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The Actors Fund Selects Drupal over Plone ...

The Actors Fund – a human services organization in New York and LA serving the entertainment industry – has engaged OHO Interactive to migrate their existing website from Plone CMS to Acquia Drupal. The site will also integrate with the Blackbaud suite of products including Raiser's Edge, Patron's Edge, and Patron's Edge online.

As part of the engagement, OHO is developing an enhanced resource database and working with the management team to overhaul the homepage to better represent the organization and balance the needs of the membership, services, and development departments.

Drupal will provide a more flexible platform for:

  • updating and dismenating content
  • improve capability for adding video to the site
  • provide a stronger platform for the development of custom features
  • enhancing cross-site promotion of content such as calendars and events
  • better content tagging

The new site is slated to launch later this summer.

Jason Smith
Jun 30, 2010
Blackbaud, Technology, Web 2.0, Website
Where does TV meet the Web?

Google answered that question today at Day 2 of Google I/O, and the answer is at Google TV.  But let's not get ahead of ourselves...  They spent the first half of the keynote building up suspense talking about the Android momentum:

  • 21 OEMs
  • 48 Countries
  • 65 Devices
  • 100,000 Daily activation run rate
  • 1 billion miles traveled in GPS navgation
  • 50,000 Applications
  • 180,00 Developers

They announced the next release of Android 2.2 called Froyo, which has 5 Focus Areas:

  1. Speed: Just-in-time (JIT) compilation
  2. Enterprise: Exchange friendly
  3. Services: Application Data Backup API, Cloud-to-Device Messaging API, Tethering & Portable Hotspot
  4. Browser - 2x-3x javascript performance (The V8 engine from Chrome but ported for Android), fastest mobile browser, voice recognition for: searching, translations, support for flash
  5. Market - Update All feature, Automatic updating, and more

Then, they surprised all us by giving all five thousand attendees Sprint HTC EVO 4G Phones!

The second half of the keynote focused on the announcement of Google TV (Tagline: TV meets Web.  Web Meets TV).  The Google TV interface is extraordinary.  Do you ever search the web for when/what channel a show is on because the guide on your TV is too overwhelming?  Google TV merges this into one easy step on your TV using a bluetooth keyboard.   Google TV will integrate with DVR, Netflix, Amazon, and others.  The TV based browser is slightly transparent so that you can see the TV shows behind the browser as well.  Google TV has increased the number of channels on your TV from hundreds to millions by integrating all of the video on the web as a TV option for the common TV viewer.

The hardware includes a Google TV box that connects via HDMI to your current set top box.  It comes with a keyboard and mouse to control the Google TV device.  If paired, the Android phone with google voice search can also integrate so that you would not have to use the keyboard or mouse.  They're going to publish the protocol so that developers can create their own applications and hardware for Google TV as well.

Again, the entire keynote will be posted on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/googledevelopers if you'd like to watch.

-Submitted by Chris Apolzon and Laurie Richards

Laurie Richards
May 20, 2010
Android, Development, Google, HTML, Technology, TV, Web 2.0
I/O: Input/Output or Innovation in the Open?

The answer is...  Both!  Google I/O got its name from both a developers roots (Input/Output) as well as developers future, (Innovation in the Open).  They kicked off their third annual developers conference today and San Francisco is currently crawling with more than five thousand developers (including two from OHO Interactive) anxious to hear whatever big news it is that is almost always released at their conferences (stay tuned to our blog, it sounds like it'll be announced during tomorrow's keynote at 9AM PDT).

The conference can already be seen to have an incredibly strong focus on HTML 5, as well as the open web and the mobile web.  Some of the HTML 5 examples demonstrated, particularly the offline mugtug demo, were amazing.  Can you imagine running an entire web application locally from the cache?  With HTML 5 it'll be possible. 

In addition to HTML 5, Open video is also here!  Today Google, and their partners, announced the webm project, an open web media project.  The VP8 codec is also now open source and royalty free.  Youtube is supporting both initiatives, and is working to convert all of their videos.  Nightly builds of Mozilla and Opera are available now to start developing against webm/VP8 to try out the next big thing in video on the web.

Time Magazine was also on hand to announce the Sports Illustrated HTML 5 web application.  With this announcement, we can see that HTML 5 will usher in unique and intuitive experiences bridging the tech-savvy web with the fast-moving journalism space.

Perhaps the most exciting news of the morning was that Google wave is now open to ALL!  Sign up for your account today at wave.google.com.  They've also added lots of new features and usability improvements. My favorite new feature is email notifications of waves so that you don't have to have yet another application, tab, etc open on your phone or browser.  Embedding waves inside other applications (i.e. in salesforce "chatter") will also be more common in the coming months.

The entire keynote was streamed live on You Tube, and will soon be available on demand if you’d like to watch it.

-Submitted by Chris Apolzon and Laurie Richards

Laurie Richards
May 19, 2010
Development, Google, HTML, Web 2.0
World Wildlife Fund Project Highlighted in "Nature"

Our project with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to develop a mapping application for use in developing countries was highlighted by the science journal Nature.

Read the article in Nature

The site will allow users to create spatial data and records for development projects. The site will have a strong community component that will allow users to collaborate and refine the data. The site will be built using Acquia Drupal and the Google Maps API 3. It is expected to launch in late spring 2010.

Jason Smith
Dec 04, 2009
Acquia, Drupal, Web 2.0, Web Application
10 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Website

One of the concerns I most often hear from clients about their websites is "how can I make them more effective?" Well to help out we've put together a list of common items that are quick wins and can help improve almost any website.  This blog post is a sneak preview of these top 10 ideas.  Over the new few months we'll be discussing these in more detail in a series of seminars and white papers. 

10 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Website.

  1. Write meaningful page headlines.
    It’s great for visitors and search engine optimization.
  2. Set-up Google Analytics.
    It’s free (!) and tells you how people found your site and what they did.
  3. Take an hour to read your site and update inaccurate information.
    People expect websites to be the most current information source.
  4. Delete 10 pages to remove clutter and out-of-date information.
    You’ll feel better knowing your site is accurate.
  5. Claim your organization on Yelp, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
    Put up some basic information so people find you on social networks.
  6. Cut your word count down to 400 words per page.
    Separating different ideas onto different pages helps people to search and to browse.
  7. Write a sub-head for every 2-3 sentences.
    It makes the page easy to skim and scan – people are in a hurry these days.
  8. Add maps, videos, and pictures to pages.
    The web is primarily a visual medium.
  9. Start online search engine advertising.
    Drive some new traffic to your site at any budget level.
  10. Create an XML site map for search engines.
    It’s not as hard as it sounds and it improves search rankings.

If you'd like a printed card of these ideas or  have questions or comments feel free to send me an email.

Ed Hastings
Sep 25, 2009
Search Engine Marketing, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Website
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