danliveshere.com

I’m always on the lookout for new and innovative designs for sites. I think that is one of the many things that always intrigues me about the web. When people combine art with functionality. I’ve seen plenty of sites that make you just go, ummm what? “What does this do?” “Why am I here?” or “How do I get this to do something… oh look something shiny!” I do really enjoy when I find a site that really shines in functionality and design. (This is why I dig the guys at Substance so much. They do a great job saddling the two concepts, design vs function).

I found about a cool site through a ’round about way. @richjoslin posted a link to a design blog in a FriendFeed room “Web Design, The Good The Bad, The Ugly”. The design blog is called Cult Foo. They have a compliation of a bunch of different sites to check out. If you have 1/2 hour to kill, check it out (the tag cloud, literally, on the top with the fixed position and use of .png transparency is a nice touch). One of the site on there is what inspired me to write this post – Digiguru.

Digiguru is the blog/portfolio site for Craig Jaimeson in South Africa, a flash and front end designer. The site that he created is a full flash one with a clean calendar interface. It has several nice touches including Full Screen, permalinks using SWFAdress and smooth transitions. The site functions well, and allows him to create…

This post is all over the place, so much I’m redoing this first sentence, bear with me as I have brain diarrhea in the next couple of paragraphs… I’ll work on being more succinct later.

Things are moving at a fast pace at the Portland Trail Blazers. Brandon won Rookie of the Year, we win the lottery, we launch a microsite, Greg Oden and Kevin Durant come into town this week. Hectic.

I’ve heard about Twitter for some time, but the guys at Substance who did the microsite suggested we use Twitter in the microsite as a way to push the info about the draft process and the inside look of what is going on. It’s been awesome. I can’t say enough cool things about Twitter. If you haven’t checked it out… do so today. We’re updating as frequently as possible and encouraging fans to sign-up for mobile alerts. When we update the feed, if you’ve subscribed via mobile, you’ll get a text message with our latest updated. My feed is here and the Portland Trail Blazers is here.

Also, we’re hiring at the Trail Blazers… I’m on the lookout for someone who I can off-load some of the production work that I get to, but don’t have enough time to really really push the design and interactive envelope. I’m looking for someone who understands where the web is tomorrow, not today. I really need someone with solid Flash skills and CSS background. I know, a tall order… BUT I’m hopeful. I am looking for an Interactive Specialist.

One person’s blog I found off of Twitter was iJustine at Tasty Blog Snacks. I have to say I’m impressed with the content…

I live in Oregon. I walk to work sometimes (thankfully I live close enough). There is a problem with pollution (anyone see An Inconveniet Truth?)… so I’m seriously considering a hybrid for my next car. One drawback, and this is the superficial side of me coming into play, but the Prius is really not that attractive.

I’m not here to bag on the Prius… I wanted to talk about the social network that Toyota and multimedia firm Firstborn and ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi LA and Enjoy User Experience launched Toyota’s Hybrid Owner Site.

It’s a great place for people to showcase, in a stunning visual way, why they bought a hybrid. This is a great way for the Toyota customer to wave the flag on something they are passionate about and give the customer endorsement in an authentic way. This is stuff that brands thrive on. Kudos to everyone involved to bring social networking wrapped together to help the environment in such a stunning way… all in flash mind you.