ANOMALY INCORPORATED

Every once in a while one of our clients does something that really makes us stop and think. A while back, we helped Freeman Motor Company, a great Portland-based pre-owned luxury car dealer, overhaul the back end data management utilities that help them keep their ever-changing inventory of cars current across multiple sites. They’ve always been a great client, and now their founder and president, Eric Freeman, has stepped up and made us even prouder.

Eric is currently visiting a resettlement camp in Kageyo, Rwanda, working with the community there to raise money to help buy them a truck. The community of 3,000 has only a handful of bicycles for transportation, and the nearest medical help is more than a full day’s walk away. A single truck would help them immensely, and help save innocent lives.

There’s more info on the Kageyo initiative on the Africa New Life Ministries website, and you can read about Eric’s travels on the blog we helped set up for him.

We’re excited to announce the launch of Emmbook for Baby, which we developed in cooperation with Perry Street Productions. Emmbook is an iPhone app enabling parents to record their baby’s milestones, moments, favorites, and photos. We had a great time developing this app, and are excited to see it start to gain some traction in the App Store.

We’re also thrilled to report that we made great use of Joe Hewitt’s Three20 Project to enable some really great-looking transitions in the “scrapbook” portion of our app. Thanks, Joe!

You can read more about Emmbook For Baby here, and if you’re a new parent, you just might like to grab it from the App Store.

Hello everyone. We have a problem.

We work too hard. You (yes, you!) work too hard. It’s summer in Portland and it’s ending, one moment at a time. So sad. So tragic. So preventable.

We have a solution in mind, but we need your help. In Cuba, there’s a tradition called “La Hora del Amigo”. The premise is simple — gather with friends over coffee, mid-day. Talk. Relax. Enjoy time passing. Interrupt the work day.

Sounds pretty good to us. And since this is Portland, it’s already happening, at Pambiche, starting at 2PM every day.

So, come out and help us reclaim some mid-day slacktime. Join us next Wednesday, July 29th, 2PM at Pambiche for coffee, conversation, and the glorious passing of time. If it’s a hit, we’ll aim to do this the last Wednesday of every month.

Call it a meetup, a tweetup, a get-together, whatever. Just remember — shop talk is OK, but please, no *real* work. See you there!

Pambiche
2811 NE Glisan
Portland, OR

Well now, that was quite a lot of fun, wasn’t it? We had a blast at Ignite Portland 6, and not just because sponsorship got us our name up in lights. Ignite is becoming a Portland institution, and we’re excited to be a part of it.


So, here’s our short-form take-away from the night. Long-form musings to follow. Or not. We’ll see…

• 1. Sponsorship pays off — that is, if our traffic numbers from the last 24 hours have anything to say about it. (thanks, and hello to all of our new friends, here and on Twitter!)




• 2. Those speakers given to tipple should request slots in the first set. I’m just sayin’…




• 3. Funny is the new black.




• 4. Rugby is *definitely* not just for boys.




• 5. It’s never too early to get your IP7 proposal in…

In all (semi) seriousness — thanks to everyone who came out for Ignite 6, especially all of the awesome volunteers and speakers. We’ll post our sponsor video here in the next day or so so those of you who missed it can catch Milo’s big-screen debut.

See you at IP7!

From the Department of Helpful Advice

Recently, I’ve been receiving a fair amount of questions that are all basically variations on the theme of “what is Twitter and how do I use it effectively?”.  After writing up a quick list of starter hints for a colleague, I ran across a similar question on Mahalo Answers, shared the same bit of advice, and wouldn’t you know it, got awarded the “Best Answer” nod. Yay us!

So, in the interest of making good use of by-products, I present the same advice here — I’ll follow up with a few opinions of mine regarding the state of the twitterverse in due course (the ecosystem is mature enough to undergo a thorough taxonomizing, IMO).

You can follow our web-and-business-related posts at @anomalyinc

Enjoy, and as always, HTH:

Step one: use TweetDeck:
http://www.tweetdeck.com/

It greatly simplifies searching, following, re-tweeting, etc, by giving you a “dashboard” that constantly updates various statuses. Warning: highly addictive…

As for General Tweetiquette:
- you reply by putting the @ sign before someone’s name in your tweet — for example:

@pdxgene thanks! that was a great lasagna recipe!

- you can and should include web links in your tweets. TweetDeck (among others) will automatically shorten them using a URL shortening service

- you can mention a subject or area of interest by including a hashtag, for example:

So glad this week is almost over! #tgif
or
Next door neighbors’ drumset is too loud! #getoffmylawn

- if you want to re-tweet (essentially, forward) someone’s tweet, you start it with “RT @username“, for example:

RT @pdxgene I’ve got two tickets to Led Zeppelin for sale cheap!

For what it’s worth, TweetDeck has automated buttons for replying, re-tweeting and direct-messaging people’s tweets, among a lot of other features.

We’re incredibly psyched to be presenting at Substance’s Show and Tell event next Tuesday, March 3!

As one of a handful of presenters for the evening, we’ll be giving a brief presentation and demonstration of our until-now-shrouded-in-secrecy, super-fantastic, so-close-to-ready-to-ship-it-hurts-to-write-about-it iPhone app. It’s going to be a great night, and we’d love to see you there!

Details at Substance, RSVP via Upcoming. Hope you can make it!

If it feels like forever since we’ve posted an update here, it’s not because we’ve been trapped under a rock or slacking off — far from it. In between the holidays and lots of Pacific Northwest skiing, we’ve managed to crank out a lot of work.

Here are a few samples of what we’ve been working on, and what we’ve got on the burner:

• - Paintings by Shauneen field — we’ve created a website for a great friend of ours and an incredibly talented painter in her own right — check it out at shauneenart.com
  
  
• - Esque Studio — we’ve recently updated Esque’s site with their new spring line, which is just *smashing* — check it out
  
  
• - Joblr — We’ve been helping out with the US launch of Joblr.net, a brand-spanking-new self-service search engine marketing tool — check it out!
  
  

And, what we’re currently working on:

• - a new, long-overdue website for EPIC Imaging, which will be launching soon
  
  
• - a very cool iPhone app for a client, which we’ll be able to discuss, promote, etc, soon…
  
  
• - some e-commerce-related extensions to WordPress — both for our own use, and for use in client projects. This is very exciting, and we’ll cover the details in a separate post, perhaps when we’re ready to release the plug-in.

Meanwhile, as if that weren’t enough, we’ve been burning the midnight oil putting together something huge that you’re all going to love — if you’ve got an iPhone — more (much more) to come about this in the days and weeks ahead — suffice it to say it’s a labor of love, and an app we’re creating because *we* want to use it (always a good litmus test!)

Founded in 2001, Crag Law Center has since developed an impressive environmental advocacy track record, including protecting Mt. Hood and other Cascade peaks from development, promoting livable communities, and helping protect northwest forests. We’re proud to have them as a client, and are incredibly pleased to have completed a major revamp of the Crag website.

The Crag website has long been a valuable resource for followers of environmental justice — featuring court filings, opinions, activist resources, and a wealth of background information on the cases Crag handles. In addition to adding a fresh look, we’ve updated it with blog posts, on-site search, and automatic indexing of case documents.

We hope you like the new crag.org as much as we do!

We’ve just finished helping our friends Andi Kovel and Justin Parker over at Esque Studio add their Fall 2008 line to the already-impressive body of work on their website.

Esque produces some of the most beautiful glass art we’ve ever seen, and are recognized industry leaders.

There are some absolutely gorgeous pieces on display — check it out:

www.esque-studio.com

We’ve just finished up and launched the new website for the Pearl Women’s Center, a unique medical practice here in Portland’s Pearl District:

We developed the site in collaboration with the incredibly talented creative team at The Maris Agency, and we’re very, very pleased with the results — a clean, brand-tuned facelift (no pun intended) for a stylish, boutique client.

In this build, we had the opportunity to try out some great new cross-browser-compatible interactive techniques. In the end, we ended up using both the script.aculo.us and JQuery libraries, and some fantastic open-source extensions of each, to enhance several different areas of the site.

In particular, for the before/after image galleries, we made use of the fantastic Galleria extension to JQuery, which, in coordination with Wordpress (and no small amount of tinkering to make it all look just right), made possible the dynamic, cross-browser, hack-free photo galleries that grace the PWC website. Much respect and thanks to the developers of Galleria for their great contribution to the world of image galleries.

As alluded to above, the other great tool at the heart of this project is Wordpress — originally developed as a blogging platform, it makes a wonderful CMS as well. The ease of extensibility and sensibly-uncomplicated template system made for a very fast and fun build, leaving plenty of room in our schedule for well-nigh-obsessive detail tweaking.

We’re experimenting with custom Wordpress plug-in development, and are looking forward to making much use of it in upcoming projects.