CBS Sunday Morning

 

My favorite thing to do when I wake up on Sunday morning is to watch the television program CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood. This program is always full of “feel good” stories and there’s always a story that brings a tear to my eye. These tears come straight from the heart. With all the shootings and bad things you hear every day going on all over the world, this hour and a half show proves that there are still really good people out there. 

Every week there’s a commentary segment and a couple Sundays ago, I found this commentary from Paula Poundstone to be very interesting. It’s called ‘Electronics and kids’ brains don’t mix’. She talked about an addiction to smartphones, tablets and video games being no good for developing brains and asks, “Are we all spending too much time looking at screens?”

While she’s only a comedienne and not a doctor or a psychologist with the credentials to support this fact, she still brings up some very interesting comments. I guess I support her points of view because I don’t consider myself “addicted” to electronics. In this day and age, I believe there are more people addicted to electronics than those who are not. Read or view her commentary and decide for yourself. Let us know what you think in the comments!

Facebook CTAs Available

Successful brands on Facebook have specific and measureable goals tied to their Facebook page. To help businesses reach their objectives and measure goals, Facebook recently introduced the “call-to-action” feature. The valuable new tool was created to help businesses fulfill their most important objectives through their Facebook presence. The seven call-to-actions available include:

1. Book Now
This button allows users to conveniently book an appointment, make reservations or buy tickets without having to leave the page.  

2. Contact Us
Feature that gives users the choice to contact the business via email, phone or by filling out a contact form. This button can also be used to direct users to the business’ website to increase traffic and clicks.

3. Shop Now
This button is available for any business with an online store. The Shop Now button can take users to new product releases and expose them to any available deals or promotions.

4. Watch Video
Videos allow businesses to educate users about their brand or drive users to a specific campaign video.

5. Play Game
Businesses in the gaming industry can use this feature to give users the opportunity to play free demos, and feature new releases. Users can also be directed to the business’ iTunes pages where they can view more details and purchase the game.

6. Use App
The Use App feature helps businesses with apps promote and increase downloads. The fast-food chain restaurant, Taco Bell, used the feature to drive users to their website where they received instructions on how to download the app to their mobile device.

7. Sign Up
This button makes it easy for users to sign up email lists, webinars or register for events.

Businesses can implement the available call-to-action buttons to fulfill their set objectives, but it’s important to choose wisely. A CTA should connect with the current communications being used on the business’ page and enhance the overall user experience. The infographic below highlights the popularity of buttons and specifies which buttons are most popular based on industry.

Facebook’s call-to-action buttons were launched earlier this year to U.S. users and are scheduled to be available globally by the end of 2015.

Responsive vs Adaptive Design

 

Now more than ever, the next greatest innovation for the internet is always just around the corner. The buzzword I’m starting to hear most often is “responsive”.

Most people know of responsive web design as something that will look good on any platform. While this is true, there’s a completely different style of web design, called adaptive web design, that is equally as important in the mobile internet game. As these styles of mobile-conscious web design become the norm, it is important that we know which style will suit our needs and desires.

So here’s the gist for Responsive websites:
They are about creating the optimal viewer experience for any possible platform. They are based on a fluid grid that has been coded to “respond” to any size or layout change, and will morph to jump through whichever hoop you need them to jump through. What I like about responsive websites is that they feel right. As mobile consumers, we physically interact with websites without even thinking about it. We pinch. We expand. We rotate. We swipe. Heck, I even caught my 2 year old niece swiping with the finesse of an Apple fanboy! To me, responsive websites are the hard code answer to this phenomenon. They will rearrange themselves how you want them to be, and they’ll do it seamlessly. Check out these links to see some great examples. And make sure you look on all of your devices (that’s really the whole point).

http://delaneau.com
http://www.catalogue.bonobojeans.com
http://joyintermedia.com

So what about this whole “Adaptive” thing?
Adaptive websites are also all about making sure your website is the best it can be on all devices. But they go about this in an entirely different way. Instead of creating one layout that will look good on anything, adaptive web designers design one layout for your iPhone, one for your tablet, one for your mom’s Android, and one for grandma’s Nook. When someone plugs in a URL, the code detects what device they are using and pulls the proper layout for that device. This way, designers can optimize for their exact audience. On an iPhone? A designer might prefer to prioritize the “Find a Location” feature in their design, since their audience is on the go. So when you have more hoops to jump through, one website doesn’t have to morph to jump through multiple hoops, like in responsive. Instead, you have a website that will fit each hoop.

So which should I choose?
Both responsive and adaptive websites have their benefits. In my opinion, responsive websites are going to be your best long-term investment, as you shouldn’t need to do too much maintenance and they will change with emerging technology. However, they are harder (and more expensive) to create because you will need a design that is flexible enough to change into so many things. And they take longer to load since you are pulling up a much larger piece of code. Adaptive websites will need to be updated as new screen sizes become popular in the market, but do not need to be as initially flexible as responsive designs. Since they are one design per device, their load times can be lightning fast compared to responsive designs. Finally, because all of these layouts are technically different URLs, adaptive websites aren’t the easiest for search engines to find.

Pros and cons of both aside, it’s probably time to take a long, hard look at that old fixed width website and think about upgrading. 

P.S. If you’d rather just look at some great GIFs explaining all of this, check out this article that one of our great designers shared with me.

The Orphaned Sea Otter Pup 681

Who knew a baby otter can be so fluffy and adorable!  The story of Pup 681 has gone viral so if you haven’t heard about this heartwarming story of rescuing an abandoned baby otter, this is one you’ll want check out.

Curious how they came up with the name for the Pup 681, her story begins with being abandoned at just a week old on September 30. She weighed less than 2 ½ pounds, apparently small for a baby otter, and had been separated from her mom for more than 16 hours. The Monterey Bay Aquarium found her alone on a California beach where they quickly started rehabilitation.  It was critical she started consuming calories as quickly as possible in order for her survival. 

Pup 681 made it to her new home at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium on October 28, where staff makes sure she has round-the-clock care to learn necessary otter life skills of grooming, foraging and feeding. Normally, sea otter pups stay with their mother as long as eight months so this little pup has a lot to learn.

The tiny pup – now 5 weeks old and weighs a healthy six pounds — is also learning how to regulate her body temperature by moving to a dry towel when she’s done swimming. She’s reaching new milestones every day like taking formula from a bottle and eating shrimp and clams.

Sea otters were listed as threatened under the U. S. Endangered Species Act in 1977, and have made a slow recovery in California. In 2014, the population was 2,944, a growth of five (that's right FIVE) from 2013, according to the United States Geological Survey. 

For now, Pup 681 is still behind the scenes at the aquarium as she continues to grow. You can see her in action in the video above. Her squeaking sounds will simply melt your heart.

New Year. New Website.

We have a whole new look over at Eire Direct!

Scroll through our Services... Read more about our Characters... Take a look at our Portfolio.

Thanks for visiting. We hope to hear from you soon.

Around Here

Just a few of the projects we've worked on at Eire lately:

Architectural Contest Poster.

Angels Grace Hospice website.

Valpac, Valassis and Money Mailer inserts.

Full-court POP.

All in a day...

Well, I attended a Webinar yesterday and it was somewhat interesting. The webinar, hosted by INEXPOLIVE, featured a guest speaker (Carman Tarren) who talked about Innovative Techniques for Multi Taskers. The subject seemed perfect for me. After all I consider myself an exceptional Multi Tasker, have been my whole life. Although some people have suggested I have Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. I even took a 300 question test for it and I did not qualify (I think because I actually finished the test).

When I started the webinar I expected it to be live, but a still picture of the speaker came up on the screen. She was quite attractive and I wondered if this was planned. I thought INEXPOLIVE meant LIVE? After getting used to seeing Carman’s face (and realizing I’d just be staring at this for an hour), I noticed that people were chatting and answering questions on another screen. This was very distracting, but then again it was a seminar on MULTI TASKING. Maybe just like not being diagnosed with ADD I was not as proficient at Multi Tasking as I originally thought?

About 10 minutes into the presentation, while looking at Carman and reading the comments on the small screen, I decided to take some notes myself. Some of the more revealing stats that the lovely Carmen shared were:

• 294 Billion emails are sent a day
• 2 million blog posts are posted a day
• 35 million apps are opened a day
• 250 million photos are downloaded a day
• 200 million minutes a day are spent on Angry Birds
• The one that really blew me a way was…
• The average length of time that a person stays on a website is 8 seconds…

Sounds to me like all these Multi Taskers are wasting a lot of time not doing much.

All in a day…

Pinterest Phenomenon

By now, most everyone has heard of Pinterest and the phrase “Oh, I found this on Pinterest” is becoming as popular as “I saw on Facebook…”. It’s hard to believe that Pinterest was actually launched almost two years ago, but it wasn’t until the last six months that it started getting noticed. According to an article on cnn.com, unique visitors to the site grew 400% from September to December 2011 (I was one of those unique visitors during that time, and have since turned many of my friends on to the site).

I will admit that at first, I didn’t understand the hype or the concept, but now, I love Pinterest. I wonder what I did with all of my time on the weekends before I was baking and crafting things that I’ve found on the site. Pinterest is an online network of virtual pinboards. Pinboards can be created by “pinning” images you’ve found on the web to your Pinterest account or by browsing other users’ pinboards and re-pinning items that are interesting to you.

At a New Year’s Eve party at my house, the food table was covered in multiple Pinterest recipes (brought by different guests), and my centerpiece on the table was designed from an idea I saw on Pinterest. I recently got engaged, and I’m not sure how people planned weddings before Pinterest. I visit the site at least once a day to get ideas on colors, flowers, bridesmaid dresses, menus – you name it, someone has pinned it.

I wonder how Pinterest will hold up in the future with so many social networking sites out there – will it become a Facebook with extreme staying power? Or will it be one of those sites that someone mentions in a few years that you think “oh yeah, I vaguely remember when that was popular”? For me, I hope it’s the later, because I just cannot get enough of it.

Why do we need bloggers?

The internet has put enormous amounts of information at our fingertips. Whether you want to learn the weather forecast in Timbuktu, the 19th president of the U.S., or find a picture of a snub nosed monkey, the information is only milliseconds away. With all these advancements in information availability, in my opinion, blogging typically only clogs the process.

Apparently there are over 150 million blogs on the internet. Who writes all these? Is anyone reading them? Many bloggers remind me of a man that we used to see periodically in college. I guess you might call him a little extreme. He would stand on his soapbox when students were walking to and from class and yell provocative statements. Some were about religion and others about the end of the world coming soon. For added effect, I believe he often wore a cape. People just chuckled and walked on by.

Why do bloggers bring back memories of him? Both have an enormous energy and incredible belief in their proclamations, but a very limited following. The louder you scream or the more blogs you post does not ensure that people are listening. I guess it takes just one listener/reader to create a following though.

Aren't you mad you spent three minutes reading this post? Go ahead and google the snub nosed monkey. It's whats great about the internet.

Oh, and the 19th President of the U.S. was Rutherford B. Hayes. I googled it.

What makes a good website, to YOU?

Time magazine just published its 50 Best Websites of 2011, which covers websites from varying topics, including entertainment, business, education, news, etc. I’ve never heard of most of them, and it made me think about what criteria Time used to identify these 50 as the best out of the millions of sites that must be on the web.

The common threads seem to be a website’s ability to connect people with similar interests, provide content that users are looking for on demand, or featuring something that anyone can relate to in their own way. One of my favorites was Dear Photograph, a site where users share memories in the form of an old photograph held up against the same background in present day. Although the people in the photographs are total strangers, I like that it feels like you were there, or maybe that you know the person in the photograph.