Fastspot had the extreme privilege of participating in an Operation Warm event at the Alexander Wilson School in Philadelphia last week. Operation Warm is one of Fastspot’s newest clients, and as always, we like to dive in and get to know our clients and the businesses they run. However, those meetings don’t typically leave the kind of lasting effect this one did.

Operation Warm strives to do one thing, put new coats on kids who otherwise wouldn’t have the means to get one. Operation Warm is a non-profit organization, managed and run by the tireless and dedicated staff we find steering many of the non-profits we work with. The man behind Operation Warm, Richard Sanford, approaches his mission with the kind of enthusiasm and determination you would expect to find in a military leader, mixed with the compassion and caring that makes you start to think of him (and his entire team) as family. They came to us to help them not only create a more compelling and emotionally connecting Website, but to also make online donations easier and help more college students and community leaders organize, raise funds and get coats to kids. (Stay tuned, it should be launching in March, 2009.)

This event at the Wilson school was particularly interesting because it was organized by Penn students. The students organized themselves, raised the funds through fund-raising events on campus, located a donor school with kids in need, got all the info and sizing for the kids (K-6), set up the event, handed out the new winter coats, broke down the boxes and headed back to class. Seeing this kind of event take place, and be so seamless and effective, really struck a nerve. Imagine what could be accomplished if every college student had to work towards something like this every semester? There are hundreds of organizations just like Operation Warm, seeking to do one small thing, but one very important thing - help people who need help. If these organizations could count on more than the individual donations they get but also count on the more valuable commodity, people’s time, imagine what they could accomplish?

The holidays always bring out the “giving spirit”, and I think it’s especially important in today’s climate to not lose sight of how important “giving” really is, be it money, time or just a voice. Helping put a new coat on a kid, helps that kid get up and go to school vs. stay home where it’s warm, it helps them stay warm at night if the heat gets turned off, it helps them feel equal and valued, it helps them focus on things more important than how much it sucks to be really really cold.

I challenge every person to do one small charitable thing this holiday season, and then keep it up in the spring, the summer, the fall. Donate a can, drop off a dollar, go online and give to one of these non-profits that makes a difference. And of course, you can make a donation to our client, Operation Warm as I can personally say, it makes a big difference in a kid’s life - I got to see their faces when they put on their new coats.

Additionally amazing non-profits who can put your donations to good use:
Donorschoose.org
Kiva.org

We recently had a pretty big pitch, after making it to the finals of a RFP process. The potential client was Russell & Mackenna, they design and build gorgeous finely crafted furniture, offering customization options and a great variety of collections. Needless to say, we wanted this client! We had just been talking about how we really wanted a furniture client, with great products, who wanted to move into e-commerce. So the pitch came and it went very well, great meeting, great discussion, and then the waiting.

About 5 days later, I got a IM that there was a delivery for me downstairs. Strange, I hadn’t ordered anything. And rather than wasting time trying to explain my reaction, and the subsequent reaction of the entire agency, let me just show you what was delivered. The card below reads:
“Please accept our condolences…You now have Russell & Mackenna as a client”

Needless to say, Russell & Mackenna was instantly our newest most favorite client. That kind of personal touch is sorely lacking in business today, not to mention the creative delivery. Talk about a smart client, they can rest assured they are getting the best of us every hour we put into their project, and they can probably also expect lots of extra hours. The fact that a client who was about to spend a considerable amount of money with Fastspot went out and sent us a huge box of flowers, well - that says a lot about what kind of company they are.

We look forward to designing and developing the most beautiful user friendly e-commerce interactive experience for their products and their company’s brand, and we look forward to it making them lots of money. Funny how something that might seem frivolous or like an afterthought can go so far to building the bond that helps shape the success of a project.

A few other clients who have gone that extra mile to make the relationship and end-product amazing:

Bucknell University - They sent us flowers too, but not until the site went live! However, they were and continue to be one of our all time favorites. www.bucknell.edu

Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association - Tom Rowe and his entire team not only made the baltimore.org maps / events project a great experience, they turned around and gave us a very long leash on one of the most exciting Website projects Fastspot has ever been part of - stay tuned, launching soon!

Tulkoff Food Products - These guys were super nice and brought over a huge sampling of all their sauces, marinades and dips so we could experience their products - delicious! www.tulkoff.com

The Purple Tooth Wine Bar - We happily created a site for these guys, and as a thanks we are always getting delicious and off-the-beaten-path wines as gifts at all of our meetings! Plus we get the Fastspot discount whenever we stop by! www.thepurpletooth.com

We are proud to present our new “Fastspot Logo Prototype” poster, designed by the talented people over at Orange Element! This poster documents the various type faces and approaches they explored when creating the new Fastspot logo, and captures the spirit of exploration and creativity that was part of the entire process.

Typically we reserve these posters for clients, employees, and friends / family. However, we are willing to part with 5 posters to the first 5 people who email us and let us know why they want their very own! The poster is 24″ x 36″ on 80# Finch Opaque Cream White Cover.

We won’t send a poster out to just anyone, we want to know why you are interested in interactive design, Fastspot, or just the aesthetics of the logo or poster. And we will post your emails to the blog.

Email us at info@fastspot.com, and we will respond to the first 5 emails that are worthy of one of these typealicious posters.

11.13.08 - Update. Well we have 5 very happy poster recipients identified who will be receiving their posters in the next 2 weeks. Thanks for all your emails, and who knows, maybe we will run another give away in a few weeks. Stay tuned!

The web is a much safer place now that cross-site scripting vulnerabilities have been (mostly) plugged. Gone are the days where you could be tricked into visiting a site that embedded your bank’s website and stole your login information through Javascript. Amateur web users as a whole have greatly benefited from the paranoia that has resulted from these “phishing” attacks.

But how has innovation been affected? The great thing about the web is that it’s inter-connected, and even with all the security measures that have been put in place, a great deal of things can still be accomplished with web mash-ups. We’ve done quite a few cool things with Google Maps, eBay, Yahoo, and other web APIs. But we had server access to all the sites we’ve incorporated those cool features on. What if you want to share a cool feature with someone else just by passing them some code to paste into their website, or better yet, simply a bookmark to click?

Bookmarklets are fairly new to the web, but already there are tons of useful ones! Take a gander at X-Ray (a bookmarklet for inspecting elements of a website), Firebug Lite (an awesome debugging tool for Internet Explorer), and even a bookmarklet for downloading videos off of YouTube and other video sites. You simply drag the link to your bookmarks bar or right click to add the bookmark, visit any website, click the bookmark, and cool things happen on the current site you’re at.

So what do bookmarklets have to do with cross site scripting and web security? Well, they’re the most effected feature-wise when it comes to the web paranoia. There is a cross-domain limit on what Javascript can do in browsers while transmitting data. For example, “AJAX” requests can’t be transmitted from Javascript hosted on www.google.com to www.yahoo.com. While working on a bookmarklet here at Fastspot, I came head on with the browsers trying to beat my way around the limitations designed to protect amateur web users. I’ve come quite a way, but there’s a long road ahead. Let’s look at how different browsers treat their security when it comes to Cross-Site Scripting (XSS).

Firefox 3:

• Allows different domains to be called in <script> tags. This is the primary method used to accomplish cross-site bookmarklet applications.
• Allows different domains to be posted to in <iframe> tags.
• Allows reading session/cookie information from different domains via <script> tags.
• Allows WRITING session/cookie information from different domains via <script> tags.

Safari and IE7:

• Allow different domains to be called in <script> tags. Again, the primary method used to accomplish these bookmarklets.
• Do NOT allow different domains to be posted to in <iframe> tags.
• Allow reading session/cookie information from different domains via <script> tags.
• Do NOT allow WRITING session/cookie information from different domains via <script> tags.

The limitations of Safari and Internet Explorer are important because they limit how information can be accessed. For example, uploading files to a different domain via a bookmarklet is easy through an <iframe> in Firefox, but in Safari and IE7, a pop-up window must be posted to. This is not an elegant solution, but may be the only way with the present state of browsers. Similarly, logging into a bookmarklet is simple in Firefox — a <script> is loaded with your login information which is submitted to the login server which sets your session up and logs you in. Simple, right? Only in Safari and IE7, you’ll need to be on the login server’s domain to write that session information, either via a pop-up, or redirecting the user to first login at the host server.

Cross-site scripting is always going to be a compromise between allowing web developers freedom and protecting the web users. Unfortunately, with each browser upgrade, the vendors seem to be moving toward a more security-conscious approach. Hopefully, HTML 5 will provide XSS possibilities, but even so, Bookmarklets may be left out in the cold.

We’d love to hear what you think! Do you have favorite bookmarklets you are using? Have you developed anything cool with this approach?

I read lots of books about business, and how to do the right things in business. I think many of them are obvious and say the same things. I think some of them are just plain stupid and self obsessed. I learned how to succeed in business by first learning to become a painter.

When faced with a blank canvas and your paints, you must make decisions, and once you start, you have to commit to them. You have to start with an idea, and be comfortable that many hours and days might go by before your idea ever starts to take shape on the canvas. You have to be open to new ideas or directions presenting themselves to you along the way. You also have to be willing to make an ugly painting.

Painting the way I paint isn’t a relaxing pass time. The canvases are large, the brushstrokes are thick and the whole process is fairly physical. When I come home at night, I am tired. I have to force myself to go into the studio, and have faith that progress will happen. Even an hour is better than nothing.

As the painting develops, it will reach a variety of stages where it looks really good, there will be this one amazing brush stroke or color passage, and I will want to stop and leave it as is. But my gut tells me, its just not done. I hang it at the foot of my bed and look at it when I go to sleep, and first thing when I wake up. If my gut keeps telling me its not done, I take it back into the studio. I have to be completely unafraid of destroying the parts I was getting attached to, as they do not make the entire experience of the painting.

As the painting evolves, great passages are covered over or scraped away, it moves through stages where it just looks like a mess, sometimes it needs to dry for a bit, sometimes I switch to my sketchbook or start another completely different painting. I am patient, but I keep going at it, until my gut tells me it is done. Then I start all over again.

What I learned as a painter applies directly to how I run my business. I work at it tirelessly, and am not afraid of failure (as its only a temporary situation). I let other ideas come into the playing field, and I don’t look for a quick fix. I trust my gut and am not afraid to make scary decisions. I have had to let good people go, and lost good clients due to not listening to my gut. Intuition, courage and action are powerful when combined, and if you just make the effort to get started and keep at it, amazing things will happen. If you can inspire this in your team, then you are definitely guaranteed to succeed!