Design Marshall
Signs
2009-05-08 22:47:07
The 2009 Chicago Innovation Awards
2009-05-05 13:27:52
If you're not familiar, the Chicago Innovation Awards is a 6 month long season which highlights the best, brightest, and most innovative companies in the region. Founded by Kuczmarski & Associates, the CIA takes nominations from hundreds of area businesses. Every nominee goes through an extensive discovery process and is then hand-scored by a selected panel of judges. There are 4 rounds of judging over the course of three months, widdling down to the final 10, who are then announced publicly at The Goodman Theatre, profiled by media partners and given a generous spread in BusinessWeek magazine. Register now for the first ever people's choice award and have your say in an 11th winner! If you're from Chicago and would like to nominate your company, you can do so until July 31st.
Anodized Aluminum
2009-05-04 19:42:50
I've noticed over the past week or so, that a lot of designers are trending to a new technique. Some places of note are the home site for Atebits (makers of Tweetie) Maximilian Schoening's vCard site and MixCSS. It's by no means a tough industrial texture to reproduce, but in the right environments will be extremely compelling. No doubt this is inspired by Apple, as was gloss and matte, so add this one to the books as anodized aluminum. To recreate this, drop in some noise, and add gradient and a spotlight. Bam!
Laminated!
2009-05-04 01:20:15
A couple of weeks ago, Phil & I were approached by Sandra Guy at the Chicago Sun-Times to do a profile of Phil and his serialness as well a spread on some of the work we've been doing of late. We talked Texthog, our online expense tracking service, some Doejo work and the mix of Tadros wizardry. The article was posted in the Sun-Times paper and online on Saturday, May 2nd. Yours truly received a solid mention, and got my lovely mug smack dab on page 13.
Spreadtweet
2009-05-04 00:30:08
Not that you need an excuse to download another twitter app; but if twitter is a sensitive subject at work, then you need to check out Spreadtweet by @elliottkember. It is an AIR app, and you can choose between Office OS X, and Office 2003 or 2007 for Windows. Pitch the guy a few bucks if you like it. I'm down with Tweetie, and try to keep twitter as mobile as possible... but if I didn't kick it at Doejo for a living I'd probably use Spreadtweet for its sheer wit.
Affable Expense Tracking
2009-05-03 15:04:19
As you might know, we recently launched Texthog, a super simple online expense tracking service. Texthog is our answer to managing outgoing costs within our businesses. We provide unique and useful tools to get it all done while you're on the go. Read on for my article written for TECHCocktail 10.
If you’ve ever been on the side of frustrated when it comes to managing expenses and budgets, you’re not alone. It’s ironic that today, in an age when just about everyone has online access to their entire lives, that there’s not an expense tracking solution that doesn’t deftly invade your space.
Why does it seem like you need to be a finance pro just to stay on top of your day-to-day expenses? Why is managing expenses such a pain in the ass, and more importantly why can’t it be just as fun and useful as something like Twitter?
With two disadvantageous extremes in mind (the antique checkbook register, and an autonomous alien robot from space we call “expensatron”) we set out to create this phantom service that anyone can use. We wanted something mobile, fun, and that allows you to take full advantage of it without training.
And just so we’re on the same page, we’re totally into telekenesis and shit like time travel (make sure you check us out at the next TECH Cocktail, we’ve working hard at this) but seriously, why should I risk total and complete identity theft, frozen accounts, and black cubes from outer space just because I’m too lazy/busy to track expenses myself?
So, without further adew, we’d like to introduce you to TextHog. A super simple way to track budgets and expenses online using technology you already use.
What is Texthog and how does it work?
Texthog is a really simple way to track expenses and create expense reports online. When you create an account, you’re given a unique texthog email address to use for posting transactions on the go. By adding this address as a contact in your cell phone, you can send text messages or emails with expenses directly to your account.
Who is the ideal user?
The perfect user is anyone who wants to track their spending, but finds complications in using other software. If you want to track expenses on the go, without pocketing reciepts, or without reconciling bank statements, Texthog is for you.
Do you store any financial information, bank account info, passwords, etc?
Apart from storing payment information in the future for paid accounts, we do not plan to store any sensitive, or invasive information like credit card numbers, account numbers. We strongly believe that cash flow is your business, and believe you can manage it effectively without the risk of storing passwords and access information to your private accounts.
How does Texthog differentiate itself from a service like Mint?
First of all, Texthog is not a set-it-and-forget-it solution. We believe you should stay active and involved not only in your spending, but also your expense tracking and reporting. Texthog gives you a set of tools to manage expenses easily and effectively, without the added cost of storing sensitive information. We take a fundamentally different approach but putting the responsibility of tracking on our users, but the process is simple and fun. Apart from automatic expense tracking, we offer several different capabilities; some of which are the ability to track among groups/multiple users, posting from mobile devices, reminders that you set yourself, attaching reciepts to transactions, yearly reporting and full export to other applications.
What is the revenue model, how does Texthog plan on making money?
While we’ll always have a free account for users that need simple online expense reporting, we have plans to release paid accounts in the near future. These accounts will include advanced features and be aligned for groups, and organizations that need to track expenses online.
Hello world!
2009-04-26 19:57:49
