2009 - Bluewire Media

Posted on Dec 24, 2009 by Nic Peck

A day in the life of a Bluewire Media developer

When people ask me what I do I normally say “I work at a web design company.” Sometimes that’s enough, but the more curious of people ask “but what do you do there?” I thought writing a post about it would help me formulate a ready-made answer to that question.

So here it is:

We can generally split our development work into 3 types, which I will call Project development, Help desk & Internal development.

Project development refers mainly to the process of building websites from designs produced by our designers.…

Posted on Dec 23, 2009 by Angela Logovik

A few moments with Lesley Hays….

Among your many talents (development, shopping, hula hooping to name a few) you’re also responsible for writing a majority of resource manuals for clients and internal process guidelines for Bluewire Media staff. One might say that you are our unofficial technical writer…

Where do you begin when first writing a reference manual?
As with any writing, it helps to start with general information and gradually become more specific.

In the case of a reference manual, I’d start with basic contact information for support, log in details, and an overview of the system to provide the user with a very basic starting point.…

Posted on Dec 22, 2009 by Adam Franklin

Meet Sarah Hyne – Usability & Web Design star!

Most people who have the pleasure of using one Sarah Hyne’s websites, wouldn’t be able to put a finger on what makes them so good.

Why is that you ask..? Well, they just WORK!

And that is the key to usability and web design according to Bluewire’s impressive web designer Sarah Hyne. I sat down with Sarah to find out more.

What is it you do?
Basically, it’s tough trying to describe what you do to people outside web design, because to them it’s a totally intangible product. Whilst they experience usability everyday, they don’t realise there’s someone behind the scenes making it work.

Posted on Dec 20, 2009 by Sam Sargent

Big Day – The BAA Xmas Lunch & Bluewire Media Christmas Drinks

Anyone would think that designing & developing websites was thirsty work with the Bluewire Media team heading along to three big events last Friday. Work was put aside as we all took half-days and attended the Brisbane Advertising Association’s (BAA) Annual Christmas Lunch at the convention centre which was followed by the official after party at the Melbourne Hotel, which was then followed by the exclusive Bluewire Media Christmas Drinks at the Orient Hotel.

The Bluewire team was joined by our SEO & SEM partners & friends, Reload Media at the lunch and then again at the Orient for some Christmas celebrations.…

Posted on Dec 19, 2009 by Sarah Hyne

Weekly round-up

Five technologies that will keep shaping the web in 2010 — Six Revisions
Best of CSS design 2009 — Web Designer Wall
Pantone Unveils Color of the Year for 2010 — myPantone
Factors that affect usability — Six Revisions
The weaker side of usability guidelines — The UX Booth
Google browser size helps keep your content above the fold — TechCrunch
Take the 2009 Survey for people who make websites — A List Apart
Web forms for people — MIX Online

Christmas Lights Guitar Hero
…

Posted on Dec 12, 2009 by Sarah Hyne

Weekly Round-Up

Principals of effective e-commerce search — Smashing Magazine
Writing user-friendly content — The UX Booth
25 awesome gift ideas for designers and developers — Six Revisions
A blob walks out of a clock tower in Brisbane — Brand New
Dieter Rams: ten principles for good design — Vitsoe
Usability testing toolkit: resources, articles and techniques — Noupe
How the iPhone Could Reboot Education — Wired

Impressive: could you play Yann Tiersen on 6 iPhones?
…

Posted on Dec 9, 2009 by Adam Franklin

SME Technology Summit 2009 – Good Review

SME Technology Summit Review

People working in Small and Medium Entreprises (aka SMEs) from across Australia converged to

Sydney Olympic Park for the first SME Technology Summit.

The one-day event had a couple of keynote presentations & a panel discussion, interspersed

with 3 ‘tracks’ running symultaneously so you could choose your own agenda.

The keynotes were Tim Pethick, the entrepreneur who founded Nudie & Mark Pesce, a futurist,

commentator & panelist on ABC’s New Inventors.

Tim shared how he has embraced technology to help catapult the success of his juice company

& it was good to hear about how he’s used ‘crowdsourcing’, social media, CRM and Skype to be

really take off.

Posted on Dec 7, 2009 by Adam Franklin

GVF Yourself – Good Vibrations viral facebook marketing

With the “IKEA Facebook showroom” campaign receiving some good viral exposure & deserved accolades, I wanted to draw attention to a local example of effective viral marketing using facebook & send to a friend.

Using a simple app on their website & harnessing free social website, facebook.com, Aussie music festival “Good Vibrations” has launched a brilliant marketing campaign to promote its 2010 festivals.

The strategy is simple: GVF Yourself & win.

1. Create your own personalised Good Vibrations festival poster.
2. Save this image and upload it as your profile pic on facebook
3.…

Posted on Dec 5, 2009 by Sarah Hyne

Weekly round-up

Site search trends for e-commerce websites — Vandelay Design
Negative space in logo design — Logo Design Love
Ten commandments of social media — Noupe
Twitter rated 2009 word of the year — Sydney Morning Herald
Complete beginners guide to interaction design — The UX Booth
You can’t innovate like Apple – Pragmatic Marketing
3 Steps for Effectively Using Social Media for PR – Top Rank Blog
7 Steps To A Google Top Ten Rank – SEO Design blog
5 Impressive Real-Life Google Wave Use Cases – Mashable
7 Simple Truths of Social Media Marketing – Duct Tape Marketing

You may now update your Facebook statuses…
…

Posted on Dec 1, 2009 by Sarah Hyne

Why you should test your website

I’ve just finished reading Steve Krug’s excellent book on web usability called Don’t Make Me Think. It’s often the case that people (clients and web designers alike) know their websites too well. So well they can’t see them from an objective viewpoint anymore. That’s why I really like Steve’s reasoning for doing user testing:

“Testing reminds you that not everyone thinks the way you do, knows what you know, uses the Web the way you do.

“I used to say that the best way to think about testing was that it was like travel: a broadening experiene.

Yearly Archives: 2009

A day in the life of a Bluewire Media developer

A few moments with Lesley Hays….

Meet Sarah Hyne – Usability & Web Design star!

Big Day – The BAA Xmas Lunch & Bluewire Media Christmas Drinks

Weekly round-up

Weekly Round-Up

SME Technology Summit 2009 – Good Review

GVF Yourself – Good Vibrations viral facebook marketing

Weekly round-up

Why you should test your website

Archives