken.

Register Your Own .CO

Here are our recommendations for getting your own .CO domain:

• Brand Managers: If you have a registered trademark and a high-value brand, register your .CO domain now before registration opens to the public. Only do this if your name is high-value as it will set you back $300 per domain.
• Small Businesses: Wait until the Standard Pre-Registration phase that starts July 20. Then the price will be a reasonable $30, and at that point we recommend you grab the .co domain.
• Everyone: Before the Standard Pre-Registration phase starts on July 20, think of opportunities to register just a couple generic domains relevant to your business that will have high search engine optimization (SEO) value (e.g. chicago-pizza.co). If high traffic either globally or from a specific region is valuable to you, you have another shot at creating a site that naturally ranks high for a generic search term.

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What does this mean to you?

Assuming you're either an enterprise IT manager, mobile marketer or small business owner looking at opportunities to communicate and connect via mobile, what does this mean for you? It will be increasingly difficult to reach a majority of your audience by building a native application (mobile app) for just one operating system. You'll have a much better time making content widely available if you embrace the mobile web. However, if you require an app for whatever reason, you'll be smart to target your platforms based on your most loyal and most profitable audience(s). There are smart ways to go about building apps and successes to be had if you give the process careful thought.

Just the Facts

Here are a few highlights from the article to give further detail. However, I encourage you to read the full article with many more facts and figures.

Grigsby compiled mobile OS stats since 2006, noting that 'In 2006, two mobile operating systems controlled 81 percent of the market. This year there are 10 different smartphone operating systems'. Further observations include the facts that:

• No single mobile OS has greater than 50% marketshare.
• Samsung will be releasing its own OS and HTC is considering producing its own. Grigsby cites reasons to take these OSes seriously based on the manufacturers' marketshare.
• Android OS has been fragmented across handset manufacturers as several have overlayed their own user interfaces (MotoBlur and Sense UI).

While operating systems diverge, the report continues to outline how the mobile web is converging on HTML5 and WebKit. The only mobile browser that won't support HTML5 and WebKit for now is Internet Explorer, though indications show that future versions of the mobile IE will also support it.

For complete analysis, read Jason Grigsby's article at O'Reilly Radar.

Get Updates from KeyLimeTie

Please follow @KeyLimeTie on Twitter or 'Like' us on Facebook. We do our best to share useful information about the web, enterprise software, mobile technologies and how you can practically use social media for business.

Facebook has taken a lot of heat in the last couple weeks on privacy issues. New defaults mean a lot of the information you share is public. While you can control all of this, the control panel is complex and confusing.

Are you concerned about your own privacy on Facebook? We recommend you use this handy tool provided by ReclaimPrivacy.org to check how secure or insecure your profile is based on your privacy settings. When your settings are insecure, it even links you right to the relevant privacy settings page so you can make the changes right away.

Do This Now

• Visit ReclaimPrivacy.org and follow their simple instructions for checking your Facebook privacy settings. I did this and it took me just a minute or two to read the steps, install the bookmarklet, visit Facebook and see what I was leaving exposed. My profile was pretty locked down already, but I did leave one thing open.
• Share it with your friends. The Facebook privacy settings are confusing, even if you're computer-savvy. This tool helped me, and it will help many others understand what they are and aren't sharing.

Get Updates from KeyLimeTie
Please follow @KeyLimeTie on Twitter or 'Like' us on Facebook. We do our best to share useful information about the web, enterprise software, mobile technologies and how you can practically use social media for business.

Full Roundup: What's New in Mobile Marketing

So what's the big deal?
The first link boldly states that 82% of brands plan to boost mobile budgets over the next 12 months. In 2009, marketing & ad budgets started shifting from traditional to social media. This year, we're seeing mobile rapidly take over the social experience. With the ability to target your message and communicate 1:1, you can engage with your most loyal customers and build that loyalty even further.

Just realize that mobile is one channel—albeit one rapidly increasing in importance—in your marketing mix. For some perspective, check this Mobile Marketer article; Why brands must have a 360-degree mobile Web strategy.

• Motrin Moms ad campaign
• United Breaks Guitars
• Greenpeace and Nestlé duke it out on Facebook
• Wal-Marting Across America Astroturfing

So what about when it happens to you? What if a customer or constituent gets upset by something you do and they decide to take it to the web?

Read this Advertising Age Article: The Right Way to Make Your Social-Media Mea Culpa

Have you had an experience like this? Maybe yours wasn't on as broad of a scale, but if you've had something like this happen, please take a minute to share what happened and what you did to make it right below in the comments.

The degree of success you have marketing via mobile is directly related to the degree of seriousness with which you treat it as a channel. Your mobile efforts, whether using the web, apps, or other means of communicating with a person on their phone should never be treated as a standalone medium.

These are just two of the core insights outlined at the Mobile University conference that brought together agency and brand representatives to talk about what works in mobile marketing and where the medium is going. The conference served to both reinforce and enhance the approach KeyLimeTie takes with our clients.

When you isolate your mobile efforts to one-off campaigns, you risk throwing away a lot of work; as if you launched a website only to wind it down weeks later. Instead, think in terms of 12-month cycles for your marketing objectives instead of a 'quick-win' 8-week campaign.

Whether you develop your mobile solution in-house or contract to an agency or development team like KeyLimeTie, realize the real value lies when you build a long-term program for engagement, complete with multiple campaigns integrated with your overall marketing strategy for the year. Your mobile marketing efforts should result in a channel through which you communicate on an ongoing basis.

The key is to first understand mobile devices for what they are. What are your consumers already doing on their phones, and how can you enable those behaviors?

People use mobile devices on breaks, pauses, for short bursts and in moments of periodic downtime. They also use it when they need information to make a quick decision. Consumers are a lot smarter than us—the marketers, brand managers and developers directly involved in marketing a product or service—so don't just do something for the sake of doing it, make it make sense with them and their habits.

Mobile Campaign Tips:

• For every $1 you spend developing and executing a mobile marketing campaign, be prepared to spend another $2 promoting it.
• Allow your customer to treat their phone as a 'mobile mouse.' QR codes let you "click" on things in the real world, taking them from real world experiences to digital ones they see on their phones. This can provide entertainment, information, connection and other kinds of value.
• Know how people use apps. After a user has 5 or more apps installed, there's a significant drop off in app usage on a monthly basis. Build in weekly interactions with your users to stay on their radar. Push Alerts on the iPhone and Android are one way of accomplishing this.

Looking to build your mobile strategy? Talk to KeyLimeTie and we'll walk you through how.

On April 23, 2010, KeyLimeTie employees came together to present their entries from the first KeyLimeTie Hackathon, our first ever internal development and innovation contest. Most Hackathons span a short period of time—from 24 to 48 hours from start to finish. We gave each of the three KeyLimeTie teams several weeks to design, develop and deliver their projects. Teams were handpicked based on role and skill level, and we intentionally placed people who seldom interact on projects on the same teams.

The Rules

The contest was simple; teams were to pick at least two APIs from Programmable Web and create something interesting. To keep things original, teams could not use the same APIs as competing teams.

For some of the employees, this was a rare chance to be creative and go beyond their normal roles and responsibilities. The experience yielded market-ready products and tools, and some great laughs and memories.

Personal Reflections

I have organized and participated in several developer Hackathons and can easily attest to their role as a catalyst for innovation, creative problem solving and community building. The KeyLimeTie Hackathon was no different. We gave a talented group of people some raw materials and a little encouragement and were blown away with the results. You can do the same.

Incidentally, you will see the applications built during the Hackathon integrated into the KeyLimeTie Content Management System (CMS), as well as available for integration into your own websites. You can stay tuned for updates by following us on Twitter or Facebook.

Chicago Tribune column featuring KeyLimeTie

Last week, Chris Pautsch and Peter Morano were interviewed by the Chicago Tribune about the things KeyLimeTie is doing on the mobile web and with mobile applications. Some of our comments made it into today's Minding Your Business column by Ann Meyer. Read the entire Chicago Tribune article here: Startups use mobile space to innovate, grow.

To underscore the article, remember these key points when looking to jump into mobile for your own company:

Strategy Before Tactics

Everyone wants to develop a mobile app because they're seen as sexy. Be careful though to examine what your goals are, who your target audience is, and the best way to reach them with timely, personal information. It may not be an app. SMS campaigns and response mechanisms like QR codes that point to a mobile web site may yield greater results depending on who you are reaching and what you're trying to accomplish.

Focus on the Mobile Web

Aside from social networking and email, search (especially finding directions, including potentially to your location) is a leading activity on the mobile phone. Give your customers the best mobile web experience you can. Anticipate their needs and help them achieve them seamlessly and they'll love you for it.

Be Real and Make it Relevant

People consider their mobile phones to be very personal. When people load your app or opt-in to mobile communications from you, they're demonstrating a high degree of trust. Note not to communicate excessively via SMS messages or based on a person's location as this can be seen as very intrusive. Use these techniques infrequently and with your most loyal customers who have expressed interest in receiving these types of messages (this also includes Push Notifications sent to smartphone apps).

Relevant KeyLimeTie Mobile Links

• Day of Mobile Hackathon
• SocialDevCamp Chicago Hackathon
• iLime - iPhone Push Notification Service
• The Secret Daily Teachings iPhone App
• Sloan Water Savings Calculator iPhone App

Are you curious about mobile, but don't know where to start? Our CIO, Peter Morano, will speak Thursday April 22 from 6:00-8:00 P.M. at the Illinois Institute of Technology Knapp Center on Developing a Successful Mobile Strategy.

Come learn how why reaching your customers and your market must be your central goal, and why this doesn't necessarily mean you need to develop an app. Peter will talk about:

• Methods for connecting with a mobile audience
• Engaging your audience effectively
• The differences between various mobile platforms
• How these factors affect market reach

Register today to see Pete speak at the Knapp Center on the 22nd. The event is free to attend, but RSVP is required.

We're happy to announce the launch of a new web site for our friends at the Naperville Running Company. They're a great running shop in downtown Naperville and they've made quite a name for themselves. Not only do they sell a wide range of running supplies, they host regional races and have even been selected as the #1 running store in the country by Formula4Media, hosts of the 2009 Running Event trade show.

This isn't just any other client for us, though. Here's the backstory:

Tracy and me during the MC200.

Last summer I was in a pinch to find the right shoes to run 20 of the 200 miles in the MC200 relay from Madison to Chicago. KeyLimeTie had a team and I had just bitten the racing bug. Their store was the only store to take the time to get to know me, my running history and my goals when they sold me a pair of shoes.

This year, Naperville Running Company turned to us to build them a new web site. We're quite happy with the results, and are glad they are too (especially because Team KeyLimeTie will be needing a lot of running gear for this year's MC200 race)! Also, be on the lookout for the Naperville Running Company iPhone application in the iTunes store at the beginning of June.

It gives me great pleasure to announce to our clients and to the industry as a whole that KeyLimeTie's Tim Courtney was recently selected alongside Andy Angelos as finalists for the Illinois Technology Association's annual CityLIGHTS awards for their work producing the SocialDevCamp Chicago conference.

The SocialDevCamp team joins other area leaders as nominees in the annual award that highlights the outstanding contributions of both individuals and companies in the Illinois technology industry. The ITA will announce the award recipient at the annual CityLIGHTS award gala on April 29 at Union Station. Please join me in wishing Tim and Andy well.

KeyLimeTie had the privilege of sponsoring SocialDevCamp Chicago 2009 last November, an event that attracted over 200 developers, entrepreneurs and social application enthusiasts to learn about and create social applications. Keynote speakers included Facebook and Google senior developers who shared strategies behind their respective companies work building the infrastructure of the social web.

To learn more about SocialDevCamp, see Tim and Andy discuss the conference in this highlight video:

On the eve of securing my own iPad, I've been thinking through the types of apps I'll want to load on it for both fun and productivity.  Presumably, I'll carry the iPad around more than my three year old MacBook Pro, even though that machine has my most used applications (including Microsoft Office, iWork and Adobe Creative Suite in addition to handy programs like TextWrangler and Omni Outliner). However, the iPad will fill a fundamentally different space. I imagine I'll still use the laptop for the heavy-duty work like long-form writing and building presentations, where I'll mostly use the iPad for things like email, note-taking, social networking, and perhaps video editing.

OmniGraphSketcher for the iPad

In essence, the app paradigm scaled up from a phone to a tablet takes the 'computer' out of the picture.  Purpose-built touch-based apps for iPhone OS, Android and other emerging platforms make both fun and producivity more accessible to the mass market of people who don't consider themselves particularly good with computers—so much so that popular tech pundit David Pogue wrote a comprehensive iPad review from both the perspective of 'techies' and non-techies. Pogue says;

'The iPad is so fast and light, the multitouch screen so bright and responsive, the software so easy to navigate, that it really does qualify as a new category of gadget. Some have suggested that it might make a good goof-proof computer for technophobes, the aged and the young; they’re absolutely right.'

—David Pogue

The new touch interface, app paradigm, and end-to-end user experience that results creates a new generation of computer users who won't even realize that's what they are.  Some day soon we may see the word 'computer' disassociated with portable devices; people will still refer to Desktops as computers, but an iPad?  'Oh, that's my tablet.' The laptop may eventually fade into memory.

So now my question is this; two years from now when I had planned to replace my laptop, will I even want one?

In 2009, mobile web usage more than doubled. Today, Google is encouraging local search through initiatives like its Favorite Places program and by beefing up its mobile web interface. Businesses, especially local ones, are looking to both mobile web and mobile apps to connect with customers on their terms. Companies looking to stay connected with their customers must address the fact that more and more people are accessing the web via the mobile phone.

At SXSW Interactive, Adobe Systems' platform evangelist Kevin Hoyt (@parkerhoyt) delivered a thoughtful talk to these developers entitled 'Best Practices for Contextual Applications.' Hoyt's central point was that people are consuming more content through more screens than ever before, and content creators must deliver that content through a consistent, integrated, and seamless user experience.

Expectations are High, Regardless of Context

The interactive industry refers to the process of developing for these various devices as contexts. As people increase their exposure to web content, the interactions are fragmenting across devices. To the customer, your brand is your brand, no matter through what context they are interacting with you. Your job is to deliver a consistent, high-quality experience across contexts, strengthening your relationship with your customers on their terms and on the device of their choice.

Thinking of your user as 'just an iPhone user' or 'just a browser user' is limiting. The people who comprise your market will move between contexts. Further, these people will take their data with them from context to context. Whether they are out for a run, at their desktop, or on the go with their phones, they will expect to be able to access their information wherever they are and regardless of the type of data.

People will demand the same quality experience across contexts, but the ways they interact and the information they need will differ based on context.

Contexts in Action

The New York Times adapts their context based on how people are consuming the information. Even their 'freemium' pricing model varies from context to context, based on how people use the information they provide within each. As an organization, they are laser-focused on unlocking new revenue potential among the various contexts, providing content on the web, mobile web, natively on the desktop via the Times Reader, and even on devices like the Chumby. They realize that people will use the data differently depending on context, and present and price differently in kind.

You interact with multiple contexts each and every day. These contexts include:

• Desktop/Laptop Computer software applications, e.g. Microsoft Word
• Web Browser, e.g. web sites
• Desktop or Dashboard Widgets
• Mobile Phones, including mobile web and native applications for iPhone or Android devices
• Tablet Computer, e.g. iPad
• Automobile dashboard or heads-up screens
• Nike+ and other input devices
• Video game consoles such as Xbox, Nintendo Wii and PS3
• Home appliances
• Ambient consumer electronics devices such as the Chumby

Requirements for Contextual Applications

To succeed at reaching your audience across contexts, you must address the requirements needed to deliver a consistent, high quality experience.

• Ubiquity - Your content needs to be everywhere your users are consuming information from, regardless of the context. Know the contexts your users use, and prioritize development of interfaces for those contexts in alignment with your sales process and strategic priorities.
• Workflow - Before you design for multiple contexts, build the workflow of how users interact on—and between— each. With a proper workflow you can put together a good experience across devices.
• Cloud Servers - By using a cloud-based server infrastructure like Amazon EC2, Rackspace, or Salesforce.com, you allow your applications to share common databases and to scale seamlessly. If you are serving video to an international user base, consider a content delivery network to handle the heavy lifting of video with minimal lag time no matter where your users are in the world.
• Social Media Services - Gain users and add features by using the APIs on popular social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, MySpace, etc. Also, you can integrate content with more focused social sites like SlideShare for presentations and Delicious for bookmarks.

KeyLimeTie Can Help

Looking to extend beyond your corporate web site and meet users on their phones, on the social web, or on their tablets and iPads? KeyLimeTie has a team of seasoned, versatile cross-platform developers with digital strategy and design capabilities to provide you a full solution. To explore further, give us a call at 630.598.9000.

Daniel Burka and Rob Goodlatte at SXSW Interactive.

At SXSW, former Digg Creative Director Daniel Burka (@dburka, now of game developer Tiny Speck), and Rob Goodlatte of Facebook gave an excellent presentation on this topic, sharing insights from successfully winning over millions of attention-deficient and critical users who visit some of the most popular web sites online. Here we'll share what we learned about the emergence of game mechanics in design, the 'Aha Moment!' and the power of and rewarding users while doing.

Burka began the talk by telling the story of how getting a dog in downtown San Francisco caused him to need to buy a car, outlining the new car buying experience and the exact steps the salesperson used to hook him and his girlfriend on wanting to buy the car they were test driving.

What does this have to do with optimizing a site for user interactions? Designers build in similar 'tricks' to attract users to convert or do some desirable action like enter their personal information, sign up for a newsletter or fan page, or even make a purchase. (You can read the entire story in the notes from the talk).

Goodlatte led his remarks by saying that 'Often we can't see the problems in our own products, because we're too focused on how we use them every day.' As a designer or as a marketer hiring a design team, you can't always revisit your own product with fresh eyes. This is why it is important critical to put yourself in the shoes of someone encountering your product for the first time. As designers, we cannot be be afraid to be proven wrong, especially when designing with new users in mind.

Geni.com Homepage lets you start creating your family tree before creating an account.

In Tiny Speck's upcoming game 'Glitch,' the site first leads visitors to create a game character and give it a name, then displays the character created alongside its name. Only then will the site ask for personal details, because now the visitor is invested in the character they have created and are more likely to convert. This principle can be applied outside the world of gaming when working toward the goal of driving user signups. An ideal example of this, Burka says, is the geneology site Geni.com, which allows you to start building your family tree before signing up.

The principle goes a little as follows:

1. Allow users to first create something of value and make incremental progress toward what your site offers, building in rewards (such as a game character or a family tree).
2. As quickly as possible, convince the person that whatever comes after sharing their details is worthwhile.
3. After the person is already invested, capture their personal information or ask for the commitment.
4. As the presentation slides say, 'Help people make something they'd hate to lose.'

Facebook's 'Aha! Moment'

Facebook calls the point where the user wants to commit the 'Aha! Moment.' This is the point in time where the user understands the biggest incentive your product or service has. By focusing user signup tests on this, Facebook saw a 5% topline increase in new user registrations (a significant number when you have 300 million users). They learned that for Facebook, this moment is the instant they see faces and names of their friends already using the site. As a result, one of the most successful web sites in the world is now totally redesigning their account creation process to eliminate every single distraction before new people reach that Aha Moment.

Learn from Games that have Feedback Cycles

An emerging trend in interaction design is to use game theory when designing software and online interactions. Games have long been written to teach players more difficult manuvers as they gain more practice, rewarding them along the way. In the same way, interaction designers can unlock complexity and funcionality as users complete more and more actions within your site. Rewarding the mastery of features and processes keeps the users interested, challenged, and engaged.

Some examples of this in both games and on the web include:

• Spore: New users are given a simple task with simple controls. After successfully performing an action with the game character, the user is rewarded with a character that evolves, along with more sophisticated controls.
• Mint.com has built instant feedback loops into their signup screen for when users enter a valid username, email address, and matching passwords. If you enter incorrect information, a red X displays next to the field alerting the user of their mistake without going through the frustration of loading the error page.

Lead Users, Teach While Doing, and Focus on One Thing

'If you tell your users to 'Go do anything,'' Burka says, 'the user will respond in kind with 'What kind of anything should I do?' By creating 'quests' as game designers call them, you can lead users down a path toward a goal, teaching them along the way. If you're naming your quest, give it something in context; for example, in a business application, you might refer to a quest as a 'to-do list.'

Tumblr walks you through creating your first post as you are signing up.

Don't think of educating users as a side part of the experience (such as documentation or help pages), rather, make it a core part of the user experience. For example, the LEGO® Universe multiplayer online game teaches users how to perform moves as they are actually discovering new things while playing. The designers specifically do not interrupt the process of playing to teach. Blog service Tumblr walks new users through the process of creating a blog and a first post within 60 seconds, creating an investment in the service on the part of the user and teaching them core features.

Sometimes competing interests and objectives can confuse users, preventing them from accomplishing your desired outcome. Like a zig-zagging checkout queue, bursting with diversions of candy and must-have impulse buys, well-meaning individuals can cannibalize the goal. What's the answer? 'Focus on one specific thing [and do it well]. Ask 'what is important for this step?'' says Goodlatte. 'Do a few things less well, because [on the web] you can't do everything at once.' Define your end goal, come up with a measurement for success, and design everything on the page to optimize for the desired outcome.

Living the Process

When designing a site, discover your Aha Moment & get to it ASAP. It will communicate more than any marketing material can. To convince management or clients of a needed change, Goodlatte suggests showing a a video of a user frustrated with your system. This evidence says far more than any theory-based argument about a site's usability.

If you are looking to improve user interactions on your site, increase signups, or increase sales, please talk to KeyLimeTie about how the design team here can help you reach your goals.

To see Burka and Goodlatte's presentation slides, visit Designing the First 15 Minutes on Slideshare. For extensive notes of the presentation itself, see the notes on the Facebook design blog.

Now that we as an industry have seen the iPad and developers have had the opportunity to write applications for the new device, thoughts are crystalizing around just how many new ways content creators, publishers, brands, companies and organizations will have to reach, enage and serve their respective audiences.

Discussion at SXSW

On Saturday, March 13 at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference, developers, gaming and media executives gathered on a panel to discuss these very opportunities. The thoughts that emerge will enlighten you to the scope of the opportunity ahead. The panel, entitled "iPad: New Opportunities for Content Creators," validated and enhanced many thoughts KeyLimeTie has been having about the device's potential.

Moderator Raven Zachary (@ravenme) set the stage by telling the audience that the pre-launch demand for the iPad is higher than it was for the original iPhone. On the first day of pre-order sales, Apple sold 51,000 iPads within the first two hours, and 90,000 units within six hours (source).

Why such a high demand? Today approximately 75 million people use the iPhone OS (between iPhone and iPod Touch owners) and are familiar with the multi-touch screen interface as well as the App Store. Many of these people will enthusiastically purchase iPads and in the process bypass the learning curve because they're already familiar with how to operate it.

The Panel Discussion

The panelists each gave a perspective on the iPad based on their respective industries. Bill Jensen (@BillyJensen), Director of New Media for The Village Voice talked about the power of the iPad to deliver well-formatted niche content. As one of the few print weeklies that continues to see growth thanks to its local focus, Jensen seemed keen to leverage this lower cost barrier digital format to deliver more niche content.

Jensen made an illustration of the variety of content available through the largest digital medium—the web—and through print distribution channels. A typical city street may have 10 newspaper boxes and the largest of bookstores could carry up to 1,000 magazines while the Internet boasts an almost unfathomable 109.5 million web sites. Being a digital medium, the iPad will bring back the experience of reading elegantly typeset books fused with interactive media, while offering a selection that will dwarf bookstores.

76% of Top 5 grossing apps in the iTunes Store are games. By 2013, panelist Shervin Peshavar (@Shervin) from the Social Gaming Network (creators of best-selling iPhone games) asserted the app market will have an estimated value of $30 billion with approximately 20 million iPads sold. Peshavar disussed the ways the iPad's size and features will change the way people both experience and produce content.

Accoring to Peshavar, the iPad's unique value lies in four distinct factors:

• Screen real estate
• Processing power
• The immersive experience it affords
• Convenient size

"The iPad enables new usage occasions, pushes creative frontier and boosts engagement" says Peshavar. "Greater engagement leads to higher ARPU," or average revenue per user. "The iPhone is more for media consumption, where the iPad will be for media creation," said panelist Jason Grigsby (@grigs). Peshavar even speculated about a radical shift in human-computer interactions, musing that we may now see real-time collaboration between two people using the same device simultaneously.

Photo credit: Wired Magazine.

Katherine Tasheff (@tasheffka) of Hyperion Books said "The iPad mimics the experience of reading a book like nothing else does." Hyperion, she says, is seeing print book sales decine thanks to e-readers. "[The iPad and e-readers are] the first step toward the virtually paperless society we will be in about twenty years," added Jensen. Underscoring the iPad's potential for ubiquity, Tasheff added "This is the first device both my father and I are excited about. And I am tech support for the man, I know what's involved."

Other Observations

• The potential for two people to collaborate or play a game on the same device instead of two networked devices.
• The iPad will be used fundamentally differently than the iPhone. The panelists are questioning the need for things like camera and GPS because people will treat the device more like a computer than a phone.
• The iPad and similar devices will likely signal the end of vertical scrolling (like on computers) as this is an artifact non-touch screen interface. Now that we are touching the screen, we won't need to scroll. Instead, designers and content creators will be free to build content that pages more naturally.

Looking Ahead

We've only seen the beginning of the possibilities on the iPad. As the iPad launches, think through ways you can better serve your customers by producing an app or re-formatting the content you create for the device. Its popularity virtually ensures someone who does what you do will be competing for peoples' attention on this new screen. This is an opportunity and also a call to action to lead the way for your industry for providing quality interactions via the digital device where many of your customers, users, fans, and audiences will be conducting their day-to-day business, communication, and pleasure activities.

If you have questions about how your company can build an iPad application, or if you are looking for a technology partner with whom to explore this frontier, please call KeyLimeTie at 630.598.9000.

We'll be posting observations and knowledge that has direct applicability to our customers' businesses, and we'll also be taking what we learn back into the organization to stay cutting edge with the services we provide.

If you want to interact with us directly while at the conference, feel free to talk to us on Twitter. Make sure you follow @KeyLimeTie, but also follow @ChrisPautsch and @TimCourtney directly. Finally, if you want the full volume of my personal live-tweets, I've set up @TimCourtneySXSW so as not to annoy people who follow me and aren't interested in the conference.

Here are some of the things we're focusing on at the event:

• Changing user interfaces. We're actively looking at what people are saying about the iPad, tablet PCs, mobile phones, and even purpose-built devices. As these new devices are becoming more mainstream, new ways of interacting with customers are emerging. We see the iPad as much more than a personal productivity and entertainment tool; it's a platform that will provide better ways to meet customers' needs where they are and when they need service.
• New Technology: Augmented Reality These applications have been talked about for some time and are just now coming into the mainstream. They can be as simple as a heads-up display on a fighter jet or a car to a mobile application that displays a virutal object superimposed over a video of the area directly in front of you. Companies can use augmented reality for advertisements, navigation, complex task support, and in industrial or architectural settings to name a few (source: Wikipedia). For an example, see ReadWriteWeb's writeup on Chevy's Augmented Reality iPhone app at SXSW.
• Making Sense of it All. Because we live on the web every day, we know there's no shortage of information being passed about new technologies, especially regarding hot topics like social media. But what does it all mean? How does it apply to you, whether you're a business unit within a large enterprise or a small-midsize company? Depending on what you do and who your customers are, you can adjust your focus on the tools that will garner the most impact. We'll listen keenly on how some these hot tools are proving useful for different types of people, and for whom they're not useful.

If you're a KeyLimeTie customer reading this, we believe in being a go-to resource on interactive web technology at the same time as being your preferred web and software developer. We're focusing our time at SXSW to equip us to do that even better.

At the KnappLab, students have access to two Macs and one Windows machine fully equipped with development environments for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile. They have the chance to work on student projects or projects entrepreneurs bring to them.

We're excited to see a leading university make such an investment in young mobile app developers. These students certainly have an open door at KeyLimeTie when they're looking for internships or full-time positions doing the work they love.

Here's a video we took giving a quick tour of the KnappLab:

KeyLimeTie was the Hackathon sponsor and I served as Hackathon coordinator. The judging panel included me and an impressive subset of the event’s speakers: Jay Freeman, David Whatley, Mark Murphy and John Haney.

The contest itself featured eleven teams who presented applications they built on the Android, iPhone and Blackberry platforms. Seven teams walked away with cash and prizes that totaled more than $3,500, including $1,500 in cash a Netbook provided by Chicago Micro, a Nokia N900 from Earth Combers, Threadless gift certificates, $500 in books from O’Rielly Publishing and 2 Droid phones from Google.

The winning teams were:

• Best Overall App: Novarra Team
• Best Overall Runner Up: Runner up: Ravi Singh (@code4ever)
• Best Open Source App - Mike Laurence (@mikelaurence)
• Best Student App - Knapp Lab Team (IIT)
• Best iPhone App - Pek Pongpaet (@pekpongpaet) and Chad Paulson (@chadpaulson)
• Best Android App – Android Technical
• Best Blackberry App - Vibhor Goyal (@vbgoz)
• Best Design: Jon Jenkins

Congratulations, everyone!

If you’re interested in competing in the next Hackathon contest, please send me an email or DM me at @petermorano and I’ll keep you informed of the next event.

The conference attracted notable speakers including David Recordon and Luke Shepard of Facebook, Harper Reed, Chris McAvoy, Blagica Bottigliero, Daliah Saper, and John R. Dallas, Jr.

KeyLimeTie CIO Peter Morano also led the developer Hackathon component of SocialDevCamp, a contest offering $2,000 in prizes to developers competing to build the best social applications over the course of the weekend.

Enjoy these video highlights from SocialDevCamp 2009. We're happy to have had the opportunity to partcipate in the event.

Legendary Chicago and suburban sandwich shop Pop's Italian Beef & Sausage came to KeyLimeTie when the company needed a new web site. They wanted a site that visually communicated the BIG taste of their adored sandwiches, and KeyLimeTie served up just what they ordered.

The new Pop's Italian Beef site proudly displays their classic features bold visuals with their featured items and provides an updated motif around their classic logo, bringing Frank Radochonski's vision up-to-date on the web. As fans of Pop's Italian Beef ourselves, we're thrilled with the opportunity to give them a fresh look online.

SocialDevCamp TechThursday Mashup Party

Thursday March 4, 6-9pm, OfficePort CHI

Organizers of the annual SocialDevCamp Conference (including KeyLimeTie's Tim Courtney and Peter Morano) are hosting an after-hours party for attendees to mingle, re-connect, see video highlights and hear from Hackathon teams who have continued developing the applications they built at the 2009 conference into something bigger.

KeyLimeTie is sponsoring the party. Food and drinks will be provided, and a $5.00 cover charge will be donated to the YWCA TechGYRLS program, an innovative, after-school programs are designed to broaden girls' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.

RSVP for the SocialDevCamp TechThursday Mashup Party Here.

MobileX Chicago

Friday March 5, 9:00am - 6:00pm, Doubletree Hotel

MobileX Chicago is a one-day conference aimed at entrepreneurs, developers, investors, industry professionals, and mobile enthusiasts. It features four tracks of breakout sessions for the target audiences and topics of “Mobile Developers”, “Entrepreneurs/Investors/Enthusiasts”, and “Mobile Marketing," along with an introductory iPhone development track.

Learn more and register to attend on the MobileX Chicago web site.

Day of Mobile

Saturday March 6, 8:00am - 6:00pm, Illinois Institute of Technology

Day of Mobile will focus on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile development. Jay Freeman, creator of the Cydia Store will keynote, and KeyLimeTie's Chris Grove will present on "Strategies for multi-platform applications." KeyLimeTie's Peter Morano is heading the Developer Hackathon, and the company is sponsoring Day of Mobile.

Learn more and register to attend on the Day of Mobile web site.

Are budgets tight at your company? Many places they are. Whether you're a Fortune company or a bootstrapped entrepreneur, chances are you have a list of things that you need and are holding off on purchasing something you need to grow your business.

ScaleWell, a new quarterly grant given by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, aims to change the way companies look at what it takes to gain traction for one's business. By giving away $1000 per quarter (no strings attached) to one company, ScaleWell is encouraging companies to look at ways to grow by funding their experience. According to the ScaleWell web site, it's a way to enable the recipient to answer questions like 'How many customers I acquire for $1000?' or 'How much closer to profitability can I get by investing this small amount?'

Moreover, the buzz ScaleWell is generating in the Chicago business community, the region KeyLimeTie calls home, can serve to inspire you no matter your role--whether you are a solo entrepreneur or an executive at a large company. Take a fresh look at the how you can grow or improve by investing a small, finite amount of money to fund an action or make a purchase that will gain you traction. Once you're done, measure the results. Whether this particular experiment succeeds or fails, you're learning along the way and taking positive steps forward.

ScaleWell was founded by Andy Angelos, Ziad Hussain, and Sean Corbett--each entrepreneurs looking to scale their own businesses while helping others do the same. ScaleWell is funded by Trustees; Trustees each donate $100 and volunteer to advise the grant recipient. Trustees decide on the award recipient from applications received each quarter.

KeyLimeTie came to support ScaleWell through CIO Peter Morano. Internally, Pete has been instrumental in applying similar ideas through the KeyLimeTie Labs innovation group, and saw this as an opportunity to lend support to another business in the larger community.

How could you scale your business by investing $1000? You don't have to be a ScaleWell recipient to do this. The budget constraint makes it realistic to think and act this way. With $1000, here are some of the things you could do to scale:

• Video camera to take videos and share online to attract more customers.
• Purchase costly software or hardware that would enable you to do more, or increase efficiency.
• Invest in a graphic design for your company or product that improves your presentation and allows you to sell more.
• Build enhancements to your web site, or purchase hosting for a new web site for a year.
• Hire a C-Level consultant to work with you on strategic alignment within your company or group.
• Sponsor an event that will gain you exposure and put you on the map in a market or a community.

How will you scale your business well? KeyLimeTie wants to know. Leave a comment below!

Update: The first ScaleWell grant was given to Michael Una for his business, Unatronics, that sells handmade electronic musical instruments. He will use the grant money to develop additional products he can sell.

Wednesday's much anticipated iPad tablet device appears to be, at first glance, a scaled-up version of the iPhone. By releasing the iPad, Apple is carving out a new category of device, and a new way people will interact with computers. Over the past ten years, there have been many unsuccessful attempts at building a widely-adopted tablet PC, so of course there is skepticism.

It would be easy to dismiss this device as nothing special, before considering how the App Store made the iPhone and the iPod Touch into the outstandingly popular devices they are today. At this point, we've just seen what Apple (and a select group from the developer community) have done with the iPad. The real applications are yet to come, thanks to the limitless creativity of the iPhone—and now iPad—developer community, including companies like KeyLimeTie.

Further, industry reporters like TechCrunch's MG Seigler explain why the iPad will succeed; its target audience is the 75 million iPhone and iPod Touch users. These people will know how to use the iPad right out of the gate.

Those people will also grow more and more accustomed to a web you can touch, with full web pages now practical on the iPad screen and people used to pinching and swiping their way around your site, making purchases, downloading documents, playing games, writing comments. The web as we know it will evolve, interaction design will shift, as the iPad and other tablets capture our share of screen time.

Many people will opt to leave the laptop at home and use the iPad for communications, eBook reading, entertainment, and even productivity when larger screens and computing power aren't required. But, imagine for a moment a restaurant menu displayed on an iPad, or iPads being used to process transactions in a retail store. That, of course, is just the start.

Here are some others' thoughts on the iPad's viability:

• TechCrunch: Top 10 Reasons The Apple iPad Will Put Amazon’s Kindle Out of Business
• Arun Shroff: Top 10 Reasons Why the iPad will NOT Kill the Kindle
• TechCrunch: The iPad Is Like Holding The Future. But Only Because I Graduated From iPhone School
• TechCrunch: Pictures: The iPad Being Manhandled

Like what we have to say? Follow @KeyLimeTie on Twitter or join our Facebook fan page for continued updates.

This past weekend I attended a lunch presentation by Andrew Mason of Groupon, which he gave to participants in the Chicago Urban League's NextONE Program. I was invited by great friend John (JR) Dallas and welcomed by the Urban League staff.

Groupon, if you are not familiar, is widely regarded as Chicago's biggest tech success story of 2009. The web site allows people to buy one steeply discounted offer each day, provided enough other people also buy the offer so the retailer has a critical mass of new customers. They achieved profitability in the spring of 09 and closed on $25mm of funding late last year, when they admittedly didn't need the money. Now they're on target for $100mm in revenues in 2010.

It would be too easy to romanticize the above. Mason and team came up with an idea, coded it in a month, and it became a runaway success. But just looking at their history as Groupon would be denying some important lessons about innovation and persistence.

ThePoint.com: Groupon's predecessor.

Before Groupon was (and still is) a web site called The Point, which Mason started in 2006. The Point was built to allow people to achieve critical mass on a political or social issue before taking action, to ensure the action they take (a donation, a protest, a mass action, etc) had an impact. The site itself didn't take off to the founders' expectations because of a lack of focus; they were providing a platform for an undefined audience to take action on any potential issue.

The software and concept that powered The Point now powers Groupon. In late 2008, the team worked for a month to get the product off the ground, with very limited features and simple e-commerce capabilities, and the new, focused idea stuck.

Among many others, I was able to pull these lessons from Andrew's talk and knowing the Groupon story:

1. They weren't afraid to act, try something different, and risk failure. Groupon was a 30-day diversion from working on The Point. If it failed, they wouldn't be out a lot of time, money, or emotional investment.
2. They took an existing asset, the software engine powering The Point, and applied it in a different way. They learned that this new application had considerably more monetary value than the original.
3. Mason and the team continually improve Groupon by creating a product they themselves want to use, and add features and improvements based upon problems they themselves have. Their philosophy, 'If I have this problem, chances are someone else does, too.'

Take a look inside your business as we take a look inside ours. Do you have the opportunity to 'Pull a Groupon?' Perhaps you have software systems that are built for one purpose that you could refactor for a different one, or maybe you could deliver your services to a completely new audience. Chances are you are creating a product or service right now that could either make better use of by-products created or could be applied in a completely different way.

If this article strikes a chord with you, please let us know in the comments. If you see successes from 'pulling a Groupon,' please let us know (and Groupon too, I'm sure they'd appreciate it)! Finally, if there is an opportunity for KeyLimeTie to assist developing the software needed for you to accomplish your goals, please drop us a line.

In the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake last week, amidst the rescue effort headlines, is a robust discussion in the digital marketing industry around the power of text message campaigns to quickly mobilize people while creating an audience. At one week after the earthquake, the American Red Cross's text message (SMS) campaign alone has raised over $24 million dollars for the relief effort.

The simple campaign asks people to text the word 'Haiti' to short code 90999. Once the user answers the confirmation message, a $10 charge is added to their mobile bill that month. After you confirm, you're again prompted; this time, asking if you would like to receive Red Cross alerts straight to your mobile phone.

That's right. The Red Cross raised $24 million dollars in one week from 2.4 million individual $10 donations by people with mobile phones. Why did it work? The message got out when the disaster was getting the most coverage and offered donors instant gratification in donating via an unprecedentedly simple method.

The campaign itself is viral because it's short, timely, memorable, and actionable. You can easily tell someone 'Text 'Haiti' to 90999 to donate $10 to the relief effort' in a text message, tweet, status update, a phone call, or an email. Using text and social networking technology, the message has potential to spread exponentially, and this one did. As a result, expect to see more charities and relief agencies using SMS for fundraisers when time is of the essence.

The larger lesson for businesses amidst the tragedy that prompted the campaign is great. Text messaging campaigns have taken the 'impulse buy' and freed it from the four walls of a retail store. Now people can respond to an ad campaign, make a quick purchase, or make a quick donation right where they are, with the same convenience of chatting with a friend.

Further, you can build opt-in lists and notify people of promotions, sales, or send news alerts that will reach them instantly in the future. Many short code providers have CRM systems so you can manage customer relationships and even integrate their text profiles with their online profiles in your main e-commerce or CRM system.

While SMS short codes have been around for years, the tragedy in Haiti is being marked by the industry as an event that has now proven the critical mass--and the effectiveness--of SMS response campaigns. If you are curious about ways your business can utilize short codes and integrate them with the rest of your digital strategy, talk to KeyLimeTie. Or, if you'd like to read up on short codes, see this informative article on GigaOM.

Last week I found this decal on a store front while in San Francisco.  After searching the web to learn about the program, I learned Google is focusing more and more on local business and location-based search as a new revenue stream, and improving how companies advertise their businesses.

Google launched a pilot program where they sent out 100,000 of these window decals to the most popular local businesses listed on their web site. The stickers contain a QR code (short for 'Quick Response') so passersby can snap a quick photo of the code and visit the Google Local listing for that company.  There they can find business information and aggregated reviews.

This helps people learn more about the businesses they walk by every day.  They might find a copy shop or a café, and be able to see what others think about the place before they buy.  Or, they could save information about a location for later, or share with a friend, by sharing the local search link that comes up in their phone's browser.

Google Local result for QR code.

What does this mean for small businesses?  It means people will be looking up your company more and more on their phones.  Here are two excellent ways to ensure they get the best information they can about you:

1. Sign up for and update your Google Local Business Center listings to add custom information to your local search listings, including local coupons.  Use this also to analyze who is searching for your business and where they are located, to aid in your marketing efforts.
2. Make sure your web site is mobile-optimized.  The best way to do this is to have your web development firm build a mobile stylesheet for your web site.  With a mobile stylesheet, people visiting your site via their phone's browser will see all of the text and images optimized for the small browser.  Mobile web sites are specifically designed to present relevant, location- and time-sensitive information to people seeking you via their phones.

If you would like KeyLimeTie to optimize your web presence for mobile, or if you have questions about Google's Local Business Center, give me a call or reach out to @KeyLimeTie on Twitter.  We'll be happy to help.

Also, KeyLimeTie’s Chris Grove, CTO and senior mobile application developer, will give a talk entitled “Strategies for Developing Multi-Platform Apps.” He’ll explain how careful planning can overcome differences in frameworks, operating systems, and languages, while sharing proven strategies for cross-platform mobile development that will guide your design process and maximize your ROI.

If you’re looking to accelerate your mobile development knowledge, visit the Day of Mobile site and register for the conference. See you there!

2010 will no doubt be a year of aggressive innovation as we start to see the power shift in the mobile market from the carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile to carriers and manufacturers like Apple, Google, Motorola, and HTC.

While the iPhone paved the way for consumers choose a handset first before a carrier, AT&T's exclusivity in the US limited choice. The Motorola Droid created similar demand, and remains tethered to Verizon. Now, Google has taken the next step by making the NexusOne available either subsidized (with a 2-year T-Mobile contract) or unlocked for any network (with the expectation of adding other networks in the future).

What does this mean for companies and brands looking to get into the app market? Greater focus on Android and iPhone as the platforms of choice. The Android Market's 20,000 apps, along with the iPhone's 90,000+ apps far overshadow both BlackBerry's and Palm's 4,000 and 1,000 apps, respectively (source: BlackBerry App World and BillShrink). For companies and developers looking to build apps, focus on Android and iPhone.

At the same time, AdMob data indicates momentum is building around Android phones as they continue to penetrate the market. While the iPhone remains wildly more popular, growth has slowed in the US while Android trends upward.

If you’re looking to build an application that drives engagement and revenue, the iPhone and iPod Touch will continue to represent significant opportunities for a long time to come. However, keep an eye on Android as we are sure to see significant competition in 2010.

Interested in either iPhone or Android applications? Give us a call at KeyLimeTie to discuss your plans. 630.598.9000.

Sloan is using the app as a part of their continued effort to position the brand as a green manufacturer, concerned with ensuring customers and end users are making the most efficient use of water resources possible.

Read the CONTRACTORmag.com article here.

Sloan shared with us their desire to bring this unique utility app to the iPhone so that architects, engineers, and contractors who select plumbing fixtures will be informed of the water savings—both financial and volume—that Sloan products provide over industry benchmarks. KeyLimeTie used this information to develop a simple iPhone application that allows users to enter criteria about a building and its occupants, along with preferred Sloan fixtures. The app then generates statistical information regarding the amount of water and money that can be saved by utilizing the selected Sloan products.

This unique mobile application makes this information easily accessible in the field, and reinforces Sloan’s position as a leader in ecological building practices.

Sloan will be exhibiting the iPhone app this week at the GreenBuild Conference & Expo. Congratulations, Sloan, on the release. KeyLimeTie is honored to have been a part of this project.

Click here to download the free Water Savings Calculator on iTunes.

We’ve enjoyed watching the continued success of an iPhone app we built, 'The Secret™ Daily Teachings,' in the iTunes store. Yesterday the app was selected as 'New and Noteworthy' and now appears on the App Store homepage in iTunes.

This builds upon last week's success; within 48 hours of the app's release, it rose to the #1 app within the Lifestyle section. Now a week after release, it still rests as the #2 app in the category.

Congratulations again to the team at The Secret and Prime Time Productions! We're honored to be a part of this project and looking forward to a continued partnership.

Our very own Tim Courtney started SocialDevCamp Chicago last year, and is co-chairing the event with Andy Angelos of Get Talked About. It’s been great getting an inside peek at watching the event come together. Peter Morano, our CTO, stepped up and has been coordinating the Hackathon developer contest running at SocialDevCamp as well (There’s even rumor of a KeyLimeTie team entering the competition, so watch out!).

The event has an impressive lineup of speakers. Facebook’s senior open programs manager, David Recordon, is delivering the Saturday morning keynote, and Google is giving a Wave demo on Sunday morning. Area leaders including Harper Reed, Chris McAvoy, Alex Bratton, and John R. Dallas, Jr. are covering both the technical and the business side of social applications in the afternoon sessions, and attendees who want to present will be able to self-organize and talk in the Unconference track both days as well.

If you’re a developer or a social marketer, you should attend SocialDevCamp this weekend. There’s a lot packed into the two days, especially for a free event. However, registration is almost full, so make sure you register if you want to attend. Visit the SocialDevCamp Chicago web site for complete information and to register.

KeyLimeTie was contracted to build the application, which allows users to read a daily affirmation or teaching from The Secret, highlight favorites, and share with friends. The app also allows people to set daily alerts on their phones, reminding them to read their daily teaching.

One of our favorite features on the app is its use of the iPhone’s Push Notification service, which Apple released earlier this year through the iPhone OS 3.0. Push notifications allow app authors to send content to users (in this case a daily reminder), which results in more engaged app users over the long term. With brands and developers seeking ways to keep users engaged, whether to increase impressions or generate additional revenue, Push Notifications has been a welcome feature.

To power the alerts, we used our iLime service, a publicly available service for iPhone developers that enables them to easily deliver Push Notifications and In App Purchase content to their users. For us, it ended up being the perfect synergy between our service and product businesses, an example of what we do best.

You can purchase The Secret™ Daily Teachings on the iTunes App store at http://appsto.re/dailyteachings.

For all of the buzz about Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine slowed its marketshare gains in August, growing only 0.23% from July to an August search market share of 9.65% (according to this release by StatCounter.com). Google gained 0.29% to a total share of 77.83%. Clearly, Google will remain the dominant force in search for a long time to come. Stay focused on growing your rankings on Google while keeping a casual eye on Bing and Yahoo with their new search partnership.

The primary differences between the current search engine and Google Caffeine? Speed and real-time search results, according to Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim article. Now that a< href="http://search.twitter.com">Twitter Search is becoming known for delivering real-time results about conversations happening right now, Google's new results will begin prioritizing current results as well. The search giant has thrown more horses behind your search, too, with search results now coming to you up to twice as fast, according to speed tests.

Here’s what to do about Google Caffeine:

• Compare your old rankings with your new ones using this comparison site ( http://www.comparecaffeine.com/search-com.php).
• Read what the experts have to say about making sure your rankings stay high:
• 6 Things to Expect if Google Decaf Gets a “Caffeine” Boost
• Google Caffeine: A Detailed Test of the New Google
• Google Caffeine FAQ: Your Questions Answered
• Work with your SEO vendor to be sure your sites are up to date. Even if you don’t engage them on a full project, consider hiring them for an hour to review changes you’ve made and allow them to communicate their consolidated knowledge on the topic (they read this stuff all day and use it in the field).
• If you’re already a KeyLimeTie client, or if you don’t yet work with a dedicated SEO team, give us a call and ask about staying optimized for Caffeine.

Extra Credit: If you wish, you can also help Google test the new search engine by following the steps in Google’s own blog post. ]]> Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:38:55 GMT http://www.iarchitect.net/blog/2009/9/1/three-things-to-prepare-for-google-caffeine/ http://www.iarchitect.net/blog/2009/4/27/using-firebug-to-debug-web-pages/ Mozilla Firefox has a very powerful add-on tool called Firebug. Firebug allows web developers to inspect web pages to do such things as identify CSS styles being applied to sections of a page, easily inspect sections of a page, and to tweak style values to properly determine values for padding, font sizes, margins, and the like. Firebug is also extremely useful in tracking down and debugging layout issues on a page, especially trying to determine what style is actually being applied to a section of a page. Also, you can step-wise debug Javascript code being run by the browser.

To get started, first install Mozilla Firefox, if not already installed (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ie.html). Then go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843 (using Firefox) to download and install Firebug. When done, you'll see the Firebug option in Mozilla's Tools menu. Selecting Tools -> Firebug -> Open Firebug will display the Firebug panes at the bottom of the browser:




Click on the Inspect button. Now you can mouse around the page and see the defined sections of the page (surrounded by blue border):




The lower pane will display the relevant section of the page being moused over. You can also click on the moused-over area, which selects the area (and takes you out of inspect mode). The right pane will show what styles are in effect for the selected area, and you can also mouse over the HTML section to highlight the section on the page, and can click on the HTML pane lines to see the relevant styles, including the hierarchy/cascade effect of a given style.

When an HTML line is selected, you can view and tweak the associate styles. This is very useful when debugging the page to determine both what style is (or isn't) being applied, and to determine correct values so the page is displayed as desired.




You can also disable a style setting to see its effect, by clicking to the left of the setting in the right pane (marked by a red 'do not' symbol):




Using combinations of these tweaking mechanisms and you can both easily see why a page displays and what the correct settings should be. You can also add new setting values in the right page.

Lastly, Firebug can be used to debug Javascript. You can set breakpoints, watch values, and step lines of Javascript in real-time:




In conclusion, Firebug helps to take out the guesswork in page layout and very easily shows what styles are being applied to sections of a page, as well as the page layout itself. For any serious web developer it is an essential tool. This blog is by no means a comprehensive explanation of all of Firebug's functionality, but rather a basic introduction of its core features. As of this writing, there is no equivalent tool for Internet Explorer. And, of course, IE and Mozilla don't always display a page the same way, typically because of the way the two browsers interpret styles.

string userName = string.Empty;

    protectedvoid Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {

        userName = HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name.ToString();
        lblLoggedInUser.Text = userName.Split('\\')[1];
        lblMessage.Text = string.Empty;
        lblMessage.ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.Red;
    }

The first 2 lines of code in the Page_Load event get the current user’s domain and user name and writes the user name portion to the label control. Putting the user name in a label control versus a text box prevents users from changing the passwords of users. Next, add the following code and wire this event to the Button’s Click event:

protected void btnResetPassword_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        try
        {
                            
            string user = userName.Split('\\')[1];
            DirectoryEntry AD = new DirectoryEntry("WinNT://" + Environment.MachineName + ",computer");
            DirectoryEntry NewUser = AD.Children.Find(user);

            NewUser.Invoke("SetPassword", newobject[] {txtConfirmPassword.Text});
            NewUser.CommitChanges();

            lblMessage.Text = "Password change successful.";
            lblMessage.ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.Green;
        }
        catch (Exception err)
        {
            // set the error message
            Response.Write(err.Message);
        }
    }
}

The first three lines in the code above create an instance of the DirectoryEntry class based on the name of the computer and then query that computer for the specific user. Once the directory entry for that user is located, the Invoke method is called on the directory entry, passing in the command argument for setting the new password. This is followed by a call to the CommitChanges method. Lastly, in order to run this code on the web server, the web.config file needs to be modified so that the solution impersonates a user with privileges to update security settings:

<identity impersonate="true" userName="user" password="pwd"/>

Once the page is made available on the server, you can integrate it with SharePoint by adding a link to the SharePoint site, or by linking to it through a Page Viewer web part.

/* EXAMPLES
--Entire table
CreateInserts 'Webpages'
--Entries WHERE WebpageID > 100
CreateInserts 'Webpages', 'WebpageID > 100'
--Entries WHERE WebpageID > 100 ORDER BY Title
CreateInserts 'Webpages', 'WebpageID > 100', 'Title'
*/--If stored procedure already exists, drop it
IF  EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE object_id = 
OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[CreateInserts]') AND type in (N'P', N'PC'))
DROP PROCEDURE [dbo].[CreateInserts]
GO

--Create the stored procedure
CREATE PROC CreateInserts

@tableName nvarchar(100),
@whereClause nvarchar(MAX) = '',
@orderByClause nvarchar(MAX) = ''

AS

--Declare variables
DECLARE @tableHasIdentity bit
DECLARE @sql nvarchar(MAX)
DECLARE @cols nvarchar(MAX)
DECLARE @vals nvarchar(MAX)
SET @cols = ''
SET @vals = ''

--Determine if table has an identity column
SELECT @tableHasIdentity = 
OBJECTPROPERTY(OBJECT_ID(TABLE_NAME), 'TableHasIdentity')
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
WHERE TABLE_NAME = @tableName

--Do we need 'SET IDENTITY_INSERT tableName ON' statement?
IF @tableHasIdentity = 1
	BEGIN
		SET @sql = 'SELECT TOP 1 ''SET IDENTITY_INSERT ' + 
@tableName + ' ON '' FROM ' + @tableName
		EXEC sp_executesql @sql
	END

--Build list of columns and values
SELECT @cols = @cols + ',' + '[' + column_name + ']', @vals = @vals + 
	'+'',''+ISNULL(master.dbo.fn_varbintohexstr(cast([' + 
column_name + '] as varbinary(max))),''NULL'')' 
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.columns 
WHERE TABLE_NAME = @tableName and DATA_TYPE != 'timestamp'

--Build SQL string
SET @sql = 'SELECT ''INSERT INTO [' + @tableName + '] (' + 
SUBSTRING(@cols,2,LEN(@cols)) + ') ' + 
			'VALUES (''+' + SUBSTRING(@vals, 6, 
LEN(@vals)) + '+'')'' FROM ' + @tableName
--Adjust @whereClause and @orderByClause
IF LEN(@whereClause) > 0
	SET @sql = @sql + ' WHERE ' + @whereClause
IF LEN(@orderByClause) > 0
	SET @sql= @sql + ' ORDER BY ' + @orderByClause

--Execute SQL string
exec sp_executesql @sql

--Do we need 'SET IDENTITY_INSERT tableName OFF' statement?
IF @tableHasIdentity = 1
	BEGIN
		SET @sql = 'SELECT TOP 1 ''SET IDENTITY_INSERT ' + 
@tableName + ' OFF '' FROM ' + @tableName
		EXEC sp_executesql @sql
	END

GO

The last song on the radio, as I was parking my car today, was Turning Japanese (bonus points if you can name the artist without using Google). This is not the ideal song to have running through your head on a workday, or pretty much any other time. So in an effort to dispel the demons of eighties novelty pop music from my tortured brain, I thought today was as good a time as any to write about the Google Web Toolkit (GWT).

GWT is a framework for writing AJAX interactive web applications. Take a look at the GWT home page for lots of great information about GWT. I'm going to look at this from the point of view of answering the key question - "Why GWT"? In other words, out of all the AJAX frameworks out there, what compelling reasons are there to choose GWT?

Write Java code, not JavaScript

One of the most unique features of GWT is that you code in Java. While in development, you can run your Java code in a special "hosted mode" browser with all of the mature, sophisticated Java debugging tools you always have available. For deployment, this Java code is run through a compiler which translates this Java code to cross-browser JavaScript.

Although this is significant, especially in shops with a lot of Java experience, I don't believe this is a truly killer feature of GWT. The important thing is that the developer is shielded from the complexities of writing JavaScript code that works in all browsers. Other AJAX frameworks provide a layer of JavaScript that provides this abstraction. GWT does this by translating standard Java code, but how this is abstracted is less important than the simple fact that it is abstracted.

Simple RPC mechanism

GWT has its own mechanism for remote procedure calls between the browser and the server. This works a lot like vanilla Java RMI - define interfaces and implementations for your server functions, and code will be generated to allow your client code to call them as if they were simple local methods. This blows away all the work of defining XML or JSON data formats for requests and responses. Just code the function for the server, call the function (still in Java) from the client code, and all of the marshalling, unmarshalling, network communication, etc. is done for you.

GWT also supports other RPC methods, such as XML or JSON over HTTP. You can write server code as standard SOAP or REST web services and GWT will be able to use them directly. This will take longer to code than the GWT RPC mechanism, but allows you to use legacy web services or services intended to also be used by non-GWT clients. A good middle-ground approach may be to prototype using GWT RPC, and re-implement as web services later.

Optimized cross-browser JavaScript

One of the key reasons to use any AJAX framework is to write code that will produce identical results on all browsers, which is fiendishly difficult in raw JavaScript. Why roll your own code to handle all of those quirks, when a bunch of framework authors have already done it for you? GWT handles this, just like any good framework. As a bonus, the generated JavaScript is automatically compressed and obfuscated, decreasing download size and making reverse engineering more difficult.

Download sizes are kept even smaller by a unique GWT feature, namely...

Deferred binding

Writing code that works on any browser is great. But there is a cost - the framework has to include code for every browser. You may be viewing the page in IE, but you also downloaded code specific to Firefox, Safari, and Opera, which will never be executed. Deferred binding is the GWT solution to this dilemma.

The first step in deferred binding happens during compilation. The GWT compiler creates a different JavaScript file for each browser type, containing all of your application code optimized for just that one browser. A very small bootstrap script is also generated, which examines the execution environment and determines which browser-specific application script to load. The bootstrap script is included in a standard HTML page, and when the page loads the script will resolve, download, and run the correct application script.

There is also provision for taking advantage of caching. The bootstrap file is intended to never be cached (and is helpfully suffixed with "nocache.js" as a reminder). The implementation scripts are intended to be cached, and have file names that are a hash code of their contents. This means that if you re-compile, but there are no changes in a particular file, it will have the same name and will allow the browser to use the already cached version. If the file changes, it's filename will change and therefore force a reload when it is next requested. All of this is done without any developer help (the generated bootstrap script deals with the filenames automatically). Pretty neat, huh?

I've only talked about deferring binding based on browser type so far, but this is a general mechanism and you can define other context-dependent variances as well. The most common use of this is...

Localization

Localizing a GWT application is very straightforward and very similar to how it is done in standard Java applications. In the simple case, just create properties files with locale suffixes, access them by key through a GWT interface, and the locale-specific string will be used. The cool part is that GWT uses the deferred binding mechanism to make sure that only those properties for the current user's locale are ever downloaded.

As with browser-specific code, this starts at compile time. For each combination of browser AND locale, an application script is generated. So, if you have, say, 4 browsers and 3 different locales, you will have 12 files generated - such as FireFox in English, FireFox in French, IE in English, etc. The bootstrap file will examine the client environment and load the application file specific to the detected browser and locale.

Image bundles

It should be obvious by now that the Google team put a lot of effort into ensuring the highest possible performance. Image bundles are yet another performance-boosting feature of GWT. Defining an image bundle allows the GWT compiler to package a number of images into a single file which is accessed through a Java object. This reduces the number of network round trips by getting all images for your application in a single file download. The packaging is done by the GWT compiler; all the developer has to do is define an annotated interface with a function to access each image.

Embeds well in existing sites

Some frameworks work best only if they are in charge of the whole page. GWT "plays well with others", in that it can generate entire pages or elements within a page equally well. The GWT scripts work by creating HTML elements inside a specified element on a page during the onLoad() event. To embed a GWT application in an existing page, you therefore only need to include the script file and add an id to the element you want to contain the application (which can be a div, a td, the body, anything). Couldn't be easier.

Conclusion

That's a lot of good reasons to choose GWT, and that's just scratching the surface. There are many other features that make GWT a compelling choice. These include interoperation with native JavaScript, intelligent support for back button navigation within an application, accessibility support, programming delayed logic, support for JUnit testing, availability of third-party widget libraries, and more. GWT is also under continuous development, with the upcoming 1.6 version to include improvements like a faster hosted mode server, faster string handling, better compiler performance, and easier deployment to standard JEE WAR files. The Google team has done a very good job of providing a no-compromise framework that provides a fast, rich, and consistent user experience while keeping the developer focused on the application rather than the technology. It's definitely worth taking for a test drive.

Now, if I could just get that song out of my head...

1//Create DataView
2DataView dv = null;
3if (useNew)
4    dv = new DataView(dt);
5else
6    dv = dt.DefaultView;
7
8//Apply filter
9dv.RowFilter = "RandomNumber = " + randomNumber.ToString();
10
11//Return num rows found
12return dv.Count;

To begin, it's worth noting that there are several advantages to using managed code over T-SQL:

Enhanced programming model .NET Framework languages offer constructs and capabilities previously unavailable to SQL developers. Visual Basic, Visual C#, and Visual C++ provide capabilities that are not available in Transact-SQL, such as arrays, sophisticated exception handling, and reusability of code.

Reusability of Code A library of managed assemblies can be created and distributed more easily than a Transact-SQL script can be distributed.

Leverage Existing Skills You can use and enhance your skills in the languages and development environment in which you are already experienced to create database objects.

Richer developer experience When you develop database objects using the SQL Server project template, you have complete integration with the project system, including building, debugging, and deployment to multiple servers.

Security When you use database objects created using Visual Basic, Visual C#, or Visual C++, the code-access security of those languages is combined with the user-based permissions in SQL Server.

Creating the Database Project

The first step in creating a stored procedure (or any database object) is to create a SQL Server project in Visual Studio:

1. From the File menu, create a new project.

2. In the New Project Dialog, select and expand a language node in the Project Types area.

3. Select the Database node.

4. Select the SQL Server Project template.

5. Click OK.

Next, you will prompted for the database connection you are using. Unless this database has had CLR-integration enabled previously, you will need to run the following in SQL Server:

sp_configure 'clr enabled', 1
GO
RECONFIGURE
GO

Creating the Stored Procedure

At this point, you are ready to start creating database objects. To create a new stored procedure, do the following steps:
1. Open an existing SQL Server Project, or create a new one. From the Project menu, select Add New Item.

2. Select Stored Procedure.

3. Type a Name for the new stored procedure.

4. Add code to run when the stored procedure is executed.

5. In the sample code below, I have created a stored procedure that accepts one parameter and queries the Product table of the Adventure Works database. The code should look very familiar, utilizing Connection, Command and Parameter objects. One object that may not be familiar is the SQLPipe. This allows managed stored procedures running in-process on a SQL Server database to return results back to the caller.

    [Microsoft.SqlServer.Server.SqlProcedure]
    publicstaticvoid SelectProductByProductID(int productID)
    {
        using (SqlConnection conn = 
new SqlConnection("context connection=true"))
        {
            try
            {
                SqlPipe pipe = null;

                SqlCommand SelectProductCommand = new SqlCommand();

                SqlParameter productIDParam = 
new SqlParameter("@ProductID", SqlDbType.Int);

                productIDParam.Value = productID;

                SelectProductCommand.Parameters.Add(productIDParam);
                SelectProductCommand.CommandText = 
"Select * from Production.Product where AProductID = @ProductID";

                conn.Open();

                SelectProductCommand.Connection = conn;

                pipe = SqlContext.Pipe;
                pipe.ExecuteAndSend(SelectProductCommand);
            }
            catch (SqlException sqlEx)
            {
                //code to handle or log the sql exception here 
                Console.WriteLine(sqlEx);
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(ex);
            }
        }
    }

Once the code is ready, you can build and deploy the stored procedure to the database by pressing 'F5'. To test the deployment, there is a file in your project called test.sql. In this file, you can add script calls to the obects you just created. For example, to call the stored procedure created above, enter:

EXEC [dbo].[SelectProductByProductID] 4

That's it. If the stored procedure was written correctly, you will now see this item in list of stored procedures in Enterprise Manager. However, you'll see the object has a lock icon next to it, as shown below. This is because the object is not editable outside of the Visual Studio project.





Conclusion

At this point, you might be asking 'so where are the benefits?'. Let's look at a few:

Exception Handling: if the stored procedure returns an error, say a constraint violation for example, this error gets converted into a SqlException that you can then handle in your managed code. To try this, change the column in the stored procedure text above to AProduct and hit 'F5'. You'll see that the catch block is entered. This gives a lot of flexibility in how you handle errors that don't readily exist in T-SQL.

Deployment: If you need to deploy the objects you created to another server, you simply change the database connection in the project properties and hit 'F5'. No more creating and managing scripted stored procedures.

1Response.AppendHeader("Cache-Control", "no-cache; private; no-store; 
must-revalidate; max-stale=0; post-check=0; pre-check=0; max-age=0");
2Response.AppendHeader("Pragma", "no-cache");
3Response.AppendHeader("Keep-Alive", "timeout=3, max=993");
4Response.AppendHeader("Expires", "Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT"); 
//Some random old date

1
2
3

1string escapedText = System.Security.SecurityElement.Escape(input);

1private static bool IsValidString(string input)
2{
3    try
4    {
5        //Trim input string
6        input = input.Trim();
7
8        //If blank, no need to validate
9        if (input.Length == 0)
10            return true;
11
12        //Loop through characters
13        foreach (char currentChar in input)
14        {
15            if (currentChar == 0x9 || // \t = 9
16                currentChar == 0xA || //   = 10
17                currentChar == 0xD || //   = 13
18                (currentChar >= 0x20 && currentChar <= 0xD7FF) ||
19                (currentChar >= 0xE000 && currentChar <= 0xFFFD) ||
20                (currentChar >= 0x10000 && currentChar <= 0x10FFFF))
21            {
22                //Valid character
23            }
24            else
25                return false;
26        }
27    }
28    catch
29    {
30        return false;
31    }
32    return true;
33}
34

1//HTML:
2
"outerDiv" class="autosize">
3    
"innerDiv" runat="server" style="display: block">
4        //Content...
5    
6
7
8//CSS:
9#outerDiv
10{
11    min-height: 200px; 
12}
13
14div.autosize { display: table; width: 1px; }
15div.autosize > div { display: table-cell; }