Zack Shapiro

mattgalligan: Flying people in NYC

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:31:33 -0700

mattgalligan:

Flying people in NYC

- 2012 -

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:29:29 -0700

Go.

Digithoughts: Skmmr - Share with those who care

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:56:27 -0700

Digithoughts: Skmmr - Share with those who care:

Skmmr got featured on Digithoughts today! Sign up for our beta here.

digithoughts:

So, you like sharing stuff you read on the web with your friends, but don’t feel that Facebook, twitter or Google+ does a good job of sorting out what to share with whom? Maybe Skmmr can be your solution: Instead of just “yelling into a crowded room”, Skmmr intends to help you share content…

We got featured on Beta List today! betalist: Skmmr is a web...

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:37:43 -0700

We got featured on Beta List today!

betalist:

Skmmr is a web app that believes in the power of sharing great content with small, intimate groups. Skmmr makes it easy to create a tight-knit group of up to 8 people and drop any content to them through our bookmarklet. Every evening, when the day is winding down and you’re relaxing at home, we send you an evening digest of the newest content from your circles.

Sign up here

With Skmmr, Sharing Content Is As Personal As It Is Easy

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:29:24 -0600

With Skmmr, Sharing Content Is As Personal As It Is Easy:

Skmmr got some great press on Fueled.com today.

Become a part of our beta at Skmmr.com.

Skmmr aims to be your favorite way to share what you’re reading with those who will care

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:52:48 -0600

Skmmr aims to be your favorite way to share what you’re reading with those who will care:

We got some great press on The Next Web today! Check it out and sign up for the Skmmr beta!

Skmmr got picked to be part of TechCocktail!

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 19:23:35 -0600

Just got some great news. Skmmr has been selected among a handful of companies to present tomorrow night at TechCocktail in Boulder.

Eric, Andy and I have worked very hard on Skmmr and we’re excited to show it off.

We’d love your feedback as we roll out the beta very, very soon. Sign up to be a part of it here.

Skmmr (beta) - Tell your friends what to read.

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 21:49:00 -0600

Skmmr (beta) - Tell your friends what to read.:

Friends,

I’m incredibly proud to be releasing Skmmr in the very near future. Skmmr is a web app that lets you create a small, intimate circle and push content directly to your friends and loved ones through those same circles. That’s about all I can say for now.

Eric Magnuson and I are behind Skmmr. It was beautifully designed by Andy Stone.

Give us your email and we’ll send you an invite to the beta shortly. We can’t wait for you to begin to share the content you’re passionate about through Skmmr!

Could Customer Service Usurping Be a Business?

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 10:00:06 -0600

This idea came to me around my fourth or fifth call to Comcast/Xfinity today, trying to get help with a strange problem affecting my cable modem.

What if, instead of calling the actual company related to your problem, you could call a third-party service, one that could help in a variety of areas, encompassing many, many companies’ knowledge bases?

This third-party service wouldn’t have mandatory scripts to read from; they’d do their best to do the right thing to help you out, looking in places such as their knowledge database or simply Googling for your problem, in an attempt to synthesize that information quickly and help you understand it better.

We complain so much about customer service when it’s bad and praise companies with extraordinary service. Yet it seems like nothing can be done about the bad companies.

Yes, a Google search can fix a lot of problems. I’ve found that when I’m looking for a specific answer, reading through forum threads that may or may not pertain to my question seem to be a waste of time most of the time.

Is there a reason that Comcast needs to know my name and address before they can proceed to help me? Not really.

Why can’t I call up a friendly person who hears my problem and does their best to help. In the future, I only want to call someone if A) I absolutely have to have the company solve my problem, or B) I need a technician to come out to my home.

I think this is a legitimate business idea.

Please share your thoughts in the comments. I’d love to know what you think.

Why You Should Produce a Lot

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 11:36:05 -0600

Across all forms of art there are those that produce in obnoxious and sometimes obsessive amounts. The Beatles, Tupac and Lil Wayne are just a few artists off the top of my mind that I pulled from this list of compulsive creators. There is a lot they can teach us about churning out work.

Not everything you produce will be a hit

This should be a fundamental understanding. Not everything you do will be popular or go viral. It doesn’t matter how popular you are online or offline, there are people somewhere who genuinely enjoy your work. And that number doesn’t matter.

We work things out when we create

Last week I was talking with my old Editor-In-Chief from the CU Independent, and I was telling her about my interest in getting back into blogging. She told me just to do it; the concerns that I had about what I was writing about would work themselves out with time.

As you produce, you work through things: emotions, fears, et cetera. Musicians are one of the best examples of this, pouring their souls into your favorite lyrics while working through those same emotions.

Practice

Every time you do something, you get better at it. The more novice you are, the greater and more noticeable your leaps are in proficiency.

Keep making things. Talent is the desire to practice. And, most importantly, go have some fun.

thenavesinkbanks: American Slang @ The Revival Tour (Brian...

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 22:50:42 -0600

thenavesinkbanks:

American Slang @ The Revival Tour (Brian Fallon/Chuck Ragan/Dan Andriano/Dave Hause)

it really doesn’t get better than this, does it?

Nope. It doesn’t.

How Utah Will Soon End Homelessness

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 15:05:44 -0600

How Utah Will Soon End Homelessness:

Utah gives the homeless homes, job training, social services like abuse prevention and access to mental health professionals and it works!

Incredible story.

Since 1997, I’ve never been prouder to be an Orioles...

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 22:47:29 -0600

Since 1997, I’ve never been prouder to be an Orioles fan. Well done.

To the Boys of Summer, see you next season.

I found a secret spot in Boulder: The Monsters Inc. House! (This...

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:00:00 -0600

I found a secret spot in Boulder: The Monsters Inc. House!

(This photo has not been doctored in any way, shape or form. Those are actual, giant Monsters Inc. characters in the window)

Facebook Timeline Drills Through Facebook's Data Floor

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:27:00 -0600

Yesterday’s Facebook Timeline announcement was interesting because it blew out the data floor that Facebook has had for years.

Facebook has very little consistent data prior to 2004 when it began. This is obviously a function of technology as a whole, as it’s difficult to gather data from before you started working on whatever it is you’re working on (there are exceptions to this, of course).

I’ve said for a while how interesting this collective memory is that we have stored on Facebook as humans. But that collective memory only goes back to 2004. Facebook Timeline’s main purpose, in my eyes, is to construct the data prior to 2004, which is very cool.

I love when bands write songs that sound better live. I should...

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 10:21:42 -0600

I love when bands write songs that sound better live. I should really go to this concert in Denver.

bijan:

The Head and the Heart - Down in the Valley (Live at KDHX 6/13/11 by KDHX)

Louis C.K. honors George Carlin As a fan of both Louis C.K. and...

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 12:37:48 -0600

Louis C.K. honors George Carlin

As a fan of both Louis C.K. and George Carlin, this is a must-watch. At it’s core, all it’s about trying things you’re afraid to do in the name of getting better. Have a mentor, learn from the best but be wary of following their path. Their path is theirs. Make your own.

Internet Winner - September 9, 2011.

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 23:03:39 -0600

Internet Winner - September 9, 2011.

An Interesting Use of 10,000 Hours

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:02:35 -0600

In high school, my buddy Pete and I played a lot of pool in my basement. One day, before the start of our sophomore year, I decided that I wanted to have a little contest: First one to 500 victories in 9-ball wins.

The only rule was that we had to finish by the time we graduated in June 2008. (We didn’t.)

We played. And played some more. And sometime over the next four years, we got really good at pool.

I lost to Pete 466-500. We played 966 games of pool, sometimes dozens at a time. I spent thousands of hours in that basement walking miles around that table, playing game after game.

Today I started thinking about Malcolm Gladwell’s popularization of the 10,000 Hour Rule, how we become closer to experts, the longer we spend on something and the more intently we practice. Until recently, I never realized how much of my pool skill I owe to those games; I never considered pool to be something that I devoted such a chunk of my life to.

Those were good days.

Design Spotlight: Drew Melton of The Phraselology Project

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:27:00 -0600

(Photo: Ryan Pavlovich)

Drew Melton is a graphic designer based out of Grand Rapids, MI. He specializes in print design and is constantly fiddling (and failing) with letters. He started a company called justlucky that collaborates with clients and designers all over the country. In addition to justlucky, Drew also runs The Phraseology Project which turns common phrases into gorgeous prints.

Tell me a little bit about yourself, your background in design and about The Phraseology Project. When did you start designing?

I started designing when I was 15 years old. I had picked up a book from the library on building your own websites with HTML. Quite quickly I discovered that it might be nice to have some graphic elements in my websites and since I was the only graphic designer I knew, I picked up a copy of Photoshop and started playing.

From there I picked up an internship at a local web design company in Holland, MI, designing and coding websites. That heavily impacted my decision to take my design career further by going to Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, MI. The experience was great for me but I quickly became bored with the class regiment which often lacked real life experience that I was getting at another internship. So in my Junior year of college, with no money or real resources I dropped out and started justlucky because that’s exactly how I felt, just lucky.

Since then justlucky has been my only source of income and I haven’t looked back. It has given me the freedom to fail (a lot) and collaborate with a whole variety of talent. Some days are really hard of course but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

2. Everyone involved in the Phraseology Project is based in Grand Rapids, MI. Is there a design community up there? What kind of work is coming out of the northern midwest?

The community up here is extremely supportive. Grand Rapids is a fairly small city of around 200,000 people so the cost of living is low and it isn’t hard to become a part of the community quickly which has been great for myself and many of the young designers who are itching to make their mark.

3. You do some incredible lettering, take me through your design process when you sketch things that will later become your prints.

Haha, oh boy. Well, my process is kind of like this…Make a lot of work and something good will happen. A lot of times I end up cherry picking a phrase from the submission database (currently holding over 16,000 submissions!) because I have a fun idea or because I love the phrase or something. Then I start sketching it pretty quick. Sometimes I’ll go through my small library of type books but otherwise I have found that I make the most progress by really sinking my teeth into the phrase pretty quickly. You learn a lot by just trying to draw something over and over. Things just start to pop out and details that you weren’t paying attention to before become pretty clear.

I am big on getting a really detailed sketch together before I even touch a computer but once I am happy with the sketch. I scan it into the computer and layout my illustrator file right over top of it and get to work. I take the file straight from illustrator to the site as soon as possible in order to keep my work moving. Otherwise I get stuck thinking about a piece and nit-picking it to pieces.

4. You have 10 prints up right now in the store of The Phraseology Project, most are done in pretty limited batches. Do you have any plans to add more prints and phrases?

Well, funny you should ask. I am working with a new printer (soon to be revealed) to get some additional prints together by the end of August as well as a t-shirt design that will help support a local, after school art program for high-schoolers. It should be pretty exciting in the near future!

5. What’s one thing you’d want someone who has never seen your work before to know about you?

That I’m totally not a “natural” talent in my own opinion. I am very opinionated and I work my ass off on just about every piece that you see on my sites. It’s not magic I just work hard. Anyone could do what I do if they really wanted and I hope people use my work to do better work in the future. I feel like I got a little off topic there, haha.

Find Drew on Dribbble and on Twitter too.