I had a few things I wanted to accomplish:

Setting Flash Aside Momentarily

I’ve built plenty of sites, apps, and other widgets in Flash/ActionScript. And while there are certainly a multitude of ways I could present my online self in Flash, I decided it was time for a new challenge. Combine that with the fact that I wanted an iPhone/iPad friendly site and I decided to jump in to jQuery as my main development framework for the presentation layer. I’ll be keeping my portfolio (once that gets a facelift) in Flash, however, so that my AS3 skills are properly represented here.

Unifying Feeds

Partially inspired by Mr. Daly‘s Flavors.me built site, I realized it was time to start unifying all of my disparate feeds. I use Twitter and this blog for my ramblings, Flickr, Tweetphoto, and TwitPic for my image sharing, LinkedIn for my resumé, and a slew of location based services for my geotracking. Isn’t it about time these all lived in one place. Besides, the site IS called Barely Concealed Narcissism. Maybe there should be more about ME.

Updated Design

I’m not really a designer. I like to think I have some basic design chops, but nothing compared to the art directors I’ve worked with over the years. In a few weeks I begin working towards an MFA in Communication Design, but the focus there will be more theoretical than practical. That said, I wanted to keep the look and feel simple and clean, inspired by my latest obsession (to which Mr. Norton can attest), 60′s style screen prints.

I admit that it took a few weeks of thinking to figure out what this new site would be. It actually came to me in the shower one morning. How’s that for a too-much-information-cliché? I sat down that weekend (the wife was out of town) and cranked this out in 48 hours or so. It took a few hours of tweaks afterwards to clean it up (more on that soon), but here we are.

I’d love to hear your reactions. Naturally, since this is a site about me, I plan on sharing my thoughts. In the interest of attention spans, I’ll take care of that in Part 2.

In truth, the term sells itself short. When referring to app store, we’re not just talking about a commercial market for applications (although that’s certainly a primary focus). Instead, this is a place for a software company to show how extensible all of its engineers’ hard work really is. And, of course, it’s also a showcase for the platform extensions themselves – letting the independent developers shine.

From a marketing perspective, launching an app store can be smart. But you really need to be a first mover in an industry. Otherwise, you become more noise than signal.

All of this is why I’m proud to have been part of LocaModa’s recent DOOH App Store launch – the first of its kind for digital out of home.

Loca’s move (with design help from StudioNumberNine & Daly Creative) continues what the company has already worked very hard to do to standardize a rather splintered industry. The company’s platform extends across multiple media to bring client content together with user interaction. And now it has a great showcase to explain what that actually means.

ATT’s digital out of home presence at pop star Demi Lovato’s summer tour was really my first major launch at my newest gig. We gave concert goers (and online participants) the opportunity to text or email messages and pictures to screens at the show, then provided them with a “playback” viewing of all the messages at that show. Users could go online after a concert and see a virtual replay of the DOOH screen. They could then capture the screen as an image and post it to Facebook.

Turns out 12-18 year old girls love to text. Who knew?

This campaign, one of Loca’s most successful in terms of user numbers, is a great example of engaging an otherwise bored [albeit captive] audience. AT&T had hundreds of eye balls staring at their brand; and by the end of the campaign their brand was on thousands of handsets (in the form of mobile text-backs).

CEO Stephen Randall was at the Boston show to capture the excitement users get by sending a message and seeing themselves up on a huge screen. The “Vanity Play” if you will:

BallardSpahr.com Homepage feature navigation element. Each image opened up into a box of further content.

BallardSpahr.com Office Map

BallardSpahr.com Careers page header. Clicking on an individual brings up a quote from him or her on the Ballard Spahr experience.

- Launched Stride on MTVTimesSquare last week. Send your message/photo to MTV’s 42ft screen (Broadway btwn 44th and 45th). Then get a ‘memento’ screenshot of what it [probably] looked like. Legalese and logistics have forced this one to be kept under wraps for a while now. Hopefully we have the opportunity to improve the whole concept as it runs.

- Posting and processing my latest shots to my Flickr account last week reminded me how much I miss taking daily photographs. Doubt I will get back to that frequency, but need to make sure I keep the camera with me more often.

- Have moved to XCode for my Arduino development. Struggling significantly with decoding IR messages from the Apple Remote. Speaking of homebrew-geekiness, congrats to Mr. Saunders for some great recent work.

- Wedding planning is flying, thanks to my wonderful partner in crime. Have some initial pages posted to sg.weds.gs. Starting to think about the registry now. Extremely conflicted on this part. More on that in the future.

- Finally, I leave you with a relevant shot, taken this weekend. Sixty-three years of marriage. And counting. Too bad I’m marrying into this family; I could certainly use some of those genes.

Users can send SMS/email messages to a screen then go to a site and see a ‘replay’ of their messages from the show.

http://www.sixteen-nine.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=668:locamoda-app-entertains-teen-mob-at-concert&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=50

It’s a small part of LocaModa’s strategy to be the only company that connects dooh with web, mobile, social networks, and – coming soon – more traditional media like TV.

More soon…oh, and I admit I already knew who David Archeletta was.