Down Time

There are certain words, or combinations of them, that can cause any web development team to cringe. "Server" and "Crash" are, ideally, to be separated at all times and uttered in the same labored breath as rarely as possible.

A server going down usually translates into justifiably unhappy clients, an over-stressed web team, a very long night for all of thee above, and, in many cases, a loss of confidence internally and externally.

Unfortunately, the scenario of a tech team pounding away at keyboards in the middle of the night, slightly resembling character geek stereotypes from a TV drama (I’m picturing Chloe from 24), is not rare enough. Despite the efforts of the best technical minds our there, it happens. Taxes will be collected, we will all grow old (even with the best plastic surgeon), and your site will go down. The real trick is expedient recovery and, in the worst case, restoration of data on a new server. For some companies, the website is an extension or tool of marketing. For others, its a hub of vital business logic and process. For cascade, we fall under each category and treat them accordingly.

In September of 2010, JPMorgan Chase, the second largest bank in the world’s largest economy, with an IT budget and staff that would rival some small nations, suffered a complete outage that lasted not for an hour, not for half a day, but for THREE DAYS! For three long days, customers were unable to log-in, transfer money, make payments, or even check their balance. In January of 2009, then popular blogging platform JournalSpace actually ceased operation. Not only could they not get the site up; they literally could not retrieve any data. For an unknown number of users, six years of witty family reenactments and how-to posts were instantly gone. (Could you imagine the uprising of Mom bloggers if this happened today? Horrifying.) After weeks of failed attempts at data recovery (reportedly costing the company more money than they had made the prior year), users were informed that the site would cease operation.

Cascade has been fortunate enough to have impressive collective up-time, but we don't take this for granted. When we have had problems, we've generally been able to isolate the issue (i.e. a site going down does not mean you don't get email) and bring things back up in a comparatively expedient manner. The fact that we backup early and often is what allows us to sleep at night. When we do encounter an issue, our first priority is to do whatever it takes to get things back up and running. Our second priority is to evaluate exactly what went wrong and how we can prevent recurrence. In the event that prevention is not possible, how can we minimize the risk or at the very least improve recovery time? This is the silver lining for us as a smart web company. Having an outage is a huge problem but what we learn from it almost always makes us more stable in the long run.

After hosting our clients web sites for almost a decade, we have a robust set of protocols for prevention and recovery but will never call it “good enough”. Regardless of whether you are hosting with cascade web//development or anyone else, realize that the most important questions are, not whether your site will go down (it will), but how fast it will come back up and are the proper backups in place to ensure it will come back up at all.

How to Post on a Facebook Page as Yourself

In addition to the list of features I outlined in Pros and Cons of Facebook's Page Updates, Facebook has added another feature to the new Pages area.

As a Page admin, you previously could not post, comment, etc. on the Page you admin AND have that message appear from your personal account. Messages were always posted as the Page alias.

Not anymore...

Facebook now allows you to toggle between posting as the Page and posting as yourself on a Page you admin. To post as yourself:

1. Visit the Page you admin
2. Click the "Edit Page" button in the top right
3. Find "Your Settings" in the sub-navigation in the left column (its the first option)
   
4. Uncheck the "Posting Preferences" box

When you want to switch back to posting as the Page, just complete steps 1-3 and recheck the "Posting Preferences" box.

Its easy to do but a confusing topic to put into words so hopefully this all makes sense! If not, feel free to post any questions on cascade's Facebook page.

Pros & Cons of Facebook's Page Updates

Today, Facebook announced their recent slew of design changes and addition of new features. These recent updates definitely have their Pros and Cons, but one new feature will have a HUGE impact on how businesses are able to communicate within Facebook:

• New Pages Design - Most users already migrated to the new Profile layout since its introduction back in December. Facebook is now offering this "new" design to Page admins.
  

• Pro: More design flexibility, especially with the new image bar.
  
• Con: Page Tabs aren't as noticeable in the left column as they were above the Wall. You're out-of-luck if you're not a fan of the new layout--ALL old profiles/pages will be converted by March 1, 2011

• Post Filter - Page admins can choose between sorting Wall posts by the default view or "Everyone", which sorts posts in an order Facebook deems as most relevant.

• Pro & Con: I'm indifferent on this one. Need more time to see if this holds any value.

• "Use Facebook as Page" - This is a early Christmas present for Page admins (or maybe I'm just revealing my Facebook geekiness). This feature allows page admins to use Facebook under their Page's alias. Now admins can post, comment, share, etc. as their Page rather than using their personal profile. This feature can be accessed in the Account drop down (top right corner) by selecting "Use Facebook as Page".

• Pro: Directly reach out to brands, sales leads, customers, business partners, etc. without using your personal profile. You can also manage your notification settings so you don't receive an email every time someone interacts with your Page.
• Con: When you switch to a Page alias, your Wall, notifications (in navigation bar), friends, likes, comments, etc. change to those associated with the Page rather than your personal account.

• Tab Apps and Iframes - Custom tabs and apps for Pages can be built using iframes instead of FBML. This comes to no surprise as Facebook has been increasing the usage of iframes and slowly killing the FBML platform (which Facebook will deprecate on March, 11 2011).

• Pro: Tab Names lengths are not under as strict of limitations with the new Page layout.
• Con: FBML fans will have to make the switch to iframes. (Not necessarily a bad thing)

All-in-all I'm a big fan of the recent updates. Much thanks to insidefacebook.com for making the announcement.

cascade's Early Christmas Present

Earlier this summer, cascade was able to share our passion of computers with a group of children across the globe through One Laptop per Child. This amazing non-profit strives to equip underprivileged children with specially designed laptops for educational and personal use. One Laptop's mission and their XO Laptop technology are best summarized in the organization's explanatory video.

Cascade's donation, made specifically by Ben McKinley and Fritz Brumder, went to Chakuwama, a unique childrens' orphanage in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. The donation included a XO Laptop for the children and a personal Dell Laptop for the Chakuwama office staff, a gift for their amazing sacrifices.

Last week, Fritz received an email with images of the children enjoying their new XO Laptop. An awesome early Christmas present for all of us at cascade, especially for Fritz.




Fritz has been working with the children of Chakuwama since 1999 when he visited Tanzania and was introduced to the orphanage. For more about the amazing woman behind Chakuwama and the children involved, please view Fritz's Chakuwama documentary.

To learn how you can donate to One Laptop per Child please visit laptop.org.

Portland Chosen for Google Hotpot

Santa isn't the only one delivering presents across Portland.

Today on Google's Places blog, the tech company announced our beloved PDX was chosen for the launch of their first local Hotpot campaign. Hotpot is an enhanced feature of Google Places. It allows users to rate local businesses and see friends' ratings both during Google searches and in the Hotpot rating app. Google summarizes Hotspot best as:

a local recommendation engine powered by you and your friends

Why was Portland chosen? Because we're awesome. Literally, that's what they said...or at least that's how I read it. You be the judge:

Portland is a tech savvy, forward-thinking city with a history of innovation and some of the best coffee houses, microbreweries and parks in the country. Whether you know it as The City of Roses, Stumptown, P-Town, Rip City or just PDX, Portland’s thriving local business community and strong heritage of being a trailblazer made it a great choice for us to try something new.

Google will be working with several Portland businesses educating them about Places and providing them with Business Kits (businesses can request one if they have a Places page). These kits mainly include marketing material and instructions on how business can benefit from Places and Hotpot.

Voodoo Donuts and fans at tonight's Blazers v. Magic game are already benefiting from Google being in town. They're also taking a group of the top 5 Hotpot users in Portland out for dinner through their second Hotpot Jackpot.

Read more about Hotpot, Google Places and where you might see them around town in the Hotpot Portland announcement, "Trailblazing in Portland".

By Kyle Bridges

A Different Take on Social Media

Blog titles are meant to have attention grabbing titles, but this one was a slap in the face: Why You Should Consider Turning Your Back on Social Media.

As I read on, the shock wore off and the author, David Port, better explained his position. David argues that not all companies are built for social media. This is true as it requires a lot of behind the scenes work. However, more often than not companies "turn their back" on social media because they fail to create an upfront strategy.

Think about it. You have the potential to reach over 500 million customers. Do you (A) "give it a shot" or (B) plan a campaign with a thorough understanding of your strategy, goals, target audience, and a desired ROI in mind?

What goes into a strategy is a topic for another day. Here are a few ways a social media strategy could help solve issues cited by those in the article:

Time/Staff Management: The very basic social media efforts involve much more than simply posting a 140 character message. Dedicating a full time employee to researching, creating and properly implementing engaging content isn't an option for most companies. When bestowing the responsibility on a current staff member ensure he/she is a great writer, interested/involved in social media and has time to add this on to their current workload.

Setting a Priority Level: How do you balance social media with the normal daily grind? This is unique to each individual or company. Before diving into social media, set a priority level and determine where it ranks among every day business processes. Adjust this process as your social media presence and business evolve.

Is It Right for Your Industry?: Maybe not...or maybe you're just thinking about it the wrong way. Take a step back and think how your company can gain a competitive advantage with social media. Choose a unique approach, be creative and put yourself in the customer's shoes.

Still think its not for you?

What is one industry that doesn't belong on Facebook. Funeral Homes? Now search Facebook for the term and see what you find...

Although a strategy will help, I'm not saying social media will benefit every business. However, there are over 500 million potential reasons why it could...

Read more of David Port's article here.

Movember

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term "Movember", here's a brief history lesson.

Movember is a hybrid word for "Mo" as in moustache and November. The basic ideology behind the term is for men to grow a moustache throughout the month of November. Your initial question most likely is...why? Why would you dedicate a month to growing one of the least attractive facial hair styles? (no offense if you rock a moustache the 11 other months of year, be proud that you can pull it off as very few can)

The idea began in 2003 in Melbourne, Australia in the idea of bringing back the moustache as a joke, but also raising awareness to men's health issues. In 2004, Movember became an official campaign and was directed towards fundraising and raising awareness for prostate cancer. The campaign quickly spread internationally. In 2009, nearly 256,000 men sported the stache with over one million raising 42 million for Movember's charity partners.

So...to help the cause a few of the fellas at cascade are attempting to sport the stache for Movember (some are adopting beard-vember). Its been a rough start, and we very well might scare off business this month, but we're down with anything that supports the cause. Be sure to visit our Facebook page throughout the month to track our progress.

For info on Movember and how to support the fight against prostate cancer, visit movember.com.

Rewarded for Employee Health

Much thanks to the Portland Business Journal for noticing cascade's efforts to promote healthy, active lifestyles amongst the workforce. We took home the #6 spot in the 5-99 employees category at the Oregon's Healthiest Employers Awards earlier this month.

This is a win-win for us. We're extremely grateful for the recognition, and, frankly, we enjoy being active. Literally, all of our employees have made the choice to be active not only for the health benefits without anyone twisting their arm to do so (except on Sunday mornings). Whether its biking, running, skiing/snowboarding, hitting the gym or competing in many of Portland's plethora of competitions (see An Event that Took Our Breath Away) it's just something we enjoy. We also encourage healthy living by offering various incentives for our employees.

Hopefully, we'll be able to keep this up and maybe take home the #1 spot next year!

An Event that Took Our Breath Away

Over the weekend the cascade crew competed in the Oyster Urban Adventure Race which had us literally running in circles all over Portland. The race combines a scavenger hunt with all types of physical activities. Throughout the 3-4 hour race we biked up Mt Tabor, played beer pong, found the world's smallest park, completed an obstacle course at a rock climbing gym, tasted some food cart delicacies, tried not to plow over children while sprinting through the zoo and kayaked under the Burnside bridge, amongst other tasks.

Here are some stats on our mileage:

Foot = 6.7 miles
Bike = 14.7
Total = 21.4 (Hence the reason why it took our breath away)

Even though we didn't capture first place, we had a blast!

Ready to start

Post-Race

The Oyster Race takes places in several cities across the US. Be sure to register when it comes to your town next year.

Capital Bikeshare: a Zipcar on Two Wheels

Cascade recently collaborated with Alta Bicycle Share on an exciting new project that incorporates sustainability, economic efficiency and physical activity all in one. Capital Bikeshare allows commuters or those out for a leisurely ride to rent bike from stations throughout the city and return them at an entirely different location across town. As daily commuters ourselves, cascade was right at home helping build a website for Capital Bikeshare.

CapitalBikeshare.com, operated on Wordpress, combines a clean front end design (done by a local DC designer) with a robust secure members area. Through the website and 3rd party software, Bikeshare members have access to the account information, payment options and their activity level on the bikes (i.e. mileage, usage, etc).

Visit the Our Work page of our website for more about our work with Capital Bikeshare.

brandlive Now Lives on the Web

You've heard us mention brandlive since last October when Nordica helped cascade launch our newest web solution. After living within cascade's online environment, brandlive now has it's own web presence.

Cascade recently launched yourbrandlive.com as the home of the live communication tool. The site features client testimonial videos, an internal blog with support topics and details on how companies can make their brands live around the world. It also includes a list of brandlive's current clients and describes how they're using the tool to improve their business processes and enhance marketing efforts. A brandlive Facebook page was also created. (Be sure to "Like" our page)

Brandlive is a live video broadcast tool that allows companies to communicate with clients, employees and end consumers. Viewers of the live broadcast can interact with the presenter via chat creating an unscripted experience that mimicks a face-to-face interaction one would have in a retail store, meeting, event, etc. The brandlive environment is designed to match the clients brand by incorporating brand design elements. We took this a step further by literally replacing the word "brand" in brandlive with the clients brand.

For more information on this truly innovative and unique communication experience, please visit yourbrandlive.com.

TWEAK: A Social Media Phenomenon

TWEAK left footprints all over the web on their first day of business creating a social media frenzy. TWEAK is one of the many companies finding success today by leveraging social media to generate brand awareness and increase profits. Cascade was thrilled to be along for the ride and to facilitate this brand launch by building the TWEAK site on the evergreen CMS.

TWEAK's motto: "It's Your Brand", couldn't be more true. The evergreen based site follows those same principles by incorporating a ton of social media goodness and custom user features. One of the coolest features on the site is how users are able to alter the site's colors and upload background images to really make the TWEAK site their own.

Aside from customizing the site, TWEAK's customers help shape product development thanks to TWEAK's genius business model. Basically, they leverage internet celebrities' audiences to generate brand awareness and supplement product research and development. For their first shoe, TWEAK called upon Rhett&Link, aka "Internetainers", to solicit design ideas from their thousands of followers. The response was incredible as ideas poured in from twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The designs ranged from functional to ridiculous with everything from velcro high-tops to bacon flip-flops. Rhett&Link then produced a series of videos commenting on the entries which served as a critical piece of the product development process and increased the audience's anticipation for TWEAK's first shoe release.

Upon product launch TWEAK barely went 4 minutes without a sale and had comments pouring in from every corner of the social media space. We are extremely excited to be such an integral part of TWEAK's success and can't wait for the launch of their next product.

Cascade Brand Announcement

We recently announced the launch of our new brand, logo and website. Here is an excerpt from our new story regarding our make-over. For the full story with more about how our company has evolved, check out our news page.



Cascade Web Development is quickly breaking free of our web development tag and transforming into engineers of industry leading online solutions. With the introduction of brandlive by Ben and Fritz Brumder, a Cascade Web Development veteran, more and more national and local companies are beginning to adopt these technologies. The Portland Developmental Commission (PDC) saw this potential and recently awarded the Portland based company with a working capital loan.

To culminate our rapid growth and better explain our brand structure, we realized we needed a new identity; One that provides stronger brand recognition and does not limit our abilities in consumer's eyes. In a similar situation to companies like Apple and Google, we decided to establish an umbrella brand which houses our current solutions. With that said, we would like to introduce a new look and ideology behind our family of brands.

Cascade was chosen as the name for the parent brand using web//development as a secondary title. Cascade appropriately represents the company in a strong and memorable manner yet personifies a more modern feel than Cascade Web Development was able to accomplish. The logo specifically expresses our strengths as a web services provider and our ability to develop custom solutions to meet our client's needs.

You'll also notice a different visual expression of our three solutions: evergreen, whitepass and brandlive. Each brand features a similar style and color pattern yet individually elicit a unique and distinguishable brand image. We hope these logos will become commonplace in our industry and personify each solution's features and functions at first glance.

As always, we thank you for your commitment to cascade and will continue to support your business with innovative solutions and tools to help you evolve.

New Addition to cascade

Congratulations to Cam, cascade's Director of Business Development, and his wife Rachel on the birth of their first child. Bennett Clear was born in the wee hours of the morning on July 21st.

We are thrilled to have a new edition to the cascade family and couldn't be happier for Cam and Rachel.

Sorry for the Lapse

I apologize for the lack of posts this month. We've been extremely busy at Cascade prepping for a major announcement this week.

Be sure to keep checking the blog and follow us on our twitter and Facebook pages to ensure you hear the news first.

New E-commerce Sites Launch on Evergreen

What happened to June?!? Before we even had time to enjoy the month, it was already over. All of us at Cascade were too busy geeking-out on 2 awesome, new websites to even notice the start of summer (well, maybe not in Portland).

June marked the launch of 2 new websites for 2 progressive product companies. Both sites included heavy doses of e-commerce and design in vastly different business environments.

JoFit Women's Performance Apparel

Sokol Blosser Winery

Check out this News Article for a project overview or the relevant posts on our Portfolio page for more details.

Taking Home Some Hardware

Finally, we have a trophy to put on the shelf. The Cascade crew had a great time last night at the Portland Business Journal's 100 Fastest-Growing Private Companies banquet at the Portland Art Museum. Congratulations again to our clients who also made the list:

• AKT Services, LLP #88
• Papa Murphy's International #89
• Info Group Northwest #32
• Lewis and Clark Bank #16
  

Water Logged

You might think we're all brain, but there's some brawn mixed in as well.

A few weeks ago we took a company rafting outing to the Clackamas River and navigated the rough waters thanks to our guides at Blue Sky Rafting. Due to our Portland-esque spring weather, the water was insanely high which made for a turbulent and speedy ride. After a few cliffs jumps and potential raft spills, we made it out safely and lived to tell about it.

Check out the rest of our trip photos on the Cascade Facebook page.

Just Do It

The term made world famous by Nike seemed a fitting title when I discovered the success story of fashion brand Burberry's use of live video to sell product. "Just do it" is most perfectly used for the moment before the leap of faith that a person or a brand makes when trying something new.

To be an early adopter takes guts and in business deep pockets. The inevitable course corrections take skill, insight and an ability to sustain. However, the moment the path has been charted by a select few is the moment to Just do it.

For the launch of it's fall 2010 line, Burberry used live video (in 3D) to broadcast the exclusive runway show to thousands of buyers that could not be there in person. During the broadcast, viewers could ask questions and chat with each other and Burberry staff. For the 72 hours following the show, viewers could buy the exclusive merchandise, sight unseen, before it hit retail stores. Burberry will continue their use of live video for Spring/Summer by broadcasting the show direct on their website. Read more on the Mashable website.

Supporting Your Audience on brandlive

A lot of technologies are built with hundreds of bells and whistles that 90% of users never know exist, let alone need. For brandlive, we purposely left out all those unnecessary features making it simple for you to implement and even easier for your viewers to operate.

Given it's ease of use, it is extremely rare for a viewer to experience a technological issue with brandlive. Regardless, we still want you to be prepared for those rare circumstances.

Below you'll find a short list of troubleshooting topics to refer to when an audience member encounters a problem. Follow these steps when you are hosting a brandlive session to ensure you and your customers get the most out of broadcast:

1. If customers are having problems seeing the live video, ask them to refresh their browser OR click the "arrow circle" in the lower left corner of the video player.
   
2. If the video keeps 'buffering" (meaning they get a little spinning wheel), remind your viewers that video plays best when only a few web pages and computer applications are open.
   
3. No audio? First try the volume button and make sure you have speakers. If they do not work, suggest headphones for the next live session.
4. If your customer reports not seeing a video screen at all, only a puzzle piece in it's place, they will need to install adobe flash (http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/).

That should be it! We've worked out the kinks saving you the troubleshooting headaches. Brandlive is easy to use and should not require much support. If you do encounter a problem not listed above, please contact us.