Here at the ‘Cap, we’re all excited about HTML 5, so much so, that we have started a monthly reading club in order to get through the 900+ pages of the HTML 5 Specs.   Definitely looking forward to the next year and a half or so…

One of the most exciting things coming out of HTML 5 is the new video element.  Just this past week at the Google I/O Conference, Google introduced a new open-source video format, now called WebM.   This new format is under an open-source license as well as optimized for the web, and it seems like it will help guide the direction of embeddable media on the Web.

There aren’t many projects that come through the door that don’t want to utilize some form of video, so we’re definitely excited to see some standardized rules come through in this next iteration.

Of course Steve Jobs isn’t a fan of the new format (read here), and he appears to have some viable points.  But regardless of that, it doesn’t really matter how the video codec turns out, HTML 5 is going to make the web a better place and I can’t wait to see how we can use it to take all of our projects to the next level.

As we get into each and every project, it’s bound to happen that something is going to change or be altered from what was originally planned.

This is what I like to call adaptive development.

Once the project specs are built out and the project begins, we get our development thoughts together and construct our plan of attack, however when that unknown comes into play we have to be ready to adjust fire.  We’re not always able to stay on the original course.  Figuring out what to do next is, often times, one of the more challenging yet enjoyable parts of working at Bottlecap.  Whenever this happens, we get a chance to really test the collective Bottlecap brain power.  We get the team together and we brainstorm solutions, from the extreme to the mundane….the joy of this comes in seeing everyone come together to work on potential solutions with one goal in mind “making the project awesome”.

The beauty of this is when we are able to attain a soluti0n that stays on budget and on time by adapting to the situation and using a little bit of ingenuity and creativity to achieve the desired outcome.

So of course you had to know that Google would get involved in the Social Media world.  With their latest announcement, Google Wave, we have a better understanding of what they envision and to be honest it looks pretty sweet.

Jeremy touched on the social networking aspects of Xobni in a previous blog and how Bill Gates said that Xobni will be  “the next generation of social networking”.  Well it appears Google is thinking along the same lines.  Google Wave will integrate email with a slew of social networking capabilities and more.  As one of the developers on the project stated, “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today”.

I  encourage you to check out Googe’s official blog about it and also if you have the time watch their Full Demo of the Wave.

We have a saying around here at the Cap, “Make it Awesome.”

It doesn’t matter if we’re working on a simple brochure site or a full-blown system, at the end of every dev meeting we leave with the parting message “Make it Awesome!”  It’s a belief that resounds through every project we work on and I feel like we deliver on that.  While we can’t promise Awesomeness as a deliverable, it’s definitely what we aim for.

So know that whenever you work with Bottlecap, our aim is to make your idea real and to make your idea awesome.

We look forward to making your next big idea a reality.

Anyone who has a website wants to know what their users are doing, how they’re responding to their site and what can be done to get more user interaction.

One useful tool we will always suggest and implement is Google Analytics.  The amount of details that you can get from that simple implementation is mind blowing, but now is not the time to get into the details of how to use your analytics tool, rather I wanted to talk about a new site analyzer that was recently brought to my attention.

It’s called Crazy Egg.  I’ve seen heat map analysis for user-interaction on websites before, but I haven’t seen it done with the flexibility this app appears to offer. I especially like the confetti feature in the demo, being able to tell where your users are clicking and grouped by how they were referred to your site is a powerful tool and should help you understand your traffic a little better.

User Experience, as defined by Wikipedia, is a term used to describe the overarching experience a person has as a result of their interactions with a particular product or service, its delivery, and related artifacts, according to their design.

But I would argue to say that it is not only about the user it is also about the business.  If the user has a great experience, but the business has not met any of its goals than the project has not done its job.   So how do we approach this thing called User Experience?

As a development company, we are always trying to find the best way to create our projects utilizing the latest technologies and methodologies.  Though when exploring our options, we always have to keep the User Experience in mind.  A site can be the most amazing piece of art on the back and front-end, but if the user can’t find what they’re looking for or if their interaction with the site is difficult, then you have not done your job and you won’t have a successful project.

When Bottlecap is developing a site, whether it is brochure site with a simple CMS or if it’s a full-blown SaaS application we always take the mindset that the user needs to be able to understand the system intuitively and without a 300 page user guide.  And we always make the effort to understand our client’s goals so that the User Experience for both the business and the end-user is a success.

User Experience, isn’t just the responsibility of one member of the team, it’s a group effort between the designers, the developers and the client and quite honestly everyone that is going to be involved with the project.