Some calorie for thought

Friday, March 27, 2009

DevBridge crew visited the corporate McDonalds restaurant at 1 McDonald Plaza, Oakbrook, IL this past Saturday to grab some breakfast chow and recoup before another week of intense development. Now before you get too excited by the common stereotypes of developers let me explain that we are indeed a very healthy bunch, all involved in some type of sport except Morris who has an allergic reaction to movement and perspiration. Tomas carves up the ice with some mean figure ska… I mean hockey, Martin tries his best at impersonating Manu Ginobli, and I pump iron so that I would have the physique to go with the accent (“Get to da choppa!”).
Fancy McD's
Morris & Martin
Tomas saying smart things
Our visit to this particular McDonalds was simply to satisfy our curiosity about the corporate headquarters restaurant, famed to have tens of plasma screens, several stories, and a stylish modern interior design... Also, it’s a known fact that that greasy food goes really well with a hangover. During our syrup drenched and saturated fat enriched feed fest (try saying that over and over) we discussed the last several weeks of company business and happenings. Tomas recently finished his Ajax Autocomplete for the jQuery framework that provides a really easy way of creating autosuggest form fields. We had great success with our previous release of Prototype Ajax Autocomplete, so seeing as our team has feverishly embraced jQuery as the sexiest of all JavaScript Frameworks we just had to follow up. If you guys need it – you can try it out and download it here. One of our new developers, who’s mysterious name shall remain as G-duties due to certain government imposed restrictions regarding him and proximity to computers, has recently launched Asico, LLC – a website for vision surgical equipment manufacturer. The highly satisfied customer has been more than generous by gifting us with a set of super sharp scalpels. Peeling oranges has never felt as satisfying and precise!
Waiting for our table
The Team sans me
Texas de Brazil
Last, but not least, last month we flew one of our partners in from Lithuania for two weeks of brain numbing training and team building. After countless destructive visits to Texas de Brazil, Yue-Sun Japanese Steak House, and Grand Dukes Restaurant we shipped Gedas back ten pounds heavier and much less lucid. We had a great time and are waiting for his return this summer after he realizes how seriously addictive those lunch burritos are and how impossible it is to get them in the ice and snow covered plains of Lithuania.
High Volume Eating
Getting Fruity
Some wine?
We’ve got a couple of really big announcements that we’re almost ready to drop, but those pesky non disclosure agreements are keeping our rowdy selves at bay. As soon as the projects are launched to the public we will definitely spew all kinds of propaganda about the stellar quality of our work to you guys. Thanks for reading; it’s time for me to order some Thai for this Friday lunch…

LavaLite.com launches

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

To celebrate the launch of our blog, we're giving you a blog post from LavaLite.com that we wrote for their site launch! Complicated, isn't it? Check out their site and pick up a lava lamp or two!

We welcome you to the new Lava Lite website! It's been a long time in the brewing; a long time in collecting all the required mystical ingredients for an ultimate online experience (actually, we just couldn’t decide what shade of purple to use for our background color).
Getting inspired for design
Studying the product
Prototype New Packaging
Now that those critical decisions have been made and massive amounts of lava transformed into lines of code stored in quasi-supercomputers, we are ready to talk about the exciting trip we took to get here.
LavaLite contacted us, DevBridge, requesting a proposal for an e-commerce website that would replace www.lavaworld.com, a creature of similar age to the primordial goo stored in their lamps. Our initial investigations of the site left our developers crying, curled up in little fetal balls of oily hair and pocket protectors; no wonder the new team at Lava Lite wanted a new site!
A different approach
Trying out some color variations
Getting closer to the final
Scared as we were, deep down we were all fascinated and mysteriously attracted to the "Original Shape of Cool", with its glowing, oozing, and curling goo inside the unique glass shell. It only helped when we learned that Lava Lamps were used as decor in the great GooglePlex! That sealed the deal for us, young developers who looks at giants like Google with puppy-like eyes of adoration.
Surrounded by the soft glow of multiple Lava Lamps and sugar high on energy drinks, our designers started mocking up the future LavaLite.com... only to be shot down time after time by the marketing guru's at Lava Lite! You see, this type of project was not a completely usual affair for us. They wanted it to be "cool", "hip", and "creative"... and we clearly understood that our utilitarian approach to web development was not going to fly this time.
The Lava Lite office
With continuous input from Lava Lite and some long Lava lit nights at the office, our designers and developers crafted a sleeker, meaner, and ultimately far better LavaLite.com. We tried to educate Lava Lite on web matters, and we got great tips about our target audience and insight into the product and business.
What's this?
Got Lava?
Blasts from the past
Finally, the day approached for the final review! We drove to Lava Lite's office, giddy with anticipation, the air full of excitement and electricity (I might have had too much coffee that morning). After a short review session and a multitude of jabs at our coke bottle thick glasses and official geek attire we were presented with what is the highest valued object in our office right now...
A Lava Lite Colossus!
A four foot tall, 110 pound tower of hypnotic blobatude, powered by a nuclear reactor of a bulb (well, it's 250 Watts. Monstrous!)
Back at geek hdqtrs
A place of honor
Look! Blobs!!!
All those sleep deprived nights of pixel pushing were finally paying off! The holy grail of all things cool was ours, in our hands (not literally, we’re big guys, but not that big)! We packed it neatly into our people mover and escaped Lava Lite's office; our sweaty palms caressing the Colossus, fearful that they might change their minds and take it back. We carried our treasure up three flights of stairs, unpacked it and placed it on its throne in the middle of our office. Exhausted, we sat there catching our breath, euphoric and mesmerized as the Colossus began to work its magic.
We thank Lava Lite for this experience and hope all who visit will enjoy the new site!