centre{source}

For anyone (like myself) who has been religiously following Google and the amazing things that they have done to improve people’s experience on the web, you would have noticed a pattern in December 2009 of “speed.” The reasons for their speed obsession are clearly justified; a user’s experience on the web is made or broken by the speed at which they are able to browse, including the initial page load, the responsiveness of the interactive components, and the number of clicks to get to retrieve their desired information.

As such, Google has been busy releasing various tools to help with user’s experiences on the web:

When your company has had so much success at planning and building world-class Web sites for companies and organizations of all sizes, it is easy to start to think “Hey, what about our site? When are we launching the new one? Can we put a treasure map on there? Can Chris take our pictures?” The answers to the last three are: “today,” “absolutely” and “if you ask him nicely.”

It will be LEGENDARY!

CentreSource is once again sponsoring the midstate’s leading tech-driven “unconference,” BarCamp Nashville. This free event will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Saturday, October 17 at the Cadillac Ranch on Broadway in downtown Nashville (map). At last glance, there were more than 60 presenters that had created sessions on topics on everything from Web development to entrepreneurship. We are also very proud that several of our team members will be presenting at this year’s event:

• Nicholas Holland – From Cave Walls to Facebook Walls
• Chip Hayner – Choosing the Right Tool for the Job

On the drive into work today, I was listening to “This Week in Google“, one of the amazing podcasts from the TWiT network, hosted by Leo Laporte.  In the most recent episode, one of the guests spoke briefly about how he felt that he could let non-direct Twitter messages and Facebook wall posts to him go without reply, but he felt obliged to respond to emails and direct messages.  This got me thinking about the “Social Obligation” that I feel with various forms of communication.

At CentreSource, we have a motto that “outcomes always outweigh the output.”  Through this, we try to focus on meeting the individual goals of our clients, versus focusing on the process of how they get done.  One goal we often hear is that our clients would like an easy way to update the website themselves.  By using a Content Management System (CMS), we enable our clients to accomplish this — without having to install anything on their computers, or know too much about how websites work.

Over the history of CentreSource, we’ve worked hard to choose the perfect CMS to be able to meet the individual needs of each client and project that comes our way.  There was always a balance that had to be struck — it couldn’t be too cookie-cutter, or else we wouldn’t be able to do everything that the client was asking.  Conversely, it wouldn’t be cost efficient if we had to custom build a CMS for our clients each time.  By focusing on the outcome  (the client’s goal of an easy-to-update website), we decided that the best single CMS option was not a single option at all, but instead a “toolbox” approach that would allow us to use the appropriate tool for each unique job.

The summer is here, which means that once again it is time for us to join forces to help out Ellie’s Run for Africa (ERFA), a 5k run and family fun day that raises awareness of and funding for Africans who struggle to meet basic needs such as health care, food, water, shelter, clothing and education.  Since the first event in 2004, ERFA has raised over $155,000 and helped to put over 420 kids in school.

Thanks to Oprah (@oprah), the CNN (@cnn) / Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) follower race, and almost every other news organization, there has been a recent influx of non-tech users being introduced to the wonderful world of Twitter.  In general, Twitter is a pretty basic system to use and understand: it centers around the simple question “What are you doing?”, allowing people to post everything from late breaking news, to their opinions of the local record store, to raising money for a good cause, to sharing the exploits of their cute little puppy.

There is one question about “what’s with the funny symbols?” that I’ve gotten a few times from Twitter newbies, so I figured I’d write a quick post shedding a little light on the subject, and hopefully provide a little insight into how to quickly become a Twitter power user.

NASHVILLE, TN, United States, 04/01/2008centre{source}.com is now ZENtre{source}.com. Nashville’s interactive strategies firm has renamed its company name to reflect its core competencies.

Since the beginning, ZENtre{source}.com, formerly centre{source}.com, has become a fountain of knowledge for progressive clients looking deep within their online persona for a user relationship that goes beyond casual clicking.

Read the full press release of centre{source}’s name change here

[ Update: For those that didn't already figure this out, April Fools! ]

Some of us at centre{source} have been running the latest version Firefox (version 3) which is currently in it’s beta stages. It’s VERY cool and VERY fast…Beta 3 Release 4 just came out today: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.0b4&os=osx

After installing, we were extremely happy to notice that Flash is once again working as expected, and it’s all running a lot faster and more stable. It definitely is a huge improvement over Firefox 3 Beta 3 (which itself was light-years of improvement over Firefox 2!)

Try it out, and let us know what you think!

Bob, Jared, and I just got to Boston for Drupalcon 2008! All week, we’ll be checking in and giving updates about what we’ve learned. If you’re in town for the convention, send me an email chayner {at} centresource.com and we’ll try to hook up for lunch!

For more information on the conference, check out http://boston2008.drupalcon.org