Own A Color – VERTIGO RED

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by Kurt Brockett

A few months ago a very cool charity site was put together by UNICEF and Glidden…Own a Color.  The core calculation came from the fact that “Did you know…Your average computer, smartphone and tablet can display 16.7 million colors? That’s a lot of colors!” (about)  What better way to raise money than start a campaign to “own” those colors with all proceeds going to UNICEF.  The thing that works is that people really do have an affinity and “ownership” of certain colors.  At Vertigo we have our brand colors so we jumped at the opportunity to own our primary accent color which we named VERTIGO RED.  You can check out the color below:

Before we jumped in and purchased VERTIGO RED, Scott Stanfield (@seesharp), our CEO snapped up FESTAL (fe57a1).  I guess he had HTML5 and parties on the brain as the description reads “F357A1 (or Festal) is the classic hot pink used by HTML5 Boilerplate. Meaning: pertaining to a feast, festival, holiday, or gala.”  Awesome.

 

NuGet Project Uncovered with Jason Jarrett

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by Kurt Brockett

Back in early January, Jason Jarrett (@staxmanade), one of our Senior Software Engineers here at Vertigo started an interesting series titled NuGet Project Uncovered.  Throughout the month of January and February he’s totaled up 23 posts of interesting NuGet projects that he’s run across while following the NuGet feed.  You can check out the introduction to the series here (link) and see more in the blog archive on his page over on the right sidebar.

As a preview here is a snippet about some of his selection criteria for the posts:

Some reasons I may have chosen a project:
  • I could potentially see myself investigating its usage someday.
  • It solved a problem in an interesting way.
  • Preferred small, focused, unique packages.
  • Preferred projects that were Open Source as in FREE.
    • Although I didn’t bother to look at any of the licenses so be sure to read into those before you use any yourself.
  • Preferred projects that have a “Project Site” where I could browse the source code see examples or even documentation.
    image
  • For some reason if I saw it was hosted on GitHub I preferred those to sites that had their own dedicated location (Can’t explain why – just did…)

Great info Jason!

 

Vertigo Partners with NBC Sports to Live-Stream Football’s Big Day

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NBC Sports featured Vertigo’s Emmy®-nominated video player (for Sunday Night Football) to live-stream the NFL post-season including two wildcard games, the Pro Bowl in Hawaii, and the final showdown in Indianapolis. Vertigo is excited to work with NBC Sports to bring HD quality video along with multiple camera angles, interactive timelines, VOD highlights, and everyone’s favorite - the commercials, online for the first time!

Live HD Video

Check out the Links below for information about this great experience -

[UPDATED]

In addition to all the big press above, we received a nice personal note this morning from a regular fan:

My family, which does not have Cable TV, enjoyed the live stream experience very much.

We watch the football more as a “mass culture” event, not because we actually care about the game, or even sports in general, but even with this detachment from the fan’s perspective, we found that the overall experience of the stream “app” made for an engaging, exciting and memorable game.

Please let anyone there who worked on this project know that there are some geeky fans out there who regarded the work of creating and delivering the streaming experience far more highly than the game itself!

Thanks Mr. Focazio! We’re glad you and a lot of football fans enjoyed it!

 

 

Vertigo turns 15!

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by Scott Stanfield

Fifteen years ago today, I started Vertigo with Cyndi Sunderman and Chris Idzerda in Point Richmond, California. We thought it would be cool to share a few artifacts and stories from our journey to where we are now.

I was working [as a waitress in a cocktail bar] at a consulting company in downtown San Francisco in early 1997. With the help of a small loan from a friend (thanks Mike Moscowitz), I was able to quit with enough in the bank to purchase a few necessities and pay the bills.

We kept our first canceled check—most people keep their first income check, but considering this was for Fry’s, I thought it was geeky ironic.

It’s clear from the perspective of history, our first purchase should have been a ping pong table, not a fax machine.

We found an inexpensive office building in downtown Point Richmond, just blocks from my house to set up shop. An all-brick building and foundation was probably not the best choice in earthquake-prone California.

Even 15 years ago, we had digital cameras. Marvel at the quality of the images. That’s me on the left, Chris with the banana, and Cyndi with our son.

We’ve suffered through two awkward identities before settling on our current, and final OGITREV logo (we pronounce it OH-git-rev). I “designed” the first one.

We had a little internal celebration today. Sabered a few bottles of champagne and toasted to our history and future success. I’m very proud of the fact that there are 11 people at Vertigo with 10+ years of service. And 18 that have been here for half our company history.

At 15 we’re almost out of our awkward teenage years; just one more until we get our drivers license.

Scott

NBC Sports Talk – Gizmodo Best iPhone Apps

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by Kurt Brockett

Back before the break we were pleased to see one of our clients make the Gizmodo Best iPhone Apps list.  Each month Gizmodo updates their list to include the top apps in a variety of different categories.  The NBC Sports Talk app for iPhone was added in the Lifestyle category.  Pretty cool to be added to a list described as “the absolutey essential apps.”  What started as development for the iPhone has now also stretched into Vertigo developing the application for Android as well.  You can check out both of the apps here:  iPhone and Android.

Vertigo Metro Design – msdn magazine

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By Kurt Brockett

This past week we received the January 2012 edition of msdn magazine at the office.  Much to our surprise we found one of our projects (and employees) staring right back at us.

DevExpress has an advertising campaign going with their new DXv2 suite of tools and that happens to include an attached leaflet on the cover.  They snagged a screenshot from some of our recent work together to highlight.  You can read more about the work at this post:  New Work: DevExpress WinForms Metro Demo App.  It’s great to see our work on screen or in this case in print!

We’re really starting to see an uptick in interest around Metro Design language and principles.  With Nokia pushing harder on Windows Phone 7 there seems to be a noticeable and measured growth on the Windows Phone platform (Another 100,000 WP7 Facebook users added, now 8-9 million phones out there? – WMPoweruser).  The new Xbox dashboard and video apps are now metro (Fly Or Die: The New Xbox “Metro” UI – Techcrunch.com) and the biggie, Windows 8 is starting to really pick up steam as we move closer to a Beta next month (Microsoft: We’re So Excited About Windows 8, We Can Hardly Speak – All Things D).

Stay tuned to The Wire as we continue to develop new work and information about the upcoming shift in the Microsoft platform and the Metro Design language and principles.

 

CES

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by Kurt Brockett

Is there really much to say?  Out – Tuesday 12:40p,  Back (hopefully) – Friday 12:45p.

I really liked the tagline that MIX used to carry “A 72 Hour Conversation” so we’ll just say we hope CES is “A 72 Hour and 5 Minute Conversation”.

Looking forward to connecting with our existing customers and partners and just as importantly meeting a few new ones.  Please shoot me a note kurt@vertigo.com and we’ll try and connect up.  Safe travels everyone!

 

You are responsible for making that feature work. Write a test. Just do it…

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originally posted by Jason Jarrett (@staxmanade): http://staxmanade.blogspot.com/2012/01/you-are-responsible-for-making-that.html

Today the PM of a project I am working on sent an email with a small list of issues that we needed to get resolved before shipping an early build to the customer for a weekly review. In his list of issues MY NAME was tagged next to a feature that I KNOW was working. I dev’d it, tested, saw it work.

Now the project I’m working on encourages unit tested code, which is a fantastic project to be on since I am a big proponent of Unit/Integration/Automated tests. Heck I wrote a tool to help run them easier (StatLight).

What I did.

The problem was this. I dev’d a feature out in like 5 minutes, took about 2 seconds to decide if I should write a unit test to prove my feature worked and this is where I failed. Manually verified my change checked in the production code without its test and I was hurriedly moved on to the next task.

About 20 min later I get a quick I.M. from a co-worker saying he had a small merge conflict in the file I just checked-in. Quickly told him how to get around his merge issue (not realizing after he checked in) that my “quick 5min dev task” was accidently removed in the merge.

What I SHOULD have done!

What I should have done was write the 2 lines of test code first. (you can argue test after/test first, I prefer test-first). Proven my code wasn’t working, by running the test, and then implement the 5 min feature making the test pass. Then when my co-worker ran into his merge issue.

Test would have failed telling him his merge didn’t go as planned.

This would have also avoided

  • PM wouldn’t have had to discover the issue, Screenshot and write up an email.
  • I wouldn’t have had to peruse source control history to understand why my “working” feature wasn’t working.
  • I wouldn’t have had to willingly confess my sins in this post.

If your feature doesn’t have a coinciding automated test. How do you know it’s still working?

Happy Testing!

To comment please check out the original post by Jason here : http://staxmanade.blogspot.com/2012/01/you-are-responsible-for-making-that.html

BRR – 2012 NHL Winter Classic

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by Kurt Brockett

Here at Vertigo, at least at our CA HQ, we had no idea what the white stuff all over the ground behind the rink was but it sure looked odd.  We’re told it’s something called snow but seeing as we had maybe one day of rain in Dec (link) we are a little bit removed from varying weather patterns.  For those of us pining for a white winter all we needed to do was tune in to this year’s NHL Winter Classic broadcast by our good friends at NBC Sports.  Using an offshoot of the Sunday Night Football experience (built by Vertigo) folks around the country were able to take in this unique yearly tradition that the NHL has built into quite an event.  Check out some of the screen grabs of the experience below.

Launch page from nbcsports.msn.com

A little picture in picture action – with the Twitters!

Nice camera control snap. Selections for Main, Goalie, Star, Cable and XFINITY cams.

Gift Ideas from the Vertigo Design Team

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by Andrew Thompson

A big hello from the Vertigo design team. We’re a small bunch and very busy, so you don’t hear from us very often, but we’re very passionate about what we do. We’re also very passionate about the tools that we use and things that we like. In the seasonal spirit of sharing, here is our list of gifts that any designer is sure to appreciate.

Pen & Paper

Most projects at Vertigo start off with a sketch or two, or at least a few notes to get us going. Trained as designers, most of us still like to use our hands to think through design challenges or to capture a wide range of new ideas quickly. Here are a few of our favorite tools.

Staedtler pigment liner

Designers are known to be very particular about what pens they use for sketching and note taking. Here is one favorite around Vertigo, but in a pinch almost any pen will do!

 3×5 cards

A few of us are obsessive note takers, and 3×5 cards are a great way to capture just about anything. Notes, plans, RGB values, sketches, grocery lists… We prefer medium stock – not too sturdy and not too soft. Just right.

Dot Grid Book

Along with our pens we also have strong preferences for notebooks. The current favorite at Vertigo are the Dot Grid books. The dots feel more universal and less constricting than lined or gridded paper, yet provide enough structure.

Windows Phone 7 Stencils

Or Android or iPad or iPhone… Pixels matter on these devices, but a quick hand sketch is a great way to think about how to organize and visualize information at low resolution.

Devices

Yep, we have them. Lots of them. Can’t get along without them.

Inkling

Soon available, this device looks like a terrific way to sketch by hand and capture it digitally to quickly share with colleagues and clients.

Cintiq 21UX

If the designer in your life likes to sketch, but is terrified when faced with a blank piece of paper, then how about a blank screen?

Intuos 4  Medium Tablet

Or perhaps something in-between. Not too big, not too small, just right.

Ricoh GRD 4

In addition to pushing pixels, many of us take pictures too. This little Ricoh is small, light, and beautiful, and great for capturing things that inspire us.

Smart Phone

We’ll try not to play favorites here – we work with and use all of them. So many apps, so little time…

Organization

As designers, we don’t like a mess. Grids, kerning, pixel perfection… get organized!

Grid-It!

Nothing worse than having a tangle of gadgets and cables in your bag when you show up to meet a client.

Cordies

On certain projects, we’ve been known to have a virtual zoo of devices on our desktops. Tether those cables please!

Rickshaw Bags

Made by hand in San Francisco. Beautifully crafted, durable and functional – we just might call that a great user experience!

Education

There are some universal truths in the design field, but things do change, and we make efforts to stay up to date, particularly with the latest research and technology.

Treehouse Membership

There are several great web sites where you can brush up on the latest design and creative development tricks. Here’s one where you can earn yourself some badges!

 Design Conferences

Professional design conferences are a great way to get the latest design related information, techniques and opinions from the leaders in the world of design, and a great way meet new people, share ideas and network.

http://mxconference.com

http://www.ux-lx.com/

http://interaction12.ixda.org

Design Organization Memberships

We like to get out, and these are a great way to see what others are up to and share something new.

IXDA

AIGA

Books

So many to recommend. Pick a few that look interesting and dive right in.

Fun & Inspiration

What’s a designer without a little fun and silliness.

Museum Memberships

Sometimes all we need is an opportunity to press our reset button in order to unlock new ways of thinking and designing.

SFMOMA

Movies

Design is universal and everywhere. Here are three documentary movies that will inspire any designer to think broadly and better understand design history and culture.

http://www.helveticafilm.com/

http://www.objectifiedfilm.com/

http://urbanizedfilm.com/

Book Book

No one will know there is a MacBook Pro inside of your antiquarian book. Aren’t designers an ironic bunch.

Walls Notebook

Make graffiti and get away with it. Perfect for that, ahem, fascinating all-day meeting.

Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams

A large contingent of the Vertigo design team recently visited the Dieter Rams exhibit at the SFMOMA for a night of inspiration and festive camaraderie. Lots to learn here.

We’re looking forward to 2012 – plan to hear more from us throughout the year. Cheers!