I browse CNN.com every day to get my news on what’s happening around the world. Indeed, it was the first way I learned of the recent invasion of the Republic of Georgia by Russia. The more details have trickled in, the more I am following the events leading up to and during the invasion. However, today, I read something on their front page that made me stop in my tracks.

In their article, “U.S. at risk of cyberattacks, experts say,” it describes how a highly-organized effort by Russian hackers preceeded the land invasion with a crippling cyber-attack (though the Russian government denies involvement). The move defaced the Georgian president’s website with images of Adolf Hitler, but other targets were much more damaging.

Hackers mounted coordinated assaults on Georgian government, media, banking and transportation sites in the weeks before Russian troops invaded. Known as distributed denial of service, the attacks employ multiple computers to flood networks with millions of simultaneous requests, overwhelming servers and crippling Web sites.

U.S. experts are saying that due to our particular reliance on the internet, we are at risk and are vulnerable to even more wide-spread effects than what Georgia has gone through. For all of us developers and designers, a shutdown of networks and server communication could be devastating. Even the downtime of a single day can wind up setting projects back several more, not to mention the potential for considerable data loss. While (hopefully) we all keep our backup servers and hard drives updated consistently, the setbacks of the loss of a week’s worth of mockups, wireframes, coding and other electronic documents and materials can be considerable.

The article mentions that this may be the first recorded instance of a cyber-attack coordinated with a land invasion. In this era of remote accessibility and dependency on the internet, I sincerely doubt it will be the last. For those of us whose careers are tied to the web, we now have a demonstrative example of why we need to be more aware of our workfiles and workflows, and how such an attack could grind our industry to a halt.

Sometimes there is a misconception that if your site doesn’t look good, it won’t be successful. That is false. Great design only goes as far as great content. In other words, if the content of your site is crap, a great design can’t do much for it.

We always come across people, sometimes potential clients, that want to dive right into a project saying “I want it to look this way and that way.” It’s rare that we get a client that wants to just dive right in and map out a strategy for the content. Well, that should be what happens first. As designers, we need to know what we’re designing for, otherwise, we’re just making a page look pretty and not solving business problems. It can end up being a waste of our time, and your money.

If you’re thinking about a site (re)design, think about your content first. Think about what you want to say to your customers/users before you think about how you want it to look. Not sure how to do that? Shauna Nicholson has some good tips on the subject. Once you have great content, then follows great design, and a successful website. It takes some work, but content should never be an afterthought.

The Tridea team was long overdue for signing up for Twitter. Andrew and I have been heavy users for quite some time, so we felt that it was necessary to get a page up for Tridea. We’ve written a couple times about good uses for Twitter, so we want to continue that trend and use it more ourselves, as a company.

So if you’re on Twitter, follow us to keep updated with anything Tridea related. And if you’re still not quite sure what Twitter is, this video may help:

When a designer is searching for inspiration, it is often found in creative and unexpected places. Two resources I often turn to are TheDieline and TheCoolHunter.

TheDieline - The Leading Packaging Design Blog

TheDieline is a great resource for inspiration. The bloggers who contribute to this site really do find the most gorgeous and well designed packaging in the world. Like this Tequila bottle. Or this bottle of olive oil. Even this great Chocolate bar packaging.

I read it every day in my RSS feed and it’s a great spot for appreciating great design and finding inspiration.

The Cool Hunter - Roaming the U.S. and the Globe…so you’re in the know

I don’t remember how I found this blog, but it is a gem. They have a staff scattered around the globe finding new, interesting, and COOL things. One of my favorite parts is their design section. They showcase a lot of amazing architecture that is really inspiring and beautiful. Like this “aquatic complex”…just stunning.

I hope you enjoy these two great blogs to help give you an inspirational boost!

Being a busy person these days, I’m always on the go in one way or another, yet I still like to be connected when I’m away from the computer. So it’s important that I have a great mobile device that meets those needs on staying up to date with business when away from my desk.

At Tridea, there are three main applications that we use to manage our business. The first being the obvious, which is email, and the Apple’s iPhone has a great mail application. I’m able to manage both business and personal emails whenever I need to, no matter where I am. As long as I have cell service (which is just about everywhere), I’m good to go.

The next application we use a lot is Basecamp. I don’t know where we’d be without Basecamp, and to say I’m excited about the iPhone version of Basecamp, named Outpost, would be a big understatement. The app is due to be released next month so I will definitely be downloading it. I’ve been able to manage with using Basecamp in mobile Safari, but it’s not ideal. Outpost will fill that void.

The last app that we use on a regular basis is Wordpress for our blog. Just this week, they released the iPhone version of Wordpress, which I’ve already tried and is excellent. Now I don’t have to be at my computer if I want to write a blog post here.

Those are just a few essentials that Tridea uses to keep business afloat, and having those applications on a mobile device has proved beneficial. As you’ve already figured out, my mobile device of choice is the iPhone, which very much suites my needs in terms of applications and ease of use. I look forward to seeing what other business applications get released that would help out with Tridea work.

What mobile device are you using and what applications do you have to help out with your business while away from your desk?