iPhone rocked the phone industry with a revolutionary PDA / phone / smart phone. Ever since every phone manufacturer has been trying to be the next iPhone. 

I was really glad to see this today, Palm is asking for volunteers to review their phone. Palm, who has an upcoming device titled the “Pre”. Its touch screen, and has a keyboard, with a new lightning fast OS. In their pre launch stages, Palm is engaging the real world by asking for reviews to use the phone, and blog, twitter, and facebook their opinions. 

This is great. They are taking away their marketing control, and letting the masses say what they will. 

This takes Guts. 

Are you so confident in your product or Service to ask the real world to review you as loudly as they can? Do you want to know the results?

Typography is one of the most standout parts of a website, affecting the overall look and feel. It’s something we certainly take into consideration when designing a site. Which fonts work best with the style and feel of the site, does the information flow easily, is everything legible and easy to navigate through? Typography is a design aspect in itself and needs careful consideration in order to make a site top-notch. 

Here are a few great sites that use great typography, making their content stand out and their design shine.

In case you havent heard, some yahoo made an application for the iPhone, called “the baby shaker app” that uses the motion sensing hardware for the user to shake the phone, to get the baby to stop crying. Disturbing yes. It seems the Media is blasting Apple for allowing the application / game to be sold on its stores. 

Why is it apples fault for some whack job who created an application like this? Isn’t it wrong that people bought it? How is this application any different than a rap song that promotes violence, drugs, killing cops and other illegal activity on the iTunes store? Is this application any different that a retailer selling a video game when the player is to kill someone for points?

Apple has since pulled the application. And I am glad they are trying to keep their store clean, but I still dont see why there is so much blame on Apple for the application. 

Apple’s real issue on their hands: They are being held responsible (even if its just by the media) to sell quality content. No record store, and video game store has been held responsible like this in the past. I mean come on, have you seen grand theft auto games, which award points for driving over people. So Apple, for what ever reason, is supposed to be the morality police when it comes to games they sell for iPhone. 

How to fix it: I guess embrace the fact that the media thinks you are the morality police. But now they need a stricter process for approving applications. We need a human to review all new applications, and follow a rigorous check list to make sure its not a potential PR issue for Apple.

Sure it will slow down the app approval process, and developers will have to wait in some sort of que to be approved. But it should avoid further PR issues.

Since the dawn of the internet era (the mid 90′s), experts have speculated that the world of paper would go away. Everything would be digital. No newspapers, magazines, brochures, even business cards. 

While a lot has shifted to the web, I still dont think the world of paper will go away 100%. 

Both the New York Times, and Seth Godin mentioned recently that newspapers are dying. Godin went as far to say that by 2012, no significant newspaper will be printed in news print. 

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Web design is not all technical. We work hard to make the html and css stuff work on our end and then hand it over to our clients to make the content work on their end. Many mistakes are made on the web, by forgetting simple art theory and how it plays a big role in how web sites look. People also forget about how other people will view their page, how they will navigate through and find the information they need. (more…)

Some people say there isn’t anything new to design anymore, we are all just rearranging things that have already been created, slapping on a new label, and calling it our own. That may be true, however I do believe we can certainly push the envelope, change what’s already out there and make a beautiful creation that has never been seen before. Just like each website we create is brand-spanking new, an opportunity to wow a new audience with every new company/church/business. I came across these vodka bottles on The Dieline and I am wowed and impressed.

Someone decided at some point that vodka bottles are supposed to be made of clear glass, and be tall and cylindrical. Everyone that made a vodka bottle after that point, followed suit. Until 1000 Acres came up with a new idea, something  unique and different. You can do what you’ve always done and seen before, but shouldn’t you expect the same results? Break out, do something different, push the envelope and you might be surprised with how well it’s received.

It’s hard to follow a title like that. This is a hard hitting, local project focusing on a broad issue in the world today. Child sex slavery is real, and here in phoenix. We are very excited to be part of such a bold project.

We have been working with Food for the Hungry’s City Initiatives team on their new project here in phoenix. On top of some marketing and overall project brainstorming, we were able to build two websites for this project. It’s semi complicated, as there are two orginzations running two arms of this project. FH (international aid organization) is over the Branded side, and Christ’s Church of the Valley (one of the largest churches in the metro phoenix area) is over the Streetlight side. 

So working together, they are going to eradicate child sex slavery in phoenix. 

Here are their two sites designed & built by factor 1

Yes, they are very similar to intentionally show unity in the project and to contrast the two parts of the problem. Branded focuses on the awareness (since most people don’t really know what the problem is, or how big it really is), and Streetlight, which is dedicated to the care and safety of the young men and women involved in child sex slavery

So check out the two sites

brandedphx.com

streetlightphx.com

Join their causes on facebook, share with a friend, and help us eradicate child sex slavery in Phoenix, and the world.

We can, and often do, talk about anything here on this blog. So what do you want to know? About factor 1 details maybe? The inner workings of a project? Matt’s favorite beer with an in depth analysis of why? How you too can design an awesome website? 

Ask away, and we’ll address it in future posts.

People reference your work whether you think so or not.

Recently we launched our first canadian church website. www.themeetingplace.org

Rod sent me this email today:

You can’t believe the great comments we’ve had about the site you built for us. It is very easy to update, looks and works great, and is top ranked in search engines. I couldn’t be happier with your service and product.

Thanks Rod! we are glad that we could produce a site that met your needs, and you can be excited about.