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.

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.

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:

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!

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?

It is with this in mind that I wanted to post about the web hosts that we at Tridea recommend:

SiteGround:
Our site is hosted on SiteGround. Prior to starting Tridea, I had refered clients to Siteground. So when it came time for us to purchase hosting I made the pitch for Siteground. Key features:

• free domain
• 750gb hosting space
• 7500gb monthly traffic
• unlimited email accounts
• $5.95/month (w/ 2 year contract)

GoDaddy:
GoDaddy is one of the hosts we recommend most to folks who are not terribly web savvy. We do this because in our experience, over the past 4 years, we’ve had a great experience with their technical support specialist. They are very helpful and a pleasure to deal with over the phone.

They have numerous plans but we usually recommend their Deluxe plan:

• $25 Google AdWords, $50 Microsoft adCenter credits
• 150gb hosting space
• 1500gb monthly traffic
• 500 email accounts
• $6.29/month (w/ 2 year contract)

Compared to SiteGround they come up short on features and lack a free domain, but really, their phone support is outstanding.

We’ve also used BlueHost and MediaTemple before with good results, although MediaTemple is a little more expensive then SiteGround and GoDaddy, they invest heavily in their servers and up-time, so sticklers for technology might prefer that.

One final note, in reviewing hosting packages for this post, I came across a name I hadn’t heard of before:

HostMonster:

• $50 Google, $50 Yahoo credits
• Unlimited hosting space
• Unlimited monthly traffic
• Unlimited email accounts
• Free domain
• $4.95/month (w/ 2 year contract)

They are an unknown to Tridea and people we’ve worked with…but with those features and that price, maybe it’s worth a gamble?

During a recent online worksession with Saulter, we were tossing around ideas for a graphic-based navigation bar for a current project. Using source photos of a variety of boxes, I wanted to quickly mask out the white background against which the boxes were photographed against. During times like these, when ideas are coming fast, sometimes I wish I could hold the digital image in my hands and use a pair of digital scissors to quickly snip it out. Until then, I’ve found the following to be the best way to cut out simple objects quick and dirty.

Masking Box from Tridea Design on Vimeo.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of what Refine Edge can do.

In some cases, we need to remove a background that has a lot of tiny spaces. In the example below, I show how to get even the background color in all those tiny crevices out. It’s a very handy function, and also one of the fastest ways to handle something with this amount of complexity.

Masking Bonsai Tree from Tridea Design on Vimeo.

Here’s a view at the quality between a wand-tool selection for the mask against the Color Range + Refine Edge method.

Whether you know these tricks or not, I certainly hope you will make use of them in your next design comp! Until next time!

In other news, Andrew and I completed a very successful weekend at Startup Weekend Ann Arbor. We worked extremely hard to design the user experience of Nudge, a text message reminder service for small business. For the sake of not having to re-type it, you can read the full recap on my blog, or view the site design on our portfolio.

While depositing a clients check over at Tridea’s bank of choice, TCF Bank, I noticed bottles of Ketchup on top of the dividers between teller stations. So I inquired, “Why are these bottles of ketchup here?”

Turns out, the tellers used that as a way to initiate a pitch on “Catching up on home improvements with an equity loan.” I thought it was a unique way to get that first dialogue and pique the customers interest. Just goes to show you, there’s creativity all around if you look for it!

Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.

It’s a community building endeavor in which all sorts of web and business folk come together to use their talents, work together, and make something cool.

They happen all around the country. In the past there has been one in New York, Atlanta, Boulder, Portland, Houston, Austin, London, and Los Angeles, to name a few. This weekend it will be in Ann Arbor!

John, myself, and the other attendees use our precious weekend hours to bust our tails and come up with fresh new ideas for the web and bring them to reality. It’ll also be a great opportunity to meet other like-minded web folks from around the area.

From a Tridea perspective, it will give us a chance to scout people we might partner up with down the road as well as size up competitors…although, the web is such a big place we rarely think about “competition” with other companies.

Should be a lot of fun, check back here for a recap when it’s over!