The Unknown Studio

Since launching the Unknown Studio last June with Scott, we’ve both variously been trying to find ways to promote the show. Some of that has meant appearing on other podcasts… Or, one other podcast, anyhow. Our third episode featured a good friend, Ramin Ostad, and on that episode we discussed storytelling using video games as a medium. Since that episode, I’ve been trying to sync my schedule with Ramin’s, who also co-host a show called UserCreatedContent, a great little podcast dedicated to all things video-gaming in Edmonton. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 37% [?]

You would be surprised how many of our clients ask to have music with auto-play inserted into their websites. I always discourage this line of thinking, but it always seems to come up. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 11% [?]

Awhile back, I’d tweeted about the image search on Microsoft’s Bing search engine and how it’s pretty awesome. Apparently, Google agrees with my assessment: Bing’s image search functionality is the tops. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 5% [?]

I had the opportunity a few months ago to reconnect with former colleague Scott C. Bourgeois at a tweetup in Edmonton. We chatted, we drank, we discussed the various experiences we’ve had driving past — and indeed creating — roadkill. And certainly that was most of the discussion of the evening. That, and survival horror videogames.

Our paths didn’t cross so much between then and now, but Scott and I managed to meet up a few times to discuss launching a podcast. We didn’t know what we were going to call it, we didn’t know what it was going to be about, but we knew we were going to do it. If it killed us or drained us financially (I doubt it will do either, but what’s a good yarn without poverty and death?). Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 7% [?]

Working for Ignition Media’s been really exciting and extremely eye-opening. I started in January with the title Account Manager. However, it’s a small shop — only five employees plus the owner — so we all sort of wind up doing a bit of everyone. I’ve been trying to carve out my niche in new business and social media.

We’re trying to find innovative new ways to increase brand impressions for current clients, as we cultivate new ones. Of course, this has meant a lot of research into using Twitter, Facebook, and online games to try and increase traffic and enhance the overall user experience for client websites. We’re looking into the creation of interactive microsites for some clients, and just additional features on current sites for others. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 5% [?]

My business – and that of many of my friends, colleagues and tweeps – quite often involves responding to requests for proposals (RFPs). It’s a necessary process for getting new work, new clients and tackling new challenges. And it can be a fairly arduous process. It takes time to craft a response that’s detailed enough, but not so detailed that you actually find you’re already a quarter of the way through a project you haven’t even been awarded yet.

Over the last month, I’ve put together myriad proposals – some large and some small. And while most RFPs carefully spell out the requirements of a project, there are many out there that are so poorly written (or so obviously boilerplate with little thought given to the exact requirements of the particular project they’re meant to address) as to be nearly impossible to properly respond to. It is the poorly-written or unclear RFPs I want to discuss in this post. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 5% [?]