The office is alive and buzzing with Olympic pride today. We’ve been talking about the games, the dramas and the performances that blew us out of the water – but nothing compares to the fierce spirit of so many people coming together. Take a look at parts ONE and TWO of this great photo essay covering the worlds best in the height of competition. What was your favorite moment?
Post by Aleksandra Wnuk, Mar 1stYesterday YouTube (owned by Google) announced that they would drop support for Internet Explorer 6 on March 13. While users will still be able to access YouTube and use most of it, they will receive a message that notifies them that some functions might not work properly, suggesting an upgrade to a newer browser (see screenshot below).
If you are not already aware, IE6 has been around for about 10 year now and its user base is still around 20%. That means that we still have to develop our website taking this browser into consideration. Lately at CloudRaker, we’ve been talking a lot about starting to drop support for IE6 and charging clients for the additional work that it requires. Depending on the type of project, making it compatible for this browser can take from 10 to 20% more development time. Stopping support for this browser would mean cheaper development costs and faster delivery.
The browser itself is not THAT bad…if we were still in 2001. When it was finally released, it was seen as a savior by the developers community. Simply because it blew away it’s biggest competitor at the time, Netscape 4. That was ages ago, and this browser is built around old standards and hasn’t improved in the last 10 years. Because a lot of people are still using it, we still need to consider it and that’s exactly why the community has had enough of it.
While I don’t personally think IE6 will die on March 13, it is certainly something that will bring awareness to the average user. The average user that visits YouTube on IE6 has no clue their browser is outdated. As long as the sites work, it’s totally fine with them, they just don’t know their browsers don’t support CSS3, transparency, has a slow JavaScript engine. They don’t know because we are still making the websites we build work for them. Now that the big boys decided to drop the support it will help, even if the users still won’t realize their new browsers now support CSS3, HTML5 and such. It still makes us happy to know they switched.
Post by Stéphane Caron, Feb 24thOur friends over @ ASICS Japan just launched the Japanese version of the OT site we built with their colleagues in Amsterdam for ASICS Europe.
RakeOn!
Post by Jean-Sébastien Monty, Feb 22ndIn the last week, there has been a lot of talk here about Buzz, and not everyone agrees on its usefulness. I personally like it, I think that Google Wave is the technology behind the service (which would show how incredibly flexible Wave really is), and a few of my friends who are not into the social realm at all, use Buzz. I do not think that Facebook just lost half its value, though.
Business Insider has a good account on how Google reacted to users complaints revolving around Google Buzz during its first week:
[...] Bradley and Todd’s first move was to set-up a “War Room” for Buzz, where engineers and product managers could plot and push immediate changes to the product.
I love this. It goes to show that sometimes, a company has to deviate from its usual process to fix a flawed product, or to quickly react on feedback given by the community. In the realtime realm that is now the Internet, this may just have become a necessity.
Post by Frédéric Lemieux, Feb 19thI honestly can’t tell.
For those of you who didn’t know, last week, Google released a new product called “Buzz”. It’s aimed directly at Facebook and Twitter and they use functionality coming from or highly inspired by FriendFeed. If you log into your Gmail account, you should see a “Buzz” tab right underneath your “Inbox” tab.
It has been on everyone’s lips and upon further testing, I cannot really understand why. Sure it’s working as intended. You can post status updates, like and comment an update, “@” reply to someone, post YouTube videos, images, all of this is there.
The feeling I have with Buzz is that it delivers about the same and offers about the same as existing tools out there. Sure Google has that huge Gmail user base and they had plenty of users from day one. But from a user standpoint, there is really is no point to using it right now.
There are way too many social websites where I can post right now. My online social life is now resumed to I post something on Twitter and it get propagated on all the other social websites I’m registered to. I honestly don’t have the time and don’t want to take the time to go through all social websites and keep up to date with what everyone posted. I try to keep a presence on most of them but that’s it.
Unless Buzz introduce a killer feature in the near future, I probably won’t switch. It’ll just stay another social website where I post my Twitter feed ;)
Post by Stéphane Caron, Feb 15thOur second installment of Meet the Rakers is brought to you by Rob, who has profiled ‘MélanieRaker’. Mélanie is so many amazing things: an information architect, a painter, an interior design aficionado, a ski instructor and a mom. Oh, and she is as unassuming and humble as they come. We could go on and on about how great we think she is, but then we wouldn’t need the video, would we? ‘Manon pèse sur le piton!’
MélanieRaker from CloudRaker on Vimeo.
Post by Frédéric Lemieux, Feb 12thWe want to thank everyone who donated to the clothing drive for Jeunesse au Soleil, as you can see, the turn out was impressive. We got everything from snow suits and warm boots to sweaters and scarves- each and every item is appreciated. Have a great week everyone!
Meet Max! from CloudRaker on Vimeo.
Anyone who’s come to visit us at our office knows that we love our pets. There’s always a dog or two running around the office, and we happen to think it brightens up the place. Last week we had one of our CloudCamps which we like to do to finish up each month – there’s pizza, and two or three mini presentations by our very own Rakers talking about anything and everything that inspires them. Friday proved to be particularly special- Robert brought in his darling adopted Greyhound, Max, and gave a presentation leaving everyone ready to call their local SPCA. Max was rescued thanks to Robert and the kind people at Greyhound Rescue Quebec and has proven to be a great companion, but there are thousands of other retired race dogs just like him who haven’t been as lucky.
Robert compiled his slideshow into a short video capturing the life of a race dog and some other tidbits of information. Take a look.
Post by Aleksandra Wnuk, Feb 5th
Sun Youth has asked Montrealers to look through their closets for warm clothes they no longer need for those arriving from Haiti to our chilly city. If it is too far or out of the way for anyone to get to Sun Youth, CloudRaker will be doing a drop off! We welcome you to bring your warm clothes here if it is more convenient for you. So friends and family, ad folks, production folks, folks who read our blog, do stop in, drop off some warm garments and grab a cup of coffee and poke around our office if you’d like. We will be doing the drop off early next week!
We are located at 1435 Saint Alexandre (suite 700)
Post by Christina Brown, Jan 25th
Here at the CloudRaker office, there’s been much talk about haircuts among the men. Our technical director Fred had let his grow particularly wild at one point and just recently had it trimmed down. He and several of our male compadres go to the little barber shop around our corner. A few years ago, my finicky self would’ve thought they were crazy, but paying $10-15 at a barber shop versus $60-80 at the hairdresser is starting to make a lot more sense.
It’s important to note that many guys have never had trouble with the no-frills treatment at barber shops, but many like me, have been more comfortable with hairdressers. It’s not necessarily from a desire to be fashionable, but from a general fear of barber shops. My fear started at 14 years old. It was the mid 90’s and I was trying to grow my hair like Kurt Cobain. Because it was getting a little mulletesque in the back, I asked my mom to take me to that $5 place my family goes to in Chinatown for a trim. I left with one of those early 90’s skater cuts with it long and even on top and totally shaved underneath..
In the last year or so, I’ve noticed a gradual change of heart among men, partially fueled by trendsetters like the Sartorialist. Maybe it’s the economic crisis forcing us to question frivolities like $60 haircuts, or just a general back-to-basics attitude but many have gone back to the way of barber shops. During the Christmas holidays, I went to Salon Caldense on Duluth, paid $15 and got a pretty decent haircut!
photo from Flick creative commons.
Post by Edmund Lam, Jan 19thCloudRaker is a digital branding agency based in the creative wilds of Montreal. We believe that ideas are more powerful than noise. But not just any old idea, ones that are unique and useful. Ideas grounded sky high.
CloudRaker completely rebrands software company Interactive Brands: new name, logo, website, the whole shebang! Meet LULUsoftware.com Feb 23rd
Nico has arrived and he's already famous!! Read our exciting news here and here. Feb 22nd
We love Joe! CloudRaker has been chosen to be the Social Media Agency for Joe Fresh Québec. The Rakers = very happy people. Feb 3rd
Lancôme's Gold Fascination page now live on Facebook! Click here to check it out. Feb 1st
