Fusionovation

Adventures in Mass Transit

jware — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:06:00 GMT

In February I learned that I'd lost my driver's license as I was standing at the TSA counter at the Lubbock airport. I was able to use alternate photo ID & credit cards to establish my identity and I was able to clear security. While alternate mean of identification works for the TSA, rental car companies are only interested in you if you can produce a driver's license. Thus began my crash course in mass transit. Considering I had little time to prepare, I managed to get around alright and made all my meetings. Seattle's got a decent mass transit system. I spent a lot less on bus fare than I usually did on rental cars and parking. I told my boss (and bookkeeper) not to get used to it…but that I would give it another shot during the nicer weather of summer.

I finally made good on that pledge last week. After parking my car at the Lubbock airport, I traveled by airplane, train, bus (Seattle Metro, Sound Transit, Mason Transit Authority, Microsoft Connect), and ferry. Just to make things even more interesting, I stayed somewhere different each night (family, friends, hotels). The snapshot below is a partial summary of just two days of public transportation excursions.

The trip took me to neighborhoods I'd never visited before, but I didn't had any difficulty getting to meetings on time. Apart from reducing my carbon footprint, It was a good object lesson in learning what's really essential (Note to self: lose the briefcase next time).

Social Media Lessons From the Wine World - Part 1: Planning

bsimons — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:08:00 GMT

In my hours away from the world of marketing and web development, I write a wine blog called Vinotology. Since I started my blog, I’ve become pretty active in the wine blogging and Twitter community and have had the opportunity to observe the way that a lot of wineries are using social media to market their businesses. There are some wineries that are doing a great job of using these tools, but there are a lot of others who aren’t.

The wine business is a perfect case study for the use of social media. This is an industry that is built on a social product, making it ideally suited to marketing via social media. Additionally, the largest growth market segment in wine is among Millennials, a demographic that was practically raised online and one that spends a good deal of time using social media. The wine industry is really just starting to work through the growing pains of social marketing. Most wineries have only recently begun to experiment with tools like Twitter and Facebook, and a lot of their experiences can be informative to people in other industries. So what have I seen successful wineries doing? In this post I want to look at the planning that goes into a successful social media strategy.

Going In With a Plan

Back when I used to work for a financial services company, one of the mantras that they used to teach us was, “People don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan.” The same thing applies when it comes to social media. There are so many different tools out there, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube, just to name a few. If you don’t develop a strategy, you can waste a lot of time on a tool that isn’t really suited to your needs, or possibly your abilities. You don’t want to get analysis paralysis, but you do need to think through your approach to social media. Here are some good questions to ask when deciding on the social media tools that you will use –

·         Am I trying to do too much?

You only have so much time in the day, so don’t spread yourself too thin. Pick the tools that are going to provide your business with the most value. It’s probably best to find one or two platforms to start with, and then you can expand out from there as you have time. It’s always better to do a few things really well, than to do too many things poorly.

·         Are my customers really using this tool?

If your customers aren’t using MySpace, you would be wasting your time getting involved in that community. A lot of businesses will probably find that Facebook and Twitter are a good place to start. These tools have a wide user base, and offer a lot of opportunities to interact with your customers. Think about the customers that you are trying to reach, and pick your technology based on where they are.

·        Am I wired for using this medium well?

Gary Vaynerchuck, one of the rockstars of social media, is constantly talking about following your DNA. Vaynerchuck has really practiced what he preaches. With a high energy and charismatic persona, he is ideally suited to take advantage of the medium of video blogging, and has done a great job of it on his Wine Library TV site. Not everyone does well on camera though. Although I’ve messed around with video some on my blog, I’ve found that I do much better with a written blog. Think about your strengths, and pattern your use of social media around them.

·         Do I understand how to use this tool effectively?

Before you dive into any social media endeavor, do a simple Google search to find what people are saying about how to effectively leverage it. This doesn’t take very long. It may take some time to really get comfortable with using Twitter or to really hit your stride with blogging, but at least you can enter the fray with an understanding of the ground rules. Other people have already made the mistakes for you, take advantage of their experience.

·         How do I intend to integrate my social media tools?

One of the awesome things about many of these tools is that they all tie in together. Your website can link to your blog, to your Twitter user page, and to your Facebook page. A lot of blogging platforms allow you to automatically send out updates to Twitter and Facebook when you make a new post. If you post videos on YouTube, you can embed them on your blog, post them on Facebook, and send out a tweet with a link to the video. The key is to think through the integrations that will provide value to your followers.

There are certainly other questions that you can ask as well, but just asking these will put you ahead of where a lot of people start out. The main thing is to approach your social media campaign the same way that you would any other marketing efforts. Just because these tools are free, doesn't mean that you should rush into using them without a plan.

In my next post I will be looking at some specific examples of how I've seen wineries effectively using social media, as well as some examples of what not to do, and I'll talk about how these same rules apply to your business.

The Webfinger Protocol - Pay Attention Marketers

jtowell — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:10:00 GMT

Google recently introduced the WebFinger protocol and enabled it for all Gmail account.

What is WebFinger?

WebFinger is a protocol that can be used to attach public profile information to an email address. Engineers have been fumbling around with ways to standardize the way profile information is shared for years. Remember OpenID? Or Facebook Connect? Many of these products have major shortcomings. With OpenID, users have to remember a provider URL and yet another account login. With Facebook Connect, we're at the mercy of Facebook with regards to how data is handled.

The interesting thing about WebFinger, is that information can be attached to an email address. Email is required for just about anything you do on the web so it makes sense that data about a profile should be attached to it.

WebFinger is about making already public information more easily discoverable, not uncovering private data.While a WebFinger profile may have information about the location of a user's Facebook profile, it won't contain data secured by Facebook.

What kind of profile data can you get from WebFinger?

WebFinger can support all kinds of data. Really, just about anything digital can in some way or another be added to a WebFinger profile. WebFinger data is delivered as XML and can include references to the source of the data, not just a copy of it. For example, if you have a public profile somewhere, and WebFinger knows about it, WebFinger would just display the URL to that public profile, not a copy of the data in it.

Google's implementation of WebFinger publishes user hCards, OpenID provider, Google public profile info, and other neat stuff.

What can marketers do with this?

What might be of obvious use is the amount of data that could be pulled down about a user. The data is public already, so there should be no problems with discovering and analyzing the data.

I think the more interesting application will be with the convenience the data can provide for users. For example, imagine a form where you want to gather a user's contact information. The form could be built so that as soon as the user enters an email address, WebFinger is used to prepopulate the form with the user's contact information.

What can be done today?

Obviously, this is still an emerging technology. However, the protocol is open and ready for experimentation. One idea is to create forms that enable WebFinger capabilities for Gmail users. Or, your organization could host your own WebFinger server to link public data about your employees. We'd love to hear from anybody building practical applications for WebFinger.

Adding a rich text editor to ASP.NET MVC using strongly typed helpers, DataAnnotations & jQuery

mpalmer — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:07:00 GMT

You may have read about the new strongly-typed helpers in ASP.NET MVC 2. In addition to the HTML element helpers like Html.TextBoxFor(), you can use the more generic Html.EditorFor() to build your own template for editing a custom data type. In this post, I'll show you how to create a single template you can use for any forms that need a rich text editor.

UIHints using Using DataAnnotations

First, we need to specify the type of data we'll be building a template for. We'll use a simplified CMS model as an example:

public class CMSPage
{
    public CMSPage() { }

    string Title { get; set; }
    string URL { get; set; }
    string Content { get; set; }
}

Using DataAnnotations, we can specify the type of each of these elements:

public class CMSPage
{
    public CMSPage() { }

    [DataType(DataType.Text)]
    string Title { get; set; }

    [DataType(DataType.Url)]
    string URL { get; set; }

    [DataType(DataType.Html)]
    string Content { get; set; }
}

We have already provided enough information for the EditorFor to build a decent edit form for our CMSPage object—but with a UIHint we can make this even better:

public class CMSPage
{
    public CMSPage() { }

    [DataType(DataType.Text)]
    string Title { get; set; }

    [DataType(DataType.Url)]
    string URL { get; set; }

    [DataType(DataType.Html)]
    [UIHint("Html")]
    string Content { get; set; }
}

EditorFor now knows we want to use the "Html" template for the Content field—now we just need to create the template.

Custom EditorTemplates

Create a new folder in Views/Shared called EditorTemplates, and create a new partial view, Html.ascx, in that folder. Since this template will be used for editing HTML, we can use string as the type.

<%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl<String>" %>
<%= Html.TextArea("", Model, new { @class = "html" })%>

Now the EditorFor helper will use our new Html.ascx template for any fields we've specified to be HTML using the UIHint attribute. Currently our template is just a textarea with the CSS class html applied, but with a little jQuery and progressive enhancement we can improve on that.

Upgrading your textarea with markItUp!

markItUp! is a jQuery plugin that lets you turn any textarea into a rich text editor for any number of text formats—we'll be looking at an editor for HTML, but there are markItUp! sets available for formats like Textile, markdown, wikis, and many others. After downloading the latest release and the Html set, add the required CSS and JavaScript references:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="markitup/skins/markitup/style.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="markitup/sets/html/style.css" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="markitup/jquery.markitup.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="markitup/sets/html/set.js"></script>

Now all we need to upgrade our textarea to a rich text editor is:

jQuery(function ($) {
    $('textarea.html').markItUp(mySettings);
});

So what are the advantages of this approach?

Reusable - all you need to do to add the same editor support to another field on any model is to add the appropriate UIHelper attribute. You could even develop several templates like this to use as a standard base project.
DRY - there is exactly one place to change the editor for all "Html" type fields.
Consistent - you can be sure that all "Html" fields will have the same editor control.

Smooth Fusion Wins Gold at Lubbock Addy Awards

tknowlton — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:04:00 GMT

Smooth Fusion took Gold at the Lubbock Advertising Federation Addy Awards in the Interactive Media division for the design and implementation of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra Kids site. Smooth Fusion received the award at the February 6, 2010 awards dinner. Jay Bates, Smooth Fusion co-founder and Creative VP accepted the award on behalf of Smooth Fusion.

Smooth Fusion worked directly with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra to re-design and update the site.

The Lubbock Ad Federation was founded in 1948.

Sorting/Filtering a generic List using delegates

sapplegate — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:41:00 GMT

This is a nice little technique to easily sort a generic List using delegates. Say you have the following class:

public class Product
{
    private int _ProductID;
    private string _Name;
    private decimal _Price;

    public Product(int productid, string name, decimal price)
    {
        _ProductID = productid;
        _Name = name;
        _Price = price;
    }

    public int ProductID
    {
        get { return _ProductID; }
        set { _ProductID = value; }
    }

    public string Name
    {
        get { return _Name; }
        set { _Name = value; }
    }

    public decimal Price
    {
        get { return _Price; }
        set { _Price = value; }
    }
}

First, we'll create a Product list and fill it with products:

List<Product> products = GetAllProducts();

Now, let's say you want to filter the products, and only get products that have a price of more than $40. You can filter the list by using the FindAll() method, using anonymous delegates instead of predicates:

products = products.FindAll(delegate(Product p) { return p.Price > 40; });

You can sort a generic list the same way. Usually, to sort a custom class, you'd have to have your class inherit from the IComparable interface, and implement your own CompareTo method. But using anonymous delegates, you can use the Sort method any way you want with just a single line of code. This will sort the list by Name ascending:

products.Sort(delegate(Product p1, Product p2) { return p1.Name.CompareTo(p2.Name); });

So there you have it. Using anonymous delegates, you can sort and filter an entire generic list using only two lines of code.

A few more examples:

//Filter list to only get products that start with the letter A
products = products.FindAll(delegate(Product p) { return p.Name.ToLower().StartsWith("a"); });

//Filter over a price range
products = products.FindAll(delegate(Product p) { return (p.Price > 20 && p.Price < 60); });

//Sort by Name descending
products.Sort(delegate(Product p1, Product p2) { return p2.Name.CompareTo(p1.Name); });

Quality is in the Details

mpalmer — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:36:00 GMT

I recently read a great post that tied chef Gordon Ramsey's obsessive nature to software quality:

Gordon Ramsey, in his auto-biography, defended his obsessive perfectionist nature, arguing he has to obsess. You don’t win Michelin stars without it.
“It doesn’t matter how amazing the steak is, if it’s served on a cold plate it’s crap. If it’s served with a dull knife it’s crap. If the gravy isn’t piping hot, it’s crap. If you’re eating it on an uncomfortable chair, it’s crap. If it’s served by an ugly waiter who just came in from a smoke break, it’s crap. Because I care about the steak, I have to care about everything around it. “
The parallels in software are obvious. If you see a few lines of atrocious code, you can make a judgement about the programmer. By judging the programmer, you can judge his boss, and by judging his boss you can judge the company. That’s the nature of fractals. The desire for quality trickles down to everything from making sure that the homepage photo isn’t blurry all the way through to making sure that font in Christmas card is correct. As Aristotle said, excellence is not an act but a habit.

Attention to detail is vital. Thomas Keller, the only American with two three-star restaurants, is famously obsessed with the details. In The Soul of a Chef, Michael Ruhlman notes that Keller stores his fish on ice in the direction they swim in the ocean. His serving staff are trained by ballet instructors. He has banned the use of tongs in his kitchen, believing they harm the food. He has stopped to correct kitchen staff when he believed they were not gentle enough with the loaf when slicing bread, and has instructed his servers to replace your bread if it cools before you are ready to eat it. He even inspects every plate that comes back to the kitchen, looking for anything that wasn't eaten.

Chef David Chang of Momofuku turned a tiny noodle shop into one of the most popular restaurants in New York by holding himself to a higher standard:

Just because we're not Per Se, just because we're not Daniel, just because we're not a four-star restaurant, why can't we have the same ... standards? ... I know we've won awards, all this stuff, but it's not because we're doing something special—I believe it's really because we care more than the next guy.

It's easy to see who pays attention to detail in the software world:

How much attention are you paying to the details of your application? You may not be building the next Apple product, but why not hold yourself to the same standards?

Site Launch: Joe's Crab Shack

tknowlton — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 17:05:00 GMT

Site: Joe's Crab Shack (www.joescrabshack.com)
Client: Slingshot, LLC
Creative Design By: Slingshot, LLC
Launched: September 2009

Smooth Fusion built the backend of the Joe's Crab Shack site and front end controls using creative assets and markup provided by Slingshot. Smooth Fusion also provides hosting for Joe's.

Site Launch: Happy Birthday Jack Daniels (ChatterAmp)

tknowlton — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:53:00 GMT

Site: ChatterAmp implementation on Jack Daniels site
Client: Slingshot, LLC
Creative Design By: Slingshot, LLC
Launched: Sept 2009

Smooth Fusion worked with Slingshot, LLC to provide a ChatterAmp implementation for the celebration of Jack Daniels' birthday. ChatterAmp aggregated tweets from all over the world wishing Jack Daniels a happy birthday and plotted the origin of the tweets on a map.

Waves, Bots, Gadgets, and the Inadequecies in Email that you Never Knew Existed

jtowell — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:46:00 GMT

By now, you've probably heard of invite only, Google Wave.To appreciate all the new stuff packed into Google Wave, you should watch this very long video or this very short video below:

The best part about Wave is that it isn't just a Google only toy. Wave is a protocol designed such that eventually, anyone will be able to create their own Wave server. The protocol is specifically referred to as a "federation protocol" which means that Wave servers will be able to talk to each other. Eventually, Wave, or something like it, will replace email. We won't send emails, we'll start or respond to waves. However, this post isn't about future IT predictions.

Before I continue, I want to remind you about what email can do: send and receive text and attachments. Got it?

Wave Robots

Today, I want to introduce you to the concept of Wave Gadgets and Wave Robots. First, a definition of Robots (aka: bots) from Wave Robot API documentation:

A robot is an automated participant on a wave. A robot can read the contents of a wave in which it participates, modify the wave's contents, add or remove participants, and create new blips and new waves. In short, a robot can perform many of the actions that any other participant can perform.
You can use a robot to perform actions such as the following:
modify information in a wave
interact with participants in a wave
communicate and synchronize information in a wave to the outside world or to other waves
access or modify state in a third-party (such as a database)

Here's an example. Let's say you want to tweet and view tweets from within a wave. Just create a wave, then add the Tweety Bot to the conversation (tweety-wave@appspot.com). This bot is an application that could be hosted anywhere. In this case it is hosted by Google. After the bot is added to the conversation, it first displays a Twitter login screen directly within the wave. Let's pause for reflection...

Remember before, when we discussed what email can do? Send and receive text and attachments. Got it?

After you log in with Twitter, directly from within your wave, you can send a receive Tweets inside the wave. See this post for screenshots.

Another sample bot comes from Amazon. The bot scans your wave text and converts it to Amazon links and buttons where applicable. Check out the demo.

Wave Gadgets

Now, about gadgets. From the Wave Gadget API documentation:

Wave gadgets typically aren't full blown applications, but small add-ons that improve certain types of conversations. For example, a wave might include a gadget that lets wave participants vote on where to go to lunch.

Wave can handle existing gadgets. But, creating Wave specific gadgets allows you to access things like user information and better handle wave playback.

Remember back in early 2009, when people used this archaic concept called "email"? Back then, if you wanted to conduct a poll, you had to send around the "email" which would contain links to a 3rd party site that users could interact with to cast their vote. Incredible right? Neanderthals...

With wave, you could use a polling gadget and embed it straight into the wave. Users participating in the wave vote right then, without leaving.

Marketers

Your head is probably now swimming with ideas for bots and gadgets. If not, here's one idea to get you kickstarted. Bob's Pizza has a bot that listens to wave participant's conversation about favorite pizza ingredients and disliked pizza ingredients. The bot produces the ideal order for the pizza party and provides buttons to automatically call in the order and have the pizza delivered. The bot might even display special offers or topping ideas based on the conversation.

Or Tom's Electronics wants to send out coupons to the launch of a new store. Instead of just firing off coupons in email, he sends out waves with an embedded, puzzle gadget. The puzzle gadget requires multiple participants to solve. Wavers add participants to their wave to help solve the puzzle. After the puzzle is solved, all the wave participants get the coupon. The net effect is that more people get the coupon and users engage with the brand in a fun, social way.

When?

Although the Wave protocol is federated, it hasn't yet surpassed email in adoption. Wave may never replace email completely, and even if it does, it will likely be a decade before it does.

However, Wave is already very popular and used by millions. If you are trying to market something to an early adoption type crowd, this platform seems ready to go.

Why Twitter's Embrace of Retweets Can Be Good for Marketers

jtowell — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:19:00 GMT

Twitter recently baked in retweet functionality into their core service. Here are the notable changes:

Retweets now display with the original twit's profile, not the retweeter's profile.
Twits can just click a button to retweet instead of typing "RT @username"
Retweets show retweet stats including who else has retweeted the tweet
The API has a new method to accomodate retweeting programmatically
The API has a new method that displays all the retweets for a given tweet.
Twitter now has pages for "Retweets by others", "Retweets by you", and "Your tweets, retweeted"

The net effect of these changes is that great tweets will see the original tweeter credited and thus drive more traffic, followers, and brand awareness to the author. The lesson to marketers is to create value in your tweets because branding on Twitter just got more powerful.

Read a more detailed commentary here.

Razorfish Finds Digital Sweepstakes Useful

jtowell — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:48:00 GMT

Razorfish surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers to cull information about the way people interact with digital branding efforts. Read the full survey here and Razorfish’s analysis here.

I found a few of these findings of particular interest to marketers. The bottom line is that digital branding, specifically through social media, is very effective. But you need to entice users with freebies to get them to participate. Here are the lessons to be learned, sans-fluffery.

Digital sweepstakes are no joke… you should use them (#21). Digital sweepstakes lead to brand awareness and the coveted WOM (word of mouth) (#21).

Most people don’t spend time producing content (like a video or essay) for a contest (#23). But when they do, the results are a WOM goldmine (#24).

Most people don’t follow brands on Twitter (#25). But when they do, they recommend the brand to all their buddies (#26). Why do people follow brands on Twitter? Because of the deals and offers (#27).

A healthy group of people will friend a brand on Facebook or MySpace (#28). And when they do, good things happen (#29). Why do people friend a brand? Because of the deals (#30)! Do you sense a theme?

Digital branding is effective (#32, #17, and #18), so use it. And don’t forget to use sweepstakes, giveaways, deals, offers, or freebies in general.

Site Launch: Thrive (a Microsoft site for developers)

tknowlton — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:08:00 GMT

Site: Thrive
Client: Microsoft
Creative Design By: Mindseye (Portland)
Launched: July 2009

Smooth Fusion worked with Mindseye to build this site for Microsoft. Mindseye provided the creative assets and Smooth Fusion implemented the site, including the Silverlight sliding banners. Smooth Fusion also hosts the community section of the site.

SharePoint Field Data: Simple Web Part

mbell — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:25:00 GMT

If you're working with CAML, it's good to have available a list of fields, their internal field names, and their data types. I wrote a simple Web part that accepts the display name of a list and returns this information, along with whether or not each field is required or indexed. The code for the Web part can be found below, and can easily be tweaked to include other field data. I went ahead and retrieved the field data for many common lists in SharePoint as a reference, and have included those results in the attached SharePoint Lists Field Data document.

    public class GetListFieldInfo : System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart
    {
        private const string default_listname = "Documents";
        private string listname;

        [Personalizable(PersonalizationScope.Shared), WebBrowsable(true), WebDisplayName("List Name"), WebDescription("Enter the display name of the list.")]
        public string ListName
        {
            get { return listname; }
            set { listname = value; }
        }

        public GetListFieldInfo()
        {
            this.ExportMode = WebPartExportMode.All;
            listname = default_listname;
        }

        protected override void CreateChildControls()
        {
            base.CreateChildControls();
        }

        protected override void RenderContents(HtmlTextWriter writer)
        {
            SPWeb web = SPContext.Current.Web;
            if (web != null)
            {
                try
                {
                    SPList list = web.Lists[ListName];
                    if (list != null)
                    {
                        writer.Write("<h2>" + list.Title + "</h2>");
                        writer.Write("<p><strong>Location: </strong>" + list.DefaultViewUrl + "</p>");
                        writer.Write("<table border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"2\" cellpadding=\"2\" style=\"width: 100%;\">");
                        writer.Write("<tr><td><strong>FIELD NAME</strong></td><td><strong>INTERNAL FIELD NAME</strong></td><td><strong>DATA TYPE</strong></td><td><strong>IS REQUIRED</strong></td><td><strong>IS INDEXED</strong></td></tr>");
                        SPFieldCollection fc = list.Fields;
                        foreach (SPField field in fc)
                        {
                            writer.Write("<tr><td>" + field.Title + "</td><td>" + field.InternalName + "</td><td>" + field.TypeAsString + "</td><td>" + field.Required + "</td><td>" + field.Indexed + "</td></tr>");
                        }
                        writer.Write("</table>");
                    }
                }
                catch (Exception x)
                {
                    writer.Write("Error retrieving list information: " + x.Message);
                }
            }
        }
    }

Site Launch: Windows 7 Developer Contest

tknowlton — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:35:00 GMT

Site: Windows 7 Developer Contest
Client: Carey Keller Anderson (Seattle)
Creative Design By: Carey Keller Anderson
Launched: July 2009

Smooth Fusion worked with Carey Keller Anderson (CKA) to build this site for Microsoft. CKA provided the creative assets and Smooth Fusion implemented the site, including the Silverlight development work.

Site Launch: DSO Kids

tknowlton — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 17:01:00 GMT

Site: DSO Kids
Client: Dallas Symphony Association
Creative Design: Smooth Fusion
Launched: July 2009

Smooth Fusion worked directly with the Dallas Symphony Association to create DSO Kids. The Dallas Symphony Orchestra created DSO Kids as a site to provide resources to young people that introduce symphonic music. Smooth Fusion provided the creative design as well as implementation for this innovative resource.

Smooth Fusion Microsoft Expertise

tknowlton — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:31:00 GMT

The Smooth Fusion team has been doing web development for Microsoft since 1996. So while we work in many technologies, we have gained an amazing amount of experience on Microsoft technologies, both public technologies and tools internal to Microsoft.

Below are just the highlights of our Microsoft expertise:

ASP .NET Development
Silverlight Development
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and 2008
ASP .NET AJAX
XML Web Services
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (on and off Corpnet)
InfoPath Development
Microsoft Certified Developers and Network Engineers
Corpnet Access
Partners Extranet Access
MSCOM Site Development (including sites built with MNP and CSP)
Implementation of visitor tracking strategies on MSCOM sites

WebTrends
Omniture
Atlas

Harte-Hanks/RMS Data Transfer
WWE Web Services
Global Marketing Platform (GMP)

PENS
Windows Live ID (including PAL on MSCOM sites)
RegSys
MS Individual
MS-I Web Services
MS-I Bulk Import

Vendor Privacy Assurance Program
Vendor Site Compliance Toolkit
Experienced with ACE security and Privacy Review Process
Postfuture/Digital Impact Integration
Product Studio Experience
Enterprise Level Hosting with Microsoft Servers and Technologies
Downloads Management Tool
Developed sites for Microsoft Partner Portal
Integration with Solution Finder

Site Launch: Windows Ready. Set. 7.

tknowlton — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:11:00 GMT

Site: Windows Ready. Set. 7.
Client: Carey Keller Anderson (Seattle)
Creative Design By: Carey Keller Anderson
Launched: April 2009

Site Launch: Jack Daniels Jack Rocks (Japan)

tknowlton — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:31:00 GMT

Site: Jack Daniels Jack Rocks (Japan)
Client: Slingshot, LLC
Launched: June 2009

Smooth Fusion implemented the site for Jack Daniels Jack Rocks campaign in Japan. The site included a sweepstakes where consumers came to the site to enter a code to win prizes. We also implemented an API to allow the mobile version of the site to interact with the same data.

Site Launch: Stonebridge Life/Destination Maternity

tknowlton — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:30:00 GMT

Site: Stonebridge Life Complimentary Maternity Insurance
Client: AEGON
Launched: June 2009

Smooth Fusion built this site that allows customers of maternity apparel stores to enroll for complimentary term life insurance. The free life insurance program is a partnership between Destination Maternity Corporation and Stonebridge Life. Destination Maternity is the world’s largest designer and retailer of maternity apparel. Stonebridge Life is an AEGON company.

Smooth Fusion also hosts the site.

Smooth Fusion News 7-21-09

tknowlton — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:38:00 GMT

Smooth Fusion

Do You Need ChatterAmp^TM for Twitter?

With the explosive growth of Twitter, there are an enormous number of tweets about popular brands. Smooth Fusion has an easy-to-use tool that allows tweets to be quickly searched and selected for display on the home page of a web site.

We call it ChatterAmp because it allows you to amplify positive brand chatter by highlighting it on your web page.

On the front end, ChatterAmp allows you to display the tweets that you have authorized to appear.

On the back end, the ChatterAmp Management Tool allows you to search tweets and select the ones you wish to highlight. It even allows advanced searches to filter by location, dates, or even attitudes.

We would love to show you ChatterAmp. Contact us now to set up a demo. We can do it over a conference call and Internet connection.

Follow Smooth Fusion

If you want to follow what is going on at Smooth Fusion (and who doesn't?), look for us on Facebook and Twitter.

If you have any feedback for us, you can send it directly to our president, Todd Knowlton, at tknowlton@smoothfusion.com.

If you have never worked with Smooth Fusion, or if it has been a while, contact John Ware at jware@smoothfusion.com.

Site Launch: Phillips 66

tknowlton — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:53:00 GMT

Site: Phillips 66 (www.phillips66.com)
Client: Slingshot, LLC
Creative Design By: Slingshot, LLC
Launched: June 2009

Smooth Fusion built the front end of the Phillips 66 site (ConocoPhillips) with creative assets provided by Slingshot for the launch of the Phillips 66 Hard Working Gas campaign.

Site Launch: TeamChoice

tknowlton — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:28:00 GMT

Site: TeamChoice
Client: TeamChoice
Creative Design By: Smooth Fusion, Inc.
Launched: June 2009

TeamChoice is a healthcare provider network based in Texas. Smooth Fusion designed a new look for TeamChoice and re-skinned their site. Smooth Fusion also hosts the site.

New Globalization Functionality for Developers in Windows 7

mbell — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:23:00 GMT

The 2008 Professional Developers Conference introduced several new features that can be expected with the release of Windows 7, one of which is the new support for writing language-aware applications. The presenters of one session pointed out why globalization really matters: over 90% of the world population does not speak English at all, and only 5.1% of the remaining percentage speaks it natively. If a developer provides an application only in English, then the developer is neglecting a vast majority of the population and severely limiting the usage of his or her application.

In the past, it has been cumbersome to say the least to provide support for multiple languages. Developers have had to guess the current language by looking at local settings, or in the case of Web applications, HTTP header information, which could very often provide inaccurate results. Windows 7 will change all of this with a set of APIs, called Extended Linguistic Services, which will initially provide the following features:

· Language detection: detect the language of a user’s text.

· Script detection: detect the writing system, or alphabet, of a user’s text (some languages have multiple alphabets).

· Transliteration: convert text from one writing system to another; i.e., Chinese Simplified to Chinese Traditional.

· Support for 100+ languages.

· Support for mixed languages (many users prefer to perform one set of tasks in one language, and another set of tasks in another language).

To access the services, a developer will:

1. Call enumeration to get the list of available services (i.e., MappingGetServices()).

2. Pass the text to the selected service (i.e., MappingRecognizeText()).

3. Do something with the results that are returned by the service based on what it discovered (i.e., text not recognized, text recognized and it is Japanese, text recognized as Chinese Simplified and can be transliterated to Chinese Traditional).

Developers can expect to follow the same general procedure for accessing new services that are added in the future. One of the Windows 7 team’s main goals in providing this set of APIs is to make the experience intuitive and easy to learn, and to not force developers to learn something new each time another service is released, which I’m sure we can all appreciate.

To watch the session, visit Channel 9 on MSDN, Windows 7: Writing World-Ready Applications.

Windows 7 RC Training Kit for Developers

mbohn — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:52:00 GMT

If you are a developer looking to get a headstart on Windows 7 development you should consider downloading the Windows 7 RC Training Kit for Developers. The Training Kit includes hands on labs, presentations, and demos demonstrating key windows features such as:

Taskbar
Libraries
Multi Touch
Sensors and Location
Ribbon
Trigger Start Services,
Instrumentation and ETW
Application Compatability

To fully utilize the the training resources you need to have:

Windows 7 RC
Windows 7 RC SDK
Visual Studio 2008

Other resources you may also find helpful learning about Windows 7 development include: