Jeffrey Zeldman says,
“I advise every web designer who cares about typography and web standards—that’s all of you, right?—to read the minutes of this remarkable first gathering, and to keep watching the skies.”

I’m not telling you who to vote for, honest. I just can’t seem to get over the Obama brand. Never in my limited history of experience with presidential campaigns have I witnessed such a successful presidential brand campaign. This is such a successful marketing campaign whether or not Obama wins (and some might beg to debate that issue). Even iPhone came out with an Obama ‘08 app to keep supporters connected and in the loop.

It seems almost taboo to bring this up, but I feel if we can put our political opinions aside and take a look at the amazing journey this brand is taking, it’s an astounding example to learn from. Look what we can do as creatives and developers if we stop putting limitations on ourselves in the brainstorming sessions!

I’ve listed a few sites that write a bit about this if you are interested. If we can remove our campaign goggles for a bit (I know that’s difficult to do as the election is just 2 weeks away) and take an objective view of this history-making marketing business, we can probably learn a thing or two. We can take away many things that have gone right here and be of better service to our clients who may look to us to do the same for them someday.

Art Design and Technology for Obama

The Hardest Working Presidential Candidate Logo | Speakup

How to Build a Brand Like Obama | Fast Company

The Evolution of Obama’s Website | The Bivings Report

The Obama vs McCain Website Smackdown | Read Write Web

Web 2.0 Tools Favor Democrats | Read Write Web

Oh Boy Obama: User Generated Campaign Think Tank | Read Write Web

Ohboyobama.com

Who Designed Obama’s Website & Logo?

Why the Obama “Brand” Is Working | Newsweek

“The latest browser market share data is in, and Safari has hit 6.22%, breaking 6% for the first time. Last month’s share was 5.81%, so this is a significant increase. It was only nine months ago that Safari broke 5%. Safari market share has now almost tripled from 2.14% in June 2005, when the WebKit Open Source project launched.”

http://webkit.org/blog/188/safari-hits-622-market-share/

Google has some new software that allows you to add social features to any web site. Google Friend Connect. It also works with existing social networks as well. Including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, LinkedIn, orkut, Plaxo, and others. Watch the video, it’s potentially very cool stuff.

» Read more!

Thanks to Andre for putting this one out there. Fantasy Interactive, http://www.f-i.com. Check ‘em out. You won’t be disappointed.

It’s actually pretty cool. Stop by my office if you’d like to see it in real life
Here’s the details:
Trek iPhone site details

Good find on 11 URL best practices (from a usability and SEO standpoint):
URL Best Practices

http://www.endless.com

The various ways you can narrow down your product search is pretty impressive.

http://spanish-portuguese.berkeley.edu/

Ok, here’s another interesting site that displays content in new and unique ways… I’m not saying it’s great design mind you (but it IS good)…just interesting when you look at the overall thoughtful blend of technology and design. The designer/programmer manages to break webconventions without losing the intuitiveness of rummaging thru the site and finding necessary information (like the logo is kind of buried in the middle of the ‘visually-cluttered’ header). And it’s chuck full of cool stuff w/o looking or acting too geeky.

There are several things to discover here and I’ll list just a few:

1. many interesting custom illustrations that load randomly as a page refreshes

2. a blog between professors and students based on a customized version of word press

3. simple navigation

4. the layout changes depending on browser window size; small screens automatically view ALL the content in 2 columns, larger screens in 3 or 4.

5. javascript animates the interface (there’s a nice fade in and out of content) and rearranges content whenever “read more” links are activated

6. from what I’ve read, it’s written in XHTML, CSS and Javascript, according to web standards and usabillity guidelines…or as steven says, “it’s clean under the hood”.

7. it’s designed and developed by Miguel Ripoll who, interestingly enough, has studied the History of Art / Musicology and Comp Lit! Check out his site here: http://miguelripoll.com/

Ok, have at it!

The iPhone isn’t even out and there are already a ton of people building AJAX apps for them. Heck, there is even a web site listing a bunch of them.

http://iphoneapplicationlist.com/

What do you really need to make apps for the iPhone? The dimensions of the screen and copy of Safari. Whether the phone will share the same success level as the iPod is anyone’s guess, but chances are it’ll do pretty damn well. And there is a pretty good chance over the years that’ll it’ll evolve into a huge market, bringing decent internet capabilities to a handheld device… not just mobile versions, but the whole shebang.

Just interesting to consider the possibilities of such a device if the mass market accepts it. The Harley NMY Tool could have a tool that would tell Ada when someone has made changes. We could make iPhone friendly versions of our admin tools so clients could update their site on the run. What apps would you think we could build for a device?

Side note: There isn’t a Flash plug-in for the iPhone, but it has been hinted that there might be one. My guess is that Adobe is going to wait to see if the phone is successful before investing time into programing a specific plug-in for it. With that said, Apple is already working with YouTube to bring QuickTIme encoded version of their movies to Apple TV, so I’m guessing the iPhone will be able to work with that version… imagine… YouTube on your phone…