Congratulations Toerisme Vlaanderen!

They are probably getting used to it: The website of Vlaanderen Vakantieland was elected Site of the year in the category travel & tourism during the Clickx Site van het Jaar elections.
At Stylelabs we know that the people at Toerisme Vlaanderen work hard to meet the expectations of their users. For us, it's a pleasure to work with such a dedicated team. A well deserved reward for all their hard work!

Fatal exception

The MacOs 10.5 Leopard PC joke made it into the RTM version:
Network PC icons have the blue screen of death :-)
Steve probably put this in himself.

usability, likeability, loveability!

We just visited the labs at humantics where we saw some demo's on how website usability tests are done using the eye-tracker (hence the strange chair ;-)). All eye-movement is recorded as the test person is scanning the screen, in search of the info needed. The result is something like a hotspot-plot which is extremely helpful in re-thinking your page design and navigational concepts.

This is where the Jobat site was tested. The result was so pleasing, so jobat paid for diner afterwards! thanks Lieven ;-)

It's life Jim ... part II

A designer is know to be creative (developers read: 'lazy') and eccentric. A designer is by default a dreamer and a wise crack.
A developer is said to be intelligent (designers read: 'unnecessary complicated, always trying to blame someone else) and boring. He is by default a nerd and ... a wisecrack.

Is it a cliché, invented to make the understanding of these species less complicated?
In my attempt to better understand my collegues, I want to build a profile of both designers and developers.

Today, I focussed on the designers. Some interesting videomaterial entered my mailbox:



One of our designers visited Fantasialand in Germany last weekend. He's the one with the red shoes (I swear I didn't invent this!)
Put on the sound, 'cause the comments must be a designer's as well (its' "Gents", vré wijs, the city which just breathes design).

So far the cliché on the designers still stands at Stylelabs.

To be continued ...

Gmail goes IMAP!

Finally Google adds IMAP support to their popular mail service Gmail. Any day now, you will see "IMAP Enabled" in the Forwarding tab on your gmail settings page.
Time to keep all those clients in sync!

Yeah, we saw the dino's

After 3 years of hard work and 26.000.000 euro later, humans and dino's meet face to face again at the Museum voor Natuurwetenschappen in Brussels. Check out the 3000m2 exposition with 35 skeletons (biggest in Europe).
PS: I also tried the Tyrannosaurus Rex sandwich at the dino bar ;-)

Nokia goes iPod

This week I'm deejaying with the new nokia 5310 XpressMusic at the Nokia customer events in Benelux. Nokia used a new crystal clear audio chip for the demanding music lover, with instant music buttons, all in an extra thin package.

It's life Jim ...

The battle between designers and developers is a daily struggle at the Stylelabs offices (as, for that matter in many other offices).
Since I'm the only woman who has to get along with them on a daily basis I want to understand them better. Et voilà ... a new project is born: I decided to investigate on the difference between the two races. Since real researchers such as Jambers or Danny V never dared to enter the world of these brave men, I will try to get to the bottom of this stereotypical feud.

Goal
Finding answers to these questions:
Who are they? what do they do? What do they feel? What is going on in those great minds?

We ourselves are quite lucky at the office. We have both developers and designers. Actually, I'm the only strange one in the house... I'm neither. And, we even have a couple of hybrids! They can do both things. The others call them schizzos, but I think they're just multitalented.

Whoever thought life at a web office could be so interesting?

To be continued ...
(My source promised me some video material by next week, so make sure you don't miss it)

Proficiat Mortierbrigade & DGE

Vorige week vielen Mortierbrigade en DGE in de prijzen op de Mixx award voor o.a. Best Belgian Product Launch. Mortierbrigade had een toch wel verrassende marketing stunt bedacht voor Niko, specialist in electrische schakelingen. Het recept: men neme een doodgewone student en sluiten die een weeklang op bij de Niko stand op Batibouw. De jongeman in kwestie kon je dag en nacht volgen dankzij live webstream. Via zijn blog hield Toon de wereld op de hoogte van zijn gemoedstoestand en dankzij chat konden jan, piet en pol hem de kleren van het lijf vragen. Dat zijn leefruimte beperkt bleef tot een matraske in een expohal kon hem niet deren, want dankzij de Niko domotica moest hij geen voet verzetten. De grote persaandacht en de webcam zorgden ervoor dat deze levende attractie overal te zien was.
Dit geweldig idee dat terecht in de prijzen viel, werd technisch ondersteund door Stylelabs. Het is niet evident om zoveel mediabelangstelling op gang te brengen. En, zoals de Mixx Awards jury aanhaalt, Mortierbrigade is er met "Toon does nothing" in geslaagd om online en offline communicatie als geïntegreerd geheel te gebruiken. Applaus!

And the winner is...

Today the 15 Flemish villages who made it to the finals of the election for the Most Beautiful Village of Flanders were announced. How do I know? We build the freaking website man!
Check it out @ www.vlaanderen-vakantieland.be/hetmooistedorp
The real winner is only to be announced in 2008, but from September onwards a full campaign including the necessary radio & television attention is started. If you live in one of the selected villages ... this is your chance to become a star. Mail to vlaanderenvakantieland@een.be and let them know that you exist! If you don't live in one of those villages, you might consider moving.
If the camera doesn't want you, you can always soothe yourself by posting a comment or a picture on the website itself. Most thing are published. If that doesn't work ... well ... as long as your mama loves you...

Atom to Dataset

bij deze is dat dan ook weer in orde.

Ruby on Rails

Today, we broke the .net monopoly and start experimenting with RoR.

Setting up my Mac Dev environment and an Ubuntu linux, wasn't plain trivial, but all is running sweet now.  Did my first scaffold and got to know the MVC dogma :-). Coming from .net, everything looks a bit old school, but on the contrary, we are dealing with a modern full blown framework. No complaints so far. More about our progress later.