Gifts: Work, Collab, Website

PhotoBall.com is live!

Just in time for the holidays.

Let's not bury the lede: 15% discount with coupon code FFNOV2015

As we pause briefly this week to take stock more formally of all we can be grateful for, we have to include work, and the opportunity to build something new and useful with a great team. Big thanks to Sharon Wong Consulting for inviting us to contribute to this incredibly fun and rewarding project, and to Star Innovations for presenting us with this exciting challenge.

The Challenge

To build a website and online presence for Star Innovations’ unique gift product, PhotoBall — your photo on a sports ball or ornament! The website needed to:

• Communicate immediately what they offer
• Provide a beautiful home to their photo editor/ball designer
• Be easy to navigate
• Offer compelling ways to engage with PhotoBall, on the site and on social

The Results

PhotoBall Home

PhotoBall Store

PhotoBall Scouts

PhotoBall on Facebook

PhotoBall on Tumblr

PhotoBall Blog, News, & Events

PhotoBall Tech & History

Make contact!

Thanks again, Sharon, Nicole, Inger, Devlan, Lisa, and the whole team. We hope to pitch in on more projects, as you extend your presence into Europe, South America, and beyond!

And special thanks to the unnamed force behind Hans Works Design, for his brilliant insights and constant support.

Sharon Wong Consulting

Nicole Perry, Inger Golob, Star Innovations

Hans Works

Happy Thanksgiving!

Don't forget to tell your friends about the great gifts from PhotoBall.com, and Share this news from infoDESIGN:

big news IN LITTLE infoDESIGN

It's been a busy stretch of new projects these past few weeks for infoDESIGN...

• Delivered edit of a chapter in an upcoming philosophy book.
• Partnered with Sharon Wong Digital Marketing to address a broader spectrum of client needs, and a longer list of clients.

• Kicked off an e-commerce website project with SWDM.
  • Watch this space for the Thanksgiving website launch! 

• Kicked off an online Help project for an exciting new SaaS platform.
• Started mentoring my partners to make a splash about their chops.
• Dealt with mountains of corp setup and paperwork. 

We're also in several other conversations about future projects, exploring ways to reshape our clients' information and make it come alive for their customers.

Engage!

#TechTip #3: Didn't Request It? Don't Click It!

Even From Friends, Check Before You Click

It's an awful feeling, a sinking feeling in your gut — realizing that a bunch of your friends just got an email message 'from you' that, if they click the link or attachment in it, will very likely attack their email account and spam their contacts, as well. It's happening to the best and smartest of us...

There appears to be a growing number impostor email hack attacks. We're all getting them, and recently, they're coming from people we know well, and trust. Or, that's what they're made to look like.

Part 1: Don't Know? Don't Click

• If the email you receive is not part of an ongoing exchange you have with the 'sender,' or a near-immediate response to an online request you issued (such as a password reset), just don't click the link, no matter how legit it looks. If it's important enough, and the sender is legit, you can ask them.

'Oh no! Click here before all is lost!' 😱

Part 2: Check with the Sender, in a Different Channel

• If it looks important, check with the person who supposedly sent it to you. But don't just click Reply; if it's an attack email, the sender can redirect your replies. If at all possible, check with the 'sender' in a different channel, one that you typically use with them. If the the link or attachment arrived in email, check with them in a text message or Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, wherever you already hang out with them. (If you don't have another channel, at least forward the email to another email address for the 'sender.' They'll often tell you right away whether it came from them or not.)

Stay safe, but with some basic caution, keep having fun in your digital playground!

#techtip #email #hack #attack #infosec

> Find more tips and news in our News section!

#PhotoTip #1: Photos Choking Your Phone?

Cloud That Mess for Some Daylight!

in 1, 2, 3 APPS

The problem is simple, and everywhere: it's so easy to take photos now, you take hundreds, and then thousands. For a while, it's all peachy... and then your phone is full. You can spend hours getting them transferred to your desktop or laptop and then deleting them from your phone, until next time, or spend days and weeks occasionally trying to go through them to delete some and make room for new ones, again and again.

Or, you can let go of all that and let the Machine deal with it. There are many new ways to automate photo backup, search, retrieval, and sharing. I thought I'd share my particular solution here - it boils down to 3 apps (which are just front ends for services): Dropbox, Google Photos, and Carousel.

View fullsize

Who manages their photos?! Let the Cloud take over, and relish unprecedented Search.

Now that they're set up, I don't fuss with storage limits, I just focus on the pics.

1. Dropbox

Dropbox automatically backs up the photos on your phone, in original resolution, to the Cloud and your desktop as soon as you reconnect to wi-fi. (I have an Android. I think Dropbox will do the same with photos from your iPhone, but only when you connect it via USB, not wi-fi.)

Get Dropbox for:

• Desktop/laptop 
• Android
• iPhone

2. Google Photos

The new Google Photos app also backs up any new photos from my phone, and from any other source (laptop, desktop, tablet, etc.) where I've installed and authorized it. If you choose 'hi-res but not original' for your photo backups, it's unlimited and free.

But the main reason to use gPhotos is mind-bending Search — based on faces, places, and keywords like 'beach,' 'pizza,' 'yellow,' etc. — and ease of navigation, across time. Zoom out to see the whole year, or zoom down to the month, day, or event. And the social sharing is much easier and more flexible than it used to be!

Get Google Photos for:

• Android
• iPhone
• Desktop/laptop

3. Carousel

Carousel, by Dropbox, allows you to surf quickly — on your smartphone — across thousands of photos, through weeks, months, and years. But next to the new gPhotos, Carousel now looks funky. 

HOWEVER, it has one absolutely brilliant feature: it will automatically offer to remove older photos from your phone once it starts filling up, and it will only delete the photos that are already backed up in Dropbox. I recently freed up 8 GB of space on my phone that way.

Get Carousel for:

• Android
• iPhone

In Conclusion

“Dropbox + gPhotos + Carousel = Endless photos”

All backed up and always available and searchable, from anywhere on the Internet, without ever again worrying about a full phone, or hassling with photo transfers.

Plus, the Search in gPhotos will blow. your. mind.

#phototip #photos #mobile #apps #cloud #autobackup

Originally published by the author on Facebook.

New Twitter feed & Facebook Page for infoDESIGN!

It's been a busy week! Today, we launched:

• Our new Twitter feed, where we'll be sharing tech tips, social hints, and interesting news from the world of communications technologies and interaction design.
   
• Our new Facebook Page, where we'll be engaging with you, asking for opinions, sharing ours, and looking for new ways to make the information journey even more exhilarating.

Like us on Facebook! 👍

See you on the social web! We hope you'll enjoy our news and tips, and most of all, that you'll contribute your own insights and interesting questions...

Engage!

#tech #technews #web #social #socialweb #infoDESIGN