In•for•ma•tion n. 1.) Knowledge obtained by research, observation, study or instruction in a form allowing for its recommunication to others enabling a state of knowing.

Ar•chi•tect n. 1.) An individual skilled in the art of building who creates the instruction for the construction of organized space. 2.) the thoughtful specifications and superintendence of the building of useful structures.

In•for•ma•tion Ar•chi•tect n. 1.) The individual who organizes the patterns inherent in data, making the complex clear. 2.) A person who creates the structure or map of information which allows others to find their personal paths to knowledge. 3.) The emerging 21st century professional occupation addressing the needs of the age focused upon clarity, human understanding, and the science of the organization of information.

From Information Architects by Richard Saul Wurman. Lest we forget, as the Web 2.0 deluge pours on.

Elexicon partnered with Spectrum Health’s PR & marketing teams and video production vendor to create Spectrum Health TV, an online series of helpful interviews with medical experts on a variety of topics. New videos and channels were just released today … thought we’d share.

We need to take a moment to recognize the 1-year anniversary at Elexicon for Naima Seales and Calvin Chopp! We also need to slightly belatedly recognize Amy Nobach for 8(!) years of outstanding service and still going strong.

Which also means … hey! Look what month it is! Elexicon its very self turns 9 this month. Happy birthday to us, and thank you to all our clients, friends, family, and team members past and present who have supported us. Double digits here we come!

The Spectrum Health Foundation and Helen DeVos Childrens Hospital Foundation web site won a Platinum Award for Best eBusiness Web Site from Strategic Health Care Communications. Elexicon provided the creative direction for the site and teamed with Spectrum Health and NuSoft Solutions to develop the site for the Foundations.

The new release of iTunes (8.0) features iTunes “Genius,” a companion sidebar that provides the ultimate “if you liked that, then you’ll like this” functionality in terms of comprehensiveness and ease of use. Upon first launch Genius examines your music library and then roughly 15 minutes later (length of time depends on the size of your music library) goes into action in the right sidebar of your iTunes interface. Click on a song — any song — and the Genius sidebar displays a list of the most popular songs by that artist that you haven’t purchased yet as well as a secondary listing of similar songs and artists that you might also like. The “favorites” and “just for you” functionality is nothing new of course, a key feature of not only iTunes but also Amazon, Netflix, and many others. The genius of Genius is its higher level of ease-of-use and comprehensiveness (and eventually, as you use it more and as Apple continues to improve it: Accuracy). This “higher level” stems from the close proximity of the Genius to your music library, the way it assimilates itself into your own personal world — your data and your user interface.

Genius and other tools like it continue to become more and more powerful because there is more metadata in the universe. The prefix “meta” means “about,” so metadata is “data about data.” In the universe of Google and Web 2.0, content is no longer king. Data about your content is king. It’s the metadata that helps your content get found more quickly by the people who want it and need it most. Without it, your content could just be a tree falling in the woods. Metadata ensures that the right people hear it. If you are not hearing the word “metadata” come up in discussions about your web site strategy (and we’re not just talking about good old fashioned meta tags), it may be time to consult with an expert to talk ideas. Hint: See previous blog post by Mr. Tucker.

By definition it may seem that the answer to this question is yes. It’s simple. A user starts a web browser, enters your company’s domain name, and your website appears. You have hopefully spent some time thinking about those users, but making sure your site is connected to the web means more than viewing your site in a web browser.

Search Engines
The most obvious example is search engines. Companies write software called “Spiders” that visit your site and ask for every page. You have probably invested some money into “Search Engine Optimization (SEO)”. One goal of SEO is to make it easy for the spider to find, prioritize and index the important content on your site. This is accomplished by improving the HTML code behind your web pages.

HTML is one language of the web, but a more powerful language is XML. For instance, to optimize your site for the Google spider you can add an XML sitemap file to the root of your website. This tells the spider where to find content, what content is important, and when content has changed.

XML can take different forms and that’s where it gets interesting.

Feed Readers
Many people read their favorite sites without ever opening a web browser. Instead they use a Feed Reader.

Many websites offer their content in XML formats called “Real Simple Syndication (RSS)” or “Atom Syndication Format (ATOM)”. A feed reader, which may look like an email application, checks your site for updates and sends the information back to the user. Internet Explorer 7 has a feed reader built-in and you will notice in the screenshot below that the content of the Elexicon blog looks very different in the IE feed reader.

Mashups
As soon as you provide an XML feed, other websites can combine your content with other sources to create a new experience. The richness of your data enables unforseen value as others start to piece it together with additional web resources. Here are some examples:

Widgets: A web feed allows users to put your information on their site. This is great for SEO and for your user. If your company has a dealer network, each dealer site could host your news widget and drive traffic to your site while adding value to theirs. In the screenshot below, you can see a simple widget displaying the Elexicon blog feed on my Google home page.

Geocoding: If your data has a geographic connection you can include the latitude and longitude. Many digital cameras will geocode and timestamp every photo when it is taken. If you upload your photos to the Flickr website, then sites like flickrvision can combine the Flickr feed with a map and you get a fascinating worldwide photo tour in real-time.

Aggregation: Others may chose to load your data and analyze it for patterns and trends. For instance, Twitscoop reads all the words from the microblogging site, Twitter, and creates a real-time tag cloud revealing the most popular topics of conversation on the web at any given moment.

Here is a Mapdango map of Grand Rapids, Michigan, which pulls together weather, events, photos, history and more.

Sites like technorati are trolling for content and if your information is tagged properly, it will likely be included.

Visualization: Besides aggregation, advanced visualization is another trend. Software is used to analyze data and create new ways of seeing things. SpatialKey is a new company doing some nice work in this area.

Application Programming Interface (API)
Another level of web integration is providing an API. An API allows others to develop even more robust web applications with your data. It will be easier to do business with you and it will offer valuable exposure for your company. A great example of this is the UPS API which provides information about a package in an XML format. Web users have used the API to create multiple ways to track packages, by map, IM via Twitter, and more.

What you can do
It is not enough to think only of people visiting your site with a web browser. You need to think about what rich information you can provide to the web. Organizing your data will benefit your company and you may be surprised what it inspires in the web community. There’s a lot going on; just look at the full spectrum of sites in this analysis dubbed The Conversation Prism.

On Geoffrey Moore’s “Crossing the Chasm” scale, I’d like to think I’m an “Innovator” but admittedly, I’m merely a humble Early Adopter. So here I am, in all my non-Innovator/full-on-Early-Adopter glory holding the “2.0″ version of the iPhone, having passed on the first iPhone for all the Early Adopter reasons (just waiting for a few of the most blatant shortcomings and flaws to be worked out … then I’m all over the next version!!!).

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the device once I’ve owned and used it for more than a couple days. But one thing is for sure. Phone Saber is cool. This free App Store gem provided me with my most distinct “this is a great time to be alive” (TIAGTTBA) moment so far. This thing transforms your iPhone into a lighsaber, reacting to your slashing movements with perfectly timed sound effects. When you’re arguing with a coworker and things seem to be at a stalemate … hold on just a minute. You’ve got Phone Saber!!! Who has the upper hand now??

Past TIAGTTBA example: listening to a streaming radio station via iTunes, hearing a new song that I like, and owning the song (also via iTunes) before it’s finished playing. Stuff like that.

There is no denying that Apple marketing is, among other things (like elegant, engaging and effective), entirely pretentious. So, they make a popular and sometimes easy target.



I just saw this via one of our clients so I haven’t done a full google-research but I would assume that Lenovo didn’t actually make this and that it will never air on television as a commercial. However, here we have yet another example of (what looks to be) viral, user-generated marketing. Whether it really is or not, think about how a customer’s faith (or lack thereof) in your product would lead him/her to create a communication like this championing (or slamming) said product. And then getting thousands of views on YouTube before they remove it (or allow it to stay).

OK, designers. Next time you ponder that great visual identity, forget the “visual mark looks good on a fax machine, too” requirement. If Flogos, an Alabama-based special effects company gets their way we’ll all be putting our logo comps through the “looks great chopped out of helium soap bubbles and floating through the sky” test.

They claim to be ready to custom “float” your logo in size increments (diameter?) of 24, 36, and 48 inches. They already have contracts in place with Disney and Universal Studios and pro sports teams are raising eyebrows. In addition to assumed stress relieving benefits of this device to a skeet-shooting logo critic such as myself, the inventors also say they can vary the height of these “cloud advertisements” and the soap/helium mixtures are safe for the environment and airplanes.

There does, however seem to be a number of Flogos skeptics out there with cynical chatter appearing on LiveScience and Brand New over the conquest of pristine “blue sky” space for the purposes of marketing. While I see their point, daytime sky marketing isn’t a new medium (and we don’t even need to discuss “night time signage” using roaming search lights, fireworks, and other darkness shattering media). Airplane banners, sky writing, tethered helium markers and hot air balloons have been around for decades — and arguably do their work in a more visually obtrusive fashion than a few dainty bubbles. Colorado based GoFast, a sports energy drink has even sought to conquest the skys by sponsoring a jet pack team (didn’t know there was such a thing, but it looks like they’re having a “pilot search” if you feel like getting in line as a guinea pig ala flambe’. Boss, consider this my formal request for time off — yee haw!).

So whether you’re a Flogos cynic or a Flogos seeker watching for the first appearance of this thing in your neighborhood (I predict a used car lot), you have to admit there’s something captivating about a free floating logo drifting skyward, with only the wind to guide it. Just try and tell me you’ve never stood there in that crowd — stiff necked and squinting up at that tiny disappearing spec that used to be some kid’s helium balloon while everyone takes turns whispering, “I can still see it!” and “Where’d it go?”. So with that type of captivation, maybe this company has stumbled upon the advertising specialties industry’s lightning in a bottle — or in a bubble? But let’s not even bother asking if there’s a money back guarantee for those unexpected wind gusts.

Under Consideration’s “Brand New Blog” pulled off a nice April Fool’s this year. The blog, a favorite of our creative director Mike VerStrat, provides a daily, rolling (and entertaining) record of prominent corporate identity updates and other significant logo designs. On April 1 they tossed a Ford logo redesign out there and the initial impact was a bit breathtaking. “How could they do that?!?”

Makes you think, though. As troubled as the automaker is, one wonders if an actual makeover would help the company seem more fresh and edgy like their international competitors. However, in my humble opinion, “they are who they are.” What other brands and logos are this “untouchable?” I’ll throw IBM out there to start the discussion…