July 31, 2008

Cuil? A search engine that’s just as odd as its name

In the blogs that I read, email newsletters I subscribe to, and info that comes across my desk, the new search engine Cuil (pronounced like “cool”) seems to have been mentioned quite a few times times. So in typical fashion, I did a vanity search for my own name (and my company’s primary product name for that matter) to see what results it would come up with compared to other searches in Google or Yahoo.

What I found, is Cuil seems to have liked my LinkedIn page best. So I did a search for my friend, and illustrator Jonathan Hull (who continually competes for search engine attention from an author with the same name.) The author guy (that “other” Jonathan Hull) seemed to control the first three pages, and then… well then… nothing else (Nope, no more results at all). So the first thing I found is the fact that Jonathan Hull’s website is named www.jonathan-hull.com or my website is www.bradmccall.com seemed to have no effect on its relevancy for the same terms searched for in Cuil. In fact, even 10 pages into Cuil’s results and I didn’t find bradmccall.com listed as any part of its results when searching for “Brad McCall”.

So I followed up with my typical rounds of search to see what showed up by typing Brad McCall Utah and while links showed up from other sites that directed to mine, the direct link didn’t show up until page 5. Seems odd, right?

So I tried another brand company. Glaceau (They make the Vitamin Water that I’ve been drinking of late – so it was a quick grab.) and voila! Their brand name appears first thing. (glaceau.com) Okay, so they got that right. So I tried “Dell”, and the search engine errored out. A search engine erroring out? More oddness. (I tried this again later and whatever didn’t work was fixed)

So at last, I tried Omniture, the company that has garnered my full-time employ, and a random bunch of links came up, many of which were a part of the Omniture website, but its corporate website was nowhere to be found in the results. If you ARE patient enough to wait, you will notice on an “Omniture” search will create a menu that has some awesome links to the corporate site as well as product links – pages that ARE MISSING from the search results.

Does anyone get how this works? What gives? And is this REALLY supposed to compete with Google?

July 23, 2008

Losing the top spot on Google

I meant to mention this the other day when I Googled myself and found I had lost the top spot on Google’s search engine to a blog. (I question Google’s mixed relationship there, because it owns the blogging tool.), but today when I checked, I’ve even moved further down the line to be 5th. I’m talking about when you do a quote-less search for brad mccall. I’m number 4 when you add back in the quotes.

Yahoo’s still got me on top, so I’m good there, and so does MSN.

Perhaps it’s because of my lack of frequency of added material to the Daily Brad? Or my lack of mentioning my name – Brad McCall in my posts with relevant content? I’m number 2 when searching for “Daily Bread”, just beneath a site that I think has been using that phrase a lot longer than me, so that can’t be it. I’m still highly suspicious about Google’s blogs appearing on top, and then not in any of the other search engines. Conspiracy theories aside, I think Google may have it’s hands in too many pots to be unbiased any of them.

July 21, 2008

My first “professional” freelance job

Red Garter Ice Cream Saloon masthead
Remember when you did your first professional freelance job? You did everything from beginning to end including the design, printing and management? I was thinking about that mixture of excitement and nervousness as I sent it off to press followed by the sure satisfaction that followed when the client loved the way it looked.

Now I look back at my work in 1996 and say – wow, I could have done so much better. But it’s 12 years later and there’s been a heck of a lot of design I’ve cranked out between now and then.

My first true freelance project was for one of my friends from High School, well actually for one her family’s businesses. Her name was Amy Kelly, the job was a postcard for tourist hotel card slots, and the business was Red Garter Ice Cream Saloon in Vale, Oregon. After inheriting land and moving to Vale, OR, Amy’s parents had started several small businesses to cater to the tourists coming through town following on the Oregon Trail. This was one of them and they needed to get their name out there.

Here’s the results (these are two up).

Red Garter Saloon postcard outside

Red Garter Saloon postcard inside

I haven’t had that same feeling about a project for a while and I I don’t know if it’s the medium I work in (100% Internet), or the fact that I work as an in-house designer for the client (Omniture), or that the projects I work on are mostly team-plays with shared responsibilities and rewards.

Do you remember your first “professional” freelance experience?

July 19, 2008

My Bloglines – links to branding, design and usability resources

For those of you who don’t know what Bloglines is, you might as well go and check out the link. But in short, it allows you a one stop place to monitor all your RSS feeds. There are a quite a few tools that do this (even your portals like Yahoo and Google), but this one was the first one I was introduced to, and you know how that goes. (They won me!) Which one do you use?

But it seems lately that I’ve clicked so many of those “Keep New” boxes that I get overwhelmed with posts I want to read further into every time I go to see the new ones. So I thought I’d post the links here. (I’m moving quickly today, so I’ll have to put little one-liners to go with them later.)

But hey! You got a new post. (Something that’s been lacking for a while from the Daily Brad… uh, Yearly Brad is more like it.) I do have a excuse, as my latest project of flipping a house has kept my creative interests outside of work “offline”.

Here’s the links:

Branding:

Design

Usability

Now my Bloglines looks much cleaner, but with the links here I can refer to some of my “come back and look at later” articles. Thanks to the websites who’ve put these together (you can notice that there are quite a few that come from the same websites.)

March 11, 2008

Omniture Is looking for UI designer

The Omniture UI team is growing continually, and we’re always looking to get some talented people on-board. It seems the UI designer is one of the most difficult to find. Someone who is not only talented in the aesthetic realm (our highly graphic applications depends on creativity and innovation), but who is also adept at creating easy-to-use interfaces for a highly technical and complex web-based software. And someone who’s willing to work in Orem, Utah. (Utah rocks!)

Here’s the latest job description we’re getting out there for a new hire. If you’ve got questions about the position or what it’s like to work at Omniture, drop me a line.

Read the rest of this entry »

March 6, 2008

Rediscovering CSS – again.

I had an “ah-ha!” moment over the past couple days. CSS is awesome!

Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve been so focused on the aesthetic design of websites for so long, and not how they’re engineered that I took CSS for granted? (I have always been able to surround myself with excellent programmers who’ve spoiled me.) So maybe the power of CSS hasn’t sunk in due to the fact that I’ve never gone in and tweaked it for myself?

But now I get it. CSS is awesome! (Did I say that?)

Read the rest of this entry »

January 30, 2008

It’s going to be a hot birthday. (I read it in the news)

2008 is one of the first years in a long time that I’m not taking a trip to celebrate my arrival to this world on January 31st. For those of you who know me well, you’ve already been asking, “where are you going for your birthday?” This year I decided to stick around town and enjoy this snow we’ve been having instead of lying on a sandy beach somewhere. Years past have been gloomy, gray and cold and it has been nice to escape to Florida, Cancun, Acapulco, Hawaii (all trips in years past). But while this year we’ve had plenty of the cold, in contrast to years past, we’ve also received plenty of the white stuff. I mean lots! It’s a nice change – I love the snow!

So to take advantage of the white stuff, I’m going snowboarding. Yup, hitting the slopes this weekend. I typically head to Brighton, but I’ve also talked about trying somewhere new this time. (Any suggestions?) In pulling up to check the weather for my birthday and the day after on KSL.com, I was surprised to find it was going to be a toasty day (and for the low none-the-less!):

So other than the oceans boiling and every living thing cooking in their skin, I think it just might be a good day to hit the slopes. I’ll be sure to grab my SPF 10,000 – wish me luck!

January 18, 2008

Back at Omniture full time

For those of you who know me, you’ve probably seen that I haven’t updated my blog in a while. You’ve also probably noticed that my Linkedin profile shows me back at Omniture. Or if perhaps you haven’t noticed any of that, yes, I’m back at Omniture. After working nearly 5 years and being a one man show designer, I took a job at Cymphonix, a job that was converted into a contract position after a year. I started contracting with Omniture in March of 2007, and was hired on in August.

Things have changed significantly since I worked for the green machine by way of employee count, their public status, their client base, their product line, and much more. It’s like working for a completely different company – other than the fact I still get to see my brand influence all over the office. My title is “Senior UX Designer”, and since I’ve never been one on throwing titles around, I think it works just fine.

Speaking of user experience (which I’ve blogged about before), I found a recent user experience pretty comical. I opened up my MSN Messenger to find an ad at the bottom showing none other than Alyssa Milano. Tell me what “user experience” you think is broken in this one:

Here’s a clue: How beautiful is THAT picture of Alyssa?!?

May 6, 2007

Biting the hand that feeds you – client late fees?

So what happens when your client is late in paying you? What do you do to handle this? Biting the hand that feeds you is no way to get more to eat. (Or more design work in this case.)

I recently had a contract client that was late in paying their invoice, and I thought that this would be a good post for my blog. Having expressed in advance that I was a stickler for payment on-time to each of my clients as I sign them, most of them have always been prompt in payment. Typically most companies ask “terms” with each of their vendors, with 30-45 wait periods until payment. But as a freelancer (NOT a vendor), I’ve found that even with the deposit before a job begins, there’s no way that I can give them these kind of terms. I make it clear up front that a check must be cut on completion of the project, and if they won’t agree these terms, I consider walking.

Standard terms for my invoices are 30% down and the rest due on delivery. (When the final project is delivered by email or CD/DVD) It is noted right on my invoice that after 10 days the invoice will be overdue (late) and a late fee will be incurred. My clients appreciate this “grace” period, and most of the time it has not been necessary to add a late fee. But once-in-a-while I’ll be working with someone new who doesn’t know the internal processes of their company, or doesn’t have a good working relationship with their accounting department and things get stopped-up. How do you politely handle this?

Here’s how I went about it this last time: The day the grace period ended (Day 10), I sent an email inquiring about the status of the check, and asked if I needed to submit a new invoice with a late fee included. There were no threats, no “warnings”, I just politely asked if they needed more time by telling them that this “time” would appear as a line-item on a new invoice. The check was ready the following day. I didn’t even have in mind what kind of late fee to charge – a standard amount or a percentage of the total?

As a freelance or contract designer, we get to handle accounting, new business, account management and all those things that are normally handled by another person in a agency environment. I don’t like dealing with the money, I don’t like change orders, and most of all – collection is the bane of my freelance existence. How do you make this a smooth process? What kind of terms you provide your clients and how about late fees? Do you have them?

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