In late 2006 Mike and I decided to form Digital Octane with out really knowing what we wanted to do; other than to work together on something. It wasn’t until after a few stumbles that we really started to hit our stride over the past few years. Fast forward to about 6 months ago when I finally decided to take the plunge into full entrepreneurship.

A Short Time Ago

Over the past 6 months we have seen some amazing growth at Digital Octane. This growth has come from steady project stream and hard work by Mike McKenzie and myself. While we continue to grow the business, there comes a point where you have to go back to basics. Mike and I have always tried to “Work Smarter Not Harder”.

Expanding our Team

In order to this. Mike and I sat down and planned out expanding our core team to better facilitate our client needs and also possibly give us the ability to have weekends. On top of growing our team, it will help us to expand our services we provide to our clients. With out Further ado. Mike and I would like to announce our newest members of our team.

Michael Chevalier

Michael is joining us as Chief Creative Officer and will be at the forefront of our branding/design efforts. He has extensive experience in the field and will be a invaluable in creating amazing experiences for our clients.

Jason Narciso

Jason is joining the Team as Director of Production. He brings years of web design and development experience to the team and is a whiz at getting things done. His work ethic is second to none and he will be helping us get our projects out the door in a more efficient manor.

Looking Forward

With the addition of both Jay and Mike we are looking forward to even bigger things for the Team, the business and for our clients…

With out getting too deep into the inner workings of all the awesome things you can do within the .htaccess file.

I am making the assumption that you know what a .htaccess file is, and where it goes.

Let’s jump into the very most basic aspects of what we have going on.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On

# Remove www from www.digitaloctane.com
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*) [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,NC,L]

RewriteRule ^company/(\w*+)$  /company/$1/ [R]
RewriteRule ^company/(\w*+)/$ /index.php?page=$1

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} m.digitaloctane.com
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/mobile
RewriteRule ^(/)?$ /mobile.php?page=$1 [L]

Now lets breakdown each snippet from the example above.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On

First off we are setting an option to tell Apache we are going to be creating “symlinks” (Symbolic Link). Basically this means that we are going typing in one URL and directing our users to another spot on our servers WITH OUT redirecting. This will make more sense momentarily.

Secondly “RewriteEngine On” is stating that we are going to be doing some url rewriting.

With these two options set. We can now get down to business. Let’s DO THIS!

# Remove www from www.digitaloctane.com
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*) [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,NC,L]

The next snippet allows the user to type in a page within our site such as

http://digitaloctane.com/company/about/ this url is then converted by the server to
http://digitaloctane.com/index.php?page=about so instead of having a really ugly url string we can create a new one that is a little bit cleaner and more human readable.

RewriteRule ^company/(\w*+)$  /company/$1/ [R]
RewriteRule ^company/(\w*+)/$ /index.php?page=$1

Lastly we created a very similar implementation for the mobile version of our site (In this example we are NOT doing any mobile site detection. That is being taken care of elsewhere)

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} m.digitaloctane.com
RewriteRule ^(/)?$ /mobile.php [L]

Above we are first defining a Rewrite Condition. If our host is m.digitaloctane.com direct our users to mobile.php.

We can extend this conditional further to allow additional parameters much like the previous example. But for this posting I kept it to the most basic implementation.

At DigitalOctane we primarily build flash sites. It’s something we’re good at. At one point it was really the only thing we built. Over the past year we have been making a transition towards  more html sites and html/flash hybrids. This is a good thing! Flash peeps stay with me! How did we get here?

Short History Lesson

It’s a pretty amazing thing if you think about it. For those of us who have been in this business for a while (I’ve been doing this since 1999ish). We went from iframes, nested tables and “spacer.gif. Not to mention the MAJOR browser compatibility issues, with browser dependent versions of websites based on the users browser.

All these factors pushed more designers, ui devs and, agencies towards Flash (not to mention the relatively low learning curve).  Which worked across every browser and OS relatively the same way. Suddenly we had a web with an overwhelming amount of Flash. Too much even. I for one was guilty of “let’s make this crazy flash interface because we can”, not because we should.

Half the problem

One of the great things about flash is also it’s worst problem. A very low barrier of entry. This has allows years upon years of bad practice. From poor development fundamentals to poor usage of the tools in general. I for one blame sites / communities back in the day (I’m looking at you flashkit!) for allowing everyone to share code with out actually teaching correct implementation or usage. I cannot count the number of times I have interviewed potential hires and asked where they go for inspiration and tutorials etc to be told “Oh I just went to flashkit”.  The snatch and grab implementation attitude has created a sour taste in the mouth of many a web user.

The times they are a change’n

Our team has a large amount of experience in the automotive industry. I find that the auto industry is a good barometer regarding future trends within our own industry. This is mainly due to the competitive nature of the automotive space. Requirements for SEO, Seach engine maketing, paid placement and “Social Media” integration are huge factors for this switch. Mobile versions of sites are another majors

Now we’re seeing the trend go the other way. We’re utilizing flash and html/js to create a better user experience for the end user; but not necessarily a full browser window flash experience. Not to say that there isn’t still room for that. Especially with product marketing sites, Movie & Videogame promotional websites that benefit from the features Flash has to offer.

The other Extreme

There are some extreme scenarios happening though. I see another round of “Just because we can” happening with Javascript. The specs for javascript haven’t really changed over the years. There have just been some really talented teams that have created a lot of frameworks which have become quite popular jQuery, Moo Tools, YUI, prototype, etc you name it. Without these frame works making things easier. I don’t think we would honestly be seeing the amount of javascript being done today.

html5, Flash and the future of the business

I’m not going to make some half hearted guess to the future of the web. But the short and long term vision for DO hasn’t really changed only the technology. We will continue to suggest the best implementation for our clients. As long as they aren’t requesting Real Player support I think we’ll be just fine.

The word for today in my opinion. “prototyping” True Research and Development. I started off today with 2 guys from CPB. Follow them @mrayinteractive and @bskahan They try to follow a 80/20 rule. 20% of their time is spent doing anything.. experiment, prototype and make stuff. Some of their most successful endeavors contain thinking and interactivity spawned from being innovative for fun.

Next up was Stacey Mulcahy on twitter as @bitchwhocodes a self proclaimed addict of twitter, and be forewarned if you do follow her, she will tell you “those are all quality links” . We had an hour presentation on Social Media focusing on Twitter and Facebook API’s. Her highest recommendation is to switch everything your doing to OAuth (Open Authorization) as your basic authorization is being tanked by twitter.

“Quick as a Flash” Presented by Grant Skinner @gskinner was the last technical session of the day for me. He went into great detail on best practices and approaches to optimizing flash. He made a great point over the fact that all those arguments over not using flash because it doesn’t perform well or takes too long to load is not Flash’s fault, its the user creating the flash movie. And in my personal opinion, the same goes for inexperienced Javascript or Jquery developers. Everyone who wants to argue those are better… can have the same faults as inexperienced flash developers.

We then got a great presentation from Jared Ficklin from Frog Studios. If you have seen this guy present before then you know he brings all sorts of crazy sound visualization through flash to the physical world. Whether it be crazy Fire tables or Smoke cannons its a very entertaining presentation. We also got the chance to see his new stuff.

We got too see the inner workings and though process behind the creation of the Minority Report’s Pre-cops computer, and shown how they made it reality… No seriously. They made a real working version. it was insane.

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

The Sessions the rest of the day were stellar. Lets start off with this one. “Creativity and Chaos” with Jason Theodor who you can follow via Twitter @jted and who was also gracious enough to already have his slide deck up on the web for us here: http://www.slideshare.net/jted/chaos-and-creativity You have take the time to go through his 241 slides, good for you.. but i would say you would have had to have been there. This guy may border a little crazy… However all us creative folk are. He gave a great session on Creativity, being creative and how to pull that creativity out. My favorite line from his presentation was:

Create Something that critics will Criticize

Go Crazy when brain storming a new project.. Nothing is wrong with that. Then scale it back to meet the needs of the client and reality.

The biggest thing i took from the next session with Ralph Hauwert who you can follow via twitter @unitzeroone is this whole “Skunkworks” concept:

The designation “skunk works”, or “skunkworks”, is widely used in business, engineering, and technical fields to describe a group within an organization given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, tasked with working on advanced or secret projects.

Great concept, This will be something DigitalOctane will always run with moving forward.

The last session of the day was with Colin Moock. Showing off a TON of code and officially announcing during his session at #fitc that Union will have a Free Standard license for up to 1000 Concurrent users. This is something our team is defiantly going to be playing with over the next couple months. As we have another upcoming project which we will write about later next week.

Writing is hard.

We all know Flash, as John said in his presentation “Some say Adobe missed the 3d Boat”. Maybe… However Adobe still has several benefits that Unity3d is yet to bring which includes Webcam and audio support.

Unity 3d is another plugin install. With a Very low saturation rate… You may be hard pressed to get a user to install something they most likely have not heard of before. However Unity3d’s quality far surpasses Flash & Paper vision.  If your building a game for the web or mobile, Unity3d may be worth a look.

Second Session of the Day I attended ( Keep in mind there are 5 sessions running at a time. So make your picks Wisely) Now i don’t know what went on in the other 4 sessions.. But I definately made the right choice going for “The Importance of Whiskey While Working… (And other work flow tips too!)” Presented by Jamie Kosoy from bigspaceship . You can follow him via Twitter @jkosoy . If you can take 1 word from his presentation its “Collaboration”. Your typical company operates in what would be called a “WaterFall” System. Sales, Design, Production and Launch. Everyone has their part… everyone washes their hand at the end. this is as Jamie put it “Bad”. At Big Space Ship the system goes Sideways. Strategy, Production, Design and Development. They all have their input from beginning to end. They work in Project Teams. Each different discipline is represented for each project. Devs and Designers are in the same meeting as the strategists putting out ideas and setting accurate time lines, Jamie says to “Dream Big” in these sessions… and scale back depending on time-line and client budget.

I think one of the most encouraging things Jamie brought up was the humble beginnings of Big Space Ship, back in the day landing a Movie Website for a Romantic Comedy. Doing a great job, they got pinned as the best “Romantic Comedy Website Company” and signed themselves another few Romantic Comedy websites. Finally getting themselves a Horror film… and it blew up from there. Jamie defiantly did a much better job telling that story and im not doing it justice.

The Adobe Keynote was alright, and The last session of the day was an inside view of North Kingdom here is their most recent demo reel:

North Kingdom Showreel 2009 from Designchapel on Vimeo.

We got a great insight into the creative process and techniques and display the many challenges they face from clients, users and the business in general.

To wrap the day up I will leave you with 1 tip from Jamie at Bigspaceship. I dont have it word for word so I am going to ad lib here a bit:

Spend the time to come up with a consistent naming convention for the site to ensure everyone is talking about the same thing, and give this naming convention to the client to make sure when they are talking, everyone knows what is being talked about.

Each year we choose a different theme for our Toronto event. This year it’s Playground. Inspired by fond childhood memories, where tinkering and painting and playing and swinging was the norm, and how as we age these simple pleasures seem to be pushed aside by the world, by work and life itself. We feel it’s time to rekindle some of those simpler times. Play is Good! … we all need some playtime to get energized and to connect to our creative side.

As i review the schedule for the next 3 days.. They are running 5 sessions at a time for each time block. This is HUGE and Terribly frustrating… Which one should i go to for each session.  The Morning sessions until lunch break are up in the air, the only 1 i have already decided on his the first session after lunch. “From Solo to CEO” 6 presenters including Grant Skinner.

I will make a strong effort to write up a Day recap for each day… No promises.

We Arrived in Edmonton around 5pm local time on the 15th of October. We came in Thursday night because we were going to be attending the Optional Papervision3d Workshop hosted by Ralph Hauwert . This was to be his final “Papervision3d” workshop or speaking about Papervision3d again. He has recently left the Papervision3d team to pursue his own interests.

We were with Ralph from 10am till around 5:30pm, teaching approximately 40 #Flashers the in’s and out’s of Papervision3d using both Adobe CS4 and Flex. By the end of the day we were all left with “on export” planet earth rotating and a moon orbiting the planet in Papervision3d.

The Conference.
FITC is a smaller conference then lets say Flash Forward. This allows for way more opportunity to speak with some of the presenters if you were so inclined. We saw some great presentation on both days. We had a chance to have some one on one time with Stacey Mulcahy talking to her about a variety of things including process and “deselopers”. If you follow her Twitter account @bitchwhocodes You might think we were insane to approach her. Believe it or not She was very nice and helpful. Sorry to blow your cover Stacey.

I think the one important thing to take back from this conference overall is that in our experience attending previous flash conferences; Its easy to feel like your not good enough after seeing some of the things these guys have made. The Good thing about #FITC is that we had a chance to see people like Erik, Ralph and James beginnings. Seeing that they are in fact Human and that they started where you started. If you take the time like they did… you’ll be up there speaking.

Follow FITC . Look up these other guys and subscribe to RSS or Follow on Twitter.

While we start putting the pieces in place for a new digitaloctane.com; it’s a small start and a much needed shove in the right direction. Let us know what you think.

HTTP Headers form the core of an HTTP request, and are very important in an HTTP response. They define various characteristics of the data that is requested or the data that has been provided. The headers are separated from the request or response body by a blank line. HTTP headers can be near-arbitrary strings, but only some are commonly understood. – wiki

Wow, What did that just say?

There are two add-ons to firefox which will significantly help you troubleshoot problems with your site especially if your making alot of calls for assets. You should have at least 1 of them, take your pick: Firebug or liveHTTPHeaders. Both will monitor HTTP Headers for you. I am sure there others, however these are the ones i have used and have had success with.

Now lets talk about how this can help you.

When you deal with Flash in the manner that i do. Your loading a base swf and XML. loading content in various swfs who’s content is loading XML, who’s XML has paths to images and assets. That can be a lot of data to look at, and when something doesn’t show up… Then what?

Personally, i turn to Firebug first. turn on headers and refresh the site. I then watch the headers, which is tracing every call I am making. With firebug you will quickly see red 404 show up with the file path that was called. This can very easily save you a TON of time digging through code… looking for some error only to discover you made a typo in the file name you called.

This very simple add on and change to your troubleshooting process can save you time and your sanity.

Firebug does not stop there, Firebug offers some Robust features for Inspecting elements which i will talk about at a later time. You should Install Now, And start using these great features.