I am proud to announce the addition of Jim Pruetting to the Application Development team here at Caxiam Group! Jim recently completed dominated a three month trial period where he proved he could back up all his tech talk by writing clean, secure, optimized code for large scale projects.

Jim is a recent Full Sail grad and brings with him a wave of new technology to add to our existing web development offerings. He is proficient in PHP, ColdFusion, JavaScript, XHTML/CSS, MySQL, SQL Server, jQuery, Linux Server Administration and a big list of other technologies but is quick to remind all who will listen that he is first and foremost an object oriented web programmer who simply will not allow himself to be defined by a specific technology or platform.

We knew Jim was a good fit early in the game when he was able to convince our team to change version control systems, AJAX frameworks and explain in detail the benefits of the nginx URL re-writing engine.

While his gaming skills leave much to be desired he has been a great addition to the team over the past three months. We hope to have Jim with us for the long haul and look forward to his growth as an application developer object oriented web programmer!

Welcome aboard Jim Pruetting!

If I haven’t already run you down in the street and yammered your ear off Todoist.com, then let me introduce you.

For years I’ve been searching for the perfect task management tool. I’ve tried all the standards, from Bugzilla to Remember the Milk but I always ended up back with Notepad.

My .txt wasn’t available from ‘the cloud’, no logical groups or filtering, and there’s no notion history. However, Notepad is FLEXIBLE! I can add, organize and reorganize my tasks however I want, whenever I want. Crazy, eh?

Enter Todoist

Todoist.com has a lot of the same features as the other tools, but it let me do things MY way! I can label, tree, sort and re-sort to my hearts content. It’s got quick and natural keyboard short-cuts, cool date-parsing date boxes, a full history, the data are fully exportable and the the price is right at $3 a month! The site even has instructional videos for getting over the short learning curve.

Don't want to forget about lunch!

Oh, and plug-ins. I use the iGoogle Gadget, FireFox plug-in, and it looks great on my beloved phone. If only there were a Thunderbird plug-in, then I might just burst into flames. Flames of affection.

And the best part, despite the plethora of features, Todoist has a fast, intuitive and SIMPLE interface. It gets out of the way and lets me track my tasks how I want to. In this age of opinionated software, it’s refreshing for a software product to work for me, instead of against me.

2 thumbs up!

Great quote from Charles Eames.

When executed in a consistent manner, those eloquent details in a design can become a voice to your users. ”Hey, we’re glad you found us. Your user experience is important and we’ve gone the extra mile for you”. Those details can:

• Enrich the overall presentation of information
• Facilitate further understanding of hierarchy & functionality
• Entice a user to explore content
• Keep users (customers) coming back to your website with a deeper appreciation of your product or service

Here are a handful of some delicious design details I’ve stumbled upon lately.
Continue Reading “Delicious Design Details – Going the Extra Mile!”

A few months ago, Dr. Paul Dyer came to us with an idea for a site to help promote and educate users on his Sacred Path, Joyful Journey process. After some initial discovery, it was decided we’d start with a relatively straightforward WordPress blog site. This site would allow Paul to share thoughts, ideas and resources while encouraging discussion from the user community.

Since that time the site has evolved into a comprehensive resource for people to find true meaning and happiness in their lives, and Caxiam Group’s relationship with Paul has evolved into that of a true friend to the team. We are grateful for the opportunity to work with Paul, and are proud to present some of the results of our relationship. Continue Reading “Introducing PaulDyer.com”

One of the many hats I wear at Caxiam Group is documenting client processes and translating those into logical structures that we can turn into web application magic.  While I never tend to write any code (it makes the programmers nervous) I do my best to provide them with the best representation of how a proposed system of application feature should work and/or look.  What better to do that with than a picture?

Continue Reading “Wireframing – Finding the Right Tool for the Job”